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Green Mountain Coffee K-Cups

Herb Swanson/Bloomberg

Green Mountain Coffee K-Cups at the company’s visitor center and cafe in Waterbury, Vermont on Feb. 18, 2011.

Green Mountain Coffee K-Cups at the company’s visitor center and cafe in Waterbury, Vermont on Feb. 18, 2011. Photographer: Herb Swanson/Bloomberg

Robert P. Stiller, founder and
chairman of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (GMCR), sold $66.3
million of his stock before it plunged the most in four months
on news that Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) had developed a rival to its K-Cup
brewer.

Stiller’s combined sales on Feb. 15 and 24 were his largest
in a single month since at least 2003, when the stock traded
below $2, data compiled by Bloomberg show. He would have
received $13.7 million less had he sold after March 9, when the
shares fell 16 percent on Starbucks’ introduction of a machine
for home-brewing single cups of espresso and coffee, a challenge
to Green Mountain’s Keurig system.

“We recently learned of Starbucks’ planned initiative in
the espresso-based single-cup category,” Green Mountain said in
a March 9 regulatory filing, a day after the machine was
announced. “However, we were not made aware of any additional
capabilities.” Spokesmen for Green Mountain wouldn’t specify
when it learned of the plan.

Green Mountain is struggling to hold market share as it
braces for the September expiration of its main patents on K-
Cups. The plastic pods have dominated single-serve coffee making
in the U.S., with flavors including Gloria Jean’s Butter Toffee
Coffee and Wolfgang Puck’s Jamaica Me Crazy blends. As other
companies prepare their own machines, the Waterbury, Vermont-
based brewer’s stock has almost halved to $53.51 in the six
months through last week.

The shares dropped 2 percent to $52.45 at 4:30 p.m. in New
York, after reaching as high as $54.75 during the session.

Must Abstain

“It’s something that the SEC would want to look at,” said
James D. Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University in
Durham, North Carolina. “If he has inside information, he has
to withdraw from the market.” Florence Harmon, a Securities and
Exchange Commission spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Starbucks informed Green Mountain of its plans before its
announcement, according to Alisa Martinez, a spokeswoman for the
Seattle-based company. She wouldn’t elaborate. Darren Brandt, a
spokesman for Green Mountain, declined to comment on behalf of
the company and Stiller.

Stiller reduced his direct stake last month by 6.9 percent,
selling a total of 1 million shares, according to regulatory
filings with the SEC. The sales aren’t marked as so-called 10b5-
1 transactions, a type of pre-programmed trade that managers set
up in advance to show they aren’t basing decisions on inside
information. Starbucks’ March 8 announcement after the close of
trading sent Green Mountain’s stock down the next day. By the
end of last week, it had regained 1.8 percent.

Stiller’s Background

Stiller, the second-biggest shareholder of Krispy Kreme
Doughnuts Inc. (KKD) and the largest stakeholder of pizza chain Noble
Romans Inc. (NROM), also co-founded the rolling paper maker E-Z Wider.
He founded Green Mountain in 1981 as a small Vermont cafe and
remains the largest individual shareholder with 13.4 million
shares, or 8.7 percent of the company, according to Bloomberg
data. Stiller was listed as 68 in a February proxy statement.

The company has faced criticism from hedge-fund manager
David Einhorn, who in October questioned its accounting and said
its market share has peaked.

“With Green Mountain’s patents expiring this fall,
Starbucks’ entry is part of the competitive onslaught hitting
Green Mountain,” said Einhorn, 43, president of New York-based
Greenlight Capital Inc., in an e-mail earlier this month.

Stiller submitted paperwork dated Aug. 4 to the SEC showing
he wanted to sell as much as 2 million shares. He sold only
500,000 that day, a separate filing shows.

Rival Machines

Even if those documents showed intent to further reduce his
stake, the February trades would be “problematic” if he had
information from Starbucks about its plans, said Onnig
Dombalagian, a professor at Tulane University Law School in New
Orleans and former fellow at the SEC.

Green Mountain says its K-Cup system and a new brewer,
called Vue, are different from the new Starbucks machine, called
Verismo. Green Mountain’s machines use “low pressure to extract
maximum flavor,” as opposed to espresso machines using “high
pressure and high temperature to produce a more intense taste
profile,” according to its March 9 statement.

Starbucks had an existing agreement to sell coffee for
Green Mountain’s K-Cup system before introducing the Verismo. On
March 21, the companies said Starbucks will also sell cups that
work with the Vue. Green Mountain jumped 10 percent on that
announcement.

Stiller’s trades probably aren’t the most important of the
“smorgasbord of cases” the SEC could be interested in, Boston
University School of Law professor Tamar Frankel said. The
commission’s resources “are not unlimited — far from it.”

To contact the reporters on this story:
Max Abelson in New York at
mabelson@bloomberg.net;
Leslie Patton in Chicago at
lpatton5@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
David Scheer at
dscheer@bloomberg.net;
Robin Ajello at
rajello@bloomberg.net.

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-26/green-mountain-founder-sold-stock-before-starbucks-k-cup-threat.html

Feast your eyes on the future of the Internet — beautiful websites built with HTML5. The newest version of HTML effectively catapults words and graphics into another dimension without plug-ins or the annoying lag time. Wix.com is making sure everyone — not just developers and fancy web designers — can get in on the action.

HTML5 is the updated version of the online code used to build websites. The newer version of this code allows websites to integrate multimedia — videos, pictures, graphics and words (that not stagnate) — into its mainframe. CSS3 is the markup language that programmers can lay on top of the HTML to make websites even more visually appealing (think: accessories to make websites extra fancy).

Recent examples of the magic of HTML5 include two interactive music experiences. Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown and OK Go x Pilobulos’ All Is Not Lost. Both were built with the Google Chrome team to showcase the advanced web technologies allowing people to see a new virtual world.

Wix.com says there’s no need to be a world-class web designer to use HTML5. The company unveiled a free HTML5 website builder with plenty of easy-to-use templates on Monday. The six-year-old company already has over 20 million free and premium users building flash websites using the myriad of DIY templates.

“With the HTML5 launch Wix users will have an even greater freedom to create ultra-modern and user-friendly websites that best cater to their needs,” Omer Shai, VP of marketing at Wix, told Mashable.

SEE ALSO: 4 Tips to Keep Your Website Ahead of the Curve in 2012

Wix built the new series of templates for people with small businesses, designers, photographers and corporations that want to take their web presence to the next level. There’s absolutely no need for code. Individuals can simply drag and drop different website features and type in words where needed.

HTML5 features will optimize integrating video, open up font/typography options, make galleries more optimal for viewing and introduce an element of interactivity. Best of all, HTML5-based websites are supposed by most new devices.

This all means the web experience will be faster, cleaner and make galleries and videos more fluid. Social media and search optimization are also improved features of these new templates.

