By Matt Cantor
Rep. Darrell Issa says he has a potential solution to the Postal Service’s money problem: Mail carriers could stop delivering your items right to your door. The House Oversight Committee is poised to vote on the proposal—potentially affecting 37 million homes and businesses—today. It could cut costs by… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
For months homeowners agonized as houses in their subdivision sank one-by-one into a California hilltop. It got so dangerous that the U.S. Postal Service refused to deliver mail.
Now, they say they know the reason eight homes were destroyed and 10 others are in danger, and they’ve taken the first step toward recouping damages by filing a claim against Lake County.
A leaking county water system that went undetected for months saturated the hillside and caused the ground to give way, said Michael Green, an attorney for the 41 homeowners in the subdivision with sweeping views of Clear Lake in Northern California.
Green is seeking $5 million for each homeowner in the claim filed last month against the county.
“They’re facing a pretty significant economic disaster,” he said.
County officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They have 45 days to respond to Green’s claim for damages before he can file a lawsuit.
Lake County supervisors previously asked Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a disaster area, but the request was declined.
The county has maintained that a landscape irrigation system operated by the Lakeside Heights homeowners association could have contributed to the ground saturation.
As home after home sank into the hillside, bewildered homeowners began to wonder if their land might be haunted.
Eventually, tests revealed leaks “dumping substantial amounts of water into the hillsides,” Green said.
He said even the owners of homes not damaged by the sinking earth are suffering damages because they will be unable to sell their property.
“We’re just trying to get these folks reasonable compensation,” he said.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
A popular southwest Ohio air show has canceled plans to stage a re-enactment of the devastating World War II atomic bomb attack on Japan after protests, officials said Thursday.
Dayton Air Show spokeswoman Brenda Kerfoot said the June 22-23 event at Dayton International Airport will keep a planned “Great Wall of Fire” pyrotechnic show but not as an event meant to re-enact the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing of Hiroshima. The B-29 plane “Fifi,” similar to the Enola Gay B-29 bomber used to attack Japan, will remain in the show but in a separate role.
Air show officials said the re-enactment was meant to highlight a historic event that helped end the war and save lives that would have been lost if the war had been prolonged.
“We’ve taken it as more of an educational show,” Kerfoot said. “The wording that we used probably wasn’t the best.”
She said once critics this week began calling it inappropriate for a family event, the air show decided to separate the B-29 from the pyrotechnic show.
“We didn’t want it to become a distraction to the overall quality of the show,” she said.
The Dayton Daily News reported that art curator Gabriela Pickett started an online petition to object to the “glamorization of destruction,” and said it didn’t reflect Dayton’s image as a city of peace. Dozens of people around the country signed it.
The city has for years highlighted its role as the site of the Dayton peace accords on Bosnia negotiated in 1995. The Dayton Literary Peace Prize each year honors literature’s power to promote peace.
A University of Dayton associate professor who was born in a U.S. wartime detention camp for Japanese-Americans said besides the “re-enactment” being offensive, the show’s contention that the bomb that killed so many Japanese ended up saving more lives is disputable — some historians say Japan would have surrendered without the atomic bomb attacks.
“By having shows like that, it is not only in bad taste, but I think I sustains misinformation,” said Ron Katsuyama, past president of the Asian American Council.
As many as 140,000 people were killed by the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, with more than 70,000 more killed in an attack three days later on Nagasaki.
In 1994, Bill Clinton’s White House pressured the U.S. Postal Service into scrapping a mushroom cloud stamp planned to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, following protests by the Japanese government.
A spokeswoman at the Japanese Embassy in Washington said Thursday it was unaware of the air show issue and had no comment.
The controversy is another setback for the show that dates to 1975 in the city that was home to the aviation-pioneering Wright Brothers.
The air show last month announced that its headline act, the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds jet demonstration team, was canceled because of the cuts triggered by the failure to reach a federal budget deal in Washington.
The show normally attracts more than 70,000 people for its displays of vintage planes, aerial acrobatics and stunts. Kerfoot said attendance likely will be lower this year.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/YDyMIlj5vZM/
By Kelly Phillips Erb, Contributor
Dust off those stamps: the U.S. Postal Service isn’t ending Saturday mail delivery this summer after all.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
The U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday said it will delay a cost-cutting plan to end Saturday mail delivery, following congressional action that blocked the effort.
