Linens 'n Things to close stores
Linens 'n Things will close all 317 of its remaining stores in 48 states, including nearly a dozen throughout Washington, after finishing...
Seattle Times business reporter
Linens 'n Things will close all 317 of its remaining stores in 48 states, including nearly a dozen throughout Washington, after finishing going-out-of-business sales.
The bankrupt New Jersey-based retailer was unable to find a buyer willing to take over the locations as a going concern. It already has closed 218 stores this year.
Linens 'n Things' Web site lists 11 Washington state locations, including Federal Way's SeaTac Village and Lynnwood's Alderwood shopping area.
The closing sales began today, promising discounts of up to 30 percent.
Amy Martinez: 206-464-2923 or amartinez@seattletimes.com
And when (if) this all finishes and normality returns, then a new generation of Oligarchs will be born......about 20 at a rough guess
Andy, Doncaster,
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4965351.eceHouse debates bill to kill D.C. gun restrictions
September 16, 2008 - 8:51pm
By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The House took up NRA-backed legislation Tuesday to eliminate most of the gun restrictions in the nation's capital, including a ban on semiautomatic weapons.
The House action comes three months after the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handgun possession, ruling that what had been one of the nation's toughest gun control laws violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
It is not likely that the vote, which could come late Tuesday or Wednesday, would have an immediate effect on gun ownership in one of the country's more violent cities. The Senate probably won't consider the bill in the few remaining weeks of this session.
But it could bolster the pro-gun credentials of some Democrats from more rural districts who face tough elections in November. The drive to repeal D.C. gun limits is being led by Rep. Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat who captured a long-held GOP seat in Mississippi in a special election last May.
The D.C. Council on Tuesday deflected some of the criticism of its gun policies by voting to let residents own most semiautomatic pistols and eliminate a requirement that guns be stored unloaded or secured with trigger locks.
Critics said the latest changes still didn't go far enough.
In July, after the Supreme Court ruling, the council passed an emergency measure allowing possession of unloaded revolvers in homes but maintaining the ban on semiautomatics.
The NRA and pro-gun lawmakers seized on that earlier emergency rule to contend that D.C. was continuing to defy the Supreme Court's decision giving residents the right to defend themselves.
If Childers' bill is enacted into law, the NRA said, D.C. residents could "purchase a pistol or revolver from a gun dealer in Maryland or Virginia, not be required to register it with the city government, store it loaded, assembled and without a triggerlock in the home and use it for defense of self and family."
The House on Tuesday initially took up legislation sponsored by the District's Democratic delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton that simply requires that the D.C. Council, within 180 days, revise firearm laws to ensure they are consistent with the Supreme Court decision.
Childers will offer his bill as a substitute for the Norton measure. The Childers alternative appeared to have the votes to override Norton's version.
Norton said her bill respects the self-governing rights Congress gave the District more than three decades ago, but acknowledged she faced a powerful foe. Five days after the Sept. 11 anniversary, she said, "Democrats were met in a dark alley with a do-or-die demand from the NRA."
The alternative was also backed by the White House, which said it would "immediately advance Second Amendment principles" protecting the rights of D.C. residents "not only to protect themselves and their families but also to protect their homes and property."
Childers said his legislation was designed only to overturn D.C. laws that conflict with the Supreme Court ruling and would allow residents to buy only those firearms that are legal under federal law.
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov
The Norton bill is H.R. 6842. The Childers bill is H.R. 6691.
http://wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1479614
Market Report: FTSE shows 'no one is out of the woods yet'
By Nick ClarkThursday, 16 October 2008
So the global rally proved to be short-lived, and recession fears have returned to haunt the City. The American market fell overnight and London was dragged along in its wake, with few stocks escaping the carnage at the end of the day.
Nick Brown, a sales trader at the brokerage Xconnect, said: "The rises earlier this week were great, but Wednesday's trading reminded us that no one is out of the woods yet."
The FTSE 100 was weak in the morning, then spiralled wildly downwards, losing 7.16 per cent at the close, to 4,079.59. It was crushed by a shocking performance from the miners as metal prices fell once more.
Rio Tinto compounded the problems, warning of weakening demand from China, saying that it had been forced to shelve its $15bn asset sale and there were issues at its Escondia mine in Chile. It closed down 16.6 per cent to 2,357p. Investors locked in losses as the sector contributed eight of the nine biggest losers. The lowest on the day was Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, which gave up a quarter of its value to close at 386.5p.
International Power was not looking too sparky either after it was forced to shut down a plant in Sicily. The plant looks like it will be offline until the end of the year after it was damaged by fire, yet some analysts thought the investor reaction was over the top. It still shed 12.41 per cent to close at 236.5p.
The black horse was back yesterday, albeit briefly. Lloyds TSB topped the leaderboard as the standout pick of the banks, rising in the morning by more than 6 per cent. It rose after The Independent story that the government was considering allowing the bank to pay dividends, despite it taking advantage of the £37bn bailout. During the slaughter in the afternoon, it lost 1.1 per cent to close at 150.2p; only HBOS bobbed into positive territory, up 0.47 per cent to 85.7p, one of two on the day.
Some suffered more than others, with Standard Chartered the worst. The Asia-focused group slumped 13.65 per cent to 1,145p after Exane BNP Paribas slashed its rating to "underperform" from "neutral". Other financial stocks from asset managers to life insurers were feeling the pain yesterday. Old Mutual was the worst, down 18.11 per cent to 63.3p.