“HTML5 provides new technological capabilities and solutions for products that don’t support Flash,” Shai said. “The majority of browsers support HTML5 now and it’s market share is growing very quickly, the popularity of mobile web browsing is on a constant rise and HTML5 is compatible across the web.”

With Wix’s HTML5 builder individuals can build small business web pages (see here) and personal portfolios (like this one).

Have you considered exploring HTML5 options for your business or personal portfolio? Tell us in the comment what you think about these new templates.

Article source: http://mashable.com/2012/03/26/free-html5-website-builder/

Feast your eyes on the future of the Internet — beautiful websites built with HTML5. The newest version of HTML effectively catapults words and graphics into another dimension without plug-ins or the annoying lag time. Wix.com is making sure everyone — not just developers and fancy web designers — can get in on the action.

HTML5 is the updated version of the online code used to build websites. The newer version of this code allows websites to integrate multimedia — videos, pictures, graphics and words (that not stagnate) — into its mainframe. CSS3 is the markup language that programmers can lay on top of the HTML to make websites even more visually appealing (think: accessories to make websites extra fancy).

Recent examples of the magic of HTML5 include two interactive music experiences. Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown and OK Go x Pilobulos’ All Is Not Lost. Both were built with the Google Chrome team to showcase the advanced web technologies allowing people to see a new virtual world.

Wix.com says there’s no need to be a world-class web designer to use HTML5. The company unveiled a free HTML5 website builder with plenty of easy-to-use templates on Monday. The six-year-old company already has over 20 million free and premium users building flash websites using the myriad of DIY templates.

“With the HTML5 launch Wix users will have an even greater freedom to create ultra-modern and user-friendly websites that best cater to their needs,” Omer Shai, VP of marketing at Wix, told Mashable.

SEE ALSO: 4 Tips to Keep Your Website Ahead of the Curve in 2012

Wix built the new series of templates for people with small businesses, designers, photographers and corporations that want to take their web presence to the next level. There’s absolutely no need for code. Individuals can simply drag and drop different website features and type in words where needed.

HTML5 features will optimize integrating video, open up font/typography options, make galleries more optimal for viewing and introduce an element of interactivity. Best of all, HTML5-based websites are supposed by most new devices.

This all means the web experience will be faster, cleaner and make galleries and videos more fluid. Social media and search optimization are also improved features of these new templates.

“HTML5 provides new technological capabilities and solutions for products that don’t support Flash,” Shai said. “The majority of browsers support HTML5 now and it’s market share is growing very quickly, the popularity of mobile web browsing is on a constant rise and HTML5 is compatible across the web.”

With Wix’s HTML5 builder individuals can build small business web pages (see here) and personal portfolios (like this one).

Have you considered exploring HTML5 options for your business or personal portfolio? Tell us in the comment what you think about these new templates.

Article source: http://mashable.com/2012/03/26/free-html5-website-builder/

The Eclipse Foundation for open source development tools is eyeing July as the release date for the 1.0 version of its Orion browser-based IDE for building Web applications, which will be discussed at this week’s EclipseCon 2012 conference in Reston, Va.

Unlike the signature Eclipse desktop IDE, which is geared to Java and C++, Orion is intended for HTML and JavaScript development, said Ian Skerrett, Eclipse vice president of marketing, in an interview. “The benefit [of Orion] is your development tool is where your apps are running,” he said. Orion is particularly useful for cloud application development, Skerrett added.

[ Node.js, which puts JavaScript on the server, also will be featured at EclipseCon in a session about the VJet JavaScript IDE, which is an Eclipse plug-in. | Subscribe to InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter for more perspectives on software development. ]

Orion was announced at last year’s EclipseCon event. Developers at this year’s conference can get tips on using and extending Orion, which Eclipse anticipates will be incorporated into commercial products. Mozilla is already using the Orion editor in its Firefox developer tools, Skerrett noted.

Version 1.0 of Orion will be available right after this June’s annual Eclipse release train, which features the release of numerous Eclipse technologies concurrently. This year’s release train is to be called Kemper, and it will be based on the Eclipse 4 platform, which features a reengineering intended to make it easier to build applications atop the Eclipse platform, Skerrett said. Last year’s release train, Indigo, featured work from 62 project teams.

Other topics at EclipseCon 2012 include developing Android applications via Eclipse tools, application lifecycle management, devops, and a session on JavaFX and Eclipse. Co-located with this year’s EclipseCon conference will be another event, Agile ALM Connect, which is a technical conference focused on connecting the latest development tools, agile methods, and persons in the application lifecycle.

This article, “Eclipse readies browser-based IDE,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Read more about application development in InfoWorld’s Application Development Channel.

Article source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/252581/eclipse_readies_browserbased_ide.html

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Apple Plans Further China Investment

Qilai Shen/In Pictures/Corbis

Apple Inc. employees pump their fists in the air as they open the company’s new store in Shanghai, China, on Friday, Sept. 23, 2011. Apple Inc. is currently has 5 stores in mainland China as it struggles to open enough stores to stave off competition of its popular iPhones and iPads.

Apple Inc. employees pump their fists in the air as they open the company’s new store in Shanghai, China, on Friday, Sept. 23, 2011. Apple Inc. is currently has 5 stores in mainland China as it struggles to open enough stores to stave off competition of its popular iPhones and iPads. Photographer: Qilai Shen/In Pictures/Corbis

March 26 (Bloomberg) — Bloomberg’s Betty Liu reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook is visiting China as the company plans greater investment in the country. She speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “In The Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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Apple CEO Tim Cook Visits China

TopPhoto/AP Images

The CEO of Apple Inc Tim Cook visit Apple’s specialty store in Beijing, China on Monday March 26, 2012.

The CEO of Apple Inc Tim Cook visit Apple’s specialty store in Beijing, China on Monday March 26, 2012. Photographer: TopPhoto/AP Images

Apple Inc. (AAPL) said it plans “greater
investment” in China as Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook
visited the world’s most populous country, where store openings
have trailed a forecast the company made two years ago.

Cook had “great meetings” with Chinese officials, Carolyn
Wu, a Beijing-based spokeswoman, said by phone yesterday,
without identifying the officials. Cook earlier in the day posed
for photos with customers at Apple’s store in the Joy City Mall
in Beijing’s Xidan shopping area.

China is Apple’s second-largest market after the U.S., Cook
said in October. His visit comes almost three months after
crowds threw eggs at another Apple store in Beijing’s Sanlitun
district when it didn’t open on the first day of sales for the
iPhone 4S. Demand for the iPhone in China was “staggering” and
the company “didn’t bet high enough,” Cook said Jan. 24.

“Apple has done a great job with the relatively small
number of retail stores they have got here,’” David Wolf, CEO
of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based marketing strategy
consulting firm, said in an interview yesterday. “The challenge
now is to extend the successful retail model they have in the
U.S. to China. Now they are really still in a test phase. It’s
time to take it broader.”

