Viernes 26/08/11 No esperen mucho de Bernanke

[Victor VE]

Hurricane Irene Tracking Map

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/hurrica ... wanted=all

[admin]

Esperando a Irene. Esto parece irreal, ojala sea todo una exageracion, que barbaro.

[Victor VE]

Admin, cuidense pues, no se vaya a poner fea la cosa.

Pobre de aquel que le ponga de nombre Irene a su hija de ahora en adelante en NY.

[Victor VE]

Admin, una recomendación con respecto al foro.

Yo utilizo la aplicación Tapatalk para acceder a diferentes foros de diferente tipo lo cual hace la navegación mas fácil en ves de acceder por web se accede por esa aplicación (una cosa no anula a la otra), funciona en Android,Iphone y Blackberry previa bajada de la aplicación.

Podria ser una mejora para el foro ya que la mayoria aca tiene algun smartphone de ese tipo.

La info la puedes encontrar aca:

http://www.tapatalk.com

[admin]

250,000 personas tienen que evacuar en Manhattan. Se ha declarado el estado de emergencia, estoy en un restaurant tomando desayuno y esta lleno, el personal a pesar que no van a tener transporte publico ha ido a trabajar.

A las 12 pm la ciudad que nunca duerme no tendra transporte publico, cerraron los puentes y tuneles con acceso a Manhattan. Todos los pasajes son gratis.

Le pregunto a mi vecina si esta lista, me dice que si, que se compro dos botellas de vino.

[admin]

Ya se esta oscureciendo el cielo.

[admin]

Todos los vuelos estan cancelados, esto va a ser otro golpe a la economia.

[admin]

Comenzo la lluvia torrencial.

[admin]

Hay ordenes de permanecer adentro de las casas entre 9 pm hasta las 9 pm de maniana.

[admin]

435,000 hogares sin electricidad en North Carolina y Virginia.

[admin]

Dos de los bancos mas grandes en Grecia se fusionan.

[admin]

Por el amor al dinero.

La nueva estrella del tennis no es timida acerca de su motivacion no comunista para ganar.

China ama a Li Na la ganandora del French Open de 29 anios, la primera en el Asia en ganar un Grand Slam. Su publicidad de Nike esta en todas las esquinas del pais. Su ciudad natal le ha puesto un monumento en su honor (el gobierno), los ninios estan jugando tennis en China inspirados en Li Na.

Toda China la idolatra, pero ella ama a China, ella sorprendio a todo el mundo cuando al ganar el French Open agradecio a su familia, y hasta a sus auspiciadores, pero no a China. Desde su triunfo, ella se ha esforzado en remarcar que el triunfo es de ella, no de China, ni del programa manejado por el gobierno.

Eso por supuesto no nos llama la atencion, nunca se espero que Pete Sampras agradeciera a US.

La respuesta del gobierno ha sido el moderar los alagos a Li Na.

Li Na compite fuera del sistema del gobierno Chino que le permite a los atletas quedarse con solo el 35% de los premios ganados, Li Na ahora se queda con el 90% del dinero ganado.
For the Love of Prize Money
China's newest athletic star isn't shy about her non-Communist motivations

By Abheek Bhattacharya and Raymond Zhong
Beijing

China loves Li Na, the 29-year-old French Open tennis champion and the first Asian player to win a Grand Slam singles title. Her Nike ads are all over the country. The government of her native Wuhan, in the central Hubei province, has erected a statue in her honor. Youngsters are picking up rackets to emulate China's newest and—with Yao Ming having announced his retirement from the National Basketball Association—possibly its most famous sports role model.

It's natural, then, that sponsors eyeing the vast Chinese market love Ms. Li too. Since her June victory, new endorsements have put her on track to become the second-highest-earning female athlete in the world, after fellow tennis player Maria Sharapova.

But does Ms. Li love China back? She generated a lot of chatter when, at the winner's podium at France's Roland Garros in June, she thanked her family and even her sponsors, but not China. She has since made it a point to remind people that the victory was hers, not that of the Chinese nation or of its state-run sports system. "I appreciate everyone's support, but it was by my own personal diligence that I won it, after all," she told reporters at a press conference here last month.

Such statements wouldn't raise eyebrows anywhere else in the world. Nobody expected Pete Sampras to thank American democracy every time he won at Wimbledon.

But this is China, where stardom does not quite operate by the same rules that obtain elsewhere. If an international sports competition can't be converted to the glory of the motherland, it isn't worth winning. Which explains the Communist Party's reaction to Ms. Li's attempts to distance herself from nationalist promotion. According to leaked censorship instructions, the Propaganda Ministry in early June ordered domestic media to keep a lid on their praise of her. "Do not continue to hype Li Na's win," the terse directive reads.