Filed under: U.S. Government, Consumer Issues, Stores, Economy
By PAULINE JELINEK
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service says it will delay plans to cut Saturday mail delivery because Congress isn’t allowing the change.
The Postal Service said in February that it planned to cut back in August to five-day-a-week deliveries for everything except packages, as a way to hold down losses.
But a statement Wednesday from agency’s Board of Governors notes that Congress has passed a spending bill that continues the long-time prohibition against reducing delivery days.
As a result, the board says it believe that Congress “has left it with no choice but to delay implementation” of the five-day-a-week plan.
%Gallery-181294%
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By The Huffington Post News Editors
WASHINGTON — What business gets more customers every year, yet keeps losing money?
The U.S. Postal Service delivers mail to 11 million more homes, offices and other addresses than it did a decade ago, even as the amount of mail that people in the United States receive has dropped sharply.
Read More…
More on Postal Service
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
By hnn
The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is running into opposition from historic preservationists as the agency tries to cut losses by selling off buildings.
The postal service lost $15.9 billion last year, after losing $5.1 billion in 2011 — as online services continue to replace money-making mail deliveries.
Hundreds of post offices are on the National Register of Historic Places, which largely protects them from being demolished, or are protected under deals with new owners….
Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University
The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is running into opposition from historic preservationist as the agency tries to cut losses by selling off buildings.
By Justin Loiseau, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
The Department of Labor released its March employment situation report (link opens in PDF) today, and the news is lackluster at best. Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 88,000, but market analysts were expecting a 193,000 hike after February’s revised 286,000 jump.
The unemployment rate dropped 0.1 percentage points, to 7.6%, continuing its recovery decline. But for March, at least, the decrease was due to a 496,000 drop in labor force numbers, rather than an increase in those employed.
Source: Labor Department
In the private sector, health care led gains, with a steady 23,000 bump, while retail trade knocked 24,000 off its payroll after averaging 32,000 new jobs per month for the last six months. The U.S. Postal Service put the squeeze on government employment, falling 12,000 in March.
For those remaining employed, March’s hourly earnings numbers leave little reason to celebrate. Analysts had expected a slight 0.2% bump, to $24.29 from $23.82, but earnings increased by #0.01 from February.
The article Employment Oozes and Labor Force Shrinks in March originally appeared on Fool.com.
Y
ou can follow Justin Loiseau on Twitter, @TMFJLo, and on Motley Fool CAPS, @TMFJLo.
Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
(function(c,a){window.mixpanel=a;var b,d,h,e;b=c.createElement(“script”);
b.type=”text/javascript”;b.async=!0;b.src=(“https:”===c.location.protocol?”https:”:”http:”)+
‘//cdn.mxpnl.com/libs/mixpanel-2.2.min.js’;d=c.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];
d.parentNode.insertBefore(b,d);a._i=[];a.init=function(b,c,f){function d(a,b){
var c=b.split(“.”);2==c.length&&(a=a[c[0]],b=c[1]);a[b]=function(){a.push([b].concat(
Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments,0)))}}var g=a;”undefined”!==typeof f?g=a[f]=[]:
f=”mixpanel”;g.people=g.people||[];h=[‘disable’,’track’,’track_pageview’,’track_links’,
‘track_forms’,’register’,’register_once’,’unregister’,’identify’,’alias’,’name_tag’,
‘set_config’,’people.set’,’people.increment’];for(e=0;e<h.length;e++)d(g,h[e]);
a._i.push([b,c,f])};a.__SV=1.2;})(document,window.mixpanel||[]);
mixpanel.init("9659875b92ba8fa639ba476aedbb73b9");
function addEvent(obj, evType, fn, useCapture){
if (obj.addEventListener){
obj.addEventListener(evType, fn, useCapture);
return true;
} else if (obj.attachEvent){
var r = obj.attachEvent("on"+evType, fn);
return r;
}
}
addEvent(window, "load", function(){new FoolVisualSciences();})
addEvent(window, "load", function(){new PickAd();})
var themeName = 'dailyfinance.com';
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-24928199-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function () {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript';
ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
Read | Permalink | <a target=_blank href="http://www.dailyfinance.com/forward/20532579/" …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Jeremy Bowman, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Well, it could have been worse. After lackluster employment reports on Wednesday and Thursday, the alarm bells sounded even louder this morning, when the Department of Labor reported that just 88,000 jobs were added in March. Still, the Dow Jones Industrial Average bounced back from an early 170-point loss to finish down just 41 points, or 0.3%, as many investors seemed to see the sell-off as a buying opportunity. It was the worst week of the year for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, and for the Dow, its worst week since February, though it only fell 13 points.
