Courts may be privatised to save Ministry of Justice £1bn

Courts may be privatised to save Ministry of Justice £1bn

The courts may be privatised in a justice shake-up that could save the Ministry of Justice £1 billion a year.

The plans would free the courts from Treasure control, placing court buildings and thousands of staff in the hands of private companies.

The system would be funded by extracting larger fees from wealthy litigants and private sector investment, and by encouraging hedge funds to invest by an attractive rate of return, according to The Times.

Fears that privatisation would erode the independence of the courts would be allayed by placing the courts under a Royal Charter, as has been proposed for the regulation of the press.

Earlier this year Justice Secretary Chris Grayling paved the way for reform by instructing officials to explore plans and ensure that the Courts and Tribunal Service provides value for money.

Mr Grayling, who is thought to be in strongly in favour of the reforms, will be presented with a paper outlining the options within two weeks, and the changes could begin this autumn.

The changes range from transferring the running and maintenance of court buildings to a private company to more radical proposals such as transferring the 20,000 courts staff into the private sector.

Judges and magistrates would not be affected by the plans.
The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, opposed the proposals.

He told The Times: “I am all in favour of making more money from commercial court users, and I am also all in favour of those who commit crime making a bigger contribution to the courts.

“What I am not in favour of is privatising the courts. The courts should not be beholden to any private provider because the courts have to be independent of every interest.

“In particular I would be strongly against court buildings being placed in the hands of private providers. We should not have [them] influencing when courts open and close their doors or judges having to negotiate with private contractors over whether, for instance, a court can be open on a Saturday for an emergency injunction.”

Crazy

The $6,600 Master's Degree

The $6,600 Master's Degree
There comes a time in every concept's life when the thing...actually...happens.

If you're reading this post, you probably already have some familiarity with all the jostling going on in the education business. You know, for instance, that a number of companies are experimenting with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), tablet-based learning, and all kinds of in-school networking and Big Data analytics.

And then came last week's announcement.

Georgia Tech, one of the nation's best engineering schools, said it would begin offering fully-accredited, real-world master's degrees in computer science via the Internet. The cost: About $6,600. Or roughly the cost of a few years of interest that many graduate students pay on a big loan to fund their education.

Here is the key line from the The Wall Street Journal's take on the program:

The upfront costs to create the online lectures run between $200,000 and $300,000, but once those hard outlays have been made the cost per each additional student is minimal, said Mr. Isbell. He estimated the school would have to hire one full-time teacher for every 100 online students as opposed to one full-time teacher for every 10 or 20 students who study on campus.

The description made me recall my freshman political science class in the mid-1990s, held in a dusty auditorium in West Philadelphia, a bow-tied professor reading his erudite, but canned, lecture to a few hundred freshmen.

Looking back on it now, this experience had far more in common with the Middle Ages than the world of 2013. What's the difference between watching a lecture in an auditorium and watching HD-quality video in one's living room or beach cabana?

From there it's not that hard to question the cost of a standard master's degree, which all-in can cost $50,000 to $60,000 per year. Even if the experience is not the same, the value for money from the $6,600 degree appears at first blush, superior.

For people in business, there's plenty to take away here. It's easy to use the old trope - disruption - but put that aside for a moment.

The thought exercise I've been going through is this: What's the proverbial $6,600 Master's Degree in your industry? And what would happen to your industry if it happened now rather than in the murky future? It's a fun and sometimes harrowing game to play.

Let's try:

For doctors, it's nearly-thinking systems that can diagnose, prescribe, and treat most common illnesses, absent human intervention.

For journalists like me, it's already arrived. It's called the free Internet.

For taxi drivers, it's driverless cars.

For hotels, it's Airbnb.

If you haven't devised the answer for what it is you do, you have three choices: Prepare for it, build it, or ignore it. What's your path?

€530m bill for Spain's 'sinking submarines'

€530m bill for Spain's 'sinking submarines'

Dive, Dive, Dive: Calculations show that the S-80 would sink like a stone. Photo: Navantia

A defence contract worth €2.2 billion has hit the rocks after tests showed that the "world's most modern" submarine would plunge straight to the bottom of the sea.

Sunday's El Mundo newspaper reported on the latest developments in the submarine saga that has given Spain's defence department a sinking feeling.

The €2.2 billion contract to design and build four S-80 underwater craft, billed as "the most modern submarine in the word" has been put on red alert after engineers found flaws in the plans and sounded the klaxon.

€530 million had already been spent when calculations made by engineers at Navantia, the construction firm, revealed that the submarine as designed would dive to the bottom of the sea and stay there due to excess weight.

Opposition party United Left has mocked the development in parliament and demanded explanations.

Two possible solutions have been proposed to help the fat-bottomed sub get off the ground: trim its weight or make it longer.

The second is more feasible but also more expensive as every extra metre added to the submarine would increase its cost by more than €7.5 million.

The president of the Navantia board has defended the work of the company's Cartagena shipyard and complained of "meddling" by unqualified people.

He explained that it had been reported as far back as 2005 that the development process was not being properly followed and that there was a lot of necessary improvisation due to the addition of new elements at the request of the Ministry of Defence.

The Spanish navy will take delivery of the four submarines next year, in the hope that they will be capable of floating. 

World Bank Insider Blows Whistle on Corruption, Federal Reserve

World Bank Insider Blows Whistle on Corruption, Federal Reserve



A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success.

Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”

According to the peer-reviewed paper, which presented the first global investigation of ownership architecture in the international economy, transnational corporations form a “giant bow-tie structure.” A large portion of control, meanwhile, “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions.” The researchers described the core as an “economic ‘super-entity’” that raises important issues for policymakers and researchers. Of course, the implications are enormous for citizens as well.

Hudes, an attorney who spent some two decades working in the World Bank’s legal department, has observed the machinations of the network up close. “I realized we were now dealing with something known as state capture, which is where the institutions of government are co-opted by the group that’s corrupt,” she told The New American in a phone interview. “The pillars of the U.S. government — some of them — are dysfunctional because of state capture; this is a big story, this is a big cover up.”

At the heart of the network, Hudes said, are 147 financial institutions and central banks — especially the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress but is owned by essentially a cartel of private banks. “This is a story about how the international financial system was secretly gamed, mostly by central banks — they’re the ones we are talking about,” she explained. “The central bankers have been gaming the system. I would say that this is a power grab.”

The Fed in particular is at the very center of the network and the coverup, Hudes continued, citing a policy and oversight body that includes top government and Fed officials. Central bankers have also been manipulating gold prices, she added, echoing widespread concerns that The New American has documented extensively. Indeed, even the inaccurate World Bank financial statements that Hudes has been trying to expose are linked to the U.S. central bank, she said.

“The group that we’re talking about from the Zurich study — that’s the Federal Reserve; it has some other pieces to it, but that’s the Federal Reserve,” Hudes explained. “So the Federal Reserve secretly dominated the world economy using secret, interlocking corporate directorates, and terrorizing anybody who managed to figure out that they were having any kind of role, and putting people in very important positions so that they could get a free pass.”

The shadowy but immensely powerful Bank for International Settlements serves as “the club of these private central bankers,” Hudes continued. “Now, are people going to want interest on their country’s debts to continue to be paid to that group when they find out the secret tricks that that group has been doing? Don’t forget how they’ve enriched themselves extraordinarily and how they’ve taken taxpayer money for the bailout.”