At the same time, Beijing isn't foolish; it's happy to use the existing hype to its advantage. Hubei province's Party secretary said last month that Ms. Li's French Open victory was "a demonstration of the superiority of socialism with Chinese characteristics under the leadership of the Communist Party of China."

Like many Chinese tennis players, Ms. Li started out playing badminton. She switched after a coach told her that she played badminton like a tennis player, her stroke more a swing than a flick. Despite the limited exposure to tennis that growing up in China afforded her, she pushed ahead. "I remember wanting to win from a very early age," she told us in an interview. She joined China's national team in 1997 and turned pro two years later.

Luckily for Ms. Li, her early career coincided with a flourishing of Beijing's interest in tennis. China created its Soviet-style sports system in 1949, when sports were seen as a cure for a weak national psyche. After China opened in the late 1970s, sports also became recognized as a vector for advancing national pride overseas.

The government's "2001-10 Plan for Olympic Tennis Glory" placed emphasis on the women's team. The thinking was simple: The men's game was too competitive. It's the sort of calculation Beijing has made across the athletic spectrum, investing in fringe events like archery and weightlifting not out of interest shown in those blacklisted_site at home, but instead to exploit niche opportunities. This tack has paid off handsomely in Olympic medals, but it has cultivated champions who seem to plug away at their blacklisted_site without joy or even interest in the experience.

Ms. Li stands out from this crowd. She's blunt when she needs to be. She is also unafraid of showing impatience with journalists' questions, like when we bring up some of the items on the Li Na gossip mill. We ask whether it's true that she proposed marriage to her husband with a box of chocolates. "Who is spreading these lies?" she snarls. "I think chocolates and flowers are the most boring things."

Or consider her postmatch interview after winning the Australian Open semifinal in January, the one that made her a minor YouTube sensation. Was she nervous during the three-set match against world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki? "Yes, because I didn't have a good evening [before]." Her husband's snoring kept her awake. What got her through the grueling third set of that match? "Prize money," Ms. Li laughed. The crowd in Melbourne roared its approval.

She was laughing then, but the quip was telling. Tennis players in the Chinese state system can keep only about 35% of their prize earnings. But since 2009 Ms. Li has competed outside of the system, which allows her to keep some 90% of her winnings.

The state cage would have trapped her in other ways, too. Until she left the system, the Communist Party had dictated every aspect of her tennis game: how she trained, what matches she played. It monitored her personal life; dating was discouraged. In 2002 Ms. Li left the national team for the first time, reportedly because of disagreements with tennis authorities over her relationship with a teammate, Jiang Shan. She later married Mr. Jiang—no chocolates or flowers involved.


But successes on the circuit were empowering the women's team by the year. In 2005, Ms. Li's teammate Peng Shuai was the first to challenge the system's strictures, demanding to pick her coaches and to decide which competitions to take part in. And, crucially, she wanted a greater share of her prize money.

The tennis authorities didn't agree right away. But after the Beijing Olympics, they gave players a choice: They could stay with the state system or they could "fly solo," more or less in line with Ms. Peng's requests. Flying solo would allow them to keep more of their winnings but would expose them fully to losses.

Eventually only four players, all women, chose to break free: Ms. Li, Ms. Peng, and the doubles team of Zheng Jie and Yan Zi, who won titles at the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006.

The experimental scheme doesn't spell complete autonomy for these players. Ms. Li still has to play on the national team in competitions where Beijing nervously eyes the medal tally, like the Olympics or the Asian blacklisted_site—"no questions asked," she says.

Ms. Li likes the new freedom. Managing her own career has been good for her, she says. It allowed her the flexibility, at least, to make one game-changing call this year. Ms. Li's husband had guided her ably as her coach since 2006, but after a string of losses at tournaments following the Australian Open, she took stock.

"After Stuttgart," where she lost in the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in April, "we just sat in the room and I was like, 'OK, we should change something for the team.'" She fired her husband and hired Michael Mortensen, a Dane whom Ms. Wozniacki reportedly recommended to her. "He's a positive person," she says of Mr. Mortensen. The positive attitude worked a few weeks later at Roland Garros.

She isn't ready to conclude that her experience can serve as a model for others, though. "When I was just starting out, the system was very good for helping me mature as a player. But because not everyone is alike, it's impossible to say that what worked for me will work for everyone else. Only after you've had some experience in a system can you say which one suits you best."

Since her big win this summer, she has tried to emphasize that she isn't an avatar of political revolt, or at least she shouldn't be treated as one. As she repeatedly tells us, "I'm just an athlete."

