Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.In the wake of the financial crisis, the banks and hedge funds of Wall Street were hit with a slew of new regulations.
If a bank or a fund broke any of the new rules, disaster could result.
Just months after Deutche Bank failed the Fed and Treasury department's "stress test" earlier this year, both of its co-CEOs were suddenly out of a job.
At the same time, regulations can cause banks to enter and exit whole business lines just to avoid fines and other penalties.
This new reality has made the industry desperate to know what exactly the regulators were thinking when they made the rules.
A little-known consulting firm has figured out an ingenius way to capitalize on this thirst for knowledge.
Promontory Financial Group was founded a little more than a decade ago by the ex-head of the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. In the time since, the firm has added some serious clout to a staff that has grown to hundreds.
Promontory has also attracted the attention of regulators. In 2013, the New York Department of Financial Services subpoenaed Promontory and other firms as part of a probe into potential conflicts of interest among consultants that serve banking sector clients. That investigation is still ongoing.
Promontory has stacked its deck with not just prominent members of the US regulatory system but international central bank executives as well. Here are the most recognizable boldface names:
Mary Schapiro is the former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission; she stepped down in 2012.
Arthur Levitt is another former head of the SEC that would later took up a post with Promontory.
Promontory also looks for top central bankers internationally. The firm hired Masaaki Shirakawa, who served as governor of the Bank of Japan until 2013.
Sir Callum McCarthy is the former chair of the Financial Services Authority in the UK. He also served on the court of the Bank of England from 2003 until 2008.
Charles McDonough spent decades working for the World Bank before he joined Promontory to serve as the firm's CFO.
Promontory managing director Stephen Hoffman may not be a household name. However, Hoffman spent decades working at the Federal Reserve. Perhaps more valuable for the consulting firm's clients, he spent years working under Janet Yellen. And that level of expertise could come in handy for the firm's clients who have big bets based on US monetary policy.
Some boldface names on Promontory's roster are a surprise. For example, there's Paul Tagliabue. While Tagliabue's policy chops are unknown, he did serve as the second commissioner of the National Football League for nearly a quarter century.
Going through the "revolving door" between Washington and Wall Street doesn't preclude someone from going back to the other side. Sarah Bloom Raskin has taken jobs at the Federal Reserve, and more recently at the Treasury Department after having worked at Promontory.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Google has released a comprehensive report on all the accidents its self-driving cars have been involved in since 2009, and the results suggest that robots are better drivers than most everyone.
During the combined 1.8 million miles these cars were on the road, Google’s cars got into only 12 minor accidents, none of which were caused by a robot.
In fact, more accidents were caused by Google employees taking control of the car than by the autonomous cars themselves.
In August 2011, a Google employee took one of the cars for a spin in manual (human-driven) mode to run an errand, and promptly rear-ended a vehicle that was stopped in traffic. Google says “no injuries were reported at the scene,” but what they mean is human injuries. The Google car did sustain some damage, which seems terribly unfair given that it wasn’t even the one driving.
Most of the other accidents were caused by other drivers, with rear-ending being the most common. And the accident report reads like a novelization of every obnoxious and dangerous driver you've ever seen on the road. One driver rear-ended an autonomous car when it was stopped at a traffic light. Another struck the side of a Google car while veering into its lane on a highway. And a third rolled the stop sign at El Camino and View street and plowed into a self-driving car’s right side.
Even before this report came out, it seemed some American’s had begun to warm to the idea of self-driving cars taking over the road. In a recent study, 27% of those polled said they would support laws restricting human driving if self-driving cars might be safer. With these new statistics from Google, it seems like they are on their way.
The auto industry is taking note. Analyst Tavis McCourt wrote that a recent conference he attended was the first "where participants in the auto industry finally have come to the conclusion that Google and Apple are not their friends, but ultimately will likely be competitive enemies."
Google’s report, which will be the first of a monthly series, also outlined some of the ways its cars are taking into account the peculiarities of the real world, one of the areas that makes many uneasy about self-driving cars. Google says its cars understand that emergency vehicles behave in different ways than normal drivers do. They cited an example where a self-driving car remained stopped at a stoplight when a light turn green because it had detected an ambulance approaching from the right.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The author of the Bush administration's highly controversial "torture memos" is pretty unhappy with the Obama administration.
In an interview with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wife Virginia Thomas of The Daily Caller, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo unleashed a wide variety of criticisms against President Barack Obama.
"I sometimes call the Obama presidency the “Bizarro World” presidency," Yoo said in the interview recorded by The Daily Caller. "In Superman, there’s like, Bizarro World, where everything is the reverse of the way it is in the real world."
"Obama’s view of the presidency is the reverse or mirror image of the Framers’ presidency," Yoo said.
While serving in the Department of Justice from 2001-2003, Yoo co-authored a set of memos that classified Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters as outside of Geneva Convention protections against torture. The memos outlined the George W. Bush administration's legal strategy to use "advanced interrogation techniques" while avoiding violating the War Crimes Act of the Geneva Convention.
In Sunday's interview, the UC Berkeley law professor reserved his most withering criticisms for Obama's foreign policy. Yoo said the Obama's foreign policy was worse than former President Jimmy Carter's, and predicted that the president's nuclear negotiations with Iran will lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view."If people want to see what a [former Rep.] Ron Paul (R-Texas) presidency would've been like, we're getting it," Yoo said. "The only area of difference is drones. Other than that, President Obama has done exactly the same things and said exactly the same things that Ron Paul's foreign policy would've been."
