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Source: http://www.educatedreporter.com/2013/05/guest-post-economist-james-heckman-on.html
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By Laurence Fletcher
LONDON (Reuters) - A booming population, fuelled by immigration, will help Britain's economy to grow more strongly than Germany's later this decade and could drive its stock market much higher, according to one of the UK's biggest equity hedge funds.
Toscafund, with $1.3 billion of funds open to investment, made its bullish predictions amid signs the UK economy is starting to recover from five years of torpor brought on by the financial crisis, while the euro zone is mired in recession.
"No-one ever gets how good it's going to be until it (the stock market) moves," founder Martin Hughes told Reuters.
Hughes, ranked 7th in this year's Sunday Times Hedge Fund Rich List with a 375-million-pound ($574 million) fortune, cited Britain's rising population as a driving force for growth.
As a result, he warned the economy could be harmed if Britain voted to leave the European Union and restricted immigration. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to hold a referendum on EU membership by 2017, if re-elected.
"If we do leave, the lights will stay on, but we mustn't use it as an excuse to raise the drawbridge. Inflation and interest rates to a certain extent are low because of immigration," said Toscafund chief economist Savvas Savouri.
Toscafund's optimism is also based on Britain's "strong" labour market, while "property is robust and car manufacturing is healthy", added Savouri.
"Looking at all three metrics, not many other places in the world have that. Debt servicing is not a concern because most household debt is secured on property whose value is trending higher."
Savouri, who was correct in his prediction last May that Greece would not exit the euro zone, said Britain's "dynamic, open" economy would enjoy GDP growth above Germany's in the coming years, rising close to 4 percent by 2020.
He is working on the basis that Britain's population will exceed Germany's within a generation, even though it is currently 20 million lower. Britain's fertility rate in 2010 was the highest since the early 1970s, according to official data.
"Where there's population growth, there's GDP growth," Hughes said, adding he favoured domestically-focused stocks such as housebuilders, as well as commercial property.
Toscafund owns more than 14 percent of housebuilder Redrow
STOCK MARKET STRENGTH
With a bullish view on Britain's economic prospects, Toscafund predicts its stock market, already at around 5-1/2 year highs, could rise much further.
Hughes pointed to the UK equity market's earnings yield - earnings per share divided by market price - which is above that of many bonds. German 10-year yields are 1.38 percent, for instance.
"The UK stock market's p/e (price to earnings ratio) of 11 is generally good value. If it's got a 5 percent earnings yield, why can't it be a 20 times p/e? The UK offers emerging market growth dynamics at valuations of a declining developed economy."
The UK FTSE Mid 250 midcap index <.ftmc> has rallied around 40 percent since June, as central banks have tried to prop up Europe's stuttering economies. According to Reuters data its p/e ratio is 9.7 times, meaning that a p/e of 20 times would see the index at roughly double current levels.
"Mid-cap UK corporate valuations are exactly the same as for European equities but Europe is shrinking and the UK is growing. The UK stock market is on a 35 percent discount to the U.S." said Hughes.
He is also taking advantage of an "unbelievable opportunity" to buy UK industrial, mixed use and shopping centre properties particularly outside London, from capital-hungry banks who are selling them off at a discount.
Such sales, driven by banks trying to meet regulatory capital targets, are triggered by a property's loan-to-value ratio rather than income earned on the property, said Hughes.
"Banks are repossessing it on the basis of loan-to-values, due to capital regulations, so you can pick up an income earning asset in double digits."
Savouri added that real estate investment trusts (REITs) may be better value than first appears because net asset values (NAV) may be too low. "With REITs I am convinced surveyed asset values are conservative, and so premiums to NAV over(stated) and discounts understated."
(Additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Mark Potter)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/toscafund-bullish-uk-economy-stock-market-124734215.html
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Novice spy gear. Cash. A recruitment letter. Bad wigs.
That's what Russia?s Federal Security Service said an American accused of being a spy was carrying when he allegedly tried to recruit a Russian agent for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The Russian counterintelligence bureau now wants the man, identified as Ryan Christopher Fogle, expelled from the country, declaring him a "persona non grata."
Fogle was detained on Monday wearing a blond wig, Russian authorities said. They also said he had large sums of euros, a Boy Scouts-style compass, three pairs of glasses, a flashlight, a map of Moscow and a typed contract offering $100,000 for future spy work.
?This is a down-payment from someone who is very impressed with your professionalism and who would greatly appreciate your cooperation in the future,? the letter, published by Russian news sites, reads. ?Your security means a lot to us. This is why we chose this way of contacting you. [W]e will continue to make sure our correspondent [sic] remains safe and secret."
The letter concludes: "We look forward to working with you in the nearest future. Your friends."
