Why people are a better brand investment than machines

Today, TSB's 'local bank for local people' claims are looking like a sham.
Photo credit: Gnesener1900

...especially if you are a bank.

A crisis is the one thing which is guaranteed to expose the reality of a brand versus the contrived and manicured fantasy which is used to promote it.

By Neil Patrick

TSB’s chief executive, Paul Pester admitted this week, ‘we are on our knees’, following a failed server migration of 1.3 billion customer records. This has gone disastrously wrong leaving hundreds of thousands of customers unable to pay their bills. Worse, some customers have been able to log into other customer's accounts, see their data and even make payments with other people's money.

The bank's employees have been working day and night to try and help customers solve the resulting problems like paying for their rent and utilities. But as the week came to a close, and despite a team of IBM 'experts' being parachuted in as an elite shock force to assist, the problems were still not completely solved.

Business customers have faced consequential losses such as non-payment of suppliers and non-delivery of goods. TSB staff have been so stressed and frustrated in their efforts to help customers that some have collapsed in tears, saying it's the worst experience of their working lives.

This situation is more than embarrassing and stressful for everyone involved. It demolishes the carefully constructed brand that TSB has been investing in, positioning the bank as one which places people at heart of everything it believes in:



TSB's regulator, the FCA, is now investigating the issue and the Information Commissioner says she wants to know more about potential data breaches. The Government has asked for assurances and wants answers to its questions to TSB. Even when the IT problems are solved, the pain will not be over for TSB.

This sorry tale will eventually become a footnote I am sure, but today, right now, it is fraying nerves and spreading havoc in TSB's customers’ lives. And it seems inevitable that many customers will leave the bank at their first opportunity after this crisis is resolved. For TSB, this disaster looks likely to cost them much more than the £100m of savings the migration originally promised.

Meanwhile in China, the world’s first robot-only bank branch has just opened. This is heralded as an exciting step towards a modern, tech enabled future; a homo-sapien free environment, cleansed of the inconsistencies and inefficiencies which are allegedly the hallmark of humans.

The irony here is that it is the people at TSB branches that are keeping the bank from sinking when faulty technology has dragged the whole edifice almost into ruin.

Banking and IT have an old and awkward relationship.  Banking IT systems are not like apps where glitches can be smoothed out over time. They demand 100% reliability and complete accuracy from the get go 100% of the time. Anything less is a big problem. Building or significantly changing any banking platform is a high risk and demanding challenge.

As we've seen with TSB, government and regulators are today emboldened, swift and merciless when it comes to punishing banks for errors and misdemeanors. After years of a light-touch attitude, post 2008, the climate has changed and banks are today probably the most closely regulated and scrutinized business sector in the UK.

Thirty years ago, banks were early adopters of what we now call data harvesting. This was decades before Facebook managed to finally wake the world to the importance of data security and privacy. Sure, we had Data Protection legislation and regulators. And banks were generally compliant with their data protection obligations. Regulatory enforcements were few and the public’s greatest annoyances were telephone sales calls and junk mail.

But this customer irritation at some of the earliest (ab)uses of technology by banks ought to have provided early warning that a very human-based relationship demanding and rewarding trust was unlikely to be entirely substitutable by anonymous automation. In fact, I’d argue that trust is the number one most essential requirement for a customer’s relationship with their bank.

Yet, this fundamental truth seems to have been ignored in the relentless drive for ever lower costs. The endless push for greater speed, and cheaper services seems to have trumped every other aspect. Especially trust.

In areas such as marketing and loan application processing, banks were some of the first businesses in the world to decide that IT could make faster, more accurate, more consistent and cheaper decisions than their human employees. This led to the steady removal of middle managers and the downgrading of staff until a bank branch was staffed by people who had little more skill than supermarket checkout operators (and similar pay and conditions too).

Now these last remaining humans in bank branches are facing imminent extinction as they too are replaced by robots which don’t go on holiday or demand pay increases (or any pay at all for that matter).

Meanwhile, banks (always some of the most unpopular and complained about businesses), are shutting branches, removing staff, and turning everything digital. This cost cutting is justified in the name of customer convenience and modernisation. And to cement the argument, every senior bank spokesperson will tell us that this is what most of their customers want.

But most is not all. And the duality where banks are simultaneously some of the least-loved businesses while moving ever closer to completely people-free service, is not a recipe to build any sort of customer love and affection.

There is and has been for decades, a space in the market for a bank which recognises that customer service delivered by people to people is an untapped and growing market. TSB recognised this and decided this was their opportunity to command a unique market position. Unfortunately, they forgot that occupying this position demands not just that you proclaim it, but also that you live by it.

Most people require relatively little from their bank. Strong security. Error free payment processing. Good and caring advice. Easy access. Fast and painless resolution of problems. It is hard to see how a combination of branch closures, increased automation and demoralised, low paid staff help deliver these things.

And 'adding value' (sic) by dubious marketing adds insult to injury. Hardly anyone really cares about an extra 0.1% of interest, or free travel insurance, or fancy TV advertising. They do care about being well looked after.

Banking for most people is service they cannot live without. And whilst I don’t think banks can or should be backwards looking, there is a stronger argument than ever for a bank which truly understands they are in a people business. And that investing in people might just be a safer bet than investing in their replacement by machines.

It's now official - The Global Jobs Crisis is real

By Neil Patrick

When I set up this blog, I was convinced that the subtitle – Global Jobs Crisis was appropriate and justified.

But many of my friends online and offline commented that they thought I was being rather apocalyptic. Even sensationalist. After all it does rather fit with the sort of conspiracy theory stuff which abounds in the online media world.

But I stuck with it nonetheless. Not because I wanted to be alarmist or a doom-monger. On the contrary. I wanted to raise awareness of the problem and try to find solutions that would work for people at a personal level.

It was simply the most appropriate tagline I could come up with which described the unfolding situation as I saw it. And with every week that passes I see more evidence that it remains the right subtitle.

So today I was interested to see that two years after I started this blog, none other than the World Bank has issued a report which describes the global jobs crisis in forensic detail.

I’d forgive anyone for not noticing it. It went more or less unremarked upon by the mainstream media. It’s titled in typical government speak and somewhat benignly: “G20 labour markets: outlook, key challenges and policy responses”.

The World Bank, Washington
By Shiny Things [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] via Wikimedia

Behind the dull bureaucratic title is the starkest confirmation I've yet seen which describes in depressing detail, the true nature of the problem.

The world is facing a global jobs crisis that is killing the chances of reigniting economic growth. Worse there is no magic bullet to solve the problem.

The Study was released at a Group of 20 (G-20) Labor and Employment Ministerial Meeting in Australia in September 2014. The Bank says an extra 600 million jobs need to be created worldwide by 2030 just to cope with the expanding population.