As far as intervening in the gold price, Hudes said it was an effort by the powerful network and its central banks to “hold onto its paper currency” — a suspicion shared by many analysts and even senior government officials. The World Bank whistleblower also said that contrary to official claims, she did not believe there was any gold being held in Fort Knox. Even congressmen and foreign governments have tried to find out if the precious metals were still there, but they met with little success. Hudes, however, believes the scam will eventually come undone.

“This is like crooks trying to figure out where they can go hide. It’s a mafia,” she said. “These culprits that have grabbed all this economic power have succeeded in infiltrating both sides of the issue, so you will find people who are supposedly trying to fight corruption who are just there to spread disinformation and as a placeholder to trip up anybody who manages to get their act together.… Those thugs think that if they can keep the world ignorant, they can bleed it longer.”

Of course, the major corruption at the highest levels of government and business is not a new phenomenon. Georgetown University historian and Professor Carroll Quigley, who served as President Bill Clinton’s mentor, for example, wrote about the scheme in his 1966 book Tragedy And Hope: A History Of The World In Our Time. The heavyweight academic, who was allowed to review documents belonging to the top echelons of the global establishment, even explained how the corrupt system would work — remarkably similar to what Hudes describes.

"The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” wrote Prof. Quigley, who agreed with the goals but not the secrecy. “This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations."

But it is not going to happen, Hudes said — at least not if she has something do to with it. While the media are dominated by the “power grabber” network, Hudes has been working with foreign governments, reporters, U.S. officials, state governments, and a broad coalition of fellow whistleblowers to blow the entire scam wide open. There has been quite a bit of interest, too, particularly among foreign governments and state officials in the United States.

Citing the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers in creating a federal system of government with multiple layers of checks and balances, Hudes said she was confident that the network would eventually be exposed and subjected to the rule of law, stopping the secret corruption. If and when that happens — even if it may be disorderly — Hudes says precious metals will once again play a role in imposing discipline on the monetary system. The rule of law would also be restored, she said, and the public will demand a proper press to stay informed.

“We’re going to have a cleaned-up financial system, that’s where it is going, but in the meantime, people who didn’t know how the system was gamed are going to find out,” she said. “We’re going to have a different kind of international financial system.... It’ll be a new kind of world where people know what’s going on — no more backroom deals; that’s not going to keep happening. We’re going to have a different kind of media if people don’t want to be dominated and controlled, which I don’t think they do.”

While Hudes sounded upbeat, she recognizes that the world is facing serious danger right now — there are even plans in place to impose martial law in the United States, she said. The next steps will be critical for humanity. As such, Hudes argues, it is crucial that the people of the world find out about the lawlessness, corruption, and thievery that are going on at the highest levels — and put a stop to it once and for all. The consequences of inaction would be disastrous.

No Go Areas for Non-Muslims in England

Taught to rebel

Russians name Brezhnev best 20th-century leader, Gorbachev worst

Russians name Brezhnev best 20th-century leader, Gorbachev worst

General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and Chairman of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet Leonid Brezhnev.(RIA Novosti / Dmitryi Donskoy)

Over half of Russians believe Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was the best head of state in the past century, followed by Bolshevik Revolution mastermind Vladimir Lenin and dictator Joseph Stalin, a poll by Levada Center has revealed.

Sociologists asked Russians about their attitude towards 20th-century leaders. Some 56 percent of respondents have positive feelings about Brezhnev, who led the USSR from 1964 till 1982. A target of countless Soviet jokes and anecdotes, he is now disliked by 29 percent of people, Levada revealed.

The first ruler of the Soviet Union, Lenin, is seen in a good light by 55 percent of Russians, while exactly one-half of Russians favor Stalin. However, over one-third of respondents do not approve of the leader, who is often described as “bloody tyrant.”
Nikita Khruschev – who was Soviet premier during the Cuban missile crisis – is liked by 45 percent of Russians. That figure is slightly less than modern-day supporters of Tsar Nicholas II, who was overthrown in 1917; he got kind reviews from 48 percent of respondents.

Josef Stalin.(RIA Novosti / Shagin)

And at the bottom of the list, two-thirds of respondents gave negative evaluations to the first and only Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the first Russian President Boris, Yeltsin.

The late Yeltsin is viewed positively by only 22 percent of Russians, while his predecessor Gorbachev is seen as Russia’s worst leader ever, according to the poll. The architect of perestroika is now disliked by 66 percent of Russians, and only one-fifth of the population has warm feelings about the Soviet president.

Experts link Brezhnev’s popularity among the population to financial well-being during his epoch, which was the “peak of Soviet socialism.” Stalin is associated with victory in World War II, which explains why he is favored by modern Russians.

First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Nikita Khrushchev.(RIA Novosti)

“No one would want to live in Stalin’s era, but he personifies what now is in shortage: Justice and equality in fear,” Professor Valery Solovei told Kommersant daily. Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s time brought “only defeats” and no material prosperity, political analyst Sergey Chernyakhovsky explained.

“Gorbachev’s rule ended up with the dissolution of the USSR, which is still considered by Russians as the 20th-century catastrophe,” said Aleksey Grazhdankin, deputy head of the Levada Center. Attitudes towards Yeltsin worsened following his 1992 reforms, which lead to inflation and the closure of many businesses, he added.

Harsh politicians are always perceived better than liberal ones, Grazhdankin said: “Freedom brings uncertainty, while people prefer certainty and clear perspectives… Rights and freedoms are too abstract, and the majority of people don’t need them. First of all, people appreciate the right to social guarantees and labor.”

Keep running

Beware neuro-bunk

Molly Crockett: Beware neuro-bunk

Brains are ubiquitous in modern marketing: Headlines proclaim cheese sandwiches help with decision-making, while a “neuro” drink claims to reduce stress. There’s just one problem, says neuroscientist Molly Crockett: The benefits of these "neuro-enhancements" are not proven scientifically. In this to-the-point talk, Crockett explains the limits of interpreting neuroscientific data, and why we should all be aware of them.
Neuroscientist Molly Crockett studies altruism, morality and value-based decision-making in humans. Full bio 




I'm a neuroscientist, and I study decision-making. I do experiments to test how different chemicals in the brain influence the choices we make.

I'm here to tell you the secret to successful decision-making: a cheese sandwich. That's right. According to scientists, a cheese sandwich is the solution to all your tough decisions.

How do I know? I'm the scientist who did the study.

A few years ago, my colleagues and I were interested in how a brain chemical called serotonin would influence people's decisions in social situations. Specifically, we wanted to know how serotonin would affect the way people react when they're treated unfairly.

So we did an experiment. We manipulated people's serotonin levels by giving them this really disgusting-tasting artificial lemon-flavored drink that works by taking away the raw ingredient for serotonin in the brain. This is the amino acid tryptophan. So what we found was, when tryptophan was low, people were more likely to take revenge when they're treated unfairly.

That's the study we did, and here are some of the headlines that came out afterwards.

("A cheese sandwich is all you need for strong decision-making")

("What a friend we have in cheeses")

("Eating Cheese and Meat May Boost Self-Control") At this point, you might be wondering, did I miss something?