According to Russian officials, Fogle was a career agent whose cover was his role as third secretary of the political department of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Photos published by the Russia Today website showed a man, presumed to be Fogle, in a blue-checkered shirt, baseball cap and blond wig pinned facedown to the ground. He was then was shown handcuffed inside an FSS office?without the wig. Another photograph shows a table covered with Fogle's purported spy gear.
"The detainee was brought in the reception office of the Federal Security Service and after necessary procedures was handed over to the official representatives of the U.S. Embassy," the bureau said in a statement. "Recently American intelligence has made multiple attempts to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement organs and special agencies, which have been detected and monitored by Russian FSB counterintelligence."
The U.S. Embassy has yet to comment on the report.
According to The New York Times, Russia?s Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul to appear on Wednesday to respond to the espionage allegation.
The ambassador, Reuters noted, was holding a live Q&A session ("#AskMcfaul") on Twitter when news of the apparent arrest broke.
When was asked to comment on Fogle, McFaul wrote "No" in Russian.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/cia-spy-russia-wig-detained-fogle-144500405.html
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May 15, 2013 ? Taking before and after pictures of Martian terrain, researchers of the UA-led HiRISE imaging experiment have identified almost 250 fresh impact craters on the Red Planet. The results suggest Mars gets pummeled by space rocks less frequently than previously thought, as scientists relied on cratering rates of the moon for their estimates.
Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across.
Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine when the craters appeared. The 200-per-year planetwide estimate is a calculation based on the number found in a systematic survey of a portion of the planet.
The University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, took pictures of the fresh craters at sites where before and after images had been taken. This combination provided a new way to make direct measurements of the impact rate on Mars and will lead to better age estimates of recent features on Mars, some of which may have been the result of climate change.
"It's exciting to find these new craters right after they form," said Ingrid Daubar of the UA, lead author of the paper published online this month by the journal Icarus. "It reminds you Mars is an active planet, and we can study processes that are happening today."
These asteroids or comet fragments typically are no more than 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) in diameter. Space rocks too small to reach the ground on Earth cause craters on Mars because the Red Planet has a much thinner atmosphere.
HiRISE targeted places where dark spots had appeared during the time between images taken by the spacecraft's Context Camera, or CTX, or cameras on other orbiters. The new estimate of cratering rate is based on a portion of the 248 new craters detected. If comes from a systematic check of a dusty fraction of the planet with CTX since late 2006.
The impacts disturb the dust, creating noticeable blast zones. In this part of the research, 44 fresh impact sites were identified.
The meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February was about 10 times bigger than the objects that dug the fresh Martian craters.
Estimates of the rate at which new craters appear serve as scientists' best yardstick for estimating the ages of exposed landscape surfaces on Mars and other worlds.
Daubar and co-authors calculated a rate for how frequently new craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) in diameter are excavated. The rate is equivalent to an average of one each year on each area of the Martian surface roughly the size of the U.S. state of Texas. Earlier estimates pegged the cratering rate at three to 10 times more craters per year. They were based on studies of craters on the moon and the ages of lunar rocks collected during NASA's Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
"Mars now has the best-known current rate of cratering in the solar system," said UA's HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen, a co-author on the paper.
MRO has been examining Mars with six instruments since 2006. Daubar is an imaging targeting specialist who has been on the HiRISE uplink operation s team from the very beginning. She is also a graduate student in the UA's department of planetary science and plans on graduating with her doctorate in spring 2014.
"There are five of us who help plan the images that HiRISE will take over a two-week cycle," she explained. "We work with science team members across the world to understand their science goals, help select the image targets and compile the commands for the spacecraft and the camera."
