Posted by Admin at 2:16 AM. Placed in Spending category
Many packaged-goods marketers have built out elaborate fan pages on Facebook, but theyre focusing their media spend on internet ads that arent on Facebook, according to new research from comScore.
A comScore analysis of online ad impressions from July shows CPGs have become the heaviest users of socially enabled ads that appear on sites outside Facebook but include visit us on Facebook or other Click to Facebook appeals to get users to brand pages.
Posted by Admin at 9:52 AM. Placed in Spending category
A 2012 East Hampton Town budget totaling $65.6 million was submitted by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson on Friday. It calls for a slight increase in spending of 2 percent, but would result in a tax decrease for residents of both the town and the village.
Should the budget be passed as proposed, the tax rate for town residents would be $26.58 per $100 of assessed value, a savings of $2.32 for a house with a $500,000 market value, and a savings of $8.12 for owners of a $1.8 million market-value house.
Posted by Admin at 3:37 AM. Placed in Spending category
A new analysis of US spending habits finds that residents of Long Island suburb Huntington, NY, spend four times more than the national average on video games.
Financial analytics firm Bundle ranked the video game spending of the 100 largest US cities by looking at anonymized spending data for GameStop, EBGames and Steam provided by the US government and third-party data providers, such as credit card companies.
Fellow New York City suburb North Hempstead, NY, came in second in terms of per capita game spending, with 2.32 times the national average. Laredo, TX, Chesapeake, VA and Modesto, CA rounded out the top five, each near or above two times the national spending average.
An abstracted map of Bundles results shows the heaviest game spending in US cities concentrated primarily in the Northeast, Midwest and South, though certain cities in Southern Texas, California and Colorado also show high spending.
The lowest ranked major cities for per capita game spending are primarily in the South, Midwest and Pacific Nowrthwest. Seattle, WA, appears to rank as one of the lowest-ranked major cities for video game spending, a somewhat surprising result for an area known as a game development hub.
The Top 50 cities from Bundles ranking — along with how the top 20 compare to the national average — are listed below:
1. Huntington, New York – 4.08 times the national average
2. North Hempstead, New York – 2.32 times the national average
3. Laredo, Texas – 2.23 times the national average
4. Chesapeake, Virginia – 2.12 times the national average
5. Modesto, California – 1.99 times the national average
6. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – 1.99 times the national average
7. El Paso, Texas – 1.97 times the national average
8. Cincinnati, Ohio – 1.95 times the national average
9. Buffalo, New York – 1.88 times the national average
10. Virginia Beach, Virginia – 1.82 times the national average
11. Rochester, New York – 1.77 times the national average
12. Birmingham, Alabama – 1.77 times the national average
13. Miami, Florida – 1.72 times the national average
14. Honolulu, Hawaii – 1.69 times the national average
15. Toledo, Ohio – 1.66 times the national average
16. Baton Rouge, Louisiana – 1.57 times the national average
17. Corpus Christi, Texas – 1.50 times the national average
18. Plano, Texas – 1.47 times the national average
19. Fresno, California – 1.47 times the national average
20. St. Louis, Missouri – 1.37 times the national average
21. San Antonio, Texas
22. Wichita, Kansas
23. Montgomery, Alabama
24. Tulsa, Oklahoma
25. Hialeah, Florida
26. Riverside, California
27. Lubbock, Texas
28. San Bernardino, California
29. Fort Worth, Texas
30. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
31. Fort Wayne, Indiana
32. Bakersfield, California
33. Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky
34. Chula Vista, California
35. Albuquerque, New Mexico
36. Akron, Ohio
37. Jacksonville, Florida
38. Greensboro, North Carolina
39. Tucson, Arizona
40. Raleigh, North Carolina
41. Stockton, California
42. Arlington, Texas
43. Durham, North Carolina
44. Long Beach, California
45. Chandler, Arizona
46. Lincoln, Nebraska
47. Anchorage, Alaska
48. New York, New York
49. Milwaukee, Wisconsin
50. Aurora, Colorado
Posted by Admin at 6:42 AM. Placed in Spending category
Norway Spending Restraint Tempered by Europe’s Deepening Crisis October 06, 2011, 6:52 AM EDT
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By Josiane Kremer
Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) — Norway will raise spending from its oil fund next year, without breaching a self-imposed cap, as the government responds to a deepening European debt crisis.