"There's little doubt there is a global jobs crisis," says the World Bank's senior director for jobs, Nigel Twose.

"As this report makes clear, there is a shortage of jobs — and quality jobs.

"And equally disturbingly, we're also seeing wage and income inequality widening within many G-20 countries, although progress has been made in a few emerging economies, like Brazil and South Africa."

He said that overall emerging market economies had done better than advanced G-20 countries in job creation, driven primarily by countries such as China and Brazil, but the outlook was bleak.

"Current projections are dim. Challenging times loom large," said Twose.

Who says something really matters

Local mainstream media is so heavily influenced by national government spin that we cannot take anything that is said at face value. And I do my best to expose the most blatant deceptions about jobs and employment news that I come across.

Which is why this report has to be taken seriously. The World Bank isn’t beyond the influence of key stakeholders with their own agendas. Many have argued that the World Bank which has had an American as its President ever since its creation in 1946, promotes a US based world view.

And I have concerns that the World Bank still clings to a largely discredited view on monetary systems.

But critically, the World Bank isn’t controlled by politicians. And that’s the most important thing in my view. No-one at the World Bank is trying to win votes from citizens. They gain no benefit by telling people that things are better than they really are.


100 million unemployed

The report, compiled with the OECD and International Labor Organization, said more than 100 million people were unemployed in G-20 economies and 447 million were considered "working poor," living on less than US$2 a day.

It said despite a modest economic recovery in 2013-14, global growth was expected to remain below trend with downside risks in the foreseeable future, while weak labor markets were constraining consumption and investment.

The persistent slow growth will continue to dampen employment prospects, it said, and warned that real wages had stagnated across many advanced G-20 nations and even fallen in some.

"There is no magic bullet to solve this jobs crisis, in emerging markets or advanced economies," said Twose.

"We do know we need to create an extra 600 million jobs worldwide by the year 2030 just to cope with the expanding population.

"That requires not just the leadership of ministries of labor but their active collaboration with all other ministries — a whole of government approach cutting across different ministries, and of course the direct and sustained involvement of the private sector."

The Group of 20 leaders have called for each member country to develop growth strategies and employment action plans. They emphasized the need for coordinated and integrated public policies, along with resilient social protection systems, sustainable public finance and well-regulated financial systems.

"Coordinated policies in these areas are seen as the foundation for sustainable, job-creating economic growth," says the report.

So there we have it. The responsibility for solving the problem has been passed to national governments. And they are urged to adopt a cross-departmental approach to solving the problem.

Given the nature of governmental silos and the painfully slow way in which government policies are formulated and implemented, I’m not holding my breath for any big breakthroughs anytime soon.

And sadly the subtitle of this blog seems to be one thing which isn’t about to become redundant for a long while yet.

Why qualifications won't guarantee you a job anymore

By Neil Patrick

Research says there's an abundance of skilled technical workers in the US. Employers say they can't find enough people with technical skills...so who's right?

Last week I was sent a report by a friend. It was a lengthy research piece which reported an oversupply of STEM (science, technical, engineering and maths) qualified workers in the US.

Since he’s an engineer who’s been engaged in a very lengthy job search, he couldn't square this report with the constant allegations from employers that they can’t find the right people with the right technical skills. He thought something didn’t add up. And I agreed with him.

The findings in the report were consistent with other examinations of the STEM labor market. These found no evidence of a general shortage of STEM workers. (That’s because they weren’t looking at the right things as I’ll explain shortly).

STEM jobs remain scarce not workers

In 2012, in the US, there were more than twice as many people with STEM degrees (immigrant and native) as there were STEM jobs — 5.3 million STEM jobs vs. 12.1 million with STEM degrees. And only one-third of US natives with a STEM degree that hold a job do so in a STEM occupation.

Further, one-third of STEM workers do not have a STEM degree, suggesting that absence of a STEM qualification isn’t an insurmountable obstacle to many jobs in the sector.

Perhaps most tellingly, real wages for almost all categories of STEM workers have shown almost no growth for more than a decade. None of this is consistent with the idea that STEM workers are in short supply.

So why are employers reporting the opposite?

At the root of the problem is the fact that the researchers were academics. In other words, out of touch with the real world. In fact it was quite possible, they’d never even set foot in it, such is the way that universities often hermetically seal their research people away from business and industry.

So where’s the error?

The researchers had used the number of people holding STEM degrees as their prime metric to measure the total available workforce of techies, and on this basis they concluded that the supply was ample to meet the needs of employers.

Here’s why that’s a mistake…

Employers do not view educational qualifications as their key measure of suitability for employment. It’s a hygene factor. It qualifies you for consideration, not for hiring. So it’s perfectly possible for employers to say they have a skills shortage because educational qualifications alone do not make candidates automatically employable. They also require (rightly or wrongly) evidence of relevant previous work experience and personality fit.

Introducing the latest bubble…it’s higher education

We all know that the recession means that business growth has been in short supply over the last 5 or 6 years. Meanwhile the educational fat cats have continued to happily make money by churning out people with qualifications, even though suitable jobs have been too scarce to allow sufficient numbers to gain relevant work experience.

It’s a pipe, connected to a tap – the tap has been left turned on and the pipe has contracted (at least for the past few years), resulting in an inevitable blockage.

Source: ONS

The higher education sector has become big business. And like all big businesses, it’s hungry for constant growth. As the graph above shows, the proportion of graduates in the UK population has more than doubled since 1992.

The educational ‘export’ market has been a particularly lucrative business as the aspirational middle classes have massively expanded in the far east economies. Every time I set foot in a UK higher education institution, the place is packed with overseas students.

This bubble  is unsustainable...

My good friend and bubble expert Jesse Colombo has done a great deal of forensic work examining the education bubble in the US. I’ll just quote a little of his analysis here:

Even more alarming than the rate of tuition growth is the blistering increase in total outstanding student loans, which grew 511% since 1999 to $1 trillion (surpassing total credit card debt for the first time), with today’s average student graduating with 50% more student debt than graduates in 2001.

Student loans made by the federal government rose a white-hot 31.9 percent in the 12 months through November 2011. Even Moody’s is warning that student loans may be the next financial bubble to burst, while a recent FICO survey shows that two-thirds of bank risk managers are seriously concerned about the student debt loads held by students in the country.

For more of Jesse’s detailed analysis of this topic just follow this link.

When I went to university here in the UK in 1981, well under 15% of my peers did the same. And the state paid for it by means of a modest, means-tested grant with a contribution from my parents (thanks Mum and Dad) which I had to supplement by working at (instead of drinking at) a bar.