"The longevity of this mission is providing wonderful opportunities for investigating changes on Mars," said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130515165025.htm
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In this Tuesday, May 7, 2013, photo, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, right, and company co-founder Reid Hoffman sit in the lobby of LinkedIn's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. LinkedIn and Facebook celebrate the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But the companies' experiences as publicly traded entities couldn't be more different. LinkedIn promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns out, the professional networking company's IPO was a great place to start a rewarding investment portfolio, too. LinkedIn's stock has nearly quadrupled in value from its $45 IPO price two years ago. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
In this Tuesday, May 7, 2013, photo, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, right, and company co-founder Reid Hoffman sit in the lobby of LinkedIn's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. LinkedIn and Facebook celebrate the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But the companies' experiences as publicly traded entities couldn't be more different. LinkedIn promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns out, the professional networking company's IPO was a great place to start a rewarding investment portfolio, too. LinkedIn's stock has nearly quadrupled in value from its $45 IPO price two years ago. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
This Tuesday, May 7, 2013, photo, shows LinkedIn's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. LinkedIn and Facebook celebrate the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But the companies' experiences as publicly traded entities couldn't be more different. LinkedIn promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns out, the professional networking company's IPO was a great place to start a rewarding investment portfolio, too. LinkedIn's stock has nearly quadrupled in value from its $45 IPO price two years ago. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
This Tuesday, May 7, 2013, photo, shows LinkedIn's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. LinkedIn and Facebook celebrate the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But the companies' experiences as publicly traded entities couldn't be more different. LinkedIn promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns out, the professional networking company's IPO was a great place to start a rewarding investment portfolio, too. LinkedIn's stock has nearly quadrupled in value from its $45 IPO price two years ago. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
In this Tuesday, May 7, 2013, photo, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, right, and company co-founder Reid Hoffman sit in the lobby of LinkedIn's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. LinkedIn and Facebook celebrate the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But the companies' experiences as publicly traded entities couldn't be more different. LinkedIn promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns out, the professional networking company's IPO was a great place to start a rewarding investment portfolio, too. LinkedIn's stock has nearly quadrupled in value from its $45 IPO price two years ago. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
In this Tuesday, May 7, 2013, photo, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner stands at the entrance to his company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. LinkedIn and Facebook celebrate the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But the companies' experiences as publicly traded entities couldn't be more different. LinkedIn promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns out, the professional networking company's IPO was a great place to start a rewarding investment portfolio, too. LinkedIn's stock has nearly quadrupled in value from its $45 IPO price two years ago. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) ? LinkedIn and Facebook will celebrate the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But their experiences as publicly traded companies couldn't be more different.
LinkedIn Corp. promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns out, the professional networking company's initial public offering was a great place to start a rewarding investment portfolio, too. LinkedIn's stock has nearly quadrupled in value from its $45 IPO price on May 20 two years ago. On Monday, it closed at $175.03 per share. In contrast, Facebook's stock is hovering around $27 per share, down 29 percent since debuted on May 18, 2012 at $38.
LinkedIn is emerging as the standout performer among its cohort of hotly anticipated IPOs from Internet companies that connect people with common interests. The company is growing faster and yielding far better shareholder returns than the rest of a class that includes online deals maker Groupon Inc., Web game maker Zynga Inc. and business review site Yelp Inc., as well social networking leader Facebook Inc.
With the exception of Yelp, the stocks of all those other companies are stuck well below their initial public offering prices. Although Groupon and Zynga have fared worse, Facebook has been the highest-profile disappointment.
But for all its success, LinkedIn still hasn't immersed itself into people's lives and reshaped technology as profoundly as Facebook has. Although LinkedIn has been attracting more frequent visits since its IPO, people still spend far more time on Facebook and share more of their lives there. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn hasn't become a hub for other online services, ranging from games to music.
Even among its fans on Wall Street, LinkedIn is seen as little more than an online hunting ground for opportunistic employers on the prowl for talented workers.
But that could change if LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and Executive Chairman Reid Hoffman realize their ambitions. As the 10-year-old company heads into its second decade, its two top executives want to establish its website as an integral part of the global economy.
"It would be a representation of every economic opportunity and every skill required to attain those opportunities," Weiner said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "We would have a digital profile for every company in the world and a professional profile for every one of the 3.3 billion people in the (worldwide) workforce. We would then be able to overlay professionally relevant knowledge for each one of those individuals and each one of those companies."
LinkedIn still has a long way to go before it's that pervasive. The service currently has profiles of some 225 million people and 500,000 companies.
But the odds of LinkedIn fulfilling its aspirations may be less of a longshot than the one Hoffman faced when he first started pondering a professional networking service in the midst of the dot-com bust in 2000.
At the time, Hoffman was worried about losing his job as a top executive at online payment service PayPal. The company had just burned through most of its cash, prompting Hoffman to mull other ideas with PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin during a retreat at his grandparents' house in Gualala, Calif. along the Pacific Ocean's coastline.
A rough concept for LinkedIn came up then, but Hoffman didn't pursue it at the time because PayPal started to thrive.
After eBay Inc. bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, Hoffman plowed much of the money that he made from that deal into LinkedIn. He started the company in May 2003 with several former colleagues from his pre-PayPal days ? Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly and Jean-Luc Vaillant. The group debated several potential names, including Netra, Wellconnected, Bizrep and Connex, before settling on LinkedIn.
Hoffman's gamble paid off. As LinkedIn's controlling shareholder, his stake in the company is currently worth $3 billion.
LinkedIn now has market value approaching $20 billion and employs about 4,000 people. It's expanding so quickly that it is running out of space at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters located down the block from the home of Google Inc. There will be space for nearly 3,000 more LinkedIn workers once construction is completed on its new corporate campus in nearby Sunnyvale next year.
Things might not have worked out so well if Hoffman, 45, and Weiner, 43, hadn't been introduced to each other at a technology conference in early 2008. They hit it off immediately, something Hoffman remembered a few months later when he began thinking of replacing Dan Nye as LinkedIn's CEO.