The world’s seventh-largest crude exporter will use 3.9 percent of its oil fund in 2012 to plug deficits, or 122 billion kroner ($21 billion), the Finance Ministry said today. That’s up from 3.5 percent this year, when spending was cut below a 4 percent spending rule of Norway’s $526 billion wealth fund for the first time since 2008.
The government, which described the budget as “tight,” expects spending to boost the economy by 0.3 percent point next year. The stimulus may add to pressure on the central bank, which is wedged between the risk of a credit-driven housing bubble at home and lackluster demand from abroad as Europe battles its debt crisis and U.S. growth slows.
“One might claim that the government should have tightened fiscal policy more than the budget proposal implies,” said Stein Bruun, a chief economist at SEB AB in Oslo. “However, the fiscal policy stance is justified by heightened uncertainty to the global outlook.”
The country’s sovereign-wealth fund has so far shielded Norway from the worst of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis and credit growth has accelerated this year as the country boasts Europe’s lowest unemployment rate. Growth in the mainland economy, which adjusts for income from oil, gas and shipping, will accelerate to 3.1 percent next year from 2.8 percent this year, the ministry said.
Period of Turbulence
The proposal takes into account challenges facing exporters while Europe’s debt crisis also shaped the bill, Finance Minister Sigbjoern Johnsen told reporters today. The budget represents growth in spending of 2.1 percent from 2011.
“It’s a budget that is set during a period with much turbulence and uncertainty in Europe,” Johnsen said. “An important objective with this budget was to take the export industry into consideration.”
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg last month said the government is committed to a tight budget and said the bill would spark “loud demands” to allow the central bank to keep rates low and prevent currency gains that hurt exporters.
Steinar Juel, chief economist at Nordea Bank AB in Oslo, said the budget “doesn’t fit very well with the rhetoric the prime minister has had.”
Wage Growth
Wages will grow 4 percent this year and next, up from 3.7 percent in 2010. Unemployment is expected to fall to 3.3 percent in 2011 and 2012 from 3.6 percent in 2010, according the budget.
Norges Bank in August postponed plans to raise its benchmark interest rate from 2.25 percent and last month signaled it may not resume tightening until 2012 as policy makers try to shield exporters from excessive krone gains.
The currency emerged as a haven for investors seeking to avoid the euro area’s debt woes and after Switzerland imposed a cap on franc appreciation. On Sept. 8, the krone rose to the highest level against the euro since February 2003. The gains have hurt exporters such as Norske Skogindustrier ASA. The world’s third-largest newsprint producer said it will lay off workers as profits succumb to krone appreciation.
The krone weakened 0.1 percent to 7.8223 against the euro by 12:27 p.m. and fell 0.1 percent to the dollar to 5.8592.
Overall economic growth, including oil and shipping output, will be 2.4 percent next year, up from 1.7 percent this year. Total exports will grow 0.4 percent this year and 1 percent next year, according to today’s budget.
Norway, which is also the world’s the second-largest natural gas exporter, places most of its energy revenue in a fund that invests abroad to avoid stoking inflation in the domestic economy. The Government Pension Fund Global is Europe’s largest equity investor. The government predicted today that the fund will grow 3.1 trillion kroner by the end of next year.
–with assistance by Marianne Stigset and Meera Bhatia in Oslo, Editors: Jonas Bergman, Tasneem Brogger
To contact the reporter on this story: Marianne Stigset in Oslo at mstigset@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tasneem Brogger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net
Posted by Admin at 4:23 AM. Placed in Spending category
Updated: October 7, 2011 1:12PM
Holiday shoppers are expected to let their good cheer overcome a worrisome economy to boost spending by 2.8 percent from a year ago. But their cheer will extend only so far, since the forecast is about half last year’s 5.2 percent spending increase from 2009, the National Retail Federation forecast on Thursday.
Retailers are keeping inventories lean and boosting discounts and promotions to lure wary shoppers, according to the retail boosters’ group. Holiday sales are expected to total $465.6 billion nationwide, or 19 percent of the retail industry’s sales for the year.
The forecast remains slightly above a 10-year average holiday sales increase of 2.6 percent. The biggest jump in the past decade came in 2004, when sales ended 5.9 percent higher than in 2003.
The retail federation’s forecast lands between two other industry groups’ predictions: ShopperTrak expects sales to increase 3 percent during the November-December season, a decline from 4.1 percent in 2010, and the International Council of Shopping Centers forecasts a 2.2 percent increase versus last year’s 5 percent jump over 2009.
