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Tampa, FL – Forget new gear, weapons, or sophisticated targeting systems. The newest tool coming to combat troops is low-tech: beards. In a report released yesterday, research think-tank Xegis Solutions noted that beards have a direct correlation to combat effectiveness.

Jonathon Burns was the lead researcher in the study.

“We took 100 soldiers. 25 were Special Forces qualified and had beards, 25 were Special Forces qualified without beards, 25 were regular Army allowed to grow beards for the study, and the last 25 were regular Army without beards. All 100 of these subjects were in direct combat in Afghanistan during the study.”

He continued, “Xegis Solutions had several teams of researchers embedded with these troops to make observations on their combat effectiveness. The results were overwhelming, out of the 50 soldiers with beards, zero were wounded or killed and they had a significantly higher accuracy of fire than the soldiers without beards. The soldiers lacking beards had a higher rate of weapons malfunctions and basically, shit went wrong most of the time.”

CENTCOM wasted no time establishing a new rule forcing males to grow beards.

Commander Gen. James E. Mattis issued a statement to all troops in combat zones.

“The time has come for the Armed Forces to accept the facts, and the facts are that beards save lives. All this time it was speculated that Green Berets were better because of their superior and intensive training while in fact, most of it had to do with beards.”

There’s no doubt that many in the Special Forces community will be angered, but General Mattis is convinced.

“It’s settled science. In light of this information we will enforce a rule requiring all males to wear at least one inch of facial hair at all times. Furthermore, any females able to grow facial hair are encouraged to do so as well.”

“It doesn’t just seem like America is dividing into two nations — one where luxury spending is going strong, the other where more and more people can’t afford to put food on the table. It really is.

No, there’s not much question income inequality has exploded over the past 30 years. What’s under dispute is the idea that spending patterns have diverged too. Some economists argue that even though there’s a wide gulf between the country’s highest and lowest earners, the differences in what people spend and how they spend it aren’t actually all that huge. After all, even those in poverty have televisions and refrigerators, the argument goes.

Yet a growing chorus of scholars aren’t so convinced, arguing just the opposite — that as income inequality has grown, so has consumption inequality. In other words, a rising tide lifts only some boats.

The latest research to support this idea comes from Orazio Attanasio, Erik Hurst and Luigi Pistaferri, three professors who recently published a paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research. The authors argue that because of long-running errors in the way consumption inequality is usually measured, the disparity between the biggest and the most modest spenders is much greater than previous researchers have claimed.

In fact, they write, “consumption inequality within the U.S. between 1980 and 2010 has increased by nearly the same amount as income inequality” — in other words, a whole lot….”

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“The 100 Best Small Companies in America.   For the first time, 24/7 Wall St. presents the 100 Best Small Companies in America. To be considered, companies had to be publicly traded with more than  $5 million and less than $1 billion in revenue.  24/7 Wall St.’s inaugural 100 Best Small Companies in America is comprised of America’s best publicly traded companies marked by outsized revenue, growth and innovation.

The initial list based on the universe of public corporations with less than $1 billion in revenue.

These companies are among the best for their size because they have increased revenue over the period covered by our analysis. Their relatively small sizes and robust sales expansion rates also makes it likely many will continue to grow even further, if the record of public company expansion is any example.  Past growth does not mean all of these firms will prosper, but most on this list have been consistently profitable, which adds to the chances of future progress.

Small companies, our research shows, usually have one or two specialized divisions and are focused on one core market. For instance, Steve Madden, True Religion and rue 21 have all carved out a niche segment in the apparel and footwear market. Their lack of diversity could be a drawback because the companies rely completely on one set of products, but it can also mean that management can be laser focused on a single opportunity.