Hoffman had been LinkedIn's CEO during the first four years of the company's existence, and he knew it wasn't something that he wanted to do for another extended period ? an aversion that differentiates him from other Internet visionaries such as Google's Larry Page, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Salesforce.com Inc.'s Marc Benioff, who all relish running the companies they founded.
"I like solving business strategy problems and I like creating whole new ecosystems for people," Hoffman said. "I am not passionate about leading a 3,000-person plus organization and all the work that goes into doing that in a world-class way. I always knew I didn't want to be CEO forever, but I still wanted to get LinkedIn to where it needed to get."
That's where Weiner came into the equation. Weiner had recently ended a seven-year stint as a key executive at Yahoo Inc. and was helping out various startups on a part-time basis as an entrepreneur-in-residence at venture capital firms Greylock Partners and Accel Partners.
After Hoffman persuaded him to join LinkedIn as its president in late 2008, Weiner was promoted to CEO six months later.
The partnership has proven highly productive. LinkedIn's membership has increased sevenfold from the 33 million members that had set up free profiles on the service at the time Weiner came on board. Revenue this year is expected to approach $1.5 billion, 19 times more than the $79 million generated before Weiner's arrival. The company's profits are also steadily rising. Analysts predict LinkedIn's net income will rise about 20 percent this year to $26 million.
LinkedIn has made a habit of topping analyst projections. That is something the company has done in every quarter since its IPO, helping to propel its stock.
Yet LinkedIn remains in Facebook's shadow. Since 2008, Facebook has grown even faster as the number of people using its social network swelled 11-fold to 1.1 billion and annual revenue soared 25-fold from $272 million last year to a projected $6.7 billion this year.
But LinkedIn has been outpacing Facebook during the past year, both in terms of user growth (LinkedIn's membership is up 35 percent versus 23 percent at Facebook) and revenue (LinkedIn's first-quarter revenue rose 72 percent versus 38 percent at Facebook).
The secret to LinkedIn's success? The company has turned its service into an easily searchable database, a treasure trove for employers and their headhunters. The company makes most of its money from the fees it charges for analytical tools and better access to individual profiles. About 18,000 companies now pay LinkedIn for its so-called "talent solutions."
Most employers rely on LinkedIn to find so-called "knowledge" workers who can fill positions that require a college degree or other specialized training. Think: computer programmers, website developers, scientists, accountants, lawyers and executives. Although McDonald's is unlikely to turn to LinkedIn to find a cashier, a coffee shop might use the service to recruit a barista. A ski resort might scour the site in search of ski instructors.
"They are not even scratching the surface of what they might eventually be able to do," said Wedge Partners analyst Martin Pyykkonen.
LinkedIn is expected to generate even more revenue by selling more ads to accompany content such as professional insights from famous executives such as Richard Branson and Jack Welch, as well as other compelling content that induces its membership to visit the site more frequently and dwell for longer periods.
LinkedIn is also working on more analytical tools to sell to sales representatives who are "looking to turn a cold call into a warm prospect," Weiner said.
Almost everything will have to go right for LinkedIn to support its lofty stock price. Investors are currently paying about $121 for every dollar in LinkedIn's estimated earnings this year and $13 for every dollar in projected revenue. By comparison, Facebook's stock is selling for $47 for every dollar in projected earnings this year and $10 in every dollar in projected revenue.
"You really have to buy into the idea that LinkedIn's revenue is going to grow 10-fold from here to justify its valuation," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said. "It's a good company with an expensive stock."
LinkedIn's success also could attract more competition. The company's biggest threat, of course, is Facebook, which already knows where most of its users work and where they went to school.
Weiner isn't worried about Facebook expanding into LinkedIn's turf because the company's research indicates that most people want a dividing line between their professional and personal identities.
Facebook hasn't yet shown any desire to open a professional networking channel, but Pachter thinks there is a greater likelihood of it happening if LinkedIn continues to do well.
"Facebook could just say, 'Hey are you tired of going to LinkedIn? Just enter all your professional information here and we'll code it so only your business friends can see it,'" Pachter said.
Another alternative would be for Facebook to buy LinkedIn. But Pachter doubts that will happen now that LinkedIn is worth so much.
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Sundar Pichai, Andy Rubin's replacement as Android chief, has been talking to Wired about his new job. He poured ice water on the idea that we'll see a raft of new hardware at Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference. Instead, he said that this year's show will focus on "all of the kinds of things we're doing for developers, so that they can write better things" for Android and Chrome OS. He also let slip that his daily driver is a Galaxy S 4, but that he's never even used the flagship's much-hyped eye-tracking feature -- an admission which'll surely go down well with HTC One fans.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Google
Source: Wired
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/X1YPdRH1fPs/
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