"This explains a lot of the disorder we're seeing, and chaos in the world," Yoo said.
Now a conservative activist, Virginia Thomas raised eyebrows several years ago for her fundraising for conservative causes.
Though out the interview, Thomas fielded Yoo soft questions about why the Constitution is great and what life is like as a conservative in Berkeley.
Yoo hasn't done much to conceal his partisan views over the years. In 2014, he questioned a damning investigation of torture tactics used by the CIA against alleged terrorists, claiming he couldn't fully trust the report since it was prepared only by Democrats.
In Sunday's interview, the Yoo he likes one thing about liberals: craftiness.
"Liberals are great at cooking food, making handcrafted items," Yoo said. "I just don’t want them to be in charge of running anything."
Yoo is the latest ex-Bush administration official to reemerge with fresh criticisms of President Obama. In an interview with British newspaper the Times this week, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the US's failure to address Russian aggression was weakening American power abroad.
The first three "Jurassic Park" films grossed a combined total of nearly $2 billion worldwide, so it's a bit surprising "Jurassic World," the latest installment in the franchise, took a decade to get made.
Steven Spielberg, who directed the first two installments in the franchise, came up with an idea for "Jurassic World" while on set for 2001's "Jurassic Park III." In 2002, it was announced a fourth "Jurassic Park" was slated for a summer 2005 release.
After delays and script rewrites the 2005 release was pushed to 2014, and finally 2015 as "Jurassic World" waded through a 10-year mess to make it to the big screen.
The delay partially stemmed from the fact that creative positions changed hands several times. Joe Johnston, the director of "Jurassic Park III," didn't want to take the director's chair again. Instead, Johnston ended up directing 2011's "Captain America: The First Avenger."
Meanwhile, multiple versions of a script for the fourth film circulated around Hollywood for the last decade.
According to the New York Times, several writers came in to work on it at different times. In January 2013, it was officially announced "Jurassic World" would be released June 2014. The timeline gave the project a little over a year for completion.
Yet, Colin Trevorrow, who previously directed the popular indie feature "Safety Not Guaranteed," was up for this daunting task.
He was hired before he even got to see what was written down, and, when he did, he didn't quite like what he saw.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.“I didn’t understand what it was about,” Trevorrow told the New York Times.
This one featured a genetically modified dinosaur spliced with DNA of both a dinosaur and a human — which likely served as early inspiration of the hybrid Indominus Rex which appears in "Jurassic World." Back in 2007, Moriarty at Ain't It Cool News got a hold of a copy of this script and described it as "A Dirty Dozen-style mercenary team of hyper-smart dinosaurs in body armour killing drug dealers and rescuing kidnapped children."
So Trevorrow and his writing partner Derek Connolly did some edits to another version of the script, this one written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. Among their alterations was the decision to expand on the idea of trained raptors and make them "as realistic as can be," as Connolly told Empire.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Spielberg, who serves as executive producer (and was very heavily involved throughout the entire process despite never visiting the set)on "Jurassic World," liked the new ideas, but decided not to rush it.
According to the same New York Times article, Spielberg told Trevorrow they should take another year, because "if we do it right this could be really special.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Along with the writers and director, the cast shifted several times.
At one point, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, and Richard Attenborough were all set to reprise their "Jurassic Park" roles for the fourth film, a fact that all three of them had confirmed.
While Attenborough passed away in 2014, it seems Trevorrow wants to try and build something new and fresh out of an existing idea. Trevorrow and Connolly decided "Jurassic World" would be better off without the return of several "Jurassic Park" alums.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view."I know a lot of fans want to see the original characters back. They’re iconic." Trevorrow said in an interview with IGN. "But I respect those actors too much to shoehorn them into this story for my own sentimental reasons. 'Jurassic Park' isn’t about the bad luck of three people who keep getting thrown into the same situation. The only reason they’d go back to that island is if the screenwriters contrived a reason for them to go."
Despite this, B.D. Wong is set to reprise his role as Dr. Henry Wu.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.It might have taken ten years to assemble, but it looks like they might not do too badly with this cast, which is led by Chris Pratt. Following the overwhelming success of "The LEGO Movie" and "Guardians of the Galaxy," Pratt has become one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He is joined by the likes of Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio ("Daredevil"), and Jake Johnson.
My family and I were driving along the Garden Route in South Africa, one of the country's many scenic wine routes, when we ran into some trouble with highway baboons.
I was on a road trip with my parents and sister, and the car showed signs that we had been driving for five days: the seats were sprinkled with crumbs from all the snacks we had enjoyed, and the contents of our bags — iPods, books, magazines — had spilled everywhere.
The particular stretch of highway we were on, which led into Capetown, was bordered by cliffs. There were signs every few miles warning cars not to stop, and most importantly, not to open any doors or windows because of lurking baboons.
However, being curious tourists — and because it's physically impossible for my father to turn down a chance for a little adventure — we pulled over.
That was our first mistake.
Then we opened our doors.
That was our second mistake.
My dad, mom, and sister were already out of the car when I was still sitting in the back seat with the door open. Before I could get out, a baby baboon scurried over to our car, jumped inside, and plopped itself down onto my lap.
I was thrilled.
My sister was horrified.
My mom was slightly worried, but still smiling at that point.
My dad advised me to just stay calm and not move.
So that's what I did. I sat there and stared at my new friend as he/she looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. Eventually the little baboon climbed off my lap, which is when my dad told me to slowly leave the car.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Meanwhile, mother baboon — who was a lot larger and more menacing-looking than baby baboon — had joined her baby baboon.