Meanwhile, NPD Group’s survey of consumer holiday spending intentions released Wednesday shows that 38 percent will shop on-line during the season, up slightly from last year’s 35 percent. Half of the on-line shoppers will buy gifts at discount-store websites.
Posted by Admin at 3:37 AM. Placed in Spending category
* Deputy defense secretary urges spending on new bomber
* Says US needs more robust cyber defenses
* Must trim other modernization due budget constraints
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – The United States should
boost spending on cyber security and advanced capabilities to
hit distant enemy targets even as military spending shrinks
with new budget constraints, the Pentagons No. 2 civilian said
in a farewell speech.
We should trim modernizations but preserve increases in
key areas, such as cyber security and long-range strike,
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said Wednesday on his
last day in office after a long Pentagon career.
Drawing conclusions from four previous post-World War Two
defense cutbacks, Lynn said the nation must make hard decisions
early on what to cut from the $530 billion-plus core defense
budget.
Lower-priority programs that are eventually canceled, or
curtailed, divert scarce resources, he told an audience at the
Center for American Progress, a public policy group that bills
itself as politically progressive.
The net result is wasted spending and less capability. It
is better to have a smaller but ready force, and fewer but
healthy programs, he added.
Lynn said in reply to a question that increasingly
sophisticated computer-launched attacks had the potential to
threaten power grids, other networks and military
capabilities.
As a result, there is some urgency for US
public-private partnerships to deploy more robust defenses,
particularly around critical infrastructure, he said.
China is often singled out by US officials as a match for
suspected US offensive capabilities in cyberspace.
Lynn did not mention China by name but said long-range
strike — generally understood to mean a futuristic bomber
capable of penetrating enemy air defenses — was an important
way to deal with anti-access and area denial strategies.
Pentagon leaders frequently use such code words for Chinas
growing no-go ability to block the US military from
operating effectively in its backyard.
Lynn declined to specify which programs he favored cutting
as part of what he termed a mandate to trim more than $450
billion in military-related spending over 10 years. President
Barack Obama and Congress agreed in August to cut national
security spending by $350 billion over 10 years, compared with
a Congressional Budget Office baseline. Measured against
Obamas proposed budget for fiscal 2012, which began Oct. 1,
the agreement translates into as much as $489 billion,
including new White House guidance for additional cuts.
Lynn warned against further, across-the-board cuts of more
than $500 billion designed to kick in if a congressional
super committee fails to agree on at least $1.2 trillion more
cuts over 10 years.
The impact on US armed forces could be catastrophic, he
said. The Pentagon accounts for about 20 percent of US
federal spending and roughly half of discretionary spending.
We should bring troops levels down in an orderly manner
that allows us to configure our forces to confront emerging
threats, Lynn said. We should avoid across the board
reductions that compel retrenchments in every theater.
As the deputy secretary, Lynn has been in charge of
day-to-day operations at the Pentagon since 2009. He was the
Defense Departments chief financial officer from 1997 until
2001. For four years prior, he was the director of program
analysis and evaluation.
In between Pentagon stints, Lynn served as senior vice
president of government operations and strategy at Raytheon Co
(RTN.N), the Pentagons No. 1 supplier of missiles.
He is being replaced by Ashton Carter, until now the
Pentagons top weapons buyer.
(Reporting by Jim Wolf; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Posted by Admin at 8:37 PM. Placed in Spending category
(Corrects spending figure proposed in second paragraph.)
The administration of Mexican
President Felipe Calderon is proposing to increase spending in
real terms by 2.5 percent in 2012 while narrowing the deficit to
0.2 percent of gross domestic product.
The Finance Ministry submitted a proposal to Congress for
2012 spending of 3.62 trillion pesos ($290 billion),
representing a nominal increase of 9 percent over 2011,
according to a presentation on the ministry’s website published
today.
“Mexico needs an income law and spending budget that’s
responsible and promotes economic growth and long-term social
development,” Finance Minister Ernesto Cordero said today in
Mexico City after presenting the proposal to lawmakers. “We
can’t take any risks and we can’t make any mistakes.”
Latin America’s second-biggest economy will expand 4
percent in 2011 and 3.5 percent next year, the ministry’s
document said. The government sees the peso trading at 11.9 per
US dollar this year and 12.2 per US next year.
The proposal estimates a budget deficit of 36.7 billion
pesos for next year, excluding investments in state-owned oil
company Petroleos Mexicanos, which compares to an proposed
deficit of 42 billion pesos this year.
The government is proposing 395 billion pesos of domestic
debt sales next year and will favor domestic sales to finance
its budget deficit, according to the presentation. Mexico will
sell $7 billion of debt overseas, the ministry said.
