Archive for February, 2010

Will there be cutbacks at A&F?

Costs to close its Ruehl stores helped push Abercrombie & Fitch Co.’s fiscal fourth-quarter profit lower Tuesday.

Still, adjusted results topped analysts’ expectations as the clothing retailer works on strengthening its business overseas and domestically.

That would give a whole new deifinition to “stripping down” wouldn’t it?

I hadn’t heard about this one, but then I don’t live in California either.

A Southern California meatpacking firm has significantly expanded its recall of ground beef and veal that might be contaminated with E. coli.

The recall includes approximately 4.9 million additional pounds of products by Huntington Meat Packing Inc. under the Huntington, Imperial Meat Co. and El Rancho brands, the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said Friday.

The original recall was announced Jan. 18 and was for 864,000 pounds of meat.

Heads up people.

I don’t think any of the airlines were expecting this.

Airlines canceled over 1,800 flights Friday as snow pounded parts of the South and dumped several inches of white onAtlanta, home to the world’s busiest airport.

Light to moderate snow fell steadily throughout the afternoon in Atlanta and its northern suburbs. It wasn’t expected to taper off until late evening. There was a chance of more snow for the area on Monday, afederal holiday when many workers will have the day off.

We enjoyed the snow here though.

Okay, whew knew Greece was going bankrupt? Seriously, that sucks.

The London stock market closed higher on Thursday following a European Union summit that pledged to help debt-laden Greece but announced no firm measures.

The benchmark FTSE 100 index ended 0.57 percent higher to reach 5,161.48 points.

Tomorrow is a new day, right?

Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the state laws would kick in and require a higher premium for unemployment insurance taxes.

Employers are getting hit with a massive tax hike at a time when they can least afford it.

Companies in at least 35 states will have to fork over more in unemployment insurance taxes this year, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.

The median increase will be 27.5%. And employers in places such as Hawaii and Florida could see levies skyrocket more than ten-fold.

Too bad our current president hasn’t done anything to lower unemployment and save all those states so much money.

The world’s tallest skyscraper has unexpectedly closed to the public a month after its lavish opening, disappointing tourists headed for the observation deck and casting doubt over plans to welcome its first permanent occupants in the coming weeks.

Electrical problems are at least partly to blame for the closure of the Burj Khalifa’s viewing platform — the only part of the half-mile high tower open yet. But a lack of information from the spire’s owner left it unclear whether the rest of the largely empty building — including dozens of elevators meant to whisk visitors to the tower’s more than 160 floors — was affected by the shutdown.

Bigger is not always better.

More and more people are doing it.

Many jobless people have reached a conclusion that captures the depth of the unemployment crisis: Looking for a job is a waste of time.

The economy is growing. Yet it’s creating few jobs. That’s why in the past eight months, 1.8 million people without jobs left the labor market. Many had grown so frustrated by their failure to find a job that they threw up their hands and quit looking for one.

And it’s why Barbara Bishop sat down at her kitchen table in suburban Atlanta last month and joined their ranks. Her decision came seven months after she quit a PR job that seemed about to be axed. Sending out resumes got her nowhere. So Bishop made a list of her skills and decided to launch her own business.

With the way things are today, it’s not such a bad idea.

Analysts expected payrolls to rise by 15,000 with unemployment holding at 10%, yet there was a loss of 20,000 jobs nd the rate fell to 9.7%.

The U.S. economy lost 20,000 jobs in January, the Labor Departmentsaid Friday, defying expectations for a slim gain. But the jobless rateunexpectedly fell to 9.7% from 10% in December.

Wall Street expected nonfarm payrolls to rise by 15,000 with unemployment holding at 10%.

Stocks opened up, sold off, then staged a big rally late to end higher. The Dow rose 0.1%, the S&P 500 0.3% and the Nasdaq 0.7%.

Someone is fudging numbers. You do the math.

President Barack Obama said on Friday new jobs figures showed the United States was climbing out of the “huge hole” created by the recession but he cautioned that the data would fluctuate in the months to come.

The jobless rate fell to 9.7 percent in January from 10 percent in December. Obama called that encouraging, but he said it was not cause for celebration.

Of course it’s not cause for celebration. Most of those jobs created were for temporary census jobs. duh.

Toyota is off to one hell of a year isn’t it?

Toyota will recall 270,000 Prius hybrid vehicles over brake problems in the United States and Japan, a report said Friday, while the beleaguered auto giant launched an investigation into possible problems with the brakes in its luxury Lexus hybrid.

The recall would affect the new Prius hybrid model, and Toyota Motor Corp. would soon notify Japan’s transport ministry and the U.S. Department of Transportation of the recall, Japan’s top business newspaper, Nihon Keizai, said Friday.

What’s next?