That's when things started to get bad.
The baboons along this South African highway might as well be humans. They know how to open car doors (yes, they know how to use the handle), and they know just how to sift through your belongings so that they find what they're ultimately looking for: food.
After finding and demolishing a pack of cookies in the back seat, mother baboon — who I think at this point had been joined by one or two other baboons — decided to take on my sister's travel bag. We all watched as the baboons sat on the side of the highway and carefully took out every single item in that bag. They tried her toothpaste, took her camera out of its case, but once they found out it wasn't food, they simply put it back in the bag or left it on the ground.
It was somewhat fascinating to watch, but I couldn't really concentrate amid the loud sounds of my sister sobbing in the background. Not that I blamed her; her possessions were in the hands of baboons and we weren't exactly sure if or when we were going to get them back.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
After an exhaustive search, and having found no more food, the baboons abandoned my sister's bag — which one of us, probably my dad, quickly snagged back — but they didn't abandon our rental car. In fact, one of the baboons had pretty much declared the car its own by climbing onto the roof.
By now, since the family was all safe, my dad had started to brainstorm how we were going to get our car back unscathed. Baboons may have their human tendencies, but that doesn't mean they don't have their animalistic ones too. Coming into direct contact with adult baboons would be dangerous.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
We had flagged down some fellow drivers who said they would help us out. The plan was that my dad would make a run for our car, hop into the driver's seat, speed off (which would force the baboon to jump off the roof), and then my mom, sister, and I (with my sister's bag) would follow in the other car. Once we caught up to our rental car, the three of us would transfer cars and both would then drive off.
Miraculously, the plan worked just like that, and all of us managed to escape the attack of the highway baboons safely. Although I think our rental car took a little bit of a beating.
My parents spent the next few hours coaxing my sister out of the horror coma she had slipped into during the incident, while I just reflected on how cool it was that a baboon had sat on my lap.
Needless to say, we didn't make any more pit stops along the highway.
We're nearly two years into the life of Microsoft and Sony's new consoles, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. At this point, there's one huge issue with both consoles: storage space.
That's right – the least exciting aspect of both consoles is also their biggest flaw.
Each console is equipped with 500GB of storage out of the box; the issue is that games are huge. How huge? Upwards of 60GB. It doesn't take a skilled mathematician to see how many games will fit on your system.
And unlike consoles of the past, you can't just insert the disk and play. You have to actually install each game on the hard drive. That of course includes games you download from Xbox online to play.
Microsoft announced plans on Tuesday to fix the flaw: a 1TB version of the Xbox One. Finally! It looks the same as the original Xbox One, only with more space. Here's a video of the console with some extra information, straight from Microsoft:
Yes, there's also a slightly altered version of the Xbox One gamepad. It now works with any headset that has a standard 1/8th-inch jack (the one on your headphones). That's pretty great too, as it means you don't have to buy the silly adapter Microsoft was otherwise selling for $25. And yes, the original Xbox One is now permanently less expensive at $350 (down from $400).
But most importantly, you can download more than 10 games without worrying about deleting older games and potentially re-downloading them down the line.
If that sounds like a problem only "hardcore gamers" face, Business Insider's Matt Johnston – a self-admitted "casual" game player – rebukes that notion with his own experience. After getting an Xbox One during the holiday season of 2014, he's already running up against storage constraints. He has to keep deleting older games in order to play new ones. Given the size of these games, re-downloading them is both cumbersome and time-intensive. Worse still, even games purchased on disc require massive installations – the issue isn't solved by just going analog.
Sony, meanwhile, has yet to introduce a PlayStation 4 with larger internal storage. That doesn't mean the company doesn't have one in the pipeline – an FCC registration popped up earlier this month. Unlike Microsoft, Sony has yet to announce the new version of the PlayStation 4, but we expect it'll become official next week during the game industry's annual trade show: E3.
Apple's WWDC developers conference event lasted over two hours Monday, but it still couldn't fit in time to reveal and demonstrate all the new features and updates we'll find in iOS 9, the upcoming operating system for iPhones and iPads. We've picked out some of the cool features they couldn't demonstrate at WWDC that you'll surely find useful.
The new font
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
If you didn't know about it, you could miss it entirely. Apple is switching from the Helvetica Neue font to its new San Francisco font it currently uses on the Apple Watch. It's almost identical to Helvetica, but slightly taller and thicker in some instances. The number "0" would appear less round and more vertically oval, for example.
The keyboard will have lower case lettersImage may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The letter keys in previous version of iOS were always capitalized, which meant we were reliant on the Shit key's overly subtle color change from black to white to know if the next letter we'd be typing would be capitalized or not. It wasn't always clear which color indicated capitalization, so this is a welcome update.
iCloud Drive
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
This is a new app which will work much like Dropbox does by letting you manage documents, photos, and other files from different devices as long as you're connected to the internet or your carrier's network.
Easily search for settings
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
While iOS 9 will surely be as intuitive as its predecessors, there will still be times when we might not remember where to find the setting you're trying to change. The new search box in settings will let you search for the setting you're looking for without needing to dig through the Settings app.
iPhone screen stays off when face down
Your iPhone screen lights up for a few seconds when you receive a notification, but your iPhone's battery life can suffer if you get a lot of notifications and the screen keeps turning on throughout your day. As a battery-saving measure in iOS 9, you'll be able to place your phone face down on a flat surface and the screen will stay off.