("Official! Chocolate stops you being grumpy") Cheese? Chocolate? Where did that come from? And I thought the same thing myself when these came out, because our study had nothing to do with cheese or chocolate. We gave people this horrible-tasting drink that affected their tryptophan levels. But it turns out that tryptophan also happens to be found in cheese and chocolate. And of course when science says cheese and chocolate help you make better decisions, well, that's sure to grab people's attention. So there you have it: the evolution of a headline.

When this happened, a part of me thought, well, what's the big deal? So the media oversimplified a few things, but in the end, it's just a news story. And I think a lot of scientists have this attitude. But the problem is that this kind of thing happens all the time, and it affects not just the stories you read in the news but also the products you see on the shelves. When the headlines rolled, what happened was, the marketers came calling. Would I be willing to provide a scientific endorsement of a mood-boosting bottled water? Or would I go on television to demonstrate, in front of a live audience, that comfort foods really do make you feel better? I think these folks meant well, but had I taken them up on their offers, I would have been going beyond the science, and good scientists are careful not to do this.

But nevertheless, neuroscience is turning up more and more in marketing. Here's one example: Neuro drinks, a line of products, including Nuero Bliss here, which according to its label helps reduce stress, enhances mood, provides focused concentration, and promotes a positive outlook. I have to say, this sounds awesome. (Laughter) I could totally have used this 10 minutes ago. So when this came up in my local shop, naturally I was curious about some of the research backing these claims. So I went to the company's website looking to find some controlled trials of their products. But I didn't find any.

Trial or no trial, these claims are front and center on their label right next to a picture of a brain. And it turns out that pictures of brains have special properties. A couple of researchers asked a few hundred people to read a scientific article. For half the people, the article included a brain image, and for the other half, it was the same article but it didn't have a brain image. At the end — you see where this is going — people were asked whether they agreed with the conclusions of the article. So this is how much people agree with the conclusions with no image. And this is how much they agree with the same article that did include a brain image. So the take-home message here is, do you want to sell it? Put a brain on it.

Now let me pause here and take a moment to say that neuroscience has advanced a lot in the last few decades, and we're constantly discovering amazing things about the brain. Like, just a couple of weeks ago, neuroscientists at MIT figured out how to break habits in rats just by controlling neural activity in a specific part of their brain. Really cool stuff. But the promise of neuroscience has led to some really high expectations and some overblown, unproven claims.

So what I'm going to do is show you how to spot a couple of classic moves, dead giveaways, really, for what's variously been called neuro-bunk, neuro-bollocks, or, my personal favorite, neuro-flapdoodle.

So the first unproven claim is that you can use brain scans to read people's thoughts and emotions. Here's a study published by a team of researchers as an op-ed in The New York Times. The headline? "You Love Your iPhone. Literally." It quickly became the most emailed article on the site.

So how'd they figure this out? They put 16 people inside a brain scanner and showed them videos of ringing iPhones. The brain scans showed activation in a part of the brain called the insula, a region they say is linked to feelings of love and compassion. So they concluded that because they saw activation in the insula, this meant the subjects loved their iPhones. Now there's just one problem with this line of reasoning, and that's that the insula does a lot. Sure, it is involved in positive emotions like love and compassion, but it's also involved in tons of other processes, like memory, language, attention, even anger, disgust and pain. So based on the same logic, I could equally conclude you hate your iPhone. The point here is, when you see activation in the insula, you can't just pick and choose your favorite explanation from off this list, and it's a really long list. My colleagues Tal Yarkoni and Russ Poldrack have shown that the insula pops up in almost a third of all brain imaging studies that have ever been published. So chances are really, really good that your insula is going off right now, but I won't kid myself to think this means you love me.

So speaking of love and the brain, there's a researcher, known to some as Dr. Love, who claims that scientists have found the glue that holds society together, the source of love and prosperity. This time it's not a cheese sandwich. No, it's a hormone called oxytocin. You've probably heard of it. So, Dr. Love bases his argument on studies showing that when you boost people's oxytocin, this increases their trust, empathy and cooperation. So he's calling oxytocin "the moral molecule."

Now these studies are scientifically valid, and they've been replicated, but they're not the whole story. Other studies have shown that boosting oxytocin increases envy. It increases gloating. Oxytocin can bias people to favor their own group at the expense of other groups. And in some cases, oxytocin can even decrease cooperation. So based on these studies, I could say oxytocin is an immoral molecule, and call myself Dr. Strangelove. (Laughter)

So we've seen neuro-flapdoodle all over the headlines. We see it in supermarkets, on book covers. What about the clinic?

SPECT imaging is a brain-scanning technology that uses a radioactive tracer to track blood flow in the brain. For the bargain price of a few thousand dollars, there are clinics in the U.S. that will give you one of these SPECT scans and use the image to help diagnose your problems. These scans, the clinics say, can help prevent Alzheimer's disease, solve weight and addiction issues, overcome marital conflicts, and treat, of course, a variety of mental illnesses ranging from depression to anxiety to ADHD. This sounds great. A lot of people agree. Some of these clinics are pulling in tens of millions of dollars a year in business.

There's just one problem. The broad consensus in neuroscience is that we can't yet diagnose mental illness from a single brain scan. But these clinics have treated tens of thousands of patients to date, many of them children, and SPECT imaging involves a radioactive injection, so exposing people to radiation, potentially harmful.

I am more excited than most people, as a neuroscientist, about the potential for neuroscience to treat mental illness and even maybe to make us better and smarter. And if one day we can say that cheese and chocolate help us make better decisions, count me in. But we're not there yet. We haven't found a "buy" button inside the brain, we can't tell whether someone is lying or in love just by looking at their brain scans, and we can't turn sinners into saints with hormones. Maybe someday we will, but until then, we have to be careful that we don't let overblown claims detract resources and attention away from the real science that's playing a much longer game.

So here's where you come in. If someone tries to sell you something with a brain on it, don't just take them at their word. Ask the tough questions. Ask to see the evidence. Ask for the part of the story that's not being told. The answers shouldn't be simple, because the brain isn't simple. But that's not stopping us from trying to figure it out anyway.

Thank you. (Applause)

Angelina Jolie Writes She Had Double Mastectomy

Angelina Jolie Writes She Had Double Mastectomy

Angelina Jolie says that she has had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer.

The Oscar-winning actress and partner to Brad Pitt made the announcement in the form of an op-ed she authored for Tuesday's New York Times under the headline, "My Medical Choice." She writes that between early February and late April she completed three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts.

Jolie, 37, writes that she made the choice with thoughts of her six children after watching her own mother die too young from breast cancer.

"My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56," Jolie writes. "She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was."

She writes that, "They have asked if the same could happen to me."

Jolie said that after genetic testing she learned she carries the "faulty" BRCA1 gene and had an 87 percent chance of getting the disease herself.

She said she has kept the process private so far, but wrote about with hopes of helping other women.

"I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made," Jolie writes. "My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer."

Phone and email messages left by The Associated Press late Monday night seeking comment from Jolie representatives were not immediately returned.

She is anything but private in the details she provides, giving a step-by-step description of the procedures.

"My own process began on Feb. 2 with a procedure known as a 'nipple delay,'" she writes, "which rules out disease in the breast ducts behind the nipple and draws extra blood flow to the area."

She then describes the major surgery two weeks later where breast tissue was removed, saying it felt "like a scene out of a science-fiction film," then writes that nine weeks later she had a third surgery to reconstruct the breasts and receive implants."

