Friday, 9 July 2010

Russia - US spy swap under way

Russia, U.S. swap 14 in Cold War-style spy exchange

A Vision Airlines Boeing 767 plane carrying candidates for the spy swap lands at Washington Dulles International airport July 9, 2010.

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The largest Russia-US spy swap since the Cold War appears to be in motion. A Russian convicted of spying for the US has been reportedly plucked from a Moscow prison and flown to Vienna.

Igor Sutyagin, a Russian arms control analyst serving a 14-year sentence for spying for the US, told relatives he was going to be on the swap list.

Russian and US officials refused to comment on a possible swap.

A swap would have significant consequences for efforts between Washington and Moscow to repair ties chilled by a deepening atmosphere of suspicion.

A political analyst believes a swap is likely.

Ninolai Petrov, Political Analyst at carnegie Endowment, said, "I am afraid that we will never learn totally about how exactly it happens, and I am afraid it can be a mixture of both secret services from both sides, to be interested somehow in doing something which is not necessarily in favour of their political leadership. The fact that a solution to the case was found in such a fast way means that there is a political desire to fix the problem and not to develop the scandal, so there is understandable political will from both sides."

In New York, the ten suspects recently accused of being undercover Russian spies pleaded guilty. The ten and an 11th person, who was released on bail by a court in Cyprus and is now a fugitive, were formally charged in a federal indictment.

The defendants are accused of living seemingly ordinary lives in America while acting as unregistered agents for the Russian government, sending secret messages and carrying out orders they received from their Russian contacts.

Editor:Zhang Jingya |Source: CCTV.com

Tips for Job-Seeking in This Economy

Newswise — Thanks to the recession, today’s job market is crowded. If an open position at a company would once attract 100 resumes, today it could attract 500. The search can be long and grueling.

Butler University Executive-in-Residence Marv Recht offers some tips to help in the job search.

1) Be prepared for your salary to get a “haircut.”
With more job seekers than available jobs, companies appear to be using the imbalance to adjust their salary bands downward. Rutgers University researchers first surveyed a representative sample of unemployed Americans in August and recently checked back with them to monitor their luck in going back to work. Since August, only one in five of the group who had been out of work for six months or longer had found a job. Of that group, only 10 percent had landed a new position with a salary on par with their previous job. The rest had accepted lower pay and fewer benefits.

2) Handle the question of salary expectations strategically.
In a job listing, employers often ask for your salary expectations or history. You do not want to rule yourself out of a chance at an interview by listing a salary that is too high; conversely, you do not want to short-change yourself if you should land the job by listing a salary that is too low.

Handle the question with a variation of this response: “My most recent base salary was $XX. However, as I
understand, there is significant growth potential in this position. As my primary interest at this stage of my career is working for a growing company, the matter of salary is negotiable.”

What if you are offered the job and the HR person asks, “What kind of salary are you looking for?” Again, you don’t want to rule yourself out by being too high or shortchange yourself by being too low. Prepare for that moment by researching on www.salary.com what the midpoint of the salary range is for that kind of job in the area where the company is located.

3) Play good offense if your age might be an issue in a job interview.
If you are 50 or over, you want to disabuse the potential employer quickly of the idea that you might work a few years in the new job and then retire. Research the company thoroughly so you can speak knowledgably about the company’s success. Emphasize the future in answers, such as “I see the company is on a growth pattern of X percent a year and I want to work for a growing firm and grow in my skills and contributions to that success.”

4) Be prepared to move.
You like where you currently live because it’s a good place to raise children, say, or your elderly parents live nearby. That’s fine — but your best shot at a job might lie elsewhere.

5) Investigate getting into a new job via a staffing organization.
With companies reduced to lean employee rolls, they are filling some of the gaps with temp employees from companies such as Kelly Services, Inc., and Adecco. As the economy picks up steam, companies will make some of those jobs full-time again. If you are already doing great work as a temp in a position, you will be first in line for consideration.