Mexico’s government is not proposing any tax changes for
2012, according to the document.
Mexico’s peso posted its first decline in three days today,
weakening 0.4 percent 12.5146 per US dollar at 5 pm New York
time, from 12.4638 yesterday. The benchmark IPC stock index fell
1.3 percent to 34,712.38.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Jose Enrique Arrioja in Mexico City at
jarrioja@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Joshua Goodman at
jgoodman19@bloomberg.net
Posted by Admin at 3:00 AM. Placed in Spending category
(Updates with Cantor quotes in 11th-13th paragraphs.)
Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass a jobs plan that would inject $447 billion into the economy through infrastructure spending, subsidies to local governments to stem teacher layoffs and cutting in half the payroll taxes paid by workers and small-business owners.
The package is heavily geared toward tax cuts, which account for more than half the dollar value of the stimulus, and administration officials said they believe that will have the greatest appeal to Republican members of Congress.
The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy, Obama told a joint session of Congress tonight.
A $105 billion infrastructure proposal includes money for school modernization, transportation projects and rehabilitation of vacant properties. Most of the economic impact from the infrastructure spending would be next year, though some of it would come in 2013, an administration official said.
Ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and workers, the president said. But we can help. We can make a difference.
The administration estimated that $35 billion its seeking in direct aid to state and local governments to stem layoffs of educators and emergency personnel would save the jobs of 280,000 teachers, according to a White House fact sheet.
Payroll Tax Cuts
The centerpiece of the plan is cuts in payroll taxes, which cover the first $106,800 in earnings and are evenly split between employers and employees. Obama would reduce the portion paid by workers next year to 3.1 percent from 4.2 percent now. The rate was cut 2 percentage points under the terms of a tax deal reached last year. That cut is set to expire Dec. 31, which would push it back to 6.2 percent.
The White House also would use temporary payroll tax cuts next year to offer incentives for new hiring and assist small businesses.
Businesses would get the same 3.1-point reduction on taxes they pay on the first $5 million of their payroll, a limit that skews the benefit toward smaller firms. The full 6.2 percent employer contribution would be waived on the first $50 million net increase in a companys payroll.
The proposal includes additional tax credits for hiring veterans and workers who have been unemployed more than six months. The administration also wants to make it illegal for employers to discriminate against applicants who are unemployed.
Areas of Agreement
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican whos been a frequent critic of Obama, said there may be areas of common ground, such as tax cuts for small businesses.
Thats something we Republicans have been advocating for quite some time now, Cantor said in a Bloomberg Television interview. He also indicated Republicans may support extending the payroll tax for workers.
He wasnt supportive of spending measures, including aid for states. Some of the rhetoric that I heard in the presidents speech sounded a lot like that surrounding the stimulus pitch when we went through that over two years ago, he said. Im worried that once again, we would find ourselves in a spending binge.
Boost to Growth
The fiscal boost from the jobs package next year would be larger than in the first year of the 2009 economic stimulus, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics Inc.
Zandi, who was briefed on the plan before the presidents speech, forecast passage of the entire jobs package would add 2 percentage points to economic growth next year and bring down the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point compared with current policy, under which a temporary payroll tax cut and an extended unemployment benefits both expire Dec. 31.
Posted by Admin at 10:54 AM. Placed in Spending category
By RAJU CHEBIUM
Gannett Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon shouldnt have to absorb the largest share of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts that a new congressional committee is looking to recommend, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday.
Congress has agreed to cut defense spending by $600 billion over the next decade as part of a deal signed into law Aug. 2 to raise the federal debt ceiling.
That deal also created a bipartisan, 12-member debt-reduction super committee to cut another $1.5 trillion over the next decade.
About $400 billion of those cuts are expected to come from defense.
Cuts of that magnitude would devastate the military, Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by conservative think tanks.
The congressional super committee could recommend steps such as eliminating waste in the Defense Departments weapons-purchasing process, said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services.
He also said hes willing to consider unpopular proposals such as raising premiums that service members pay under Tricare, the militarys health insurance program.
But Graham said he wont support any plan that would cut core Pentagon programs designed to fight terrorists or protect US interests abroad.
Im willing to do big things, said Graham, a former Air Force lawyer who serves on the Air Force Reserve. Im willing to do things that will be controversial to make the Department of Defense budget sustainable and more businesslike.