Many women have chosen preventive mastectomy since genetic screening for breast cancer was developed, but the move and public announcement is unprecedented from a 
star so young and widely known as Jolie.

She briefly addresses the effects of the surgery on the idealized sexuality and iconic womanhood that have fueled her fame.

"I do not feel any less of a woman," Jolie writes. "I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity."

She also wrote that Brad Pitt, her partner of eight years, was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Southern California for "every minute of the surgeries."

Jolie, daughter of Hollywood luminary Jon Voight, has appeared in dozens of films including 2010's The Tourist and Salt, the "Tomb Raider films, and 1999's Girl, Interrupted, for which she won an Academy Award.

But she has appeared more often in the news in recent years for her power coupling with Pitt and her charitable work with refugees as a United Nations ambassador.

Calif. Homes Sinking One By One In Now-Abandoned Subdivision

Calif. Homes Sinking One By One In Now-Abandoned Subdivision

Homes are sinking in a California subdivision built on top of volcanic country. Eight homes have been abandoned so far and 10 more are under an imminent evacuation notice after cracks appeared in the ground and entire sections dropped 10 feet into the ground.

A Tudor-style house was a long-time dream of Scott and Robin Spivey, who lived in the Lake County neighborhood for 11 years.

But the Spiveys were forced to evacuate when cracks began appearing in their walls in March. The small cracks turned into gaping fractures, which culminated in their 600-square-foot garage dropping 10 feet below the street.

It didn’t take much longer for the houses on both sides of the Spiveys’ dream house to collapse as well. Scott Spivey, a former building inspector, stated, “We want to know what is going on here.”

Randall Fitzgerald, a writer who bought his home in Lakeside Heights a year ago, added, “It’s a slow-motion disaster.” Frustrated homeowners have been forced to watch as a hilltop with sweeping views of Clear Lake and the Mount Konocti volcano slowly swallows the subdivision.

The California homes that are sinking were built 30 years ago. The movement is different than the sinkholes in Florida, which have been known to swallow entire homes in an instant. Rather, this collapse can move several feet in one day, then just centimeters the next.

County public works director Scott De Leon added that the sinking homes are confusing to more than just the homeowners. He added, “We have a dormant volcano, and I’m certain a lot of things that happen here are a result of that, but we don’t know about this.”

Some of the subdivision movement is happening on shallow fill, according to De Leon. However, a geologist has warned that the ground could be compromised down to bedrock, which rests 25 feet below the surface. Cracks have also appeared recently in roads well beyond the shallow fill.

In a bid for answers to stop the California homes from sinking further, officials have inspected the development’s original plans. But they have found nothing to account for the problem. Tom Ruppenthal, a consultant from Utility Services Associates in Seattle, suggested that groundwater may have shifted course.

The homes that have already sunk have been tagged for mandatory removal. But the hillside is so unstable, it can’t support the equipment needed to complete the job.

Hope, Jobs, Cash

20 yeas ago, we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs

Today, we have NO cash, NO hope and NO jobs

Please, God, don't let Kevin Bacon die!

Australia

Police hunt supermarket bottom sniffer

Police hunt supermarket bottom sniffer

Police are hunting a man who carried out what they describe as 'bizarre' sexual assaults after he repeatedly knelt behind a shelf stacker to smell his behind.


The man was caught on CCTV creeping up on the unsuspecting worker at least 20 times as he stacked shelves at a Co-op store in Plymouth, Devon. The footage shows him casually pretending to chose items from shelves before suddenly crouching down behind the employee.

The man's odd behaviour to the employee was spotted on at least two occasions. The offences only came to light when the employee became suspicious and informed his manager who checked the in-store security video.

The victim - who cannot be named for legal reasons - said: "I had no idea what was going on. I thought it was all a bit strange. I was shocked and I couldn't believe he was in the aisle for that long."

Police say they are treating it as sexual assault.

DC Steve White of Plymouth police, said: "We are treating this incident very seriously and we would appeal to the public's help in tracking down this man.

"It is a bizarre incident and the shop was full of people. Someone must have seen the man and could well help us identify him."

The man is white, clean shaven and of medium to large build.

During the first incident he was wearing a brown T-shirt with jeans and black shoes and glasses and in the second a blue shirt with jeans.

Spain is officially insolvent: get your money out while you still can

Spain is officially insolvent: get your money out while you still can

I'd not noticed this until someone drew my attention to it, but the latest IMF Fiscal Monitor, published last month, comes about as close to declaring Spain insolvent as you are ever likely to see in official analysis of this sort. Of course, it doesn't actually say this outright. The IMF is far too diplomatic for such language. But that's the plain meaning of its latest forecasts, which at last have an air of realism about them, rather than being the usual dose of wishful thinking.

Let's take the projected budget deficit first. This is expected to decline quite steeply this year to 6.6 per cent of GDP, but that's mainly because the cost of bailing out the banking sector fell substantially on last year's budget. On a like-for-like basis, there has in fact been very little fall in the underlying deficit. And nor on the present policy mix is there ever likely to be, for that's where the deficit is projected to remain until the end of the IMF's forecasting horizon in 2018.

Next year, the deficit is expected to be 6.9 per cent, the year after 6.6 per cent, and so on with very little further progress thereafter. Remember, all these projections are made on the basis of everything we know about policy so far, so they take account of the latest package of austerity measures announced by the Spanish Government.

The situation looks even worse on a cyclically adjusted basis. What is sometimes called the "structural deficit", or the bit of government borrowing that doesn't go away even after the economy returns to growth (if indeed it ever does), actually deteriorates from an expected 4.2 per cent of GDP this year to 5.7 per cent in 2018. By 2018, Spain has far and away the worst structural deficit of any advanced economy, including other such well known fiscal basket cases as the UK and the US.

So what happens when you carry on borrowing at that sort of rate, year in, year out? Your overall indebtedness rockets, of course, and that's what's going to happen to Spain, where general government gross debt is forecast to rise from 84.1 per cent of GDP last year to 110.6 per cent in 2018. No other advanced economy has such a dramatically worsening outlook. And the tragedy of it all is that Spain is actually making relatively good progress in addressing the "primary balance", that's the deficit before debt servicing costs.

What's projected to occur is essentially what happens in all bankruptcies. Eventually you have to borrow more just to pay the interest on your existing debt. The fiscal compact requires eurozone countries to reduce their deficits to 3 per cent by the end of this year, though Spain among others was recently granted an extension. But on these numbers, there is no chance ever of achieving this target without further austerity measures, which even if they were attempted would very likely be self defeating. IN any case, it seems doubtful an economy where unemployment is already above 25 per cent could take any more.

In the past, the IMF has been guilty of being far too optimistic about Spain, both on the outlook for growth and the public finances, so it's possible it is now committing the reverse mistake of undue pessimism. Yet somehow I doubt it. Spain is chasing its tail down into deflationary oblivion.

All this leads to the conclusion that a big Spanish debt restructuring is inevitable. Spanish sovereign bond yields have fallen sharply since announcement of the European Central Bank's "outright monetary transactions" programme. The ECB has promised to print money without limit to counter the speculators. But in the end, no amount of liquidity can cover up for an underlying problem with solvency.