Another industry which is well represented on this list is niche healthcare. Once again, most of the firms in this sector which made the list are in only one business. Mesa Labs makes manufacturing quality control products for medical devices. It is a narrow market, and there is no guarantee that a large device manufacturer might not attack the same sector. Bio-Reference Laboratories provides testing services. Cantel Medical provides infection prevention and control devices. This infection prevention business appears to be a relatively small one, but the overall medical industry in the US is expanding at such a rapid rate and regulations are changing so quickly that some of these companies will prosper because of these changes. Given the state of American healthcare costs, not many people would be surprised to see healthcare firms on a list of fast growing companies

These corporations are also often willing to take calculated risks, in some case, as they strive to expand their bases. Retailers are a good example.  Steve Madden, one of our companies, was started in 1990 with $1,100. The company has consistently added lines of apparel since then to increase revenue…”

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“After six months of rising optimism, small business owners came back to earth in March, expressing concerns with inflation and rising prices in the National Federation of Independent Business’ latest Small Business Optimism Index survey.

The index fell nearly two points in March from February, when it was at its highest point in the past 12 months.

Even as the stock market continued to rise and unemployment continued to decline in March, business owners were not cheered by the numbers.

“One could have hoped it could keep going up,” William Dunkelberg, NFIB’s chief economist, told CNBC.com. Business owners remained subdued, he said, because “nothing has happened to make people feel good about the future.”

Nine of the 10 components in the index went down in March; business owners expressed pessimism in the areas of job creation, expectation of higher sales, easing of credit conditions, and earnings. The only area in which optimism increased was with inventories, which are low. As consumer confidenceremains unsteady, businesses are keeping inventories in check.

Dunkelberg said that the March report mirrors the one from March 2011, “and not in a good way.”

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“WASHINGTON (AP) — Reigniting a debate about the bottom line for President Barack Obama’s health care law, a leading conservative economist estimates in a study to be released Tuesday that the overhaul will add at least $340 billion to the deficit, not reduce it.

Charles Blahous, who serves as public trustee overseeing Medicareand Social Security finances, also suggested that federal accounting practices have obscured the true fiscal impact of the legislation, the fate of which is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Officially, the health care law is still projected to help reduce government red ink. The Congressional Budget Office, the government’s nonpartisan fiscal umpire, said in an estimate last year that repealing the law actually would increase deficits by $210 billion from 2012 to 2021.

The CBO, however, has not updated that projection. If $210 billion sounds like a big cushion, it’s not. The government has recently been running annual deficits in the $1 trillion range.

The White house dismissed the study in a statement late Monday. Presidential assistant Jeanne Lambrew called the study “new math (that) fits the old pattern of mischaracterizations” about the health care law.

Blahous, in his 52-page analysis released by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, said, “Taken as a whole, the enactment of the (health care law) has substantially worsened a dire federal fiscal outlook.

“The (law) both increases a federal commitment to health care spending that was already unsustainable under prior law and would exacerbate projected federal deficits relative to prior law,” Blahous said.

The law expands health insurance coverage to more than 30 million people now uninsured, paying for it with a mix of Medicare cuts and new taxes and fees.

Blahous cited a number of factors for his conclusion:

— The health care’s law deficit cushion has been reduced by more than $80 billion because of the administration’s decision not to move forward with a new long-term care insurance program that was part of the legislation. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program raised money in the short term, but would have turned into a fiscal drain over the years.

— The cost of health insurance subsidies for millions of low-income and middle-class uninsured people could turn out to be higher than forecast, particularly if employers scale back their own coverage.

— Various cost-control measures, including a tax on high-end insurance plans that doesn’t kick in until 2018, could deliver less than expected.

The decision to use Medicare cuts to finance the expansion of coverage for the uninsured will only make matters worse, Blahous said. The money from the Medicare savings will have been spent, and lawmakers will have to find additional cuts or revenues to forestall that program’s insolvency.

Under federal accounting rules, the Medicare cuts are also credited as savings to that program’s trust fund. But the CBO and Medicare’s own economic estimators already said the government can’t spend the same money twice.

Blahous served in the George W. Bush White House from 2001-2009, rising to deputy director of the National Economic Council. He currently is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center.

His study was first reported late Monday by The Washington Post.”

Does that mean the fed will stop charging interest for money printed out of thin air ?