Back then, universities were not businesses. For better or worse they were state institutions. And they acted like it…they were slow to change and whilst they could spell "innovative financial leverage", they didn't really practice it.

But that was all set to change when government decided that it was a good idea (i.e. vote winning) to proclaim that university education was elitist and it was socially just to get more young people from less privileged backgrounds into the university system. It also appeared to be a handy way to reduce the growing numbers of the young unskilled unemployed. Instead of a glut of young people signing on for state benefits as soon as they left school, this would create a new generation of educated and aspirational young people, eager to take the economy to hew heights. Except this had to be paid for by them signing up to government debt, using what I can only describe as career mortgages.

The trouble is that whilst I agree with its egalitarian principles, this vision missed the vital recognition that this expanded output from the education system needed to dovetail precisely with the ever evolving needs of business and industry.

And that's where everything went horribly and tragically wrong.

So do we have a more employable population? Not quite. While the elite universities have expanded only modestly, protected their brand value and retained their high quality standards, there’s been an absolute explosion of less selective, lower quality degree courses made available to almost anyone who is willing to pay for them.

Young and old alike are both losers in this game. Oversupply of university educated people has created a glut of unsatisfied aspirations and debt for the young, and done little to provide businesses with the skills they seek in their workforces.

For the mature and experienced, it’s seen the perception of the value of their years of accumulated know how crumble in the eyes of employers who place the highest value on the most recent qualifications (provided this is backed up with recent and relevant experience).

Oh and of course the UK and US governments have also burdened each and every one of us with another massive government debt that will sooner or later have to be written off or bailed out...

Spain: Corrupt government officials steal £1.5bn EU jobs aid

By Neil Patrick

How the EC is failing to help people get jobs… and squandering our money in the attempt.

On Thursday, buried at the bottom of page 17 of the Daily Telegraph, I came across a truly shocking story which shows how the EC is failing to help people cope with the jobs crisis.

There’s an online version of the story here

Spanish government officials are under investigation by the Spanish anti-corruption police (who must be very busy people), concerning the embezzlement of £1.5bn of EU funds given to Andalusia to help people get back into work.

Back in November 2012 here, I reported (largely negatively) on the announcement by the EC that they were going to use EU funds to stimulate job growth across the Eurozone, particularly in the Southern member states.

I felt that the measures proposed would be ineffectual. Firstly because labour isn't as mobile as economists and politicians would like, and secondly because I felt it would be hugely expensive and inefficient.

But I was wrong. I massively underestimated just how inefficient this policy would be.

The first examples of just how hopeless it has been are now coming to light.

Anti-corruption detectives in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia believe this is the nation’s biggest ever fraud…and in Spain, that's saying something.

£1.5 billion! To write this down in full gives you a sense of the scale. It’s £1,500,000,000. To think about it another way, let’s say you were spending one pound a second, every second of every day. That would equate to £3,600 every hour; £86,400 every day. To spend £1.5 billion would take you 48 years!

Spain: A pretty face hides some nasty secrets

The population of Andalusia is 8.45 million people (2012). That’s roughly the same as the population of New York City. So the total EC grant amounted to an investment of £177 for every man, woman and child in Andalusia. Except they never got it.

So even £1.5 billion shared out amongst a population of 8.45 million isn't a lot. But shared between a few corrupt individuals it's a fortune. By the way, in Spain, the average household net-adjusted disposable income is currently just £15,000 a year.

To sum it all up, we have corrupt officials in Spain helping themselves to money taken from European taxpayers by an unelected suprastate that was intended to help the unemployed in a region hard hit by recession.

And that money has gone. Probably never to be seen again. How much will the police and legal investigation work cost? I don't know but it won't be cheap or quick and will compound the costs of the whole sorry episode.

For more details of this story, please see the Spain Report’s news item here.

Our retirement plans are ruined…and why this may be good news

By Neil Patrick

We all know the way our careers were supposed to go. Roughly speaking.

We’d get a bunch of qualifications, start work, change employers maybe four or five times, work hard, get promoted and then at around 50 or so have a comfortable cruise towards our retirement at 65. Then we’d be able to relax and enjoy the next 20 or so years.

We’ll that’s all gone now for most of us.

I’m sorry to say that it doesn't make much difference what your employer or financial advisor recommends. If you are a baby boomer in the US, UK and much of the EU, unless you’ve been so successful (or lucky) in your career that you are sitting on a very large pension fund, this version of our life story is a fairy tale.

You probably know this.

In the US, some 82 percent of workers aged 50 and older say it is at least “somewhat likely” they will work for pay in retirement, according to a poll released in October by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago. Almost half of boomers polled now expect to retire later than they previously thought - on average nearly three years later than what they thought at age 40.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. People have a habit of being unduly optimistic when thinking about their financial position if it’s much beyond the next year or so. It’s a combination of hope and difficulty in facing up to harsh realities.

Some of the other statistics emerging in the US are really horrific.

One in 6 reported having less than $1,000 in retirement savings and 1 in 4 working respondents aren’t saving for retirement outside of Social Security. Some 12 percent of non-retired people reported borrowing from a 401(k) or other retirement plan in the past year. Though 29 percent reported at least $100,000 in savings, some find even that’s not enough.

“All too often, people have a lump-sum illusion. They think, ‘I have $100,000 in my 401(k),’ and they think, ‘I’m rich,’” “said Olivia Mitchell, a retirement specialist who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.“But it doesn’t add up to much. It certainly is not going to keep them in champagne and truffles.”

Make no mistake this isn’t a blip, or a phase. It’s a demolition of the life expectations of a generation. 

You can go searching for people to blame if you like. There are plenty who must carry at least a portion of the guilt. Personally, I think it’s more important to invest our energies in something more productive and positive.

Like working out what to do about this.

The good news is that humans are much more resilient and adaptable than we sometimes give ourselves credit for.

And when we are confronted with difficulties, we often respond in much more creative ways than we expect.

I have a friend who is 60. Two or three years ago he was on the face of it, doing well in his career in sales. He was the Sales Director for a booming manufacturing business. And much of that success was down to his drive and natural flair at finding clients and keeping them coming back for more. He’d be in his office every morning from about 7am, then from about 10am would be hunting down new clients and working on developing relationships with the current clients.

He was very, very good at his job. And the business was growing largely due to his abilities to win new orders and contracts. But I knew a different side. I knew that he was locked in a war with his boss. There was a huge power and personality fight going on. And this was steadily sapping my friend’s motivation and strength.

His stress levels were through the roof.

In the end he became ill. Very ill. He developed diabetes. He lost weight. He looked like a shadow of the man he used to be.

But he did the most sensible thing he could. He quit his job.

For a while he looked around for other jobs. But at 60, you guessed it, there was no-one interested in hiring him into the sort of job he just left. Especially since he’d quit at it.