Europe said that Greece was the first and last such restructuring, but then there was Cyprus. Spain is holding off further recapitalisation of its banks in anticipation of the arrival of Europe's banking union, which it hopes will do the job instead. But if the Cypriot precedent is anything to go by, a heavy price will be demanded by way of recompense. Bank creditors will be widely bailed in. Confiscation of deposits looks all too possible.

I don't advise getting your money out lightly. Indeed, such advise is generally thought grossly irresponsible, for it risks inducing a self reinforcing panic. Yet looking at the IMF projections, it's the only rational thing to do.

PS. I don't include creditors of the British arm of Santander in this warning, who are ring fenced from the mothership back bome in Spain, theoretically at least.

How I lived by spending nothing for two years

How I lived by spending nothing for two years

In November 2008, Mark Boyle gave up money for more than two years while living in a caravan. He shares his top tips for living on less with Jessica Winch.

In November 2008, Mark Boyle gave up money for more than two years. The business and economics graduate quit his job with an organic food company and set up home in a donated caravan on a Somerset farm.

He volunteered at the farm, grew his own food, cooked on a wood-burning stove and generated electricity through a solar panel, bought for £360 before the experiment started.

“I got to the point when I was looking at all the big issues in the world, such as deforestation and sweatshops, and I realised they are all symptoms of a deeper cause; a separation from what we consume. The most potent tool we have in terms of separation and an illusion of independence is money,” he said. “I wanted to see if it was possible to live without money, and how it would affect me.”

He admitted that when he started he was seen as “a bit of a joke”. “I used to get a lot of criticism,” Donegal-born Mr Boyle said. “When you challenge money, you challenge a lot more than notes and coins. You challenge a whole perspective on the world.”

However, the 34-year-old said support had increased over the past few years. “I’m sure some people still think it’s a bit of a joke,” he said. “But when I started in 2008, just before the financial crisis hit the headlines, I was mostly taking criticism. But since then most people are incredibly positive about what I’ve done.

“It is just people who don’t have that much money, wondering how they are going to survive the next year. Money isn’t as secure as they thought it was when times were booming.”

He said few people will want to give up money completely, although there has been an increase of that in the past year.

The vast majority of people were simply interested in how they could spend less. “I think that’s a sensible approach,” he said.

He said the first few months of living without money were “definitely the hardest period”.
“I came from a very conventional background and everything was new to me,” he said. “How I eat, how I get from A to B, and how I brush my teeth. All these things were new, and I felt the lack of perceived security that money gives us.”

He cooked food – grown, donated or foraged – on a rocket stove outside the caravan. He bathed in a river with soap made from the plant soapwort, and made his toothpaste from washed-up cuttlefish bones and fennel seeds.

He travelled around on foot or by bicycle. Instead of a flush toilet, Mr Boyle had a compost lavatory – still one of his top tips for people wanting to emulate his moneyless lifestyle.

“After two or three months I just started to trust that everyday my needs would be met somehow,” he said.

For those who prefer to put Colgate on their toothbrush, Mr Boyle advocates websites such as Freecycle and Freegle, where goods and services are given away or exchanged.
There are also websites such as Liftshare, which matches journeys and cars to save on petrol. If you want to reduce your spending on the high street, Mr Boyle suggests organising a clothes swap with friends or neighbours.

He set up a “Freeconomy” community online in 2007, where skills and tools are shared. “It’s not about having to go off and live in the woods, you can do it from your house,” he said.

Mr Boyle wrote a book, The Moneyless Man, during his time living without money. His latest book, The Moneyless Manifesto, is available free online and contains practical advice for people who want to live on less money.

Mr Boyle, who returned to the monetary world in 2011, is currently housesitting at Emerson College, an adult education centre that runs courses in a range of areas from biodynamic agriculture to storytelling .

He has just won planning permission for a straw bale, timber frame, passive-solar house in Devon, which he hopes to start building in June using the proceeds from his book sales.
Although it may seem ironic that Mr Boyle has made money from living a moneyless lifestyle, he said he was always clear that the profits made would go towards this new project. “We are working towards living in a localised gift economy, meeting all of our needs through gifting and growing our own food,” he said.

There is also a moneyless wedding to plan with his fiancée, Jess. “I’m not sure how it will work,” he said. “It’s a big conversation to have, how you put on a wedding for free.
“We want to show that people don’t have to get into masses of debt to have a really fun wedding.”

Luckily, his fiancée shares his views about living on less. “The time I lived without money, I've never been happier or healthier,” Mr Boyle said. “It had its ups and downs but it was a whole new way of being in the world. I want to get back there as quickly as possible.”

Mark Boyle's tips for cheaper living

1. If you are looking to buy something, from a wardrobe to a bicycle, there is no need to buy it. Go to websites such as Freecycle, or Freegle.
2. If you are looking for clothes and don’t want to spend money on the high street, organise a switching evening with friends.
3. If you are travelling for leisure or for work, go to websites such as Liftshare, which matches cars with journeys.
4. If you are travelling and need a place to stay, forget B&Bs and hotels, go to websites such as Couchsurfing or The Hospitality Club.
5. Websites such as Freeconomy are perfect if you are looking to share skills or tools without money changing hands.
6. You can use forest gardening techniques (mixing trees, shrubs and plants to mimic the structure of a natural forest) to grow as much food as possible in your garden.
7. You can re-home battery chickens to give them a new life and provide you with fresh eggs. Visit the British Hen Welfare Trust for more information.
8. You can easily make your own cider by scrumping apples from your neighbour’s garden. Obviously ask them for permission, and drop round a bottle to say thank you.
9. You can grow your own soap and shampoo by planting soapwort in your garden.
10. For the really brave, I recommend installing a compost toilet in your house or garden. It saves money, water and the environment.

The Salvation of Japan

The Salvation of Japan
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s bold recovery strategy is working.

Abenomics is working: Shinzo Abe’s policies are leading the way to recovery

Something remarkable happened on Thursday. Sony posted a profit. Not a particularly large one for a company its size, but a profit nonetheless: 43 billion yen in its just-ended fiscal year. It was the first profit for one of Japan’s iconic firms since 2008. The exact same day, the price of yen slipped below 100 to the dollar for the first time in years. And while the precise details of the timing are a coincidence, the trends are not. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to save his country’s economy seems to be working. His posture of bold, persistent experimentation—what Ben Bernanke once called “Rooseveltian Resolve” appears to be waking Japan’s long-stagnant economy from its slumber.

And it’s not just Sony. Japan’s broad stock market index is up more than 36 percent since Abe took office in late December. Household spending, housing starts, and industrial production all jumped the last time data were released. Japan is on the move again.
What’s the secret to its success? Mostly determination. Japan was marooned in a sea of macroeconomic despair. Short-term interest rates were at zero, the dread lower bound. But years of slow growth and failed fiscal stimulus programs had also saddled the country with the highest debt-to-GDP ratio on the planet. Conventional monetary policy was out of ammo, and running an even larger budget deficit with so much debt already on the books seemed insane. Abe decided, essentially, that when the macroeconomy gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

He brushed off the doubters and plunged ahead with new fiscal stimulus—reversing a big tax hike implemented by his predecessor—allaying doubts about debt sustainability by combining it with monetary stimulus. He fired the Bank of Japan’s president, and brought in an outsider. Haruhiko Kuroda promised to do “whatever we can do” to curb deflation and said he wanted to see the inflation rate rise. The stimulus program will be affordable because under Haruhiko the Bank of Japan is committed to printing as much money and buying as many bonds as are out there. At least until inflation rises from its longtime near-zero level up to 2percent.