The number of new jobs added was the lowest total since October, and comes after several months of strong job growth. In fact, the figures in January and February were revised upward by a total of 61,000, to 148,000 and 268,000. Economists are struggling to come up with an explanation for the sudden drop off, and have suggested that increases in the payroll tax and income taxes on the wealthy, as well as sequestration, have contributed to the weak labor market. Ninety-five thousand jobs were added in the private sector, while governments shed a net of 7,000 jobs, many of which were in the Postal Service. The unemployment rate dropped from 7.7%, to 7.6%, but the decrease was primarily the result of job seekers giving up on finding a job.
Cisco Systems was among the poorest performers on the Dow today, falling 2% after fellow network provider F5 Networks reported disappointing preliminary earnings, and fell 19% as a result. F5 missed its own revenue guidance by 7%, and also reported lower-than-expected earnings per share, while Radware, another industry peer, also reported poor preliminary results. For more information, see my colleague Evan Niu‘s coverage here.
American Express was the worst performer on the Dow, falling 2.1%, as the weak employment growth likely hurts the credit-card issuer more than most companies. The Jefferies Group also voiced some concerns about the lender heading into earnings season, and gave it a price target 10% below its current value. Total consumer borrowings jumped from $12.7 billion in January, to $18.1 billion to February, a trend that should favor the lender.
Meanwhile, Boeing bucked the overall trend, rising 1.4% after reporting a successful test flight of its troubled Dreamliner 787 jet, which had been grounded due to battery fires. The aircraft-maker now says testing has been completed, which leaves that 787 in the hands of regulators who originally ordered the composite jet grounded.
After a subpar week, investors can look forward to the beginning of earnings season, which could reverse the downward trend caused by poor employment numbers. Alcoa will be the first Dow stock to report earnings, releasing on Monday after hours. Analysts are expecting an EPS of $0.08 from the aluminum maker, which has been among the poorer performers on the blue chips so far this year.
<p class="MsoNormal" …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Dan Dzombak, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down big-time following a terrible jobs report. As of 1:20 p.m. EDT the Dow is down 88 points, or 0.6%, to 14,518. The S&P 500 is down 0.77% to 1,548.
There were two U.S. economic releases today.
|
Report |
Period |
Result |
Previous |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Nonfarm payrolls |
March |
88,000 |
268,000 |
|
Unemployment rate |
March |
7.6% |
7.7% |
|
Trade gap |
February |
($43 billion) |
($44.5 billion) |
Source: MarketWatch U.S. Economic Calendar.
The key report here is the jobs figures, particularly nonfarm payrolls. A drop in the unemployment rate is not necessarily a good sign, as it stemmed from people leaving the workforce. In March the labor force declined by 496,000, bringing the participation rate in the economy down 0.2 percentage points to 63.3% of the population.
On Wednesday ADP released its private-sector jobs report, which showed an addition of just 158,000 jobs in March, down from 237,000 in February. While ADP’s report does not always line up with the government‘s, investors were concerned that the result fell short of expectations.
Today the government released its own jobs report, which includes both public and private-sector jobs. The report showed that the U.S. added just 88,000 jobs in March, down from 268,000 in February. That is far worse than analyst expectations of 190,000 additional jobs.
US Change in Nonfarm Payrolls data by YCharts.
While some are blaming this on the sequester, the results were actually weak across the economy. In the private sector, the biggest decline was in retail jobs, which fell by 24,000. This is worrisome, as retail has been one of the strengths of the economy and the jobs market, adding an average of 32,000 jobs per month over the last six months. One theory is that consumers are beginning to feel the effects of higher payroll taxes and gasoline prices. We’ll have to wait for retail sales reports to see whether that’s the case.
In the government, the biggest decliner was the U.S. Postal Service, where employment fell by 12,000 in March. Motley Fool senior analyst Jim Royal took an in-depth look at how the Postal Service is being gutted. It’s a fascinating read.