Since opening its first store in Sanlitun in 2008, Apple
now has two stores in Beijing; three in Shanghai and one in Hong
Kong, for a total of six. That’s fewer than the 25 stores that
then-head of retail Ron Johnson projected over two years on Feb.
25, 2010. Johnson left Apple last June to become J.C. Penney
Co.’s chief executive officer.

‘Greater Investment’

“China is very important to us and we look forward to even
greater investment and growth here,” Apple’s Wu said yesterday,
without providing further details.

In addition to adding retail stores, other areas for
investment may include increasing Apple’s “very thin” staff in
China, Wolf said. Cook may also consider whether to own
manufacturing or research facilities in China, he said. Foxconn
Technology Group, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of
electronics, makes the iPhone in China for Apple.

Apple, the world’s most valuable company, almost doubled
its potential customer base for the iPhone this month when it
signed a second carrier, China Telecom Corp. (728), in the world’s
largest mobile-phone market.

China Telecom at the end of February had 41.2 million
subscribers on its third-generation network who could use the
iPhone to surf the Internet for games and videos. China Unicom
(Hong Kong) Ltd. (762), the nation’s first carrier to offer the
iPhone, had 45.9 million 3G users.

Court Battle

China Mobile Ltd. (941), the world’s largest carrier by
customers, does not offer the iPhone with a service contract,
and its homegrown 3G network is incompatible with the device.
Still, China Mobile had 15 million iPhone users on its 2G and
Wi-Fi networks, the company said this month.

Apple is waging a court battle for rights to the trademark
for its iPad tablet computer in China with failed Hong Kong-
listed display maker Proview International Holdings Ltd. (334) Apple
has appealed a November court ruling that its 2009 contract to
buy the iPad name in China from Proview’s Taiwan unit was
invalid because the mark was owned by Proview’s Shenzhen unit.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story:
Edmond Lococo in Beijing at
elococo@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Michael Tighe at
mtighe4@bloomberg.net

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I like the cookbook format myself in situations like this. I’m already familiar with HTML but I want to learn about the new features that exist in HTML5. This means I’m not nearly as interested in explanations, especially in the basics, as I am in getting a big diff on the languages with lots of examples and only as much explanation as necessary. Though the trick for authors is to walk the fine line between too much explanation and not enough. If they get too wordy, it really isn’t a cook book any more. Not enough explanation and it can become difficult to understand all the issues that come to bear with an example. This is especially true when dealing with something that is new and still in development.

HTM5 Developer’s Cookbook walks this line well. Hudson and Leadbetter have organized the recipes into various categories and further labeled them with a level of difficulty. Recipes are marked as beginner, intermediate and advanced. I found the labels helpful because while I’ve mucked about with HTML and its corresponding tech, I felt more comfortable easing in on the beginner end first. If I were working with someone who was a true beginner to working with any kind of development, I would probably not start them off with a cook-book. I think that is especially the case here because so much of HTML is not covered. This is not an exhaustive resource on HTML but rather a set of explanations and examples on what is new or different in this latest version of HTML.

The book itself begins with a quick review of how we got to where we are, a bit of HTML history. The chapters follow this pattern, starting with some history where needed and an explanation of the new technology driving the examples that are to follow. Then there are the recipes themselves, followed up by any helpful information and a summary. There’s more prose than I’ve seen in many other cook-books but in this case I didn’t see it as a negative. The authors assume that readers are familiar with the old approach and they need to explain how the new approach is different. In some cases tags have changed meaning, this needs to be spelled out.

Hudson and Leadbetter deal with handling how various browsers support (or don’t) the various aspects of HTML5 that they highlight. This is especially important as everything is still in flux. Though if past history is any indicator, even if the spec were completely nailed down, there would still be differences between browsers. This does bring up an important question though. This book has a definite shelf life. As HTML5 continues to develop there are many parts that may become inaccurate. This is true of most tech books, but doubly so in this case. If someone is looking for a timeless tome on the topic, this wouldn’t be it. In my case, it’s a timely resource to get up to speed quickly, from a single source that I trust. I can search the web and find a mixed bag or turn to this one spot to get quickly up to speed.

I had an electronic version of the book made available from the publisher for this review. I’ve found that format to be very helpful in this case. It keeps me from feeling at all guilty about buying a book with such a narrow window of usefulness. I also really enjoy being able to jump straight to recipes. There is a list of just the recipes at the end of the book that are linked directly to each that make this especially easy. I’m rapidly moving away from dead tree books, and I didn’t feel any reason here to miss that format. (On a side note, I got the page count above from Amazon. I wonder what metric we’ll be using to judge book size in the future? Word count?)

All of the chapter titles and recipes are available on line. From new structural elements to integrating with devices, there are plenty of practical and useful examples. I couldn’t find a clear statement in the text of the book on readers being given the freedom to use the recipes directly in code. This surprised me so I checked with the publisher and they told me that all code is free to use. Maybe that is not necessary here because everything shown is just an example of following the specification, but given the current climate with regards to intellectual property I wanted to be sure.

I’ve rated the book 9 out of 10 due to the fact that I think the authors do a great job of not wasting my time but instead quickly deliver what I need. If you want to get a feel for what is up with HTML5 yourself, I recommend this as a great option. If you are interested in a more comprehensive review of HTML in general or how to create web pages, I would find something more suited to providing an introduction to web programming.

You can purchase HTML5 Developer’s Cookbook from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers’ book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Article source: http://books.slashdot.org/story/12/03/26/1359237/book-review-html5-developers-cookbook?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

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Chocolate Binge Topping $100 Billion Boosts Cocoa

Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg

Global sales of chocolate confectionery rose 34 percent to $102 billion in the past five years.

Global sales of chocolate confectionery rose 34 percent to $102 billion in the past five years. Photographer: Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg

A survey of about 1,000 Americans
that suggests eating chocolate may help people get leaner
deserves to be followed up with more study, according to a
California-based researcher.

The survey found that those who ate chocolate about five
times a week had a body mass index one point lower than those
who didn’t indulge, Beatrice Golomb, at the University of
California, San Diego, wrote in a letter published in the
Archives of Internal Medicine.

For someone who weighs 120 pounds and is 5 feet tall, one
BMI point translates to about 5 pounds, Golomb said in a
telephone interview. The report, the first to tie chocolate
consumption to lower body mass index, doesn’t say how much or
what type of chocolate was eaten, nor does it control for diet
and exercise, opening the way for more research.

While not definitive, the survey “does pose a very
interesting question that researchers can jump on,” said Nancy
Copperman, director of Public Health Initiatives at North Shore-
LIJ Health System in Great Neck, New York, who wasn’t involved
with the survey. “Lowering of BMI wasn’t related to how much
they ate but frequency.”

The survey results suggest researchers looking at diet
should consider the types, rather than number, of calories
people are eating as foods such as cinnamon and chocolate are
found to provide possible health benefits, said Golomb, an
associate professor of family and preventive medicine at the
university’s School of Medicine.