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“The shortfall in US labor union pension funds is huge and growing rapidly. The latest data, from 2009, from the PBGC showed that thesemulti-employer plans were 48% underfunded with $331bn of assets to support $686bn of liabilities – and it has hardly been a good ride for those asset values since then. Critically, as the FT notes today, recent changes by FASB has enabled Credit Suisse to estimate shortfalls more accurately and it paints an ugly picture. The critical difference between reality and what is being reported is the ability for firms to use actuarial ‘facts’ to discount liabilities or compound assets at a 7.5% annual growth rate – as opposed to the sad reality of a financially repressed investing environment where returns swing from +20% to -20% in a flash forcing all funds into market timers and not long-term buy-and-hold growth players. These multi-employer pension schemes cover over 10 million people concentrated in industries with highly unionized workforces such as construction, transport, retail and hospitality but of the shortfall only $43bn lies with firms of the S&P 500 – leaving the bulk of the burden on small- and medium-sized businesses once again. It seems the number and size of unfunded (implicitly government) liabilities continues to rise or does this force pensions to follow Ben’s path and increase exposure to hedge funds (which are underperforming in this serene rally so far this year) in an effort to meet these hurdle rates? Either way it appears this under-appreciated drag on the real-economy as one after another small-, medium-, and large- (Safeway faces shortfalls larger than its market cap) businesses will need to eat into earnings to fund this shortfall.

“Michigan State University President Lou Anna K. Simon contacted the Central Intelligence Agency in late 2009 with an urgent question.

The school’s campus in Dubai needed a bailout and an unlikely savior had stepped forward: a Dubai-based company that offered to provide money and students.

Simon was tempted. She also worried that the company, which had investors from Iran and wanted to recruit students from there, might be a front for the Iranian government, she said. If so, an agreement could violate federal trade sanctions and invite enemy spies.

The CIA couldn’t confirm that the company wasn’t an arm of Iran’s government. Simon rejected the offer and shut down undergraduate programs in Dubai, at a loss of $3.7 million.

Hearkening back to Cold War anxieties, growing signs of spying on U.S. universities are alarming national security officials. As schools become more global in their locations and student populations, their culture of openness and international collaboration makes them increasingly vulnerable to theft of research conducted for the government and industry.

“We have intelligence and cases indicating that U.S. universities are indeed a target of foreign intelligence services,” Frank Figliuzzi, Federal Bureau of Investigation assistant director for counterintelligence, said in a February interview in the bureau’s Washington headquarters.

‘Academic Solicitation’

While overshadowed by espionage against corporations, efforts by foreign countries to penetrate universities have increased in the past five years, Figliuzzi said. The FBI and academia, which have often been at loggerheads, are working together to combat the threat, he said.

Attempts by countries in East Asia, including China, to obtain classified or proprietary information by “academic solicitation,” such as requests to review academic papers or study with professors, jumped eightfold in 2010 from a year earlier, according to a 2011 U.S. Defense Department report. Such approaches from the Middle East doubled, it said.

“Placing academics at U.S. research institutions under the guise of legitimate research offers access to developing U.S. technologies and cutting-edge research” in such areas as information systems, lasers, aeronautics and underwater robots, the report said….”

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Drunk man attacked and robbed by savage animals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdmaYeWfmGQ&feature=related

A sad day for humanity when innocent bystanders turn on a man being beaten down in the street…

“Doubts on Romney’s Conservatism Help Santorum in the South,” reads the ABC News headline from March 13. The headline would have you believe that Rick Santorum trounced Mitt Romney in the Alabama and Mississippi GOP primaries. It obscures the fact that Santorum beat Romney by just 44-39 percent in Alabama and 42-39 percent in Mississippi. In other words, nearly half of GOP primary voters in these states voted for Romney.

The headline not only obscures the kinds of political divisions that divide the rural and more liberal urban parts of the South; it also feeds into the idea that Southern conservatives vote primarily on “family values” issues, and takes it on good faith that Romney — who has moved awfully far to the Right during primary season – is somehow the more civilized, sane, humane and/or liberal of the two.

In January, CNN contributor John Avlon wrote about the ugly stereotypes about South Carolina that he saw as that state’s primaries kicked off: “You know, the characterization of South Carolina as a swamp of sleazy politics and brutal attack ads, a Bible belt bastion of rednecks and racism, a state defined by Bob Jones University. Sometimes these stereotypes are floated in political conversations as evidence of how ‘real’ the state is in determining the true feelings of the conservative base.”