Better notification shade in iPad in landscape mode
The notification shade for iPad in iOS 9 will feature two columns, whereas there was only one column in iOS 8, which didn't show as much useful information.
Disable vibration
According to MacRumors, we'll be able to disable the iPhone's vibrations, which could have a slight battery-saving effect if you receive lots of notifications throughout the day. It'll also prevent you from annoying coworkers if your phone constantly buzzes.
New apps designed for older iOS devices
Apple is said to implement "app thinning" into iOS 9, which means you'll be able to download a version of the app designed specifically for your iOS device. That means that if you have an older iOS device, you won't download unnecessary features in the app that you can't use, like NFC for Apple Pay for example.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Another Marvel hero is about to join the Netflix-verse: The company has announced Jon Bernthal of "The Walking Dead" will play Frank Castle, better known as The Punisher, in season two of "Daredevil."
In the comics, Castle — who has been previously portrayed by both Tom Jane and Ray Stevenson in "The Punisher" and "Punisher: War Zone," respectively — is a special forces vet who loses his family to violence brought about by organized crime. Believing the law doesn't significantly punish criminals, he begins a one-man war on crime, executing his targets so they can never hurt anyone again.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Punisher is a great fit for the darker, more violent tone of Netflix's "Daredevil," and a good foil for the series' version of Matt Murdock, who had a pretty...flexible approach to how much he was willing to hurt criminals. Introducing Castle into the hero's orbit will likely force him to further develop his ideals and cement his place as a street-level hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
This means we'll likely see a brutal showdown between the two characters, since Daredevil, while operating outside of the law, very much believes in it, and is certainly against killing. We don't know much about the plot of "Daredevil" season two, but if there's a Big Bad involved, then this also sets the stage for one of the greatest of action-movie tropes: The uneasy team-up.
Pretty exciting stuff.
Season 2 of "Daredevil" will arrive on Netflix in 2016.
The nutrition bar industry is booming, and grocery stores are thrilled.
"Stores love them because they are individually wrapped and have a long shelf life, yet they are popular and turn over fast,"writes Alana Dizik at The Wall Street Journal.
The price of the average snack bar has doubled to $2 from a decade ago, but consumers are happy to pay steep prices for the bars, WSJ writes.
Stores also make big profits from the convenience food.
"The cost of ingredients makes up only 25% of the price, and profit margins for bars tend to hover as high as 40% to 50%, compared with only 20% to 30% for most other packaged foods," WSJ writes.
Consumers are willing to pay up for bars from brands like Kind and Quest because they believe the protein is a good value.
Manufacturers have taken note of the opportunity: there are 1,012 nutrition bars on the market today versus 226 a year ago.
The Kind brand faced a scandal after the Food and Drug Administration suggested the bars weren't healthy.
In a warning letter addressed to Kind, the FDA said at least four types of Kind bars were in violation of "healthy" labeling rules, Bloomberg reported.
The FDA claimed the bars have too much saturated fat to be labeled "healthy" and not enough protein to use the plus symbol.
The brand adjusted its labeling after the criticism.
Apple announced a new low power mode Monday for devices running its upcoming update to iOS 9, the operating system for iPhones and iPads.
Apple's SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said during the announcement that the setting "pulls levers you didn't know you had" to give you up to three hours of added battery life with typical use.
That's great for iPhone users whose iPhones barely make it a day on a single charge.
Even without the low power mode, iOS 9 has been optimized to run more efficiently and squeeze an extra hour of battery life out of the iPhone.
However, the description below the on/off switch for Low Power mode in iOS 9 says "Low Power mode reduces performance and networking activity to extend battery life." That means the mode will shut down certain functions of your phone in order to save the battery.
If you've ever used an Android phone, you might have some idea how Low Power mode in iOS 9 might work. If you haven't, you could expect the following.
On many Android phones, power-saving features will turn off certain antennas like GPS or WiFi, and some will turn off automatic syncing for things like email, which means you'd only get new emails when you open your email app. You can pull these network-related "levers" yourself in iOS's settings, but it's nice to have them all pulled with a single flick of a switch rather than digging through Settings.
However, the "levers" Federighi might have referred to that we didn't know we had could be the internal hardware in your iPhone.
On some Android phones like the Galaxy S6, for example, the power-saving feature will actually slow down the internal hardware, which slows down the overall performance of the phone. You can still go about your typical usage, but it's not as quick or smooth.
While we don't exactly know yet how much of an impact on performance the low power mode in iOS 9 will have, it's likely your iPhone would slow down a little when you turn on the low power mode, which might be better suited for limited usage rather than typical usage.
This time, Wood's goal was helped by fellow substitute Jordan Morris who stepped over the long pass, leaving Wood one-on-one with a defender just outside the box.
Germany dominated most of the first half, taking an early 1-0 lead. However, the U.S. got a goal late in the first half from Mix Diskerud on a beautiful long pass from Michael Bradley.
The win was the first ever for the United States against Germany on German soil.
Allow me to explain. Within the span of three hours I managed to achieve not one, but two epic selfies.
My selfie hot streak took place at Yankee Stadium. I was there to attend the Yankees' game against the Angels and the team's annual "Photo Day" celebration.
This event involves fans being permitted to attend batting practice. At the practice, some players come up and take photos with the fans.
I had one picture I wanted — a selfie with designated hitter Alex Rodriguez.