Fast forward to today. I had a beer with my friend a couple of weeks ago. He looked strong and fit. He had recovered the twinkle in his eye and the infectious grin that he always used to have. He was happy and healthy again.

He hadn’t been hired into a new job. He’d created his own.

He was always great at DIY. And he loves doing it. He’s simply taken his hobby and turned it into his job. And by doing great work and looking after his customers better than almost any tradesman I ever met, he has far more work stacked up than he can actually do.

He's happier than he’s been for years. He has a job he loves and the customers are queuing up round the block.

Is he worried about his pension and retirement?

I doubt it, I really do.

Unemployed Boomers Need Help NOW

By Alinda Tugend

I WAS recently talking to a friend at a party whose husband - in his 60s - has been unemployed for more than two years. While there are many challenges, she said, one of the hardest things is trying to balance hope with reality.

She wonders how to support him in his continued quest to find a job in his field of marketing and financial services while at the same time encouraging him to think about what his life would be like if he never worked in that field or had a full-time job again.

“I wanted to move to what I thought was a healthier place. I wanted to turn the page,” said my friend, who asked to be identified by her middle name, Shelley, since she didn’t want to publicize her family’s situation. “He saw it as vote of no confidence.”

For those over 50 and unemployed, the statistics are grim. While unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are lower than for young people who are recently out of school, once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding work. Over the last year, according to the Labor Department, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers.

There are numerous reasons - older workers have been hit both by the recession and globalization. They’re more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, and since their salaries tend to be higher than those of younger workers, they’re attractive targets if layoffs are needed.

Even as they do all the things they’re told to do- network, improve those computer skills, find a new passion and turn it into a job - many struggle with the question of whether their working life as they once knew it is essentially over.

This is something professionals who work with and research the older unemployed say needs to be addressed better than it is now. Helping people figure out how to cope with a future that may not include work, while at the same time encouraging them in their job searches, is a difficult balance, said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Psychologists and others who counsel this cohort need to help them face the grief of losing a job, and also to understand that jobs and job-hunting are far different now from how they used to be.

“The contract used to be, ‘I am a loyal employee and you are a loyal employer. I promise to work for you my entire career and you train, promote, give benefits and a pension when I retire.’ Now you can’t count on any of that,” she said. “The onus is all on the employee to have a portfolio of skills that can be transferable.”

People in their 20s and 30s know that they need to market themselves and always be on the lookout for better opportunities, she said, something that may seem foreign to those in their 50s and 60s.

If a counselor or psychologist “doesn’t understand how the world of work has changed, they’re not helping at all,” she said. “You can’t just talk about how it feels.”

In response to this concern, Professor Fouad and her colleagues have drawn up guidelines for the American Psychological Association to help psychotherapists better assist their clients with workplace issues and unemployment. It is wending its way through the association’s committees.

Of course, not everyone who is unemployed and over 50 is equal. For some, the reality is that they need to find another job - any job - to survive. Others have resources that can allow them to spend more time looking for a job that might have the salary or status of their former position.

In the first case, Professor Fouad said, “You need to decide what is the minimum amount of money you can make and how to go about finding it.” In the second case, she said, it’s necessary to examine what work means to you and how that may have to change.

Is it the high social status? The identity? The relationship with co-workers? It is important to examine these areas, perhaps with the help of a professional counselor, Professor Fouad said, to discover how to find such meaning or relationships in other areas of life.

Sometimes simply changing the way you look at your situation can help. My friend Shelley’s husband, Neal, who also asked that I use his middle name, said the best advice he received from a friend was “don’t tell people you’re unemployed. Tell them you’re semiretired. It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself.”

He also has friends facing the same issues, who understand his situation. Such support groups, whether formal or informal, are very helpful, said Jane Goodman, past president of the American Counseling Association and professor emerita of counseling at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.

“Legitimizing the fact that this stinks also helps,” she said. “I find that when I say this, clients are so relieved. They thought I was going to say, ‘buck up.’ ”

And even more, “they should know the problem is not with them but with a system that has treated them like a commodity that can be discarded,” said David L. Blustein, a professor of counseling, developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, who works with the older unemployed in suburb of Boston. “I try to help clients get in touch with their anger about that. They shouldn’t blame themselves.”

Which, of course, is easy to say and hard to do.

“I know not to take it personally,” Neal said, “but sure, I wonder at times, what’s wrong with me? Is there something I should be doing differently?”

It is too easy to sink into endless rumination, to wonder if he is somehow standing in his own way, like a cancer patient who is told that her attitude is her problem, he said.

Susan Sipprelle, producer of the Web site overfiftyandoutofwork.com and the documentary “Set for Life” about the older jobless, said she stopped posting articles like “Five Easy Steps to get a New Job.”

“People are so frustrated,” she said. “They don’t want to hear, ‘Get a new wardrobe, get on LinkedIn.’ ”

As one commenter on the Facebook page for Over Fifty and Out of Work said, “I’ve been told to redo my résumé twice now. The first ‘expert’ tells me to do it one way, the next ‘expert’ tells me to put it back the way I had it.”

Some do land a coveted position in their old fields or turn a hobby into a business. Neal, although he believes he’ll never make as much money as in the past, recently has reason to be optimistic about some consulting jobs.

But the reality is that the problem of the older unemployed “was acute during the Great Recession, and is now chronic,” Ms. Sipprelle said. “People’s lives have been upended by the great forces of history in a way that’s never happened before, and there’s no other example for older workers to look at. Some can’t recoup, though not through their own fault. They’re the wrong age at the wrong time. It’s cold comfort, but better than suggesting that if you just dye your hair, you’ll get that job.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/your-money/unemployed-and-older-and-facing-a-jobless-future.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

What Mark Carney should be telling you about your career plans

By Neil Patrick

Unless you are particularly interested in the financial markets or economics (as I am) you probably didn’t pay too much attention to the news that the Mervyn King shaped hole at the head of the Bank of England had been filled (partially at least) by Canadian Mark Carney.

Mr Carney has a very good record we are told, having steered Canada’s economy skilfully around the economic crisis that swamped the US, UK and the Eurozone from 2008 onwards.

He’s wasted no time either in putting his stamp on the way the Bank of England conducts itself, and the first of his measures is the announcement that from now on the Bank will issue what he calls ‘forward guidance’ on its plans for interest rates.

Carney used the same ‘trick’ in Canada. On the face of it, it’s no bad thing; it allows businesses and markets to get a greater level of confidence over the medium term environment and consequently plan better and have fewer short term shocks to cope with. So in principle, I think this is a good thing.

But in practice, right now in this climate, it’s quite another. That’s because he’ll almost certainly be telling us all to expect near-zero interest rates for many years to come.