Today’s Dow leaders
Today’s Dow leader is Boeing , up 0.5%. Boeing has been in the news a lot over the past three months since the FAA grounded its 787 Dreamliner. As I’ve said, the Dreamliner problems are embarrassing for Boeing in the short run but will be a minor blip in the 30- to 50-year future of the aircraft. After all, Boeing continued to get orders for 787s throughout this ordeal. In the first quarter the company received orders for 42 Dreamliners. Besides the 787, the company received 156 orders for 737 regional airliners, three orders for 747s, and 19 orders for the 777 airliner.
Boeing is a major player in a multitrillion-dollar market in which the opportunities are massive. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
The unions are pushing back hard against Postal Service plans to end Saturday mail delivery, rallying across the country Sunday and launching TV ads to bolster their case that America needs its mail six days a week.
A few blocks away from my apartment, there’s a store that Yelp users describe as “dirty,” “disgusting,” “horrible,” and “saturated with bitterness.” Yet they are still in business, and probably will be for a long time to come. What type of establishment could have their customers routinely express such deep rooted frustration, and still get away with it? The local Post Office, of course. At some point, we have all probably thought about doing something like what Michael Richards‘ character Kramer tried to do on Seinfeld – get out of the system, permanently. In a famous exchange, when postal employee Newman asks him what he will do about his bills, cards, and letters, Kramer points out that he can use “e-mail, telephones, fax machines, FedEx, Telex, telegrams, and holograms.” And he’s right. For your everyday needs, there are now a wide variety of ways to communicate and conduct transactions. Few people actually want the bulk of the items that come through their mailbox these days. But as despised and problematic as it is, the Postal Service is one of the most important institutions in this country – it is essential to a functioning economy, and it is, thankfully, not going anywhere, any time soon. There have been plenty of loud declarations that Postal Service has failed and will be out of business shortly. But these arguments usually reveal how little people understand about what the Postal Service actually does – and how little they appreciate this institution’s amazing reach and scale. Handling over 160 billion pieces of mail in a year (40 percent of the world’s mail), the Postal Service provides universal coverage for accessing their services to the entire country for low, standardized prices. They make regular deliveries to remote islands and secluded areas that would not be worth the trouble for a private business. In rural and low-income regions where broadband isn’t commonly available, they provide a much-needed lifeline for communication. Most recently, Outbox, a start-up from Austin, Texas, has reignited the debate over the future of mail. Since their launch in San Francisco earlier this month, they have attracted a lot of excitement with their simple plan to allow people to have their physical mail picked up, scanned, and digitized for a five dollars a month. In reality, this may not be the only cost; they are reportedly exploring ways to bring the sketchy practices of targeted e-mail advertising to the physical world. Furthermore, their marketing reveals a very immature understanding of why the Postal Service — which they strangely refer to as “America’s oldest social network” — cannot simply be “recreated” by a few guys driving around in a Prius. A suggestion that often comes up is to just dismantle the Postal Service and have everyone switch to using private services like FedEx, UPS, and DHL. The people making these arguments are probably unaware that these companies are deeply reliant on the Postal Service for many of their everyday functions – comparatively, they do not come close to …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Earnings season is winding down, with most companies already having reported their quarterly results. But there are still some companies left to report, and FedEx is about to release its quarterly earnings report. The key to making smart investment decisions with stocks releasing their quarter reports is to anticipate how they’ll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you’ll be less likely to make an uninformed knee-jerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.
One of the most important signs of health for the global economy is whether goods are moving from place to place. FedEx obviously has a lot of insight into the workings of worldwide shipping, and its business not only reflects levels of economic activity but can also influence them. Let’s take an early look at what’s been happening with FedEx over the past quarter and what we’re likely to see in its quarterly report on Wednesday.
Stats on FedEx
|
Analyst EPS Estimate |
$1.39 |
|
Change From Year-Ago EPS |
(10.3%) |
|
Revenue Estimate |
$10.85 billion |
|
Change From Year-Ago Revenue |
2.8% |
|
Earnings Beats in Past 4 Quarters |
3 |
Source: Yahoo! Finance.
Will FedEx deliver better results this quarter?
Analysts have gotten less secure about FedEx’s earnings prospects lately, cutting $0.06 per share off their calls for the most recent quarter and $0.04 from their full fiscal year 2013 estimates. Yet the stock has had no such worries, rising 21% since mid-December.
