| Vignette gets bottom-line boost from tax benefit; EZCorp profits up 29 ...
Vignette made $13 million, or 49 cents per share, compared with $6.8 million, or 23 cents per share, in the last quarter of 2006. Excluding one-time items, profit was $7.3 million, or 28 cents per share, compared with $8.5 million, or 28 cents per share, in 2006. Revenue increased to $52.7 million from $52.6 million in 2006. Analysts were expecting profit of 29 cents per share on revenue of $51.7 million. Analysts typically exclude one-time items. The company gained $6.5 million on provisions for income tax payments, compared with a payout of $648,000 in 2006. EZCorp's profit increases 29% Austin-based EZCorp Inc. said profit rose 29 percent in its fiscal first quarter on a 22 percent increase in revenue.
Schwarzenegger Seeks Broad New Budget Powers To Avoid Deficits
It would be capped at 15 percent of the budget and could be used only to help with the next downturn. Schwarzenegger gleaned the idea from former President Bill Clinton, who had similar budget powers as governor of Arkansas. He said it would put an end to the feast-and-famine cycle of California budgeting. "For several years, we kept the budget wolf from the door, but the wolf is back," Schwarzenegger said, addressing state lawmakers in the Assembly chamber two days before he is to lay out a budget for the coming fiscal year filled with deep cuts. "We cannot continue to put people through the binge and purge of our budget process," Schwarzenegger said. "It is not fair. It is not reasonable. It is not in the best interests of anyone." Revenues have tapered off with the slowing economy, and Schwarzenegger is grappling with a projected $14 billion budget gap over the next 18 months.
Clinton Campaign Stung By Third-Place Finish
A few hours before the caucusing began Thursday night, Bill and Hillary Clinton were seen striding through the Hotel Fort Des Moines with a look of consternation on their faces. The caucuses marked the culmination of a dispiriting week for the Clintons as a series of polls presaged a possible Obama victory — so long as a projected massive turnout of young and first-time caucus-goers materialized. And so it did with an estimated 212,000 Democrats showing up to caucus, almost twice as many as in 2004. The groundswell of Democrats responding to Obama's and Edwards' call for "hope" and "change," respectively, flooded and stalled the vaunted, fine-tuned Clinton electoral machine. The enormous institutional and organizational power of the New York senator's campaign - ranging from a laundry list of endorsements by elected officials to the celebrity clout of Bill Clinton to a brigade of hundreds of snow-shovelers who cleared the driveways of elderly caucus-goers–wasn't enough to overcome the emotional call to a new political dynamic that seemed to turbo-charge the Obama campaign.
Group homes need a permit
Albany can and should require the property owner to go through the conditional use process before operating directly or indirectly any group home.Secondly, Albany can legally limit the congregation of convicted felons. Federal anti-discrimination law does not apply to convicted felons. While Albany does not appear to have such a law in place, it makes sense to regulate the deliberate concentration of convicted felons for their sake and everyone else's sake.Ultimately, the issue comes down to the question of whether or not the city cares about families and whether it really wants to protect and enhance the historic single-family areas. Most of the tools are already on the statute books. New ones could be added. The city should act.John Redmond Byrne, AlbanyOxford House helps peopleI am writing in response to the article in Monday's paper regarding the new Oxford House on Sixth and Ferry.
Seattle Investor Group Calm as Markets Swing
It certainly could be. Thirty-year fixed-rate mortgages have been dropping since Christmas. The average is now 5.5 percent, quite low by historical standards. So if you have an adjustable rate mortgage that's going to reset, now could be an excellent to time to swap into a fixed-rate loan. Lending standards have changed since the "anything goes" days of the housing bubble that burst last fall. "Here's why," says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst with bankrate.com, a personal finance Web site. "There are actually standards now. Instead of the loan requirement being the ability to fog a mirror, the people now in the best position to get mortgages have good credit, proof of income and either money for a down payment or equity in an existing house." Lower interest rates will take some of the sting out of adjustable rate loans that are resetting higher.
EDITOR'S CHOICE
The move was meant to help the Whites focus on pulling clear of the relegation zone, with both player and manager maintaining that it was in the best interests of the team. But it served only to create confusion when it emerged that the pair were at odds over who instigated the move. Lee said he had relieved the veteran midfielder of the coaching role he gave him when he became manager in April, but Speed insisted he had resigned. .
Briefly in Tompkins
All contest participants will receive free admission passes to the Sciencenter. The Sciencenter will select three winning entries for each grade level. Winning entries will be featured on the museum's Web site and each winner will receive a $25 gift certificate to the Sciencenter Store. Entries are due Feb. 1 and should be addressed to Sciencenter Cosmic Contest, 601 First St., Ithaca NY 14850. Include your name, title of your entry, your home or school address, and your grade, teacher, and school. For complete contest guidelines, visit www.sciencenter.org. Contest encourages reuse of T-shirts The 2008 eco-fashion design contest Green T, a SewGreen project, is under way, focusing on the cotton t-shirt as a symbol of the problems with the conventional apparel industry. The goal of the contest is to reduce purchases of conventional cotton Ts, buying organic, not treating T-shirts as throw-away items and putting old ones to use in creative new ways.
Can weakening U.S. economy survive current strains?
Such is the fallout from a housing meltdown that threatens to slingshot the country into a recession. The big economic question these days is whether the weakening economy will survive the strains or collapse under them. The odds have grown that the economy will slip into a recession. .
Microsoft opens personal health record site
But the software maker must still grapple with whether sharing data exposes it to greater financial risk in the event that hackers get their hands on confidential medical data. Many state-level security breach notification laws have been passed in the last couple of years, giving identity theft victims the ability to sue companies whose systems are hacked or whose computers are stolen, Hirsch said. The health care industry is just one U.S. sector that's treading lightly as a result. Some of the best sources of comprehensive health records data, major insurance companies, haven't agreed to build applications that work with HealthVault. But even if Microsoft were able to get providers and insurance companies to feed data into HealthVault, it's not clear consumers will use it.
Capital One's mortgage pain & gain
We're pulling back on loan growth, focusing on our most resilient businesses and closely managing credit with the insights and experience we have garnered in prior economic downturns." Its shares rose $4.39, or 11 percent, to $44.20 Wednesday and have traded between $37.41 and $83.84 in the last 52 weeks. Capital One, a credit card issuer that continues to expand into retail banking, said it is taking a $1.9 billion provision for loan losses in the fourth quarter, including about $1.3 billion it expects to write off as uncollectible. The company is also adding about $650 million to its charge-off allowance because of recent delinquencies in its consumer lending businesses in "recognition of the weakening trends in the U.S. economy." The company has worked hard to expand beyond its credit card roots into banking and mortgages.
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