“Chocolate has already shown favorable associations to
heart disease, all-cause mortality, blood pressure and even
cavities,” she said “If you’re eating a couple of squares of
chocolate a number of times a week, it’s probably just fine.
Typically chocolate is consumed as a sweet and should have
adverse applications for body mass index. In fact, it’s the
converse,” according to the survey.

1,000 Surveyed

The researcher surveyed more than 1,000 men and women who
didn’t have any known heart disease or diabetes. Of those, 972
had their BMI calculated and 975 filled out a food frequency
questionnaire. The relationship between chocolate and body mass
index was true, even though those who ate chocolate actually
consumed more calories, Golomb’s letter said.

Golomb said a study where some people eat chocolate and
some don’t that controls for diet and exercise is needed to
shore up the suggested link.

Based on previous research, Copperman said about 1 ounce of
dark chocolate, the equivalent of one McLean, Virginia-based
Mars Inc.’s Dove dark chocolate square, is fine to consume each
day. People can also sprinkle cocoa powder on foods like oatmeal
or fruit to get benefits of chocolate without the fat, she said.

The survey was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of
Health.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Nicole Ostrow in New York at
nostrow1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Reg Gale at
rgale5@bloomberg.net

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Adding to the dizzying future technologies shopping list may not be ever so high on a CFO’s list. But it might be a good time to think about HTML5 and its future implementations within your enterprise.

In essence, HTML5 is a cross-platform programming language for multipurpose web application development. It lacks the performance “bugginess” of Adobe’s fading Flash format, and is beginning to impact software development, with many choosing to deploy it within their applications, even within conventional desktop apps. More importantly, because this is an HTML language, apps built using it run well on all manner of devices — a major plus for enterprise users in the BYOD transition.

A recent survey of 1,200 developers identified 75% who are using or plan to use HTML5 within their apps. This follows Adobe’s recent declaration that Flex is no longer the best tech for creating and deploying rich content across mobile platforms. That, of course, is something oncefamously predicted by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs.

Some warn the technology isn’t yet ready for prime time use within business applications. Yes, it can be an element within such software, but work remains to be done to ensure rock-solid security and effective synch between devices. That work proceeds, with the World Wide Web Consortium promising a final definition of HTML 5 in a few years.

Speaking to Net Magazine, Jeffrey Hammond, principal analyst at Forrester, says: “It isn’t simply a question of either/or; there are four viable approaches to choose from: native, hybrid apps (native code with HTML and JavaScript), mobile middleware platforms, and a web approach (HTML5 and JavaScript).”

This doesn’t mean you can’t implement HTML5 within part of your application development — we’re in an age of transition, with hybrid solutions seen as the best way forward.

Salesforce has fully embraced HTML5 for tablets. Speaking at Mobilize 2011, Salesforce.com SVP Sean Whiteley said: “We’re doing it all. We didn’t have to make a decision, we just had to figure out what to do using what. HTML5 is still not there yet, it’s very early, but we do believe it will evolve.”

The buzz around the standard has created some champions. Kony Solutions CTO Sriram Ramanathanthinks organizations should be prepared to exploit it, but even he cautions for a hybrid model, leveraging the advanced features of desktop apps beside the mobile-savvy HTML5.

In a sense, this conversation mirrors what, for some time, we’ve been arguing for here at CFOworld: The enterprise is changing and workforces are going mobile.

“HTML5 functionality is exploding, revolutionizing consumer expectations of mobile apps, and at the same time, BYOD is compelling IT organizations to adapt quickly,” says Ramanathan in a press release.

Article source: http://www.cfoworld.com/technology/35047/cfos-should-think-they-leap-%E2%80%93-html5

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Billionaire Ronald Lauder,
chairman of RWL Water Group, talks about the global need for
clean water and his investment in water and wastewater
treatment.

Lauder, who is president of the Neue Galerie, also
discusses some of his art investments. He speaks with Deirdre
Bolton on Bloomberg Television’s “Money Moves.” (Source:
Bloomberg)

Running Time: 10:35

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Monti Signals Spanish Euro Risk as EU to Bolster Firewall

Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg

Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister during a joint news conference with Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister, at Chigi palace in Rome, on Feb. 23, 2012.

Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister during a joint news conference with Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister, at Chigi palace in Rome, on Feb. 23, 2012. Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg

March 26 (Bloomberg) — Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti warned that Spain could reignite the European debt crisis. Linzie Janis and Owen Thomas report on Bloomberg Television’s “Countdown.” (Source: Bloomberg)

March 26 (Bloomberg) — European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said the region will toughen debt-crisis defenses to guard against future risks.
Owen Thomas reports on Bloomberg Television’s “First Look.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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Monti Warns of Spanish Euro Risk as EU Readies Stronger Firewall

Denis Doyle/Bloomberg

The Spanish national flag is seen flying from a flagpole against buildings on the Madrid skyline, in Spain.

The Spanish national flag is seen flying from a flagpole against buildings on the Madrid skyline, in Spain. Photographer: Denis Doyle/Bloomberg

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Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti

Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti speaks at the Chigi Palace in Rome on March 13, 2012.

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti speaks at the Chigi Palace in Rome on March 13, 2012. Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti
warned that Spain could reignite the European debt crisis as
euro-area ministers this week prepare a deal to strengthen the
region’s financial firewall.

Monti pointed to Spain’s struggle to control its finances
ahead of a finance ministers meeting in Copenhagen starting on
March 30, where officials will seek agreement to raise a 500
billion-euro ($664 billion) ceiling on bailout funding.

“It doesn’t take much to recreate risks of contagion,”
Monti said during the weekend at a conference in Cernobbio,
Italy. Days after his Cabinet approved a bill to overhaul
Italy’s labor laws, Monti praised Spain’s efforts to loosen work
regulations while advising it to focus on cutting the national
budget. Spain “hasn’t paid enough attention to its public
accounts,” he said.

The euro crisis has eased after the European Central Bank
last month boosted liquidity through three-year loans to banks,
while European Union leaders this month sealed a second Greek
bailout package. Italian and German confidence indexes rose
today as Spanish and Italian bonds gained.

Reinforcing Firewalls

EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn
said he was confident ministers will resolve their differences
on providing more bailout funding for the euro. Speaking
yesterday to reporters in Saariselkae, Finland, Rehn said that
officials “will take a convincing decision on the reinforcement
of the firewalls.”

Euro-area leaders have established two bailout funds, the
temporary European Financial Stability Facility and the
permanent 500 billion-euro European Stability Mechanism, which
is scheduled to begin operations this year. Under current rules,
unused EFSF funds would be passed on to the ESM, though
disbursement could not exceed the half-trillion limit.