What he should be saying is that interest rates will have to rise one day, that the government is too deep in debt to keep most of its promises and that as soon as the cheap debt disappears i.e. as soon as any sort of economic recovery starts to happen, real wages will not rise for years.

So was Mr Carney really the saviour of Canada whilst the rest of the west fell into recession? The Bank of Canada first used the forward guidance idea in 2009. Carney slashed interest rates promptly but also pledged to Canadians that this low rate environment would remain in place for a long time to come.

The policy was credited with helping Canada steer its way around the recession and paved the way both for the creation of Carney’s reputation as one of the world’s cleverest central bankers and ultimately him getting the transfer deal from Ottawa to London.

But I suspect that the true value of Mr Carney’s measures have been massively over-hyped. The reality I think was that Canada’s salvation was as much due to the innate conservatism of its banks, high commodity prices and the fact that Canadians carried on happily spending and borrowing, as it was by anything that the central bank said.

To put it another way, are we really sure we are comparing apples with apples here?

So whilst I think this question remains open to debate, I am quite definite that this forward guidance obscures the emergence of a really dangerous situation for most working professionals.

Let’s not forget that 0.5% interest rates are an aberration. They have not been this low for the last 300 years. At some point in the future they MUST rise again. So if you’ve become used to paying your mortgage or business loan or whatever at today's rates, try doubling or trebling that monthly cost and ask yourself how comfortable you’d be in that situation?

If the answer is 'not very', you need to start doing something about it right now.

Next, let’s not forget either that the Bank England does not control the prices that you pay for the financial products and services you buy. UK banks have had a hard time as we all know, and whilst you may smugly argue that they got what they deserved, the fact remains that they will be using every trick they can muster in the coming years to generate profits again. The demise of free banking is already on the horizon and you can fully expect that as central bank base rates rise, customer prices will rise at least as fast and probably faster.

The next point is that as we all know, the UK government is in a state of near cataclysmic debt. It has the biggest deficit of any country in the developed world and simply cannot expect to continue without huge future reductions in spending. And as you’ve probably guessed, this means you can expect to see the costs of pensions, education and healthcare increasingly passed on directly or indirectly to you.

Last but not least, the growth of the last two decades in the UK was based mainly upon debt and house price growth which meant almost everyone felt they were getting richer. We weren’t, it was an illusion and only the ongoing supply shortage and of course the latest government house buying subsidy madness is keeping house prices from collapsing to their true value.

Only one thing really creates real wealth growth and that is rising productivity, and whilst some recent reports point out that this has increased slightly in recent months, it’s a far cry from being any sort of major turnaround. So, without the artificial stimulus of rising debt, real wages are unlikely to rise any time soon and may even continue to fall.

Couple this with the outlook for living costs I’ve outlined above and you can see that if you want to see any sort of improvement in your standard of living, or even just maintaining the one you have now, you’ll need to have a plan to earn a great deal more money over the coming years.

Of course no-one in the government or the Bank of England wants to highlight these points – after all who wants to hear this sort of truth? The reality for most of us is that we will have to work harder, save more and spend less. That’s the sort of forward guidance that Mark Carney ought to be giving us.

In Hard Economy for All Ages, Older Isn’t Better ... It’s Brutal

 

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Young graduates are in debt, out of work and on their parents’ couches. People in their 30s and 40s can’t afford to buy homes or have children. Retirees are earning near-zero interest on their savings.

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s - those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security - have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.

“If I break my wrist, I lose my house,” said Susan Zimmerman, 62, a freelance writer in Cleveland, of the distress that a medical emergency would wreak upon her finances and her quality of life. None of the three part-time jobs she has cobbled together pay benefits, and she says she is counting the days until she becomes eligible for Medicare.

In the meantime, Ms. Zimmerman has fashioned her own regimen of home remedies - including eating blue cheese instead of taking penicillin and consuming plenty of orange juice, red wine, coffee and whatever else the latest longevity studies recommend - to maintain her health, which she must do if she wants to continue paying the bills.

“I will probably be working until I’m 100,” she said.

As common as that sentiment is, the job market has been especially unkind to older workers.

Unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are far lower than those for young people, who are recently out of school, with fewer skills and a shorter work history. But once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding another one. Over the last year, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers, according to the Labor Department’s jobs report released on Friday.

The lengthy process is partly because older workers are more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, like manufacturing. Compared with the rest of the population, older people are also more likely to own their own homes and be less mobile than renters, who can move to new job markets.

Older workers are more likely to have a disability of some sort, perhaps limiting the range of jobs that offer realistic choices. They may also be less inclined, at least initially, to take jobs that pay far less than their old positions. 

Displaced boomers also believe they are victims of age discrimination, because employers can easily find a young, energetic worker who will accept lower pay and who can potentially stick around for decades rather than a few years.

“When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” said Arynita Armstrong, 60, of Willis, Tex. She has been looking for work for five years since losing her job at a mortgage company. “They’re afraid to hire you, because they think you’re a health risk. You know, you might make their premiums go up. They think it’ll cost more money to invest in training you than it’s worth it because you might retire in five years.

“Not that they say any of this to your face,” she added.

When older workers do find re-employment, the compensation is usually not up to the level of their previous jobs, according to data from the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

In a survey by the center of older workers who were laid off during the recession, just one in six had found another job, and half of that group had accepted pay cuts. Fourteen percent of the re-employed said the pay in their new job was less than half what they earned in their previous job.

“I just say to myself: ‘Why me? What have I done to deserve this?’ ” said John Agati, 56, of Norwalk, Conn., whose last full-time job, as a merchandise buyer and product developer, ended four years ago when his employer went out of business.

That position paid $90,000, and his résumé lists stints at companies like American Express, Disney and USA Networks. Since being laid off, though, he has worked a series of part-time, low-wage, temporary positions, including selling shoes at Lord & Taylor and making sales calls for a limo company.

The last few years have taken a toll not only on his family’s finances, but also on his feelings of self-worth.

“You just get sad,” Mr. Agati said. “I see people getting up in the morning, going out to their careers and going home. I just wish I was doing that. Some people don’t like their jobs, or they have problems with their jobs, but at least they’re working. I just wish I was in their shoes.”

He said he cannot afford to go back to school, as many younger people without jobs have done. Even if he could afford it, economists say it is unclear whether older workers like him benefit much from more education.

“It just doesn’t make sense to offer retraining for people 55 and older,” said Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas in Austin. “Discrimination by age, long-term unemployment, the fact that they’re now at the end of the hiring queue, the lack of time horizon just does not make it sensible to invest in them.”

Many displaced older workers are taking this message to heart and leaving the labor force entirely.