Cutting core programs will say to the country and the world at large defense is a secondary concern, Graham said. I want my nation to embrace (the concept) that we are the leader of the free world. It is our God-given destiny. And when we reject that role, evil has a foothold.
His comments came shortly after the super committee, called the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, held its first meeting to discuss operational logistics.
That panel, which has three Republicans and three Democrats from each chamber, includes Assistant House Minority Leader Jim Clyburn of Columbia.
The debt ceiling law directs panel members to identify at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts — their goal is to find at least $1.5 trillion — by Nov. 23. Congress must vote up or doen on the proposals as presented with no changes.
If panel members cant agree on cuts, or if Congress fails to adopt their proposals by the end of the year, spending would be cut by $1.2 trillion across the board.
Democrats top priority is to safeguard entitlement programs such as Medicare.
Eliminating unnecessary and duplicative spending, and ending military adventurism need not be accompanied by slashing essential services like public education, and shredding safety nets, Clyburn said at the debt-reduction committees meeting Thursday. It is just plain wrong to put all the burden of debt and deficit reduction on the elderly, the middle class, and the poor.
Posted by Admin at 4:25 AM. Placed in Spending category
Conflict recently arose in the California assembly when Assembly
Member Anthony Portantino accused Speaker John Perez of cutting his offices
budget for voting against party lines on a recent measure. Perez maintains that the cuts were made
because Portantinos office spent in excess of its allotted budget by nearly
$70,000. Their disagreement is
difficult to evaluate because the Assembly Rules Committee has not released the
relevant data on Assembly Members Offices spending.
Realizing this difficulty, the California Common Sense (CACS) research
team has looked into the data that the Rules Committee has made public. We found two important data sources: the
annual budgets for Assembly Member offices, published by the Rules Committee
for 2009-2010, and information on Assembly Members staffers annual salaries,
published on the Assembly website and last updated on May 3, 2011. We compared the information from these
sources to judge how complete an image of Assembly Members Offices spending
they provide.
What the data includes:
The reported budgets include Assembly Member Offices allocated funds
for 17 categories of expenditure, including staff salaries, per diem, travel,
and communications. The salary data
lists the salary of each legislator, and the salaries, positions, and names of
all staff members working for an Assembly Member or a party Caucus.
What We Found:
The sum of all spending in the reported budgets is $16,882,750.96,
which breaks down into $10,240,466.25 reported for staffers salaries and
$6,642,284.71 reported for Members offices operating expenses. The sum of all Assembly Member Office
staffers salaries is $34,038,564. That
means there is a $17,155,813.04 difference between all spending reported in the budgets, and actual spending on
staffers salaries-and a $23,798,097.75 between the reported budgeted spending
on staffers salaries and actual spending on staffers salaries.
Admittedly, we would not expect the numbers to line up exactly. Because the published budgets are from
2009-2010 and the salaries were updated in 2011, there should be some
disagreement because of newly created or removed staff positions. However, both figures describe offices
annual spending, and the discrepancy is too large to be attributed to minor
changes in staffing arrangements. For
the discrepancy to be explained entirely by staff changes, offices would have
to have multiplied the size of their staffs by, on average, a factor of three
between 2009-2010 and 2010-2011.
The extent of the discrepancies becomes clearer when we look into
individual Assembly Members Offices in detail.
The largest difference between total reported budget and the sum of
staffers salaries occurs in the office of Assembly Member Felipe Fuentes.
Fuentes office is budgeted $144 thousand for staffers salaries. The sum of staffers annual salaries is $1.6
million. Fuentes chief consultant alone
makes $169.5 thousand annually-more than the entire amount reportedly budgeted
for staffers salaries. The offices of
Mike Gatto and Marty Block likewise report total budgets for staffers salaries
lower than the salaries of their highest-paid staffers.
What we conclude:
The magnitude of the discrepancies between the reported budgets and
the amount that Members offices are actually spending on staff according to
the published salaries suggest that the budgets are significantly
underreporting the offices expenditures.
We therefore conclude that the published data give an, if not
inaccurate, at least severely incomplete representation of what the California
Assembly spends. In particular, it is
impossible to determine the actual allotted budget and realized expenditures
for any given Assembly Members office.
ABOUT CACS |
California Common Sense (CACS) is a Stanford-based nonprofit devoted to opening
government financial data to the public, informing Californians about
governmental inefficiencies, and promoting effective and efficient government
policies. CACSs government transparency projects and research harness new
technology to reveal fragmented administration and overlapping state entities.
Visit www.cacs.org to learn more.