As a result, the yen has fallen about 12 percent so far this year making it easier for Japanese exporters to compete with rivals in South Korea, China, or elsewhere.
Even though that’s a lot, it would be wrong to see the Abenomics effect as simply currency depreciation. After all, the 36 percent increase in the value of Japanese stocks is much larger than the currency impact alone. And the data from household spending and home construction shows clearly that while a falling yen may be goosing Japanese exports, the stimulus program is having a broader effect on domestic demand as well. Everything, in other words, is going according to plan.

When Abenomics enthusiasm began to hit the economic blogosphere months ago, many longtime Japan watchers urged caution. Abe, they warned, was little more than a crude nationalist interested in using short-term stimulus to hide the need for real reforms. And a crude nationalist he may well be. Massive, expectations-jarring stimulus isn’t the kind of thing that countries undertake lightly. One plausible account of why the Japanese elite were finally spurred to action was alarm at the extent to which China was overtaking Japan. A firm nationalist perspective and a deeper commitment to foreign policy issues than economic ones may be exactly what it took for Abe to roust Japanese leaders out of their complacency.

Another frequent critique of Abenomics is that short-term thinking merely distracts from the need for deeper structural reform. But this is a false choice, whether in Japan or Italy or the United States. Governments can walk and chew gum at the same time. And in early April, Abe’s government announced a major overhaul of the electrical power sector in Japan. In many ways, a time of stimulus is an ideal moment to pursue reforms. The risk of all this yen-printing is that you’ll break the back of deflation only to immiserate middle-class Japan with rising consumer prices and stagnant wages. Things like reforms to bring more competition and lower prices to the electricity market become the best cure for the downsides of stimulative policy. Now he’s even talking about tackling Japan’s long-entrenched structure of discriminating against women in the labor market, probably the biggest structural problem the country has.

Japan’s economic reform may seem remote from everyday concerns in the United States, but it has important lessons for us. Japan fell into the trap of prolonged high unemployment and zero interest rates long before the United States did. It’s in many ways fitting that they now seem to be leading the path forward to recovery.

Span of Control: 5-7 direct subordinates of one manager

Span of Control: 5-7 direct subordinates of one manager

I keep hearing about "ideal" number of direct subordinates, which is 5 to 7. It's also called "Span of control" Span of control, also known as span of management, is a human resources management term that refers to the number of subordinates a supervisor can effectively manage. [Source] The concept and the number dated back to 1922: In studies of British military leaders, Hamilton found that they could not effectively control more than three to six people directly. These figures have been generally accepted as the "rule of thumb" for span of control ever since. [Source]

Generation J(obless): A Quarter Of The Planet's Youth Is Neither Working Nor Studying

Generation J(obless): A Quarter Of The Planet's Youth Is Neither Working Nor Studying

We recently discussed the 'dead-weight' problem of youth unemployment in developed economies. The Economist estimates that the world's population of NEETs (not in employment, education, or training) is a stunning 290 million - or around one-quarter of the world's youth.



Sadly, many of the 'employed' young have only informal and intermittent jobs. In rich countries more than a third, on average, are on temporary contracts which make it hard to gain skills. Young people have long had a raw deal in the labour market.



Two things make the problem more pressing now. The financial crisis and its aftermath had an unusually big effect on them. Many employers sack the newest hires first, so a recession raises youth joblessness disproportionately. The number of young people out of work in the OECD is almost a third higher than in 2007. Second, the emerging economies that have the largest and fastest-growing populations of young people also have the worst-run labour markets.

Why is this so important? A number of studies have found that people who begin their careers without work are likely to have lower wages and greater odds of future joblessness than those who don’t. A wage penalty of up to 20%, lasting for around 20 years, is common. The scarring seems to worsen fast with the length of joblessness and is handed down to the next generation, too - leading to a vicious cycle that weighs on growth dramatically.

Countries with the lowest youth jobless rates have a close relationship between education and work. Germany has a long tradition of high-quality vocational education and apprenticeships, which in recent years have helped it reduce youth unemployment despite only modest growth. Countries with high youth unemployment are short of such links.



Companies used to try to bridge that gap themselves by investing in training; today they do so less.

Mismatch and training gaps may explain why over the past five years youth unemployment in flexible economies like America and Britain has risen more than in previous recessions and stayed high.

It is hard to be optimistic about a problem that is blighting the lives of so many people.



It would seem the opportunity for the jobs and wealth transfer to the younger generation is being blocked by a generation hamstrung by an increasingly repressive Federal Reserve.

How Strong is Your Password?

check:  How Strong is Your Password?

Hollywood effects wizard Ray Harryhausen dies at 92

Hollywood effects wizard Ray Harryhausen dies at 92

The legendary filmmaker was best known for using stop-motion model animation in movies such as 'Jason and the Argonauts' and 'Clash of the Titans.'

• Special-effects wizard was known for stop-motion model animation
• Influenced George Lucas and Peter Jackson, among others
• He was inspired by the original 'King Kong'

Way before movies like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings inspired the imagination of film lovers everywhere, audiences were enraptured by the sword-wielding skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts, the great ape of Mighty Joe Young and the dinosaurs opposite Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

The man responsible for all those and much more, Hollywood special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, died Tuesday in London at the age of 92. His family announced his death via The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation Facebook page.

The legendary effects wizard's influence was felt both in his sci-fi and fantasy movies as well as in the works of later filmmakers such as George Lucas and Peter Jackson. Beginning his career in the 1940s, Harryhausen became well known for using stop-motion model animation and having them interact with actors in a live-action world.

"Harryhausen's genius was in being able to bring his models alive," said a statement on the movie icon's Facebook page. "Whether they were prehistoric dinosaurs or mythological creatures, in Ray's hands they were no longer puppets but became instead characters in their own right, just as important as the actors they played against and in most cases even more so."

Born in Los Angeles, Harryhausen first became inspired as a 13-year-old watching Willis H. O'Brien's large beast of King King come alive via stop-motion photography in 1933. The young Harryhausen would then work with O'Brien as a technician on Mighty Joe Young (1943) before his breakthrough 10 years later with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, where he designed a giant rampaging lizard that attacked New York City.

Monster movies became his forte in the 1950s and '60s, and he unleashed a wide variety of various creatures, including the gigantic irradiated octopus of It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955), alien spacecraft in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), a whole island of beasties including the Cyclops in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and a prehistoric mollusk in Mysterious Island (1961).

Harryhausen really put actor Todd Armstrong's Greek hero through the wringer in Jason and the Argonauts, pitting Jason against dangerous harpies, a multi-headed hydra and arguably Harryhausen's most famous creations, an animated army of skeleton warriors. The swordfight between them and live actors took Harryhausen more than four months to complete.

His final special-effects work was as a producer on the original 1981 Clash of the Titans, which featured the memorable sea monster the Kraken (an 18-inch model that Harryhausen used) as well as the snake-headed femme fatale Medusa.

"I'm grateful that we made pictures that have lasted," Harryhausen told USA TODAY in 2010. "We tried, like Greek mythology, to make them in the classic manner."

When asked to pick a favorite, he was stumped. "I can't. The others get jealous."