When I saw him walking by, I asked Rodriguez if he would take a selfie with me and he obliged.
Normally, a shot with a huge, controversial celebrity would be the pinnacle of anyone's selfie day. However, about two hours later, I managed an even more impressive feat of selfie strength.
In the fifth inning, I saw the cameraman who takes video for the Yankee Stadium Jumbotron approaching the area where I was sitting. He had his eye on two gentlemen who were sitting behind me, but I had never made it on the Jumbotron. I knew I had to get on the screen and that it would not be complete without a selfie.
Of course, having my phone in the picture would completely ruin my Jumbotron experience and the resulting selfie. I would have to hold my phone away from myself.
With lightning fast reflexes, I opened my phone's camera, held it outward in my hand, and aimed it at the Jumbotron. When the cameraman came up and began filming the men behind me, I leaned back, made a "number one" gesture with my free hand, and attempted to repeatedly take pictures on my phone with the other. Since I wasn't looking at my phone, I could not tell whether I got the shot.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.My selfie hand was strong.
After the cameraman left, I saw that I managed to capture several pictures of my brief Jumbotron cameo.
It was a "Reverse Jumbotron Selfie," or what professionals refer to as an "RJS."
Soon after I appeared on the Jumbotron, my beloved Yankees went on a tear and rallied to recover from a 2-1 deficit. Coincidence? I think not.
I believe obtaining a selfie with A-Rod followed by a Reverse Jumbotron Selfie may be an unparalleled performance in the history of the selfie art form.
Do you agree or do you think you've done better? Let me know in the comments below.
Many people have argued for years that legalized prostitution will make the trade safer and fairer for sex workers.
But legalized prostitution may have unintended consequences, a European sex worker wrote in the New Republic on Monday.
Writing under the pseudonym Molly Smith, the sex worker pointed out that many countries that legalize prostitution leave sex workers tangled up in a mess of burdensome regulations.
Smith's article proposed an alternative to legalizing prostitution and regulating it heavily — merely decriminalizing it.
In many countries with legal prostitution, like Germany, prostitutes are hampered by bureacratic regulations that turn them into criminals if they don't comply, Smith argues.
The alternative is a model like New Zealand's, which has a big focus on protecting workers' health without as much bureacratic red tape. Smith refers to this approach as "decriminalized" sex work rather than legalized sex work.
Legalization would mean the regulation of prostitution with laws regarding where, when, and how prostitution could take place. Decriminalization eliminates all laws and prohibits the state and law-enforcement officials from intervening in any prostitution-related activities or transactions, unless other laws apply.
Here are some of the problems with the legalization model, Smith argues:
Widely presented as a more tolerant and pragmatic approach, the legalized model still criminalizes those sex workers who cannot or will not fulfill various bureaucratic responsibilities, and therefore retains some of the worst harms of criminalization. It disproportionately excludes sex workers who are already marginalized, like people who use drugs or who are undocumented. This makes their situation more precarious, and so reinforces the power of unscrupulous managers.
The US has actually had some experience with both models. Nevada has a highly regulated legalized prostitution system. Rhode Island also decriminalized prostitution in 2003.
According to University of California researchers, instances of reported rape and sexually transmitted diseases plummeted after Rhode Island stopped policing prostitution. Nevertheless, Rhode Island outlawed prostitution again in 2009.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand just cut its overnight interest rate to 3.25% from 3.5%, and now the New Zealand dollar, also known as the kiwi, is just getting crushed.
Near 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, the kiwi was down more than 2% against the US dollar quickly to as low as $0.7028.
In its statement, the RBNZ said:
With the fall in commodity prices and the expected weakening in demand, the exchange rate has declined from its recent peak in April, but remains overvalued. A further significant downward adjustment is justified. In light of the forecast deterioration in the current account balance, such an exchange rate adjustment is needed to put New Zealand’s net external position on a more sustainable path.
The RBNZ also added that it expects further easing may be appropriate.
And so, in short, what New Zealand wants is its currency to lose value against the dollar in order to gain back competitiveness in global trade, which it has lost amid the rise in the price of milk futures.
Student loan asset backed securities (SLABS) are popping up left and right on Wall Street.
But it's startups, not the established banks, that are set to profit billions.
For the uninitiated, SLABS consist of student loans that have been refinanced and packaged into a large offering.That offering is then cut into pieces and sold to institutional investors, like hedge funds and pension investments.
Startup companies including SoFi to Lending Club are getting in on this action and reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
Wednesday, SoFi closed a new SLABS offering totaling more than $400 million. That comes on the heels of a $100 million SLABS securitization from CommonBond also on Wednesday. Soon, SoFi will announce it has funded $3 billion in mortgage, student loan refi and personal loans.
The offerings are getting investment-grade ratings from agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's and boldface name advisers like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley regularly turn up on their deals.
All this comes as the student loan bubble reaches a new high virtually every month and federal estimates are in the $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion range for the amount of debt the government has issued to students.
More than 10% of those loans could be repackaged as SLABS, Goldman Sachs noted in March. (SLABS are only made up of loans issued to borrowers very strong credit.)
One of the reasons that SLABS have taken off is thanks to the Federal Reserve's record-low interest rates. This makes it easier for startups like SoFi to borrow the money they need to lend money to people who want to refinance their student loans.
Perhaps most attractive to investors in SLABS is that the debt has to be paid, even if the borrowers declare personal bankruptcy.