Policy makers are discussing how to add to the funds, for
example by allowing the EFSF and ESM to work concurrently to
make more money available. Keeping sums deployed from the
temporary fund while allowing the ESM to operate at capacity
would bring a total crisis backstop to 692 billion euros.

General Strike

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister,
Wolfgang Schaeuble, have abandoned their opposition to combining
the two funds, Der Spiegel reported yesterday, citing unnamed
government officials. The two leaders have agreed that the EFSF
and ESM may be “in operation” for a transitional period, the
magazine reported.

The focus by policy makers and investors has shifted over
recent weeks from Greece to Spain, where Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is struggling to reduce the country’s budget deficit in
the face of a looming recession.

Rajoy faces his first general strike on March 29 as unions
protest against changes to employment laws making it cheaper to
fire workers and cut wages. Three months after coming to power,
he is due to present the 2012 budget on March 30, which is
designed to cut the deficit.

Meanwhile, Rajoy failed to win an outright majority in
elections for Spain’s most populous region, Andalusia, last
night. Even though his People’s Party took more seats in the
legislature than any other, it fell short of the 55 needed. The
region has been controlled by the Socialists since Spain’s
return to democracy in 1978

The conundrum for European leaders was underscored on March
22, when a report showed that euro-area services and
manufacturing output contracted more than economists forecast.
The drop in March on declining domestic demand added to signs
that the region’s economy is sliding into recession.

Relief From ECB

Leaders struggling to resolve the crisis have been given
some space by the ECB’s three-year loans to banks, made between
December and February. Speaking at the seminar he hosted in
Saariselkae, north of the Arctic Circle, Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen warned that crisis management “can’t be outsourced”
to the region’s central bank.

“While more than a trillion euros is not exactly small
change,” the ECB’s loans “have certainly not solved the euro
area’s problems once and for all,” Joachim Fels, chief
economist at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note yesterday.

As he lauded Rajoy’s efforts to loosen rules on employee
dismissals, Monti pushed a bill to overhaul Italy’s labor laws
through Cabinet on March 23, facing down opposition from unions
and political allies needed to pass the measure in parliament.

Illustrating the difficulties in establishing consensus for
change, Pier Luigi Bersani, the head of the Democratic Party on
whom Monti relies for backing in parliament, has said he will
seek to get the law amended during debate. The CGIL, Italy’s
biggest union, has called a general strike.

The Italian premier, in office since replacing Silvio Berlusconi in November, opted not to force through a decree that
would have implemented the measures immediately.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Patrick Donahue in Berlin at
pdonahue1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
James Hertling at
jhertling@bloomberg.net

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-25/monti-signals-spanish-euro-risk-as-eu-plans-to-bolster-firewall.html

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Green Mountain Coffee K-Cups

Herb Swanson/Bloomberg

Green Mountain Coffee K-Cups at the company’s visitor center and cafe in Waterbury, Vermont on Feb. 18, 2011.

Green Mountain Coffee K-Cups at the company’s visitor center and cafe in Waterbury, Vermont on Feb. 18, 2011. Photographer: Herb Swanson/Bloomberg

Robert P. Stiller, founder and
chairman of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (GMCR), sold $66.3
million of his stock before it plunged the most in four months
on news that Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) had developed a rival to its K-Cup
brewer.

Stiller’s combined sales on Feb. 15 and 24 were his largest
in a single month since at least 2003, when the stock traded
below $2, data compiled by Bloomberg show. He would have
received $13.7 million less had he sold after March 9, when the
shares fell 16 percent on Starbucks’ introduction of a machine
for home-brewing single cups of espresso and coffee, a challenge
to Green Mountain’s Keurig system.

“We recently learned of Starbucks’ planned initiative in
the espresso-based single-cup category,” Green Mountain said in
a March 9 regulatory filing, a day after the machine was
announced. “However, we were not made aware of any additional
capabilities.” Spokesmen for Green Mountain wouldn’t specify
when it learned of the plan.

Green Mountain is struggling to hold market share as it
braces for the September expiration of its main patents on K-
Cups. The plastic pods have dominated single-serve coffee making
in the U.S., with flavors including Gloria Jean’s Butter Toffee
Coffee and Wolfgang Puck’s Jamaica Me Crazy blends. As other
companies prepare their own machines, the Waterbury, Vermont-
based brewer’s stock has almost halved to $53.51 in the six
months through last week.

The shares dropped 2 percent to $52.45 at 4:30 p.m. in New
York, after reaching as high as $54.75 during the session.

Must Abstain

“It’s something that the SEC would want to look at,” said
James D. Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University in
Durham, North Carolina. “If he has inside information, he has
to withdraw from the market.” Florence Harmon, a Securities and
Exchange Commission spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Starbucks informed Green Mountain of its plans before its
announcement, according to Alisa Martinez, a spokeswoman for the
Seattle-based company. She wouldn’t elaborate. Darren Brandt, a
spokesman for Green Mountain, declined to comment on behalf of
the company and Stiller.

Stiller reduced his direct stake last month by 6.9 percent,
selling a total of 1 million shares, according to regulatory
filings with the SEC. The sales aren’t marked as so-called 10b5-
1 transactions, a type of pre-programmed trade that managers set
up in advance to show they aren’t basing decisions on inside
information. Starbucks’ March 8 announcement after the close of
trading sent Green Mountain’s stock down the next day. By the
end of last week, it had regained 1.8 percent.

Stiller’s Background

Stiller, the second-biggest shareholder of Krispy Kreme
Doughnuts Inc. (KKD) and the largest stakeholder of pizza chain Noble
Romans Inc. (NROM), also co-founded the rolling paper maker E-Z Wider.
He founded Green Mountain in 1981 as a small Vermont cafe and
remains the largest individual shareholder with 13.4 million
shares, or 8.7 percent of the company, according to Bloomberg
data. Stiller was listed as 68 in a February proxy statement.

The company has faced criticism from hedge-fund manager
David Einhorn, who in October questioned its accounting and said
its market share has peaked.

“With Green Mountain’s patents expiring this fall,
Starbucks’ entry is part of the competitive onslaught hitting
Green Mountain,” said Einhorn, 43, president of New York-based
Greenlight Capital Inc., in an e-mail earlier this month.

Stiller submitted paperwork dated Aug. 4 to the SEC showing
he wanted to sell as much as 2 million shares. He sold only
500,000 that day, a separate filing shows.

Rival Machines

Even if those documents showed intent to further reduce his
stake, the February trades would be “problematic” if he had
information from Starbucks about its plans, said Onnig
Dombalagian, a professor at Tulane University Law School in New
Orleans and former fellow at the SEC.

Green Mountain says its K-Cup system and a new brewer,
called Vue, are different from the new Starbucks machine, called
Verismo. Green Mountain’s machines use “low pressure to extract
maximum flavor,” as opposed to espresso machines using “high
pressure and high temperature to produce a more intense taste
profile,” according to its March 9 statement.