Tom Hanks presented Harryhausen with a special Oscar for his lifetime of effects work in 1992. "Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane ... I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made," Hanks said.

Celebrities and others known for their work in the sci-fi and fantasy communities shared their admiration on social media Tuesday.

"I loved every single frame of Ray Harryhausen's work. He was the man who made me believe in monsters. Glad to have met him. A true legend," tweetedShaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright.

Shaun star and Star Trek Into Darkness actor Simon Pegg tweeted: "Ray Harryhausen an inspiration and a legend, even before he left us. His influence cannot be measured and has shaped cinema as we know it."

"If I believed in God, I'd want him to be like Ray Harryhausen -— nudging us one frame at a time toward the sublime & fantastic," tweeted comedian and actor Patton Oswalt.

"RIP Ray Harryhausen. He was a source of inspiration, the master of stop motion, and even a voice actor in Elf. His work still holds up," tweetedIron Man director and actor Jon Favreau.

Those filmmakers who grew up on his movies and later made their own have paid tribute to Harryhausen over the years.

"Ray has been a great inspiration to us all in special visual industry. The art of his earlier films, which most of us grew up on, inspired us so much. Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars," Lucas said.

"The Lord of the Rings is my Ray Harryhausen movie. Without his lifelong love of his wondrous images and storytelling it would never have been made — not by me, at least," Jackson stated.

"I think all of us who are practitioners in the arts of science-fiction and fantasy movies now all feel that we're standing on the shoulders of a giant," said director James Cameron. "If not for Ray's contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn't be who we are."

People have also paid direct homage to Harryhausen in their films, as well. Tim Burton's stop-motion animated film Corpse Bride featured a character playing a Harryhausen piano — instead of a Steinway — and in Pixar's Monsters, Inc., one-eyed Mike Wazowski takes a date to a restaurant called Harryhausen's.

Chart of the Day: NYSE Margin Debt Raises Eyebrows

Chart of the Day: NYSE Margin Debt Raises Eyebrows

High levels of margin debt on the New York Stock Exchange are raising concerns about the state of the rally.

Stephen Suttmeier, technical research analyst at Bank of America BAC Merrill Lynch, notes leverage, as measured by NYSE margin debt, rose 28% in March from a year ago to $380 billion. That figure is slightly below the July 2007 peak of $381 billion.

Market analysts track margin-debt activity as an indication of investors’ appetite for taking on speculative trading. It has been trending higher since bottoming out during the financial crisis and currently is hovering around all-time highs.



“Leverage can be used as a sentiment indicator because it is related to investor confidence…Although it should not be used as a market timing tool, the implication is contrarian bearish,” Suttmeier says. ”Peaks in NYSE margin debt preceded peaks in the S&P 500 in both 2007 and 2000.”


It’s no surprise people have been taking on more risk as the market has moved to record highs. But the question is what happens when the easy ride higher turns south and some of that margin debt turns into margin calls?

A potential pitfall for those trading “on margin” is a sharp decline in stock prices, which can expose investors to margin calls, requiring them to post additional collateral lest their brokers sell their securities to cover the debt. A wave of margin calls can worsen selling pressure on stocks and was seen as partly to blame for the market’s woes during the financial crisis.



“It’s rather alarming to see NYSE margin debt just shy of its all-time high as of the March reading,” Cullen Roche of Orcam Financial Group wrote on the Pragmatic Capitalism blog (hat tip Business Insider). ”My guess is we’ve actually already surpassed the all-time high though we won’t officially know until April data is released.

“Fun times knowing we live in a world that is built on such a fragile foundation.”

–John Kell contributed to this report.

The case for living with mom and dad

The case for living with mom and dad

• Returning home may be a route to financial independence
• More adult Americans are living with their parents. In fact, there’s even a new TV show about it on ABC, “How to Live With Your Parents.”

There are more adult Americans age 34 or younger sleeping in their childhood bedrooms now than at any other time in the past 30 years, studies show. Nearly one-quarter of those ages 20 to 34 were living at home between 2007 and 2009, up from 17% in 1980, according to a study released last August by Zhenchao Qian of Ohio State University. The rate is closer to one-third for 25- to 34-year-olds, says Kim Parker, the lead researcher on another recent survey, “The Boomerang Generation.”

Some parents are straining under the pressure. Financial advisers say it’s costly to host an adult-child, between $8,000 and $18,000 a year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. But it’s a burden more parents are bearing: Some 22.6 million adults aged 18-34 lived at home in 2012, a number that’s jumped 18% in the last decade, the U.S. Census found. The ABC sitcom was based on writer and actress Claudia Lonow’s own experiences of living at home after getting divorced. The TV version features a young woman (played by Sarah Chalke) who moves home with her daughter because of the financial crisis and a recent divorce.

But just because more young adults are moving in with their parents doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Andi Cooper, 32, a communications specialist from Ridgeland, Miss. who recently moved in with her parents, says people shouldn’t feel sorry for her. “I’m extremely happy,” she says. And she’s not alone.

Others report the same feeling. Some 78% of those surveyed in a 2012 Pew Research survey say they’re satisfied with their living arrangements and 77% feel upbeat about their future finances. “If there’s supposed to be a stigma attached to living with Mom and Dad through one’s late 20s or early 30s, today’s boomerang generation didn’t get that memo,” Parker says.

It may also be part of a larger cultural shift: People are also getting married later in life and flying the coop later, Qian says. Case in point: Jennifer Marcus, 26, a public-relations executive and television blogger, works in New York and moved back to her childhood home in New Jersey in September 2011 for one year. “They gave me emotional support after a really tough breakup,” she says. “I also switched jobs this year and my parents were monumental in helping me with that decision.” Marcus had a job and wasn’t a drain on her parents, and it gave her time to find an apartment in the city.

To be sure, many young adults are living with their parents strictly because of joblessness, low wages or high housing costs. About one-third of 25- to 34-year-olds say they moved back or never left because of the economy, the Pew report found, up from 11% in 1980. But there’s a silver lining too. Nearly half of these young adults say they have paid rent to their parents instead of to some anonymous landlord, and 89% say they have helped with household expenses, the report found.

And many college graduates in their 30s who still live at home to save money say they’re glad they avoided buying a home at the peak of the market. Cooper says she has a lot of friends who bought homes in their 30s, before 2008—and are now unable to sell them because they have negative equity. Despite having a graduate degree in Wildlife Science and a well-paid job, she says she had never bought a house. “I definitely feel blessed to have dodged that bullet,” she says.

Moving back in with one’s parents may even make sense for those who can afford a place of their own, others say.” Living at home promotes saving,” says Sheldon Garon, a professor of history at Princeton University and author of “Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves.” He says it could help students pay off the $1 trillion they now owe in student loans. “There has been a staggering increase in student debt in the last few years,” Garon says. “It may make a lot of sense for young people to trim their costs.”

On a personal note, college graduates also reap the benefits of having two mature roommates who can give them valuable advice about planning their future. Qian says this is a critical time for many young people. Because of the time spent living at home with her parents, Marcus potentially saved tens of thousands of dollars in the price of a new home. “Living at home is giving me the opportunity to wait for a good opportunity,” she says, “and, more importantly, to save a strong down payment.”