This year SoFi has already placed $700 million in SLABS. The company expects that figure could rise to $2 billion by the end of 2015. Quarterly SLABS are expected to commence in 2016 and CEO Mike Cagney says SoFi can sell $4 billion in asset backed securitizations in 2016. Altogether Cagney thinks SoFi can capture a total loan volume ranging from $13 billion to $15 billion next year.
The whole business of taking loans and repackaging them as securities scares a lot of people who were burned in the 2008 crises.
But SLABS are a lot different than the securities made out of home loans before 2008. The biggest difference in the companies' SLABS offerings is where the debt originates. The borrowers are high class borrowers. CommonBond CEO David Klein points out that his average customer has a credit score north of 760 and makes $140,000 a year. SoFi also says the loans it repackages were also made to highly qualified borrowers.
"Hey Jack, Arkansas wants you," shouted Evan Wolkenstein from the steps of 812 Guerrero St.
The crowd of protesters standing in the rain in front of him offered alternatives: Oklahoma, or more realistically, Palo Alto or Mountain View.
Then the chants started up again.
"Hey Google, You can't hide. We can see your greedy side."
Google lawyer Jack Halprin purchased 812 Guerrero Street, a seven-unit apartment building in the Mission District, for $1.4 million in 2012.
In 2014, he served tenants an eviction notice under the Ellis Act, which allows landowners to push existing tenants out so the buildings can "go out of business" and be converted into condos.
Wolkenstein, a high school teacher who has lived in the building, is one of those tenants facing eviction, but today wasn't his day to be evicted.
"Hell no, we won't go. Hell no, we won't go."
This week, tenant Rebecca Bauknight received a one-page Notice to Vacate that said she could be evicted from her apartment any time after 6 a.m. Wednesday morning. Bauknight has lived in the building for more than 25 years, a neighbor said.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Other tenants in the building recently won an appeal that effectively delayed their evictions from the building, but Bauknight did not join the law suit because of a struggle with mental illness, her neighbors said.
"It feels great to have time," Wolkenstein said. "The main thing that's so horrible about this is the dis-empowerment."
"Becky, el barrio está contigo. Becky, el barrio está contigo."
Outside of the house on Guerrero St., about 50 protestors stood in the rain. Neighbors scurried down their steps into an Uber across the street while one yelled down from the window at the group, which chanted for hours in unison on the rainy morning.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view."Even though it's sad, he could have evicted one household to move in," Wolkenstein said, taking a break from holding a sign to talk to Business Insider. "He knows he's evicting someone who struggles with mental illness."
"Scott Weiner you can't hide. We are on the tenants' side."
A police car sat on the corner and watched, but didn't enter to remove Bauknight, who was said to have stayed inside with her dog.
Meanwhile, the protesters who showed up at Halprin's building Wednesday carried signs with slogans like "Evict Google,""We love Becky," and "This is a community, not a Monopoly board."
Some were anarchists from Oakland who had traveled across San Francisco Bay. Many were local residents. Conversations revealed that many were in working class jobs, and had stood outside since 6:30 a.m. before they went to work to chant in the crowd.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view."He's not getting the message at all," Wolkenstein said. "From the day he walked in the door, he was closed and cruel."
Claudia Tirado, another schoolteacher and tenant in the building, led most of the chants, before two singers took over for a creative rendition of Hit the Road Jack. Tirado introduced her son who was sad about Bauknight's dog leaving the building. Tirado warned that "Green leads to greed" as she passed around the mic.
"Hit the road Jack, and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more."
Then, someone on the steps spotted it:"Here comes the Google bus!"
The protestors turned and raised their fists as it rambled past, its occupants safe from the rain. "Boo!" the crowd hissed.
And now the World Bank is also asking the Federal Reserve to wait until 2016 before it raises rates.
According to Bloomberg, the bank's chief economist, Kaushik Basu, said on Wednesday that the economy is sending mixed signals.
The World Bank also cut its forecast for US growth this year to 2.7% from 3.2% in its semiannual update on its forecasts for the global economy.
Last Thursday, the IMF urged the Fed to hold off on rate hikes until 2016 because there isn't enough evidence of wage or price inflation.
Fed chair Janet Yellen and other board members have said it would be appropriate to raise rates from 0% for the first time since December 2008 at some point this year if the economy continues to advance at its current pace.
Basu, like Wall Street, expects that the Fed will raise rates this year anyway.
Your 20s are a time of discovery. You figure out who you are, what you want, and how to make it happen.
The habits you establish during this time tend to stick and become the foundation of your adult life. Establishing positive ones can be the difference between success and failure.
We've sorted through a variety of advice from entrepreneurs, academics, and media influencers and found a few recurring themes. Here are the habits everyone should master early on to set themselves up for a lifetime of success.
Learn from every failure.
"Listening is like programming a computer," author and investor James Altucher writes. "You take stuff in, you process it, you spit life back. Learning is different. It shatters your life."
No matter what your financial, intellectual, and moral circumstances are, you will make terrible mistakes and have to deal with unexpected and unfair challenges. That aspect of life is largely out of your control, but you are always in control of your perception.
"Just relax," Altucher says. "Those things are going to happen. Enjoy them. You can't avoid them. These are opportunities to learn. That's your only goal."
Take measured risks.
"With no family to feed and no dependents counting on you, your 20s are without a doubt the years to take a leap and pursue your passion," says Jessie Goldenberg, who abandoned a promising media career shortly after college to start her own business, the successful mobile fashion boutique Nomad.