These stereotypes are nothing new. In fact, they often date back to the Civil War. They tend to denigrate the Southern poor, under-educated and rural in ways that bear striking resemblance to Republican rhetoric that demonizes the poor in general. But every election season, those of us who have spent most of our lives in the South are reminded of the devastating misconceptions that many other Americans have about us. The Right romanticizes us as the “real America” while the Left treats us a punchline. Polling organizations like Public Policy Polling design studies that target Southern states and reinforce the national sense that we are backward and dim-witted. Here are just a few of the ways in which popular political narratives distort the contemporary realities of Southern life in historical context.

Read the rest here.

By Tom Lauricella

In many ways, global financial markets remain lashed to the risk on/risk off seesaw that has driven trading for the last few years. But peel back the layers of the onion on the U.S. stock market and things are looking dramatically different.

Earlier this week , as part of the WSJ first quarter wrap-up, we noted that correlations between asset classes – such as the U.S. dollar and stocks – have fallen from peaks hit late last year. But cross-asset correlations remain elevated compared to history. One only had to look to yesterday’s trading, where traders hit their big shiny red “risk off” buttons following a sloppy Spanish bond auction and all the way across the Atlantic, U.S. stocks had their second-worst day of the year.

But as we also noted here at MarketBeat yesterday, data compiled by BofA Merrill Lynch show large-cap stock pickers have been having a better time of beating their benchmark. Savita Subramanian, head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy at BofA Merrill, pointed to lower correlations between stocks as a tailwind.

We were curious where correlations between stocks stood compared to longer-term trends, so we asked Subramanian for more data.

Turns out, correlations are really down a lot. A whole lot. They’re at below average levels for the last 26 years, and perhaps most eye-catching of all, they’re at levels not seen since late 2006 – in other words, before the financial crisis.

The most collected artist alive.

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An interesting exploration into the self. How fitting for this weekend’s holiday.

Cheers on your weekend!

Anima from Dominoes Falling Productions, is a feature length documentary using a collaboration of various material.

The film examines our relationships with ourselves, others and the environment around us.

Other themes include our creativity and our power as individuals and as a collective to manifest our own reality.

an·i·ma – The Latin translation of the Greek word psyche.

1. The inner self of an individual (soul); a relationship with that which is greater than self.

2. Expressions of the unconscious or true inner self of an individual (Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology).

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“Employers in the U.S. added fewer jobs than forecast in March, underscoring Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s concern that recent gains may not be sustained without a pickup in growth.

The 120,000 increase in payrolls, the fewest in five months, followed a revised 240,000 gain in February that was bigger than first estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The March increase was less than the most pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg News survey in which the median estimate called for a 205,000 rise. Unemployment fell to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009, from 8.3 percent.

Faster employment growth that leads to bigger wage gains is necessary to propel consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Today’s data showed Americans worked fewer hours and earned less on average per week, helping explain why policy makers say interest ratesmay need to stay low at least through late 2014.

“You’re going to see a slowing in the pace of job growth,” Neil Dutta, an economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York, said before the report. “Despite the much ballyhooed recovery in the labor market, we’ve seen more jobs and yet disposable income is weaker.”

Stock-index futures declined after the figures, with the contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in June falling 0.8 percent to 1,379 at 8:33 a.m. in New York. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.10 percent from 2.18 percent.

Payroll estimates from 80 economists in the Bloomberg survey ranged from increases of 175,000 to 250,000 after an initially estimated 227,000 gain the prior month. Revisions added a total of 4,000 jobs to payrolls in January and February.

Fewer Retail Jobs

The March data showed a 34,000 decrease in retail employment, the biggest decline since October 2009.

The unemployment rate, derived from a separate survey of households, was forecast to hold at 8.3 percent, according to the survey median.

The jobless rate dropped as unemployed workers stopped looking for work and left the labor force. The participation rate, which indicates the share of working-age people in the labor force, fell to 63.8 percent from 63.9 percent.