Starbucks had an existing agreement to sell coffee for
Green Mountain’s K-Cup system before introducing the Verismo. On
March 21, the companies said Starbucks will also sell cups that
work with the Vue. Green Mountain jumped 10 percent on that
announcement.

Stiller’s trades probably aren’t the most important of the
“smorgasbord of cases” the SEC could be interested in, Boston
University School of Law professor Tamar Frankel said. The
commission’s resources “are not unlimited — far from it.”

To contact the reporters on this story:
Max Abelson in New York at
mabelson@bloomberg.net;
Leslie Patton in Chicago at
lpatton5@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
David Scheer at
dscheer@bloomberg.net;
Robin Ajello at
rajello@bloomberg.net.

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-26/green-mountain-founder-sold-stock-before-starbucks-k-cup-threat.html

Video: Long Practices

Cody Franson tells us what new coach Randy Carlyle is preaching.

Clarke MacArthur, Matt Frattin and Mike Brown took full part in Monday’s practice as the Maple Leafs injured list looks to be shortened.

The Leafs sent Nazem Kadri and Ryan Hamilton back to the AHL Toronto Marlies on Sunday with the expectation that two of their injured forwards would be ready to play Tuesday against the Carolina Hurricanes.

Both Kadri and Hamilton were up with the Leafs on an emergency recall situation and couldn’t stay in the NHL once the Leafs were able to dress 12 healthy forwards.

Coach Randy Carlyle said he’d decide Tuesday which of those injured players would play in what amounts to an elimination game between the Leafs and Hurricanes. The loser of the game between the two teams now tied for 12th in the East will be officially eliminated from the playoff hunt.

“We’ll make a decision on our line up (after) the pregame skate,” said Carlyle. “They’re closer to be being available to us than they were an hour ago.

“Hopefully they have a decent recovery after practice and they get their treatment and have the same opportunity tomorrow morning.”

MacArthur, who’s upper body injury had been undisclosed, said he hurt his shoulder in practice.

“It was one of the battle drills in practice,” said MacArthur. “I got tangled in a stick and fell right not on it. Just bad luck. It’s the second or third time I’ve done that. Time for a new pair of shoulder pads.

MacArthur said he hoped to be back to play against Carolina.

“I felt pretty good,” said MacArthur. “Getting hit, I wasn’t hurting as bad as I thought I would.

Frattin had a sprained ankle, Brown had a bruised thigh.

Nikolai Kulemin, who has a broken finger, worked out on his own prior to the practice. There was no sign of Joffrey Lupul, out with a separated shoulder.

Article source: http://www.thestar.com/sports/leafs/article/1152075--maple-leafs-injured-players-on-the-mend

(click image for larger view and for slideshow)
A recent crime campaign targeting Facebook users used a novel attack vector: malicious Chrome extensions.

The attack, which occurred in Brazil, “caught our attention not because it asks the user to install a malicious extension, but because the malicious extension [is] hosted at the official [Google] Chrome Web Store,” said Fabio Assolin, a security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, in a blog post. “If the user clicks on ‘Install aplicativo’ he will be redirected to the official store. The malicious extension presents itself as ‘Adobe Flash Player,’” which is ironic, because Chrome not only includes a built-in version of the player, but also automatically updates it.

The existence of malicious Chrome extensions begs two questions: What can they do, and how can you stop them? Here are six related facts:

1. Extensions might spread Facebook attacks.
In the case of the fake Flash Player, the extension first downloads a script file, which can then pipe commands to the user’s Facebook profile, including having them “like” any page that the attacker designates. Attackers also can send any message they like via a user’s Facebook profile, such as creating a post with a malicious script, or inviting more people to install the malicious Chrome extension or–potentially–a malicious Facebook application.

[ One security problem you won't have to worry about with Firefox? See Firefox Takes Privacy Lead With HTTPS By Default. ]

2. Malicious extensions can be monetized.
Why would attackers bother with a malicious Chrome extension, or gaining access to people’s Facebook profiles? “You’re probably asking yourself how the bad guys are turning this malicious scheme into money,” said Assolin. “Well, it’s easy: they have total control of the victim’s profile, so they created a service to sell ‘Likes’ on Facebook, especially focused [on] companies that want to promote their profiles, gaining more fans and visibility.”

3. Extensions offer JavaScript capabilities.
Facebook attacks notwithstanding, some security experts paint the overall Chrome information security situation in stark terms. “Chrome extensions are evil,” said Felix “FX” Lindner, head of Recurity Labs in Berlin, in his “Apple Versus Google Client Platforms” session at Black Hat Europe this month. “Chrome extensions, if you’ve never done them, it’s almost like they were invented for banking Trojans,” he said. That’s because the extensions can be used to rewrite anything that’s in the browser, as well as to inject JavaScript. Historically, of course, an attacker would have to find a browser or Web application bug to exploit, then attempt to inject the JavaScript. “Only now it’s built in, in Chrome, so it’s a lot more stable and better,” said Lindner–at least for attackers.

4. Google ID offers security weak point.
How do attackers install malicious extensions? “One thing you can do is just break into the Google account” of a developer, said Lindner, and then replace a real extension with a malicious one. Within a few hours, the updated extension will typically be pushed to all active users. For such an attack to work, however, an attacker must first guess or steal a developer’s Google account username and password, and the account would have to be unprotected by Google’s free two-factor authentication. But that authentication aside, a dedicated attacker could find ways to steal developer credentials.

5. Vet extensions thoroughly.
Google Chrome extensions wield enormous power. “Once you have a malicious extension in your Chrome browser, you’re pretty much [expletive deleted],” Lindner said. For example, attackers can use a malicious extension to execute JavaScript, and the extension management dialog in Chrome is rendered in JavaScript. As a result, he said, an attacker “can automatically install extensions,” for example by creating JavaScript code that simply clicks “yes” for any “do you want to install this?” prompts.

6. Google does nuke malicious extensions.
In the case of the Facebook attack that served up a malicious Chrome extension, “We reported this malicious extension to Google and they removed it quickly,” said Kaspersky’s Assolin. “But we noted the bad guys behind this malicious scheme are uploading new extensions regularly, in a cat-and-mouse game.” To date, the extension appeared to have been installed by about 1,000 people, mostly in Brazil and Portugal.

With these potential security risks in mind, “think twice before installing a Google Chrome extension,” said Assolin.

The biggest threat to your company’s most sensitive data may be the employee who has legitimate access to corporate databases but less-than-legitimate intentions. Follow our advice in our Defend Data From Malicious Insiders report to mitigate the risk. (Free registration required.)

Article source: http://informationweek.com/news/security/app-security/232700243

Wix,the free do-it-yourself website builder that enables users to create and customize their own website, today unveiled a new website builder which supports HTML5.