Of course, taking risks to the point of being reckless is as bad or worse a habit than suppressing ambition. Tim Ferriss, author of "The 4-Hour Workweek"recommends a simple exercise for weighing risk:
1. Fold a piece of paper into three columns.
2. In the first column, write down all of the things that could go wrong should your attempt fail. Think of the most terrible things possible.
3. In the second column, determine ways that you can mitigate the possibility of each of those bad consequences from happening.
4. In the third column, think of how you would recover from each of the scenarios you imagined and wrote in the first column.
Keep learning.
"Shark Tank" investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban became a billionaire in the tech industry, despite never formally studying computer science. It's why he says the best lesson he learned in his 20s was that "with time and effort I could learn any new technology that was released."
It's not a boast, but rather a message that if you want to have a successful, enriching career, you're going to need to make a habit of dedicating time and effort into acquiring knowledge that gives you an advantage.
Cuban explains that college is the time you pay to learn, but "now that you have graduated, it's your chance to get paid to learn. And what if you aren't a recent college grad? The same logic applies. It is time to get paid to learn."
Associate with those who make you better.
Tech entrepreneur and author Ben Casnocha has worked closely with LinkedIn founder and chairman Reid Hoffman for several years and writes that the greatest lesson Hoffman taught him was "that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time around. You really are the company you keep."
There's no need for maintaining toxic personal or professional relationships out of loyalty.
"If you really want to reach your highest potential you have to consistently surround yourself with people who challenge you, who are strong where you are weak, and work just as hard or harder than you do,"says Beth Doane, founder of Raintees.
Build meaningful professional relationships.
And on that note, don't develop a habit of going to so-called networking events and blindly tossing out and collecting business cards with the hope that someone will get back in touch and help you out.
Always take an opportunity to meet someone interesting and talented, and prioritize personality over perceived usefulness, says Jon Levy, founder of the Influencers. "It's adding diversity to your network that truly helps it. The reason is, every time you add an additional person that's in your industry, you're not expanding your network very much because you all probably know the same people," he says.
He recommends taking Wharton professor Adam Grant's advice. As Grant told Business Insider last year: "If you're a giver, then you build quality relationships, and with those relationships you're exposed to opportunity over the long term. You actually increase your own luck so far as you contribute things to other people."
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Save and invest for the future.
It's essential to develop healthy personal finance habits, and the earlier the better.
Consider taking a portion of your paychecks and putting it into an emergency savings fund, a stash of money you don't touch until you absolutely need it. A good goal to start working toward is accumulating the equivalent of three months' salary, says certified financial planner Jonathan Meaney.
A common theme among Quora users is wishing they'd shed the bad eating and drinking habits of their youth and developed a fitness regimen before the physical limitations of growing older began to set in.
"Your hangovers will be so bad at 28 that the idea of staying out drinking all night will be a hilarious idea to you," musician Meggie Sutherland Cutter writes on Quora. Choose an hour at the gym over a happy hour every now and then.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said.
Jobs said this mindset will make you understand the importance of your work. "And the only way to do great work is to love what you do," he said. "If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."
Settling means giving in to someone else's vision of your life, or the pressure to prioritize salary above all else. "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition," Jobs said.
Keep work from overtaking your personal life.
As you strive to make something of yourself in your 20s, don't develop a habit of ignoring your personal life.
"If I could go back in time, I'd introduce my 22-year-old self to a quotation by the writer Brian Andreas: 'Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life,'"Huffington Post cofounder Arianna Huffington writes on LinkedIn.
Huffington says that advice would have saved her from the "perpetually harried, stressed-out existence I experienced for so long."
Learn when to take a step back from everything and appreciate what you've accomplished and what you already have. And if you are obsessed with your work, understand that you will actually be making yourself more productive by allowing yourself to enjoy life.
In the realm of "dream jobs," video game tester ranks pretty highly for a significant number of people.
But if you dream of endless days spent playing your favorite video games, you'll be sorely disappointed.
As an unnamed video game tester explained during a recent Reddit AMA, success as a QA tester in the video game industry means taking your job seriously and meeting high expectations.
The tester, who goes by the user name HigherCalibur, said he's been working in the industry as a quality assurance tester for about 10 years, and during his time he's worked for several different companies and has been credited on more than 30 game titles.
Here are some questions he answered during the live chat that provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of video game testing. (We've edited questions and responses for clarity.)
A. I had a friend in customer support at EA Games who knew a guy in Human Resources that brought me in on a group interview. I made it through that and the two weeks of training they put the newbies through, and I started my first testing job.
A. A lot of people ask if all testers do is play video games all day, and that would definitely be a no. While I do work on video games most of the day, I definitely don't play them like a normal, sane person would.
My objective is to break the games in any way possible and to report anything that breaks to people on our programming, design, or art teams (generally referred to as "devs").
For example, I've had to do what is called "matrix testing" for fighting games, which is where you test every character against every character on every stage. Then there's "functionality testing," which means making sure game features work according to design documentation.
I also don't test the game itself all day. I have meetings to attend, emails that need to be sent out and replied to, bugs to report and regress, and all of the other stuff you would assume someone in a normal office job would need to do. I just do it at a place that makes video games.
A. Usually my day starts out with regression testing, which is when I see if programmers successfully fixed a bug previously found. We get a new build (version) and refer to our bug tracker database to find anything that developers claimed they fixed. Anything fixed gets closed, anything not fixed gets reopened, noted, and sent back to the person who claimed to fix it.