The share of older people applying for Social Security early spiked during the recession as people sought whatever income they could find. The penalty they will pay is permanent, as retirees who take benefits at age 62 — as Ms. Zimmerman did, to help make her mortgage payments — will receive as much as 30 percent less in each month’s check for the rest of their lives than they would if they had waited until full retirement age (66 for those born after 1942). 

Those not yet eligible for Social Security are increasingly applying for another, comparable kind of income support that often goes to people who expect never to work again: disability benefits. More than one in eight people in their late 50s is now on some form of federal disability insurance program, according to Mark Duggan, chairman of the department of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

The very oldest Americans, of course, were battered by some of the same ill winds that tormented those now nearing retirement, but at least the most senior were cushioned by a more readily available social safety net. More important, in a statistical twist, they may have actually benefited from the financial crisis in the most fundamental way: prolonged lives.

Death rates for people over 65 have historically fallen during recessions, according to a November 2011 study by economists at the University of California, Davis. Why? The researchers argue that weak job markets push more workers into accepting relatively undesirable work at nursing homes, leading to better care for residents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/business/americans-closest-to-retirement-were-hardest-hit-by-recession.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Jim Rogers - why farmers will be driving Lamborghinis

By Neil Patrick

I have talked elsewhere on this blog and Twitter about the likely meltdown of the global economy. I hate to be alarmist or sensational, but the more I look at the numbers, the more convinced I am that no other outcome is ultimately now possible.

In Europe this week, the situation in Cyprus is in my view a foretaste of the type of events that will spread across the western economies in the coming months and years. The inability of politicians to find a solution is now beyond doubt I think.

If you've worked hard, saved and invested your money all your life, you are about to be punished very severely for this as the citizens of Greece, Spain and Cyprus have recently discovered. In fact it’s already happening by stealth means as low interest rates, inflation, stagnant earnings and rising taxes combine to extract wealth from the middle classes to pay for unsustainable government spending and bank bailout programmes.

Here noted investor, free market advocate, and author Jim Rogers gives an interview with Glenn Beck. He asks whether the latest State of the Union address makes you wonder whether President Barack Obama is "delusional" or just a good liar? It’s a good question, but I think the answer doesn't really matter. What matters is understanding what is coming and how we can prepare ourselves.

So what can we do about this at a personal level? Well an MBA is possibly the most redundant qualification in the US right now says Jim. On the other hand, as food supplies become more and more critical, farming will become more valuable than ever, ‘the farmers will be driving Lamborghinis!’ says Jim.

This isn't enjoyable to watch, but I’d rather know about the looming threats than stumble blindly into them. My thanks go to Glen Beck and Jim Rogers for their insights.

Update - Government robs citizens of Cyprus

UPDATE Monday 25th March

By Neil Patrick

I've just watched the President of Cyprus announce that a deal has reached with the ECB to bail out Cyprus. Eurozone finance ministers have agreed a 10bn-euro bailout deal for Cyprus to prevent its banking system collapsing and keep the country in the eurozone.

Since the final shape of this deal has been under discussion for a over a week now, the terms are somewhat different to how they were mooted when I reported below. But the ethical fundamentals are unchanged. The Cyprus government with the ECB holding a gun to its' head, is now robbing its' banks and citizens directly. They have attempted to avoid inciting the mass of the electorate by applying a cap, so that only those with significant sums on deposit pay for the politicians' errors...the people who are the least unlikely to incite civil unrest in other words...

Laiki (Popular) Bank - the country's second-biggest - will be wound down and deposit-holders with more than 100,000 euros ($130,000; £85,000) will face big losses. However, all deposits under 100,000 euros will be "fully guaranteed". On the face of it, the better off citizens and corporates will pay, and the less wealthy will be protected. For now.

But think about it - £85,000 isn't a fortune. Plenty of people who have worked hard all their lives and paid their taxes are about to be robbed by their government to pay for the government's errors. It's more than a disgrace, it's a terrifying portent of what we can expect to see repeated again and again in the coming months and years.

I don't see this as a rescue. I see it as a small scale test of a new and very troubling development in the evolution of 'democratic' governments' interpretation of democracy and their legitimate authority.

IMF head Christine Lagarde said the bailout deal agreed was "a comprehensive and credible plan" to help restore trust in the banking system. Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris said he believed the possibility of bankruptcy had been averted. Christine Lagarde is of course desperately trying to shore up confidence in the Euro, whilst the Cypriot Government have found a scapegoat in their banks; an easy and popluar target to divert the blame to.

Cypriot officials meanwhile have warned the island faces a deep recession with many businesses to shut. The mood of Cypriots seems to be relief that whilst this is bad, things could have been much worse.

Give it time...

Meanwhile the content of Stefan Molyneux's video below seems even more relevant and justified now. So if you've not seen it have a look now with the luxury of hindsight...

Once again, my intention to post about the jobs crisis has been overtaken by news that is so astonishing that I had to report on it immediately. I have long believed that the populations of western democracies live under the illusion of freedom. But this isn’t a philosophy blog, so I’ll not expand that idea here and now.

Something has happened now though that is yet more evidence of this idea as reality. And it’s a profound and shocking example of what we can expect to see more of in Europe as the Eurozone farce unravels. Rather than inflating the currency, which was the pre-EU strategy, the Cypriot government has decided to adopt a more obvious form of theft by taking money directly from its citizens’ bank accounts.

A €10 billion EU bailout required a 9.9% tax on anyone with deposits greater than €100,000, and 6.75% on those less than €100,000. Savers who lost money would be compensated by shares in commercial banks, with equity returns guaranteed by future revenues expected from natural gas discoveries.

The president was elected weeks ago partly because he ruled out any kind of wealth tax. According to one report, the IMF and EU were originally demanding a 40% wealth tax on bank account holders in Cyprus.

What is so wrong with Cyprus? Unemployment is half that of Greece and Spain and debt to GDP is 87%. The US has a debt to GDP of well over 100%.This is economic imperialism, a fundamental breach of property rights, dictated to a small country by foreign powers.

The European Central Bank has no money, it's exchanging paper for assets.

Cypriot banks got into trouble after losing €4.5 billion on their Greek government bond holdings after Euro zone leaders decided to write down Greece's debt last year. The Cypriot president said if he hadn't accepted the tax on bank deposits, the European Central Bank would have stopped providing emergency funds to the country's top two lenders which would have led to the collapse of the banking system, the bankruptcy of thousands of small businesses, massive job losses, and ultimately the country's exit from the Euro.

You may well have caught some of this news in the mainstream media, but as usual, I went looking for a deeper analysis and I am pleased to share here Stefan Molyneux’s excellent evaluation and commentary.