FedEx has benefited greatly from the economic recovery generally and from the rise in online retail in particular. Rival UPS still shipped considerably more packages over the holidays than FedEx, but both companies have gotten their fair share of business. Woes at the U.S. Postal Service could eventually leave UPS and FedEx to fight over bigger slices of the overall industry pie, although for now, package volumes at the USPS have actually been fairly strong, thanks to partnerships like its SmartPost deal with FedEx.
FedEx got some good news in January, as regulators rejected UPS’s bid to acquire European giant TNT Express on antitrust grounds. Although the European economy has struggled lately, a UPS/TNT combination could have left FedEx on the outside of what’s likely to remain an important market once the current economic crisis in Europe subsides.
In its quarterly report, watch for FedEx to discuss the impact of its rate increases and those of UPS on its bottom line. As energy costs have remained high, FedEx’s fuel-efficiency initiatives have the potential to produce more profits, and so watch overall costs to see if the company’s efforts are paying off.
The best investing approach is to choose great companies and stick with them for the long term. The Motley Fool’s free report “3 Stocks That Will Help You Retire Rich” names stocks that …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Alex Planes, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
On this day in economic and financial history…
American Express was founded in Buffalo, N.Y., on March 18, 1850. In a unique twist of fate, this company — originally created as an express mail service — was the result of the merger of two smaller express-mail companies owned by Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, as well as one owned by John W. Butterfield. Exactly two years later, this pair founded Wells Fargo in New York City on March 18, 1852. These two financial titans would soon take on important — and occasionally competitive — roles in the spread of both communications and finance to the American frontier.
Shipping was every bit as important a link in the chain of American commerce in the 1800s as it is today, as the U.S. Postal Service did not deliver packages larger than an envelope until much later in its history. Simply sending stock certificates, contracts, and other official documents required specialized express delivery through a trusted provider, a service for which which both AmEx and Wells Fargo quickly became known.
Wells Fargo took on a banking role from its earliest days, but AmEx did not expand into financial services until it began offering money orders in 1882 and then pioneered the widespread use of traveler’s cheques in 1891. Within several years, AmEx was selling more than $6 million in traveler’s cheques annually, which would be roughly equivalent to $160 million today. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo had long since established itself as an arbiter of gold values for the forty-niners during the California Gold Rush. This early business became a cornerstone of Wells Fargo, which was founded partly in response to AmEx directors’ reluctance to expand to the booming West Coast. By the time AmEx moved into financial services, Wells Fargo had survived a California banking panic in 1855, started the West’s leading express business, and opened hundreds of banking and express offices throughout the country.
AmEx would grow into an even larger express-services company than Wells Fargo. At the time of President Woodrow Wilson‘s wartime nationalization of the railroads in 1917, AmEx controlled more than 70,000 miles of railroad. At this point, AmEx joined Wells Fargo in separating its financial and delivery businesses — Wells Fargo having already done so in 1905. The Panic of 1907 hit Wells Fargo hard, and it spent years rebuilding from that crash at a time when AmEx thrived as a travel services company. However, conservative management allowed Wells Fargo to survive the more devastating crash of 1929, which destroyed thousands of its competitors.
At this point, the tables turned, and Wells Fargo held a stronger position than AmEx, shares of which had been stealthily bought up by Chase National Bank (predecessor to JPMorgan Chase) through the difficult postwar years, until 97% of AmEx shares were in Chase’s hands by 1929. Only the …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
It was 1953 and a storm had caused a power outage at Fort Campbell, Ky., where then-Pvt. Bob Rodgers had just arrived for basic training.
Rodgers, then a 20-year-old anticipating deployment to Korea, sat down to write a letter to his wife in Indiana discussing the routines of life in boot camp.
Sixty years later, that letter finally turned up, when the U.S. Postal Service gave it back to Rodgers, who’s now living in southwestern Michigan, according to the South Bend Tribune.
In the June 13, 1953, letter, Rodgers told his wife, Jean, about his daily duties. “All you do is march, KP, shine boots, shine boots and shine more boots and brass and more brass,” he wrote.
On March 7, New Carslisle, Ind., Postmaster Connie Tomaszewski hand-delivered the letter to Rodgers, now 79. She did so the same day it arrived at her office, she told the Tribune.
Rodgers was bemused by the return of the letter.
“I asked if they had found the remains of the horse and rider and got the letter out of the saddle bag,” he said, smiling. “She just shook her head.”
Tomaszewski said it’s hard to even guess what might have happened to the letter over six decades.
“There are a million possibilities. … It could have sat at Fort Campbell,” she said. “The important part of it is it did get delivered.”