The technology group Autonomy Corporation found favour early on with numbers that beat expectations. The company is in a prime position to profit from banks' despair as it makes technology to deal with the slew of regulation set to hit the US and Europe. It failed to hold its gains and closed at 808.5p, down 1.16 per cent.
Another group to post strong results but couldn't fight the macro environment turning on the market: the publisher of the Pink 'Un, Pearson, saw sales grow 8 per cent, while operating profit was up 11 per cent. A bullish outlook that expects full-year earnings at the top of current market estimates and backing from Numis sent the shares up, before settling 8p down at 551p.
Miners dominated the fallers on the second tier as well, with Talvivaara Mining the worst, down almost a quarter to 161.75p, while the international ferro metals group Aricom was close behind, 23.64 down at 10.5p. Industrial machinery group Charter also suffered as Panmure Gordon cut the stock from a "buy" to a "hold" based on what it called the "double-whammy of volume and price declines".
On the upside, BlueBay Asset Management was among the risers after support from Citigroup. The asset management group posted a gain of 5.5 per cent to 182.25p, despite assets under management falling 2.3 per cent to $20.5bn as the market conditions bit. Hugh Willis, the chief executive, predicted that the market would turn before the end of the financial year, and the stock rose as analysts said they were impressed by the inflows over the past quarter.
Top by far was Sports Direct International, which benefited from the read across from positive news in JJB. It rose 5p, 14.7 per cent, to 39p, despite a target cut from Panmure to as low as 30p. One trader said: "It's a prime next target as it doesn't look expensive. There will also be a bit of short covering; it is a self-perpetuating process."
JJB has endured a tough October, but it was very much in focus after receiving an approach for its Qube and Original Shoe Company operations yesterday. While the group revealed neither the bidder nor the price, it leapt 24.47 per cent to 29.25p. Both divisions have reported losses since they were bought in the past year – the former from Mike Ashley, the latter from Sir Tom Hunter.
Among the fallers, Woolworths Group gave up 14.43 per cent, or 0.7p, to 4.15p over rumours of departures and fears over the group's performance in the run-up to Christmas.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/sharewatch/market-report-ftse-shows-no-one-is-out-of-the-woods-yet-962738.html
The Beginning of the End
October 10, 2008
Peter Schiff, President and Chief Global Strategist
While I have warned for years that the United States was headed into the eye of an economic hurricane, nearly every other "expert" from Washington, Wall Street, the press and academia saw nothing ahead but sunny skies. Now, suddenly, there is an overwhelming consensus that absent the Federal mortgage bailout, my dire forecast would have come to pass. While I'm glad that rose colored glasses have finally been removed from so many eyes, the vast majority of these observers are still blind. In truth, the bailout plan substantially increases the threats to the U.S. economy.
When I wrote my book "Crash Proof", I not only predicted that our consumer/mortgage credit-based economy would fall apart, but that the government would ineptly try to repair it. The magnitude of those potential policies formed the basis of my worst case scenario. My fears have now been confirmed, and the U.S. Government is now set to destroy all hope of economic recovery.
Make no mistake; had the government resisted the political pressure to interfere with the markets, we would now be experiencing a very deep recession. But by refusing to let the markets work, policy makers are resisting the only medicine capable of curing the economic disease that afflicts us. The same mistakes were made in the early 1930's, causing a severe financial crisis to morph into the decade-long Great Depression.
The government will now attempt to keep bad loans from failing and real estate prices from falling. Rather then allowing market forces to rein in excess borrowing and replenish savings, it will encourage even more borrowing and drain what is left of our savings pool. Rather than allowing our economy to return to one based on legitimate production, it will continue to encourage reckless consumption.
In the end, by refusing to allow market forces to work their cure, our economy will inevitably die from the disease. Our economy will now face death by hyperinflation, which will cause a complete loss of confidence in the dollar and result in prices and interest rates skyrocketing out of sight. The evaporation of our national wealth will lead to civil unrest, food and energy shortages, and the possible imposition of martial law. If such a scenario unfolds, what is left of our Constitution will surely be completely shredded.
Although this reality looms as large as anything I have ever seen, investors still do not see the forest for the trees. Convinced that the bailout will actually work, and that foreign governments are derelict for not launching similar plans, global investors are fleeing other currencies in favor of the dollar. Soon investors will discover that foreign politicians and central bankers have acted responsibly. When they do, the current gains seen by the dollar will reverse violently.
Investors seem to be bracing themselves for a global depression that will not occur. Foreign stocks, particularly those exposed to China or natural resources, are trading at the lowest valuations I have seen in my entire career. Fears of a global meltdown are based on the misconception that the U.S. economy is the tent pole for economic activity around the world. The premise of my entire argument is that the U.S. economy, by consuming so much of the world's resources and manufactured goods, and borrowing so much of the world's savings, has in fact been a drag on the global economy.
The enormous global vendor financing scheme is finally coming to an end as the vendors discover that their biggest customer is flat broke. In the short run, our creditors are experiencing some pain because they finally realize that they will never get their money back.
Once the foreign stock markets take this hit, they will be far better poised to grow than their American counterpart. Foreigners will reclaim their productivity and savings for themselves, and will subsequently experience the biggest global economic boom in history. America on the other hand will fare much worse, as we will be left with a hollowed out manufacturing base, dilapidated infrastructure, no savings, and a gigantic Federal Government that will regulate, spend, borrow and print our economy into ruin.
http://www.newmogul.com/item?id=1002
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