Stefan Molyneux is the host of Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web - http://www.freedomainradio.com

Mechanics of a meltdown in European jobs

If you visit my site often, you’ll know that I think monitoring the economic situation is important. I could just post endless job hunting tips and news about job opportunities, but today the big picture is just so critical that I feel I must share this news too.

I’ve already posted about how and why I think that the Eurozone is approaching meltdown, and why the politicians will be ineffectual in reversing this decline. You may be doubtful of my analysis and I certainly hope it is wrong. So I have been looking for more data and insight into this topic and today I have decided to share with you a film that documents the severity of the situation in the Eurozone.

I was in two minds as to whether to post this - it certainly won’t provide an uplifting experience for anyone that views it (yep, that’s my health warning). But if you do want to know the real mechanics of what’s going on, this film has more data and insight than any news report or economics article I have seen. It’s heavy on stats – but excellently presented in an easily digestible form and thankfully devoid of rhetoric, opinion and political bias. So you are free to form your own judgement based on the data provided here.

From my perspective, the debt burdens in Europe (just as in the US) are unsustainable now. This means that the breakup or at least redefinition of the Eurozone will happen, it’s just a question of when. If the Euro survives in its current form beyond the next two years, I will be completely amazed. So the jobs outlook in Europe is looking increasingly bleak, but nonetheless bleaker in some places than others.

As I said at the start, I was in two minds about sharing this. On reflection overnight though I decided to go ahead because knowledge of what is happening and sharing this is vital I think. Whilst the prognosis isn’t good, I think understanding what is happening, where and how will enable you to make better personal decisions than if you didn’t have this knowledge.

If you’d prefer it if I stuck to the narrow path on this blog, please let me know!

PS I suggest you grab a coffee (or something stronger) before watching this.

My thanks and appreciation go to Stefan Molyneux and Freedomainradio.com for the production.

The unemployment crisis that lies behind the US monthly jobs report

By Heidi Moore

While pundits obsess about a decimal point, the real story is the 15 million out-of-work Americans cut loose by policy-makers

Friday brought a relatively good employment report. The economy added fewer jobs than economists had hoped for, but they were of good quality: most of them came from private companies, rather than the government.Construction did extremely well, as new houses are being built. Further math showed that the economy actually added more jobs than we thought it had in November and December.

It is tempting to call this a recovery. A number of economic indicators show that the economy is at least moving forward, rather than back. Housing is doing well, for instance. GDP, except for a blip late last year thanks to lower defense spending related to the fiscal cliff, shows every sign that it will continue to grow.

As much as the numbers move forward, though, there is some sadness embedded in them: we still have a joblessness crisis. And as long as the actual numbers appear to get "better", then it will not be treated like a crisis, but more like an inconvenience. For the duration of the US unemployment crisis, we have had no answers. No one is really working on any solutions to it except "wait and hope, and hope and see."

Note this glum start to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' news release today:

"The number of unemployed persons, at 12.3 million, was little changed in January."

Further down, something even more glum:

"In January, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was about unchanged at 4.7m and accounted for 38.1% of the unemployed."

Those figures tell the truth more than any other numbers do. Let's leave the jobs report behind and look at the jobs picture.

In the real economy, we still have a significant number of unemployed people – and more importantly, we have a core group of long-term unemployed people, who become more unemployable the longer they are out of work. There are another 2.4 million people who are "marginally attached", meaning they were "not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey."

If you add those marginally attached workers – those able-bodied, willing to work, and unable to find jobs – to the number of unemployed, it gets closer to 15 million people out of work. That's a crisis. And even while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rises to new highs – it hit 14,000 just today – big companies are still making layoffs. This week alone, mass layoffs of more than 50 people and up to 1,000 were announced at Time Inc, Disney, BAE Systems, Harman International, Viking Range, Amgen and Boston Scientific.

What makes it a crisis is that we don't seem to have any ideas on how to employ the unemployed. There are few, if any, ideas coming out of Washington. Corporate America, which still considers itself reeling from the recession, seems disinclined to pitch in – except for a few outliers like Starbucks' "Create Jobs for USA" program. No major retraining programs have cropped up (even if the unemployed, with their pained finances, could afford them).

Despite the nation's weakening infrastructure on roads and bridges and sewer systems, there are no grand plans to deploy laborers to fix them: plenty of experts believe that a boost in infrastructure spending could help us grow jobs again, but not much is moving on that front. No industry except construction seems to be adding jobs at a rapid enough clip to breathe life into the economy.

That's not very comforting. We can't be a housing-centered economy again. Haven't we grown up yet?

And those who are getting jobs aren't getting good, well-paying ones. Bloomberg economist Joseph Brusuelas pointed out that the lowest-paid jobs are going the fastest: "the composition of jobs continues to reflect the low-wage bias in hiring that is one of the primary characteristics of the current business cycle," he wrote. Additionally, at least 8 million people are working part-time because they can't get full-time work.

For young people, the picture is even worse, as nonprofit organization Generation Opportunity pointed out in their latest Millennial Jobs report. They estimate that the youth unemployment rate, the rate for 18-29 year-olds, last month was 13%; an additional 1.7 million young adults don't even count as part of the labor force, they point out, because they've given up looking for work. Terence Grado, director of policy at Generation Opportunity, said in a statement:

"My generation is suffering disproportionately … we need a new strategy that encourages the private sector to grow, invest, and provide real opportunities for the millions of young people who have great skills, are ready to contribute, and have waited long enough."

Grado has a point – not just for millennials, but for all of the unemployed in America. They're not really looking at month-to-month changes in numbers gathered in Washington; they're looking for some hope that things will change. That seems very hard to provide right now.

The Federal Reserve's low interest-rate policy has helped Corporate America rebound, and may have saved the economy at the high end, where banks and companies live. Now, though, it's time to buckle down and look for ideas that will move the needle on unemployment in regular households, where everyone else resides.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/series/heidi-moore-on-business-and-economics

Greece needs her old friends again now

By Neil Patrick

Greece has been in the news now for months as successive ECB bailouts have failed to restore investor confidence in the Greek economy. Today, the Greek people are suffering more than at any time for the past 70 years. The last time Greece suffered like this, Germany co-incidentally was also centre stage to these events although Mussolini’s Italy was also a prime protagonist.

But the common perception of the roles of Germany and Greece in the current crisis have been misunderstood in my view. A Bloomberg editorial concluded that, "Europe's taxpayers have provided as much financial support to Germany as they have to Greece", describing the German role and posture in the Greek crisis thus:

“In the millions of words written about Europe's debt crisis, Germany is typically cast as the responsible adult and Greece as the profligate child. Prudent Germany, the narrative goes, is loath to bail out freeloading Greece, which borrowed more than it could afford and now must suffer the consequences. By December 2009, according to the Bank for International Settlements, German banks had amassed claims of $704 billion on Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, much more than the German banks' aggregate capital. In other words, they lent more than they could afford. . . . irresponsible borrowers can't exist without irresponsible lenders. Germany's banks were Greece's enablers.”

