lambtonton

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-03/shortening-federal-unemployment-benefits-will-help-jobless-in-u-s-view.html

By the Editors Aug 2, 2011 5:00 PM PT

In 2009, Congress extended jobless benefits to 99 weeks, the longest period in U.S. history. Those payments were meant to help unemployed workers get through a tough recession, while shoring up a faltering economy. Was it a wise approach? And with extended benefits expiring at year’s end, should compensation be prolonged again?
Drawn-out benefits have been most effective at sustaining household income for displaced workers. State and federal programs will pay $129.5 billion this year in jobless benefits, according to Labor Department actuaries. Those payments provide roughly 50 percent of lost wages.
Nearly all that cash re-enters the economy quickly as recipients pay for food, clothing or housing. For that reason, jobless benefits have long been thought of as one of the most efficient ways to prevent consumer spending from collapsing during a slump.
Unfortunately, the 99-week experiment hasn’t been so successful in helping people get re-employed. Drawn-out benefits have caused job hunts to stretch out by almost a month — with no greater guarantee of success — according to economists Mary Daly, Bart Hobijn and Rob Valletta. All three work for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
In a discussion paper published this month, the Fed economists conclude that 99-w...

August 3, 2011 | 2:43 pm







A study that suggested Internet Explorer users were not as smart as those using other Web browsers is apparently a fake, according to the person that initially distributed it.

In a statement on its website, Aptiquant said it “was set up in late July 2011 by comparison shopping website AtCheap.com in order to launch a fake ‘study’…. The main purpose behind this hoax was to create awareness about the incompatibilities of IE6, and not to insult or hurt anyone.”

The company, Aptiquant, doesn’t exist, according to a separate statement on its website.

A man identifying himself as the owner of Atcheap.com said he was behind the hoax. “It was just a joke, and I didn’t really mean to insult anybody,” he said.

On Wednesday, BBC reported that images of the company’s staff were copied from another website: “Thumbnail images of the firm’s staff on the website also matched those on the site of French research company Central Test, although many of the names had been changed,” the BBC said.

The BBC said readers raised questions regarding the study, and the news organization had a security consultant inspect source material after questions arose. “It’s obviously very easy to create a bogus site like this — as all phishers know it’s easy to rip off someone else’s web pages and pictures,” Graham Cluley, a senior...