Athlete or not, her achievement singles her out for emulation. Chinese are going to ponder the benefits of "flying solo," of exercising individual choice.

In one sphere at least, Ms. Li strongly advocates freedom of choice. She's excited about all the children who are picking up rackets now that there is a Chinese tennis champion, but she wonders: "How many of them are actually interested in tennis and chose it for themselves, and how many are just acting on their parents' wishes?" She wants tennis to be the children's own choice, not another box that their tiger mothers force them to check off.


That impulse to coddle also informs the way China's sports system treats its athletes, Ms. Li suggests. "In China there is greater fear of children getting hurt, so the system serves as a protection for younger players. . . . It's protection for everyone."

Beijing's idea is that without the protection, athletes would crumble under the strain. But with the protection, will they ever become great? The toss-up is between a system that guarantees safety but fosters dreary conformity, and one that doesn't protect China's athletes from pressure or failure but gives the great among them the opportunity to overcome great odds.

Ms. Li doesn't claim to know where the answer lies for China. For her own career, though, the way forward is clear. "If you want a life free of pressure, then you should return to the previous system, with all its protections," she says. "Now that I have to protect my own team, the pressure is of course greater by comparison. But pressure and motivation are twinned. You can't have one without the other. I'd rather have both pressure and motivation."

Messrs. Bhattacharya and Zhong are editorial page writers with The Wall Street Journal Asia.

[admin]

The Amazing Steve Jobs Story He ranks in the industrial pantheon along with Edison and Ford. By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.Like this columnist

People will be trying to isolate and bottle the "leadership secrets of Steve Jobs" till the end of business time. But of course it's impossible.

His story isn't just the story of a person, but the combination of time, place and person, spawning a career in industrial design of awesome proportions. Mr. Jobs founded two pivotal companies in American history. Both happened to be named Apple. One was the Apple of the Macintosh, the other was the Apple of the iPhone.

From the beginning, he saw the human possibility in the extraordinarily complex hardware and software engineering of digital devices. The Macintosh should work in a way that's intuitive, that doesn't require an owner's manual. And today you only need to survey the blogosphere or friends with toddlers to hear stories of 3-year-olds picking up an iPad and quickly sussing out what it's for.

Then there's the business story. The first Apple had become, in the minds of the people running it and its investors, a computer company—one riven over whether to follow Bill Gates's advice and license the Macintosh operating system and make a living raking in fees from clone makers.

That's the Apple that spit Mr. Jobs out. The second Apple—the Apple of the iPod, iPhone and iPad—was the noncomputer company that Mr. Jobs perhaps instinctively intended all along. A decade after his return, he made it official and changed the name from Apple Computer to Apple. His purpose wasn't to fill a niche in an industrial landscape, but to realize the full potential of the medium to which Apple had committed itself.

But let's also acknowledge that coupled with vision and the pursuit of excellence was hard-headed business strategizing. The triumph of iTunes, the App Store and the incipient Apple Cloud ushered in the era at Apple of network-esque complexity as well as the possibility of network-esque revenues. It made Mr. Jobs, despite himself, an empire builder. Success brought rivals like Google and Amazon. There came the need to anticipate moves and countermoves, the need to play defense. This was an unsung part of the Jobs C.V. in later years. And almost tactless to mention is the garish side effect: the rise of Apple to exceed Microsoft and on some days Exxon Mobil, as the world's most valuable company.

Now this was an almost inexplicable business success, a miraculous reversal of fortune of the sort that inspires banner headlines and hyperventilating on cable TV when it happens on the ball field. It was an astonishing achievement, emblematic of a man meeting his moment completely, when few men get a chance to meet their moments even partially.

Mr. Jobs's negotiation of personal relationships has been, by reputation, fraught and idiosyncratic. But whose isn't? And whatever his interpersonal challenges, a different kind of warmth is also apparent. An image that will become part of the Jobs lore, inevitably, is his extraordinary determination to cling to life, at least partly for the benefit of the company he created and the customers he accrued. His unpathetic willingness to show his withered self in order to introduce to the world the latest wonders of Apple product development was painful and glorious to watch.

What comes to mind now is a forgotten PBS show in the 1980s that tried to explain what was then known as the "quality revolution" in business. Interviewed was some wise old MIT professor who said, if memory serves, "Quality is love." Mr. Jobs's determination to make superb products was, one likes to think, an expression of love for the world, life and possibility.

"I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it," he said in his announcement this week, perhaps his one concession to ordinary sentimentality, for it seems impossible that Apple, or any company, could anticipate another run like Apple's in the 10 years since the iPod's introduction.