While Wix’s Flash-based platform offers advantages for PC users, the new HTML5 product allows for website, tablet, Facebook fan page or mobile-friendly web design available on any device. With its user-friendly drag and drop interface and hundreds of customizable templates, Wix lets users create and deploy an online presence using a product that is right for them. Both solutions maintain Wix’s core value of making a professional websites accessible to all while removing the need for any coding or design skills.

In addition to being a one-stop shop for creating cross-platform compatible websites, Wix’s new HTML5 product offers heightened social capabilities, faster loading time, improved interactivity and a more simple integration of external tools and widgets than its predecessors.

Wix CEO and co-founder Avishai Abrahami said, “The web, mobile and tablet channels are highly dynamic spaces where opportunities to connect with mass audiences are endless and people shouldn’t be left out of that wave because they cannot write website code. With Wix, our HTML5 product offers unlimited opportunity to those who want the most beautiful HTML5 websites without all the technical headaches. Building a website should be as effortless as everything else the web now offers, and Wix is about giving you the freedom to design the website you want with great looking results.”

Wix was founded in 2006 by Abrahami, CEO Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan. The company has raised $66 million to date from Insight Venture Partners, DAG Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital and Mangrove Capital Partners and was one of “Globes” most promising Israeli start ups for 2010.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on March 26, 2012

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2012

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Article source: http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000736624

SAN MATEO, Calif., March 26, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
InMobi, the largest independent mobile ad network, today announces that the InMobi Creative Services team won Best Game Site Mobile Application ad in the Web Marketing Association’s 2012 Internet Advertising Competition Awards. The winning creative was for the SEGA Samurai Bloodshow mobile ad.

The rich media creative award is among the first to be won by a mobile ad network, and one of the first awards for interactive mobile creative built without any manual coding. The win represents a milestone for InMobi’s creative services team and InMobi subsidiary Sprout, whose cloud-based tool produces high performance HTML5 rich media creative through a drag-and-drop interface that requires no knowledge of code.

Judging criteria for the creative award included creativity, innovation, impact, design, copywriting, use of the medium, and memorability. The SEGA Samurai Bloodshow campaign leveraged the latest in HTML5 innovation and gamification to meet performance based advertising goals. InMobi Creative Services worked with SEGA to create an experience that enables the user to play the game directly from the ad without having to go through a multi-step process to download the trial from the App Store.

Anne Frisbie, Vice President and Managing Director, North America, InMobi says, “We are very excited to be recognized for leading the mobile advertising industry on two levels–first, for rich media creative produced by a mobile ad network, and second, for digital creative built without manual coding. It is a great accomplishment for InMobi, and we look forward to delivering many more innovative campaigns and first-to-market experiences for mobile advertisers and consumers.”

About InMobiInMobi is the largest independent mobile advertising network. With offices on five continents InMobi provides advertisers, publishers and developers with a uniquely global solution for advertising. The network is growing and now delivers the unprecedented ability to reach 578 Million consumers, in over 165 countries, through more than 93.4 Billion mobile ad impressions monthly. The recent acquisition of Sprout, a leading HTML5 authoring platform for mobile rich media, helps expand the InMobi offering to creative agencies and brands.

InMobi is venture-backed by investors including: SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sherpalo Ventures. The company has offices in Bangalore, Johannesburg, London, Nairobi, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo.

To learn more, please visit
www.inmobi.com/research , follow us on Twitter @InMobi, or read our blog at
www.inmobi.com/inmobiblog/ .

Contact:West Coast: Dan Gamble, Hotwire US | dan.gamble@hotwirepr.com | +1 415 371 7938East Coast: Jill Ivey, Hotwire US | jillian.ivey@hotwirepr.com | +1 215 806 2951

SOURCE InMobi

Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/inmobi-wins-creative-award-in-web-marketing-associations-2012-internet-advertising-competition-2012-03-26

Orion project adds JavaScript and HTML capabilities for Web app development

By Paul Krill, InfoWorld, 03/26/12

The Eclipse Foundation for open source development tools is eyeing July as the release date for the 1.0 version of its Orion browser-based IDE for
building Web applications, which will be discussed at this week’s EclipseCon 2012 conference in Reston, Va.

Unlike the signature Eclipse desktop IDE, which is geared to Java and C++, Orion is intended for HTML and JavaScript development,
said Ian Skerrett, Eclipse vice president of marketing, in an interview. “The benefit [of Orion] is your development tool
is where your apps are running,” he said. Orion is particularly useful for cloud application development, Skerrett added.

[ Node.js, which puts JavaScript on the server, also will be featured at EclipseCon in a session about the VJet JavaScript IDE, which
is an Eclipse plug-in. | Subscribe to InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter for more perspectives on software development. ]

Orion was announced at last year’s EclipseCon event. Developers at this year’s conference can get tips on using and extending
Orion, which Eclipse anticipates will be incorporated into commercial products. Mozilla is already using the Orion editor
in its Firefox developer tools, Skerrett noted.

Version 1.0 of Orion will be available right after this June’s annual Eclipse release train, which features the release of
numerous Eclipse technologies concurrently. This year’s release train is to be called Kemper, and it will be based on the
Eclipse 4 platform, which features a reengineering intended to make it easier to build applications atop the Eclipse platform,
Skerrett said. Last year’s release train, Indigo, featured work from 62 project teams.

Other topics at EclipseCon 2012 include developing Android applications via Eclipse tools, application lifecycle management,
devops, and a session on JavaFX and Eclipse. Co-located with this year’s EclipseCon conference will be another event, Agile ALM
Connect, which is a technical conference focused on connecting the latest development tools, agile methods, and persons in
the application lifecycle.

This article, “Eclipse readies browser-based IDE,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

For more enterprise computing news, visit InfoWorld. Story
copyright InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

Article source: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2012/120326-eclipse-readies-browser-based-ide.html

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Bernanke Hesitates to Extol Economy Knowing Policy at Risk

Scott Eells/Bloomberg

A job seeker at the New York Career Fair on Feb. 22, 2012.

A job seeker at the New York Career Fair on Feb. 22, 2012. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

William C. Dudley, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

William C. Dudley, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Bernanke Hesitates to Extol Economy Knowing Policy Put at Risk

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building stands in Washington, D.C. The Fed’s forecasts for growth still are above the average Wall Street prediction.

The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building stands in Washington, D.C. The Fed’s forecasts for growth still are above the average Wall Street prediction. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may be hesitating to extol the improving economy — in
part to preserve the central bank’s own reputation.

While Fed policy makers upgraded their assessment of the
outlook at their March 13 meeting after the most-robust six-
month period of job growth since 2006, they reiterated their
plan to keep interest rates near zero until at least late 2014,
citing still “elevated” unemployment and “significant
downside risks.” Bernanke said today that continued
accommodative policy will be needed to make further progress.