While a 0.9 percentage-point drop in unemployment since August may underpin PresidentBarack Obama’s standing leading up to the vote in November, only one president since World War II – – Ronald Reagan — has been re-elected with a jobless rate above 6 percent. Reagan won a second term in 1984 with 7.2 percent unemployment in the month of the election, after the rate had fallen almost three percentage points in the previous 18 months.

Private Payrolls

Private payrolls, which exclude government agencies, rose 121,000 in March after a gain of 233,000 the prior month. They were projected to climb by 215,000. Manufacturing payrolls increased by 37,000 after a 31,000 gain.

Strengthening demand is prompting companies like Ford Motor Co. (F), the second-biggest U.S. automaker, to bring in more workers. The Dearborn, Michigan-based manufacturer boosted its 2012 sales forecast to 14.5 million to 15 million vehicles from a previous projection of 13.5 million to 14.5 million.

“We’ve already announced some shift increases, some adds in terms of shifts this year,” Erich Merkle, sales analyst at Ford, said April 3 on a conference call with analysts. “So, certainly we’ll be adding some people to fill those shifts.”

Employment at service-providers increased 89,000 after a 211,000 gain in February. Professional and business service payrolls rose 31,000 last month, even as temporary hiring declined 7,500.

‘Modest Growth’

“We see modest growth inside the U.S. and demand for labor,” Carl Camden, president and chief executive officer of Kelly Services Inc. (KELYA), a Troy, Michigan-based staffing agency, said March 12 during a conference. The expansion is “a nice steady, not robust, not rock-and-roll, but a steady recovery, capable of producing a steady stream of jobs.”

At the Western Area Career and Technology Center in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, about 25 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, the job placement rate is 94 percent.

Some companies in the region, home to an energy boom related to shale gas drilling, are starting to compete for workers, Joseph Iannetti, the school’s director said April 4. Enrollment at the campus in Canonsburg, typically less than 400 students, is 430 this year, he said.

“We’re about to go into a really nice labor shortage here,” he said. “We’re seeing increasing demand for people with skill.”

This Year

Matt Stuckey, 42, sought work for several months in 2011. In February, the former U.S. Marine officer became a marketing director for the United Services Automobile Association, a San Antonio, Texas-based provider of financial services to military personnel.

“During the fourth quarter of last year it was very quiet,” he said in a March 27 telephone interview. “Then at the beginning of the year the job market just turned on.”

The Commerce Department last week said the economy expanded at a 3 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter after a 1.8 percent rate in the prior three months. Gross domestic product grew at a 2 percent pace in the first quarter, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists last month.

Today’s report also showed construction companies reduced payrolls by 7,000 workers last month after a 6,000 decrease. Government payrolls fell 1,000 in March.

Weekly Earnings

Average weekly earnings fell to $806.96 in March from $807.56, today’s report showed. The average work week for all workers decreased to 34.5 hours from 34.6.

Wage increases are needed to help Americans weather gasoline prices that have increased by 66 cents this year through April 4, to $3.94 a gallon, according to data from AAA, the nation’s largest auto club.

The so-called underemployment rate, which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking, decreased to 14.5 percent from 14.9 percent.

Bernanke, in a speech to economists on March 26, said the employment gains have been a “welcome development. Still, conditions remain far from normal, as shown, for example, by the high level of long-term unemployment and the fact that jobs and hours worked remain well below pre-crisis peaks.”

“We cannot yet be sure that the recent pace of improvement in the labor market will be sustained,” Bernanke said, adding he was particularly concerned about the number people out of work for six months or longer.

The report also showed a decrease in long-term unemployed Americans. The number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more eased as a percentage of all jobless, to 42.5 percent from 42.6 percent.”

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“For those paying income taxes later this month and wondering just what their money goes toward, here is a breakdown of how the U.S. government spends it.

“U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is telling business and political leaders to be careful about major cuts in spending, suggesting that too much, too fast might lead to a new recession.

Economists have been warning that the United States faces a “fiscal cliff” in the next year as the Bush tax cuts expire and automatic spending cuts equaling $1.2 trillion kick in. Half would come from domestic spending, half from defense.

Some fear that extending the tax breaks again while cutting spending will hurt U.S. GDP growth, prompting a quick decline just as the economy gets back on its feet….”

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