Marv Recht has over 35 years of career counseling and human resources experience, working for General Motors Corporation and human resources consulting firm DBM. Now retired from corporate life, he works at Butler University as an executive-in-residence for the College of Business where he teaches courses on career planning and development, and serves as an academic advisor.

To find other Butler University experts, visit http://www.butler.edu/experts/.
Source: Butler University
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Thursday, 8 July 2010

Joblessness and housing add risks to U.S. recovery: IMF

A view of a home for sale in Los Angeles February 24, 2010. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON | Thu Jul 8, 2010 6:53pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - High unemployment and a moribund housing market have increased risks to the U.S. economic recovery, while the public debt looms large and needs to be cut, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.

In a statement after annual consultations with U.S. authorities, the IMF raised its U.S. growth forecasts slightly to 3.3 percent for 2010 and 2.9 percent for 2011, but said unemployment would remain above 9 percent for both years.

The lofty jobless rate, coupled with a large backlog of home foreclosures and high levels of negative home equity, posed risks of a "double dip" in the housing market, it said. But the IMF said it did not think a renewed recession was likely.

"The outlook has improved in tandem with recovery, but remaining household and financial balance sheet weaknesses -- along with elevated unemployment -- are likely to continue to restrain private spending," the Fund said.

The IMF also said commercial real estate continued to deteriorate, posing risks for smaller banks. Further tipping the balance of risks to the downside, it said Europe's sovereign debt crisis could worsen financial market conditions and hurt trade.

David Robinson, the IMF's Western Hemisphere deputy director, conceded in a news briefing that recent data had come in on the weak side since the report was completed on June 21. If the weakness continued, the Fund may have to revise its forecasts downward, he said.

In a separate report on the world economy, the IMF raised its 2010 global growth forecast to 4.6 percent from the 4.2 percent it had projected in April.

DEBT BURDEN

Apart from dealing with economic risks, the IMF said the key challenge for the United States was to develop a credible strategy to put its budget on a sustainable path without jeopardizing the recovery.

The fund said U.S. federal debt as a percentage of gross domestic product would rise from 64 percent in 2010 to 80.4 percent by 2015, 96.3 percent by 2020 and 135 percent by 2030. These debt forecasts are higher than those of the Obama administration and the Congressional Budget Office, which projects debt-to-GDP at 77.4 percent in fiscal 2015, and 90 percent by 2020.

A U.S. Treasury official said the IMF's forecasts for future growth and interest rates were "overly pessimistic". The Fund, for example, predicted U.S. growth at 2.8 percent in 2012, compared to the Blue Chip consensus of private forecasters at 3.4 percent growth for that year.

But the IMF welcomed commitments by the Obama administration to stabilize this at just over 70 percent of GDP by 2015 but called for a downward path after that, a step that would require both spending cuts and increased revenues.

The IMF said the biggest contribution the United States could make to global growth and stability would be to increase its domestic savings -- particularly by reducing deficits.

"The U.S. is no longer going to be the global consumer of last resort and therefore other countries, especially those with current account surpluses, will need to take up the slack," Robinson said.

"With our assessment that the dollar is now somewhat overvalued from a medium-term perspective, I emphasize medium-term, this will also need to be accompanied by greater exchange rate flexibility and appreciation elsewhere," he added.

Robinson said he believed the dollar's value would decline moderately over the next five years based on economic fundamentals. The dollar's rise in recent months was "not helpful" in sustaining global recovery but was not a "deal breaker" either, he said.

The Fund said the Federal Reserve's pledge to keep interest rates exceptionally low was appropriate to fight deflation and the drag on the economy from reduced government spending, but said the U.S. central bank must clearly communicate its plans for exiting its supportive policies.

The IMF also said that while the United States has made considerable progress in restoring financial stability, more capital will be needed in the banking system to support additional lending -- particularly if securitization markets remain impaired.

It said U.S. financial reform legislation would reduce systemic risks in the financial system, but noted that Congress missed an opportunity to consolidate bank regulators, maintaining a burden on agencies to cooperate and avoid gaps in supervision.

(Additional reporting by Emily Kaiser, Tim Ahmann and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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