After that, we usually just go through any game features that are a priority to check. These tasks are typically sent down from the production team, since they manage and oversee the project itself. Anything that needs "hands-on" attention at that moment gets it.
Finally, if nothing needs our direct attention, we usually just engage in "open" testing. That depends on the individual tester, to be honest. I personally like doing organic playthroughs using as few cheats or dev commands as possible in order to make sure the user experience is where we want it.
Some folks pound on specific systems. Some folks go through all of the text with a fine-toothed comb. Any bugs we find, we simply write up and send off to the member of the dev team responsible for fixing the particular issue.
A. Being able to keep your cool in a frustrating situation is key. Crunch time is one of the most mentally draining and awful situations you can be in. But if you thrive in stressful situations, then you've definitely got the mental fortitude to handle the job.
You also need to be a very skeptical, analytical person. Never take someone's word for it. If someone says something is working properly, check it anyway.
Being a flexible thinker who's able to pick something apart without knowing what it is or how to make it yourself is also key.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Lastly, being able to communicate with different kinds of people is vital.
I've had to learn how to communicate with artists, programmers, and designers, all of whom think very differently and have to be handled in different ways.
Programmers might prefer a blunt, direct approach, but that will typically put an artist into a defensive mindset.
Knowing how to communicate with people is extremely important because you're telling them how something is broken on a daily basis and, if they don't understand what you're trying to communicate, then you're wasting time that could be spent fixing the issue.
A. Usually pretty low. The industry standard where I live is around $16 to $18 an hour, but those places are rarely looking for testers these days, and almost never hire people with no experience. More often than not you're going to start at around $10 an hour.
A. Usually you don't get benefits, but since the state of California just required all businesses to provide benefits to workers after 90 days, now even contract employees are getting health benefits at least.
As for other perks we usually get free copies of whatever game we work on and other free game-oriented swag. I have so many game t-shirts from stuff I've worked on, it's kind of crazy.
A. Yes. It's very, very rare to find a QA position that is direct-hire. However, most of them are now contract-to-hire positions and around three to six months per contract. After this you're evaluated and hired on permanently if you work your butt off and get along well in the team environment.
A. You kind of have to know where to look. There are a small handful of staffing agencies that work to get people their first jobs in the industry. I would also suggest checking out Linkedin for anything temporary since the temp jobs are usually for new people trying to break in.
I should mention that QA is a good starting point but is usually not a career. You should definitely look at what you want to do in the industry now and take steps to get there. Want to be a designer? Make something. Want to be an artist? Make something.
A. Yes. God, yes. For every game I have enjoyed working on, there are three or four games that just make me want to claw my eyes out. Most of them are kids games, adaptations of ancient arcade games for modern platforms, or games that are just bad.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The six months or so for normal testing cycles are mind-numbing if you didn't find some way to enjoy what you're working on. This is usually made worse if there's a "cooler" project going on at the same time. You become jealous of those people who look like they're having more fun and enjoying their job.
A. Pretty much, but you really need to know people and be able to have an "in." Most of the time, it's because you know and are friends with the lead on the project. Yeah, it seems immature, but games QA is very cliquey. One of the reasons I started smoking in the first place was to get into the smoking circle at work and socialize with that group.
A. I know QA is extremely volatile and there's no such thing as job security. If a company hires a ton of contractors, then they usually keep on anyone they like and ditch the chaff. But that's just how it is. One day you can be filing a bunch of crash bugs, the next your contract is up and you're filing for unemployment. It happens.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Q. What's the best and worst part of being a QA tester? A. I love the fact that I get to work on games for a living and that everyone around me has a passion for games. I love my job, and I love that I've been able to work with the people I have. Some of my closest friends are people I've met doing this job. The thing I dislike most is that it's incredibly hard to move one's career forward. That can be a deal breaker for some.
A. I rarely, if ever, play a game I tested outside of work. The only exceptions to that are "Soul Calibur 3,""Tekken: Dark Resurrection,""Star Trek Online," and "Neverwinter Online."
A. I've long since learned to "switch off" after work so I don't pick apart something I enjoy. That said, I definitely don't play games as much as I used to. Binge gaming is a rarity for me these days, and I almost never go out and buy the newest game release. The last game I bought on launch day was probably Warlords of Draenor (released in November, 2014) and before that was Space Marine (released in September, 2011).
A."Mega Man 2." Not only does it have my favorite soundtrack from any of the Mega Man games, but I have very fond memories of playing it with my Dad, passing the controller back and forth between lives, reading off the passwords from the screen after beating a stage so he can put it down in his notebook.
I've always been a huge fan of the "Mega Man" series in general because I like the concept of defeating an enemy to get their powers and using those powers to exploit the weakness of another boss.
A."Street Fighter." Hands-down the best G.I. Joe movie ever made. Seriously, watch it again and just assume both armies are the Joes and Cobra — It'll blow your goddamn mind. Also, I love watching Raúl Juliá and Jean-Claude Van Damme ham it up.
Barring that? Probably "Mortal Kombat." In my opinion it's still the best translation from game story to movie ever (a game about a fighting tournament becomes a movie about a fighting tournament).
Built in 2003, the 12,800-square-foot, Italian country manor sits on 1.73 acres of land. It's within walking distance of the Menlo Circus Club, a distinguished equestrian center.
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You will be greeted with luxury as soon as you open the door.
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The family room boasts wood floors and plenty of natural light.
In the wake of the financial crisis, the banks and hedge funds of Wall Street were hit with a slew of new regulations.