Her mother, Toni Cooper, says her daughter contributes to utilities and groceries, so having her live at home in her 30s doesn’t significantly impact their living expenses. Plus, she and her husband are happy to mind their daughter’s two dogs when she is traveling for work. “Andi won’t start off in debt where 100% of her monthly income is going towards living expenses,” she says. “She’s now in good shape to take that step.”

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two

BREAKING INEQUALITY - Why You Will Always Be Poor

Small-Town Mayor’s Millions as Exhibit A on Graft in Spain

Small-Town Mayor’s Millions as Exhibit A on Graft in Spain

Mayor María Soledad Aured de Torres of La Muela, Spain, with a portrait of the town’s former mayor, María Victoria Pinilla, who is facing charges over what officials call shady land deals.

In the good times, the former mayor of this small, wind-swept village of 5,000 in northern Spain was busy building: the olive oil museum, the wind museum, the museum of life. If that were not enough, there was the new bullring, the sports center with 25,000 seats and the zoo with the exotic-bird park.

Unfinished urban projects in La Muela attest to the sense that the village of 5,000 feels a bit like a ghost town these days.

The former mayor, María Victoria Pinilla, seemed to be prospering personally, as well. Three stately houses took shape on her family plot. There was an apartment in Madrid, a beach house and a vacation home in the Dominican Republic next to Julio Iglesias’.

Now, however, the fence outside the former mayor’s family compound is in disrepair and half-built housing developments lie abandoned on the outskirts of the village. And last month, Ms. Pinilla, 57, became just one more in a growing throng of political officials in Spain to face corruption charges.

Investigators calculate that she and other family members accumulated about $24 million, mostly from shady land deals during Spain’s boom years. Searching her property, the police had to borrow a bill-counting machine from a local bank to help total up all the cash: $485,000.

For decades, corruption was accepted in Southern Europe as a fact of life, a way to distribute the spoils, and few people — including, in many cases, prosecutors — gave it a second thought. But the grinding economic crisis, which stalled projects and ended the flow of cash, has helped lift the veil on corrupt officials, exposing graft, bribery, payoffs, secret favors and other misdeeds on a scale that few imagined.

At a time when Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal are imposing deficit-cutting austerity plans on their hard-pressed citizens, these revelations of widespread political corruption are stoking bitter resentment, destabilizing governments and undermining the credibility of the political class as a whole.

Corruption did not cause the euro zone crisis. But the economic problems will persist, regional experts say, until these countries remake themselves into modern societies with efficient, competitive economies.

“It’s the key challenge,” said Miklos Marschall, the deputy managing director of Transparency International. “The political class has no respect in Southern Europe. The public institutions need to be rebuilt, step by step, so the government can be a credible actor.”

Spain is by no means Europe’s most corrupt nation — Greece and Italy are considered more so. But the sheer volume of political corruption cases here is proving deeply embarrassing.

Judges here are now investigating about 1,000 officials ranging from small-town mayors like Ms. Pinilla to former cabinet ministers. Even the country’s conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has turned up on a list of his party’s stalwarts who were supposedly taking payments under the table.

Nor has the royal family been immune. King Juan Carlos’s son-in-law and daughter have been subpoenaed in a corruption inquiry that began with the investigation of officials in the  Balearic Islands.

There are so many scandals that some newspapers have taken to organizing all but the biggest developments in a quick-list format, rather than writing whole articles.

Some experts believe there is still far more to come, the result in Spain of a political structure that puts huge power in the hands of local officials. Many of them can grant procurement contracts or rezone land with little or no consultation.

“Over a lunch, they can decide that you are going to make 100 million euros,” around $131 million, said Manuel Villoria, a professor of political science at the University of Juan Carlos in Madrid, who is writing a report on Spanish corruption for the European Union. “So, they could ask for what they wanted. It often wasn’t for them. It was an apartment for a daughter or for a sister’s children.”

No political party seems immune. Last month, an investigating judge jailed seven people, including one member of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, in a scandal involving the use of regional development funds to pay fake early retirement pensions to up to 100 individuals. But many of the cases are more like La Muela’s, where local officials enriched themselves while planning vast developments. Some of this money was funneled into their political parties, experts say.

 Unlike in Greece, corruption is not a way of life in Spain. Most Spaniards go about their daily business without ever paying a bribe. But experts say that the concentration of power in the hands of regional and municipal officials and their ties to the local savings banks created ideal conditions for corruption in the construction boom years.

The danger is not over, they say. New sectors of commerce may soon take its place. For instance, Mr. Villoria writes in his draft paper, the health care system, now undergoing privatization, could easily take the place of construction in future scandals unless changes are made.

Already there is talk of overhauling the country’s party financing and transparency laws, increasing sentences for corruption and strengthening the independence of auditors. At the same time, many experts say more needs to be done to bolster an underfinanced judicial system, which allows many corruption cases to go unresolved for years.

One case in the Valencia region, involving allegations that a provincial governor, Carlos Fabra, tried to sell government approval of pesticides, was under investigation for nine years. The case passed through more than a half-dozen judges, as each was promoted or moved on. Such cases are not considered good for one’s career.

Few politicians under investigation resign or even step aside temporarily. Spanish columnists have had a field day recently noting that in Germany a politician resigned merely for plagiarism.

While he stayed in office, Mr. Fabra, who now faces trial, was the driving force behind a project that has become a symbol of wasteful spending — the $183 million airport in Castellón that has never managed to attract a single flight since it was inaugurated in 2011. A statue there, meant to honor Mr. Fabra, cost taxpayers about $500,000.

Justice has not moved swiftly in the La Muela case either. The town’s current mayor, María Soledad Aured de Torres, remembers the day in 2009 when 200 police officers surrounded Ms. Pinilla’s compound and her City Hall office, shutting down village business for hours.

But soon enough, Ms. Pinilla was back at work serving out her term as mayor over the next two years. The investigating judge in the case, Alfredo Lajusticia, wrapped up the investigation only last month, concluding that Ms. Pinilla should be tried over embezzlement of public funds, tax evasion and money laundering, among other charges. More than 40 people are likely to face charges in the case, including family members, civil servants, property developers and contractors.

La Muela feels a bit like a ghost town these days. In the surrounding fields, fading billboards announce developments that were never built. An unfinished hotel looms grimly over one end of the village center, the nearly empty zoo bookends the other.

Ms. Pinilla, who served as mayor for 25 years, has maintained her innocence throughout. Outside her home recently, her son, Víctor Embarba Pinilla, who is also likely to face trial over money laundering, use of privileged information and tax evasion, said his mother had been told by her lawyers not to speak to reporters. But he said she had done nothing wrong.

He also said that reports of his family’s wealth were greatly exaggerated, but Mr. Lajusticia’s 70-page report painted a damning picture. He has impounded 127 properties from the various defendants in the case, including about 80 that belong to the mayor’s former husband. Her cousin is next on the list with about 25.

The current mayor said that Ms. Pinilla and her family made a lot of their money buying land in the village, then reselling it after she had rezoned it for development. She noted the numerous bronze statues of horses, lions and bulls scattered about the village, all purchased from one of the businesses of Ms. Pinilla’s son.

Some residents say they were stunned to hear the extent of the former mayor’s family fortune. But some shrugged it off.

“Yes, it’s incredible what happened here,” said Alfonso Guirao, 42, who bought his home in La Muela in 2006 and now owns a bar here. “But it’s all incredible. Look at what is going on all over Spain.”

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