Mary Dando, spokeswoman for the Greater Indiana District of the U.S. Postal Service, said the letter may have actually been delivered, then ended up at a flea market or antique store where a collector latched onto it.
In such cases, people sometimes put them back in the mail for reasons unknown, Dando said.
Rodgers said even if his wife didn’t get the letter, it wasn’t a big deal.
“She didn’t miss it, and I didn’t miss it, because I wrote her about every day,” he said.
Jean Rodgers died of cancer eight years ago.
The letter bears a Fort Campbell postmark and the date June 15, 1953. It also features two 3-cent stamps.
Asked what her reaction would have been to the letter’s final arrival had she still been alive to receive it, he said, “She’d have got a kick out of that.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Pitney Bowes Inc. Statement on National Academy of Public Administration’s Review of the “Hybrid Public-Private Postal Service” Concept Paper
Can Postal Reform Help Keep the Mail Trucks Full?
Independent Review Suggests that “Last Mile” Postal Reform Concept is Worthy of Consideration as Part of Comprehensive Postal Reform
STAMFORD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– In a report released today, the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) reviewed the potential for a “Hybrid Public-Private Postal Service” that was outlined in a concept paper earlier this year by a coalition of four long time postal policy leaders. The Academy report on the paper by John Nolan, George Gould, Ed Gleiman and Ed Hudgins provides a helpful analysis of one very promising long term option to secure affordable and universal postal delivery service in the U.S. The panel indicated that several reforms to the Postal Service are needed, but that this concept is worthy of consideration as a part of a comprehensive reform package.
We agree with the NAPA panel that the public wants–and our economy desperately needs–a healthy, universal, affordable and reliable postal system. Hundreds of thousands of jobs and almost a trillion dollars in commerce depend on it.
Like the panel, Pitney Bowes (NYS: PBI) believes that the financial relief and operational flexibility requested by the US Postal Service are critical to its short term stability. We also believe that significant structural reform such as the “final mile” delivery model proposed by the authors of the concept paper should be considered as part of any postal reform package by Congress, and provides a promising way to help ensure the long term future of affordable universal mail delivery service in the U.S.
The “final mile delivery” model proposed in the white paper has the potential not only to protect, but also to strengthen, the nation’s only universal door-to-door delivery service by unleashing the creative energy of American business to find significant opportunities to increase mail volume, control costs and enhance services for rural, suburban and urban areas.
By concentrating on its strength in delivery, and charging only for that service, the Postal Service will encourage increased use of commercial providers to collect, transport and sort the mail, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Filed under: U.S. Government, Economy
The U.S. budget deficit is a narrower $493.95 billion for the first 5 months of the year versus $580.82 billion for the same 5-month period a year ago. The news sequestration and the resolution to the fiscal cliff may have helped in this matter, although it seems that higher tax revenues are unlikely to bring Democrats and Republicans any closer together. Tax receipts are up 13% so far to $1.01 trillion.
February’s budget deficit was $203.54 billion versus almost $231.7 billion for the same month a year ago. Bloomberg was calling for a deficit of some $205 billion. Should we bother mentioning that this year’s February had one day less in it? Federal spending was up 2% to $1.505 trillion. So what you are seeing is slower spending growth, but not slower spending.
It is hard to celebrate close to $100 billion less when you consider that the run rate on a straight-line is still in the range of close to a $1.2 trillion deficit even if recent projections from the CBO appear to finally be under $1 trillion (almost $850 billion). As per the “straight-line” estimate, that is if the rates were averaged from the first five months and annualized on a static 12-month basis.
Today’s report is on the heels of a Republican budget proposal aiming at $4.6 trillion in spending cuts along with a tax code revision. Democrats seem very unlikely to jump on board. We are still of course awaiting a White House budget proposal and the nation has now operated for four years without a budget.
By the way, we have still been given no explanation from the great profitable and “independent” U.S. Postal Service how they added some 4,500 workers to their payrolls in February.
Filed under: 24/7 Wall St. Wire, Economy, Politics
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
By Tim Worstall, Contributor There’s a proposal out of California to impose a tax, a tiny one, on all emails sent in order to subsidise the US Port Office in all the vital work that it does. The idea’s a very silly one I’m afraid: Earlier this week, readers reacted with skepticism after Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak suggested that taxing email might be one way to raise money for the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