Bernanke’s caution is “appropriate,” said Peter Hooper,
chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. The Fed
chairman risks damaging his credibility by being too optimistic
so soon after adopting the 2014 pledge in January and before
having conviction about the economy’s momentum, Hooper said.
Policy makers fueled speculation in 2011 that monetary
tightening was coming by laying out their exit strategy, and
they don’t want to guide the market prematurely again, he added.

“They were not at all discouraging some talk about the
exit” a year ago, Hooper said in an interview from his New York
office. “They’re not going to make that mistake twice. Bernanke
is going to be very patient.”

Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes were 2.26
percent (USGG10YR) at 10:28 a.m. in New York, up from 1.8 percent Jan. 31,
according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices, as manufacturing data
improved and jobless claims dropped. The yield had climbed to
3.74 percent in February 2011 as policy makers outlined how they
planned to withdraw their record stimulus.

Unprecedented Steps

Even though the recent increase reflects signs of strength
in the economy, Fed officials probably won’t welcome the rising
yields after the unprecedented steps they’ve taken to reduce
rates, according to Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at
Jefferies Co. in New York.

“They don’t like it,” he said. “They have expanded their
balance sheet quite substantially to keep rates low.”

In addition to pushing out expectations for higher
borrowing costs, U.S. central bankers have kept their benchmark
rate between zero and 0.25 percent since December 2008 and
bought $2.3 trillion of bonds in two rounds of asset purchases.
They’re also pursuing a maturity-extension program announced in
September to replace $400 billion of short-term debt in the
Fed’s portfolio with longer-term securities. The so-called
Operation Twist is scheduled to be completed in June.

‘Stronger Economy’

Rising bond yields are “a reflection of a stronger
economy,” James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank
of St. Louis, said in a Bloomberg Television interview last
week. “Low yields might sound good, but” they can “represent
a lot of pessimism.”

Bullard, who doesn’t vote on the policy-setting Federal
Open Market Committee this year, said U.S. monetary policy “may
be at a turning point,” and the Fed’s first interest-rate
increase since the global financial crisis may come as soon as
late 2013.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley offered a more cautious view on March 19, saying signs
the economy is improving don’t dispel risks to growth that
include higher gasoline prices, fiscal cutbacks and a weak
housing market.

The data have been “a bit more upbeat of late,” Dudley
said in Melville, New York. “But while these developments are
certainly encouraging, it is far too soon to conclude that we
are out of the woods in terms of generating a strong,
sustainable recovery.”

Declining Labor Participation

About half the drop in unemployment since September “was
due to a declining labor-force participation rate,” said
Dudley, who is also vice chairman of the FOMC. Had participation
not decreased “from around 66 percent in mid-2008 to under 64
percent in February, the unemployment rate would still be over
10 percent.”

Joblessness has fallen to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three
years, from 9.4 percent at the end of 2010 and a high of 10
percent in October 2009.

“A wide range of indicators suggests that the job market
has been improving, which is a welcome development indeed,”
Bernanke said today to the National Association for Business
Economics in Arlington, Virginia. “Still, conditions remain far
from normal, as shown, for example, by the high level of long-
term unemployment and the fact that jobs and hours worked remain
well below pre-crisis peaks, even without adjusting for growth
in the labor force.”

Communications as Easing Tool

By being more optimistic, Fed policy makers would encourage
traders to move up their expectations for monetary tightening.
That may weaken the effectiveness of using policy forecasts,
like the 2014 plan, as stimulus. Bernanke has said that
communications are among the main easing tools left after
reducing the federal funds rate.

Bernanke’s view is “‘we’ve gone pretty far here with our
verbal policy messages; we’re not about to upset this just
because we have a little bit of good data,” Hooper said. “It’s
going to take quite a few months of very good news, with the
market moving well ahead of them,” before Bernanke will signal
the exit is approaching.

Money-market-derivatives traders predict the Fed will lift
its target rate for overnight loans between banks a year earlier
than the late 2014 forecast. Forward markets for overnight index
swaps, whose rates show what traders expect the federal-funds
effective rate will average over the life of the contract,
signal a quarter-percentage point advance around the October-
November 2013 period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg as
of March 23.

‘Very Limited’

“Our ability to say with any precision what the date of
liftoff will be is very limited,” Bullard said in the Bloomberg
television interview. “Markets have to understand that. Policy
makers have to understand that as well.”

Dudley stopped short of calling for additional stimulus
from the Fed last week, saying “nothing has been decided”
about more bond-buying.

“The market focuses on direction and growth rates” of the
economy, while “the Fed focuses on levels,” such as
unemployment, said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson
ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey. “Year in and year out,
that’s one of the most fundamental sources of miscommunication.
The Fed cares about the gap.”

Continuing Housing Weakness

Dudley’s focus on weakness in the housing market was
supported by data last week showing purchases of new homes
unexpectedly fell in February for a second month. Sales dropped
1.6 percent to a 313,000 annual pace, the slowest since October,
from a 318,000 rate in January that was weaker than previously
reported, according to figures from the Commerce Department. The
median estimate of 78 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News
called for a 325,000 pace.

Bernanke shared Dudley’s concerns about the impact on
consumers from higher energy prices when he spoke before the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform March 21.
Gasoline jumped to a 10-month high last week, with the price for
April delivery at $3.3852 a gallon on the New York Mercantile
Exchange March 23. Futures have climbed 26 percent this year.

“Higher energy prices would probably slow growth, at least
in the short run,” Bernanke said. Rising fuel costs create
“short-term inflation pressures, and moreover, they act as a
tax on household purchasing power and reduce consumption
spending, and that also is a drag on the economy.”

Above Average

The Fed’s forecasts for growth still are above the average
Wall Street prediction. Central bankers predicted in January
that the U.S. economy would expand by 2.2 percent to 2.7 percent
in 2012, compared with a median projection of 2.2 percent in a
Bloomberg News survey of 70 economists from March 9 to March 13.
The Fed will update its economic forecasts at its April meeting.
The U.S. expanded 1.7 percent in 2011.

Expectations for additional stimulus have declined since
the FOMC’s March meeting, when policy makers acknowledged the
economy is improving. Forty-seven percent of investors in a Bank
of America Corp. survey released March 20 predict no further
asset purchases by the Fed, up from 36 percent in February.

While the odds of a third round of bond buying, or so-
called quantitative easing, are declining, the Fed’s “pretty
dim view of the economy” has kept the option alive, said
Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities LLC in
Stamford, Connecticut.

“I don’t think they’ll do QE3, but I would readily
acknowledge that it’s not entirely off the table,” said
Stanley, who predicts the Fed will raise interest rates in
mid-2013. “They view the risk of careening into deflation as so
much more severe than overstaying their welcome, so they’re
prepared to err in that direction.”

To contact the reporters on this story:
Caroline Salas Gage in New York at
csalas1@bloomberg.net;
Rich Miller in Washington at
rmiller28@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Chris Wellisz at
cwellisz@bloomberg.net

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-25/bernanke-hesitates-to-extol-economy-to-keep-reputation.html