Indeed, it seems unlikely that even Mr. Jobs, had he remained healthy and in charge, wouldn't eventually have met a technological wave or strategic development that he couldn't understand quickly enough and react to. Possibly it's already here: Television in the age of the digital cloud, a puzzle now taxing many of Silicon Valley's most creative minds.

And that would have been fine, preferable to the medical torture and premature professional swansong that have been his lot. The legend did not need this almost sacrificial ending to secure for him a place in the industrial pantheon with Edison, Ford and (though it might cause him to curl his lip slightly) Gates.

[admin]

Cuatro mujeres Cubanas hablan lo imposible

Cuatro mujeres Cubanas se presentaron frente al Capitol de Cuba la semana pasada cantanco "libertad" por 40 minutos, no eran fuerzas rebeldes, aunque uno no podria saber la diferencia por la manera como el regimen Castrista reacciono. Deben haber representado una amenaza grande al sistema porque fueron arrestadas e interrogadas al dia siguiente.

El problema para el regimen debe haber sido la cantidad de personas que se juntaron a mirarlas.

On Cuba's Capitol Steps
Four women speak the unspeakable

The four Cuban women who took to the steps of the capitol in Havana last week chanting "liberty" for 40 minutes weren't exactly rebel forces. But you wouldn't know that by the way the Castro regime reacted. A video of the event shows uniformed state security forcibly dragging the women to waiting patrol cars. They must have represented a threat to the regime because they were interrogated and detained until the following day.

The regime's bigger problem may be the crowd that gathered to watch. In a rare moment of dissent in that public square, the crowd booed, hissed and insulted the agents who were sent to remove the women.

One of the four women, Sara Marta Fonseca, gave a telephone interview to the online newspaper Diario de Cuba, based in Spain, as she made her way home after being freed. Ms. Fonseca, who is a member of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights, said that the group was demanding "that the government cease the repression against the Ladies in White, against the opposition and against the Cuban people in general." The Ladies in White are dissidents who demand the release of all political prisoners.

Yet as Ms. Fonseca explained, the group wasn't really addressing the government. "Our objective is that one day the people will join us," she said. "Realistically we do not have the strength and the power to defeat the dictatorship. The strength and the power are to be found in the unity of the people. In this we put all our faith, in that this people will cross the barrier of fear and join the opposition to reclaim freedom."

Ms. Fonseca said her group chose the capitol because the area is crowded with locals and tourists and they wanted to "draw attention to the people of Cuba." In the end, she said that they were satisfied with the results because she heard the crowd crying "abuser, leave them alone, they are peaceful and they are telling the truth." This reaction, the seasoned dissident said, "was greater" than in the past. "I am very happy because in spite of being beaten and dragged we could see that the people were ready to join us."

For 52 years the Cuban dictatorship has held power through fear. The poverty, isolation, broken families and lost dreams of two generations of Cubans have persisted because the regime made dissent far too dangerous. If that fear dissipates, the regime would collapse. Which is why four women on the capitol steps had to be gagged.

[admin]

Perú eleva en 5 pct su presupuesto 2012, con cautela por crisis
sábado 27 de agosto de 2011 04:41 GYT
Imprimir[-] Texto [+] LIMA (Reuters) - Perú contempla elevar en un 5 por ciento en términos reales su presupuesto público para el 2012 frente al de este año, con cautela ante la amenaza de una crisis financiera global, dijo el viernes el Gobierno.
El ministro de Economía, Luis Castilla, dijo que el Gobierno elaboró un proyecto de presupuesto público que asciende a 95.535 millones de soles (unos 35.000 millones de dólares) para el próximo año, el cual enviará en los próximos días al Congreso para su revisión y aprobación.

"Este presupuesto ha sido realizado de manera cuidadosa, un presupuesto cauteloso ante la inminencia de una crisis o shock externo, pero a la vez permite avanzar con las promesas que se han realizado", dijo Castilla en una conferencia de prensa.

El Gobierno del presidente Ollanta Humala, que asumió el poder a fines de julio, tiene el desafío cumplir varios programas sociales que prometió en su campaña electoral.

Castilla afirmó a la prensa tras una reunión de ministros en Palacio de Gobierno que en el presupuesto público 2012 se prevé un crecimiento económico no menor de 6 por ciento y un superávit fiscal de 1 por ciento del Producto Interior Bruto.

Perú, un gran exportador de materias primas, registró una expansión económica de un 8,8 por ciento el año pasado, una de las tasas de crecimiento más altas del mundo.

Castilla refirió asimismo que para el próximo año el Gobierno contempla un endeudamiento externo máximo de 2.230 millones de dólares y créditos internos hasta 2.632 millones de soles para financiar parte del presupuesto público.