But I want to remind you about much earlier events, for a better insight into the real character of the Greeks. If your memory doesn’t go back for 70 years, here’s a summary of events in Greece in 1940-41.

The so-called Balkans Campaign began with the Italian invasion of Greece on October 28, 1940. Within weeks, the Italians were driven out of Greece as Greek forces pushed on to occupy much of southern Albania. In March 1941, a major Italian counterattack failed, and Germany was forced to come to the aid of its Italian ally.

Operation Marita began on April 6, with German troops invading Greece through Bulgaria in an effort to secure their southern flank. The combined Greek and British Commonwealth forces fought back with great tenacity, but were vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and after intense combat, finally collapsed. The city of Athens fell on April 27.


The Greek campaign ended in a quick and complete German victory with the fall of Kalamata in the Peloponnese; by the end of that month, some 50,000 British and Commonwealth troops had been evacuated, and a further 7,000 were taken into captivity.

The Axis conquest of Greece was completed with the capture of Crete a month later. Crete was strategically important to both the supply of British and Commonwealth forces fighting Rommel from their base in Egypt and to the security of British supplies to and from the Far East via the Suez Canal.

The battle for Crete began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne invasion of Crete under the code-name Operation Mercury. Greek and Allied forces, along with Cretan civilians, defended the island. It was a tough and bloody fight in which the allied forces inflicted heavy casualties on Germany’s elite paratroop and mountain forces. These German casualties were so heavy that Hitler forbade that German paratroops were to be used again in any large-scale airborne operations.

Combined Allied casualties (Greek, British, Australian and New Zealanders) in Crete over the period 20 May – 1 June 1941 were 23,830, comprising 3,990 dead, 2,750 wounded 17,090 captured.

Inspired by the Greek resistance during the Italian and German invasions, Churchill said, "Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks". In response to a letter from King George VI dated 3 December 1940, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that, "all free peoples are deeply impressed by the courage and steadfastness of the Greek nation", and in a letter to the Greek ambassador dated 29 October 1942, he wrote that "Greece has set the example which every one of us must follow until the despoilers of freedom everywhere have been brought to their just doom."

Perhaps surprisingly, even Hitler praised the courage of his Greek adversaries. In a speech made at the Reichstag in 1941, Hitler expressed his admiration for the Greek resistance saying of the campaign:

"For the sake of historical truth I must verify that only the Greeks, of all the adversaries who confronted us, fought with bold courage and highest disregard of death"

The Führer also ordered the release and repatriation of all Greek prisoners of war, as soon as they had been disarmed, "because of their gallant bearing." According to Hitler's Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the Führer "wanted to give the Greeks an honorable settlement in recognition of their brave struggle, and of their blamelessness for this war."

So it is my firm belief that the Greek people are made of much stronger stuff than they are currently given credit for. If you are British, Australian or Kiwi, remember that our forebears stood shoulder to shoulder with the Greeks against totalitarian and oppressive invaders to defend the freedom and democracy that the ancient Greeks created. The Greeks have not forgotten this and we should not forget them in their current hour of need.

Citi Group to Slash 11,000 jobs

December 5 2012 

Citigroup, the third-biggest U.S. bank, said Wednesday it plans to cut more than 11,000 jobs - about 4% of its global workforce - in an effort to reduce costs and enhance profitability.

The move was applauded among investors, who pushed Citigroup shares up 6.3% to $36.46 in heavy trading.

In a statement, New York-based Citi (C) says it will take a pretax charge of about $1.1 billion this quarter and expects savings in 2013 to be $900 million.

The move was lifting other financial stocks, such as Bank of America, up 5.4% to $10.43.

"These actions are logical next steps in Citi's transformation," CEO Michael Corbat said in Citi's statement. "While we are committed to - and our strategy continues to leverage - our unparalleled global network and footprint, we have identified areas and products where our scale does not provide for meaningful returns."

The bank, which employs 262,000 worldwide, did not detail how many of the jobs cuts will be in the United States, although it plans to close 44 branches.

Corbat was elevated to CEO in October after the abrupt resignation of Victor Pandit. "Today's announcement shows that there's a new sheriff in town and nothing is sacred,'' says RBC Capital Market analyst Gerard Cassidy.

Most of the job cuts Citi cited, or about 6,200, will come from Citi's consumer banking unit, which handles everyday functions in bank branches and online.

Citi said that it will sell or scale back consumer operations in Pakistan, Paraguay, Romania, Turkey and Uruguay and focus on 150 cities around the world "that have the highest growth potential in consumer banking."

The bank says about 1,900 jobs will be cut in its institutional clients group, an effort to "improve overall productivity in our markets business, especially in areas experiencing continued low profitability, such as cash equities.'' And another 2,600 jobs will disappear in the bank's operations and technology group and global functions. Citi says it plans to cut 15 branches in Korea, 14 in Brazil, seven in Hong Kong and four in Hungary.

"This is just the beginning, '' says Raymond James Financial analyst Anthony Polini, who rates Citigroup a strong buy.

"In a slow growth environment, low interest rates are eating away at profit margins. One would think there are more opportunities to cut, especially overseas," Polini says.

The CEO promised the bank would reduce "excess capacity and expenses, whether they center on technology, real estate or simplifying our operations."

Pandit resigned in mid-October, just one day after the bank said its underlying third-quarter profits were strong and that the bank's outlook was improving.

In November, a regulatory filing disclosed that Citi paid Pandit a $6.7 million bonus and paid a $6.8 million bonus to John Havens, the former chief operating officer who resigned when Pandit did.

Pandit had reportedly clashed with the board over the company's strategy and its relationship with the government. He had been at the helm of the bank for five years, before and following the 2008 financial collapse.

Mike Mayo, a Credit Agricole Securities analyst and long-time Citigroup critic, said in an interview on cable TV's CNBC that the layoffs are needed, but more change is necessary. "The big issue isn't what's going to happen in the next one to two years, but what will they do in the next five to 10. They need a more radical restructuring. At some point, they need to exit some businesses."

Citi nearly collapsed during the financial crisis and had to take two taxpayer bailout loans. It has been shrinking since, shedding units and trying to find a business model that's more streamlined and efficient.

The streamlining hasn't gone as smoothly as Citi hoped. This fall, for example, when Citi negotiated the sale of its stake in the retail brokerage Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, it got far less than it wanted from buyer Morgan Stanley.

Contributing: The Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2012/12/05/citi-cuts-11k-jobs/1747897/