Mitt Romney: 'Boring' by design? (The Week)

New York ? Romney catches a lot of flak for being wooden and robotic. But that's all part of the master plan, says Robert Draper in The New York Times Magazine

Mitt Romney has at least two widely perceived flaws as a presidential candidate: He's an inveterate flip-flopper, and he's stiffly robotic. The Romney campaign doesn't buy the first characterization, and the second one is less a flaw than a deliberate strategy, writes Robert Draper who interviewed Romney's team for a long piece in The New York Times Magazine. Instead of trying to turn a "smart and highly qualified but largely colorless" Mormon into a guy you'd like to have a beer with, Team Romney has made its candidate "exquisitely one-dimensional: All-Business Man, the world's most boring superhero." Here, 5 key points from Draper's "Building a Better Mitt Romney?Bot" profile:

1. The "Romney-Bot" strategy is deliberate
In his 2008 run, Romney held about 200 freewheeling "Ask Mitt Anything" sessions with voters, featured his five sons at his campaign stops, and tried hard to win over skeptical social conservatives. It didn't work. This time, Draper writes, his campaign is betting that it's alright for Romney to be an extremely wealthy, "socially awkward Mormon with squishy conservative credentials," because "recession-weary voters want a fixer, not a B.F.F." So the 2012 game plan is to eschew spontaneity, keep it brief, keep Romney "tightly contained in the business-centric pocket," and "hop[e] to God that he does not stray from it.

SEE MORE: Has Mitt Romney become a climate-change skeptic?

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2. The strategist behind the drab Romney persona is a colorful eccentric
Masterminding this less-is-more plan is Romney's chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, a Mississippi native "as wry, eclectic, and mussed in appearance as his boss is earnest and buttoned up." Stevens has worked on several big campaigns, mostly for "non-ideological Republicans," but he's also dabbled in Hollywood, writing an episode of the TV show Northern Exposure?and consulting on movie projects for George Clooney. Producing ads for Romney in 2008, he noticed that the candidate had too many cooks in the kitchen. Stevens has streamlined the 2012 campaign ? and persuaded Romney, an English major, to give up writing his own speeches.

3. The bland technocrat theme extends to Romney HQ
Romney's national campaign headquarters is an "unmarked three-story waterfront building" in Boston's North End that was supposed to be demolished after his 2008 run. "The equally bleak panorama inside ? grimy industrial carpet, halfhearted wall adornments, and the occasional piece of paper taped to a door announcing that the person inside is in charge of 'Strategy' or some such," says Draper, "is a testament both to a campaign's tunnel vision and to the fact that the wealthy Romney is a rather tightfisted fellow."

SEE MORE: Is Mitt Romney's business experience really a plus?

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4. Stevens fears Obama's campaign more than the GOP rivals
The serial implosions of Romney's GOP rivals has left his team looking smart. In fact, Draper observes, Stevens doesn't seem "terribly intimidated" by any of the other contenders ? Rick Perry reminds him of "the townies in the early scenes of The Deer Hunter who go loping into Vietnam expecting to kick butt." But Stevens calls President Obama's team "the best campaign organization ever put together."

5. The risk-minimizing strategy carries its own risk
Stevens and the Romney team think their "strategy of underwhelming force" will play well against the "once-dazzling Obama," Draper says. From their point of view, an electorate that feels burned by its "failed romance with the One" will be ready to "settle on Mitt Romney as the One Who Won't Break Your Heart." But distancing Romney from his own life and his human side allows others to fill in the blanks, notes Maggie Haberman in Politico. And Romney is already "being defined aggressively by Democrats and GOP rivals as a 'flip-flopper,'" even as his team is "insisting he is best known for 'constancy.'"

SEE MORE: Mitt Romney's 'incredible' waffling on Ohio's union fight

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Read the entire article in The New York Times Magazine.

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New insights into responses of Yellowstone wolves to environmental changes

Thursday, December 1, 2011

A study of the wolves of Yellowstone National Park has improved predictions of how these animals will respond to environmental changes. The study, which was partially funded by the National Science Foundation, appears in the December 2, 2011 issue of Science.

The study, which is part of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, involved tracking changes in various characteristics of the wolves of Yellowstone National Park ever since these animals were reintroduced to the park in 1995. Some tracked characteristics--such as population size--are related to population ecology. Other tracked characteristics--such as coat color--are genetically determined through evolution.

The project also involved using a new model to compare the collected data on Yellowstone wolf characteristics to environmental conditions through the years covered by the study.

Conditions in the park during each year were defined along a continuum from "good years" to "bad years"--with good years more favorable to wolf survival than bad years.

Tim Coulson of Imperial College London, the lead author of the study, explains, "The novelty of the new model is that it looks at how the frequencies of changes in environmental conditions along the 'good to bad' year continuum simultaneously impact many wolf characteristics."

Results indicate that:

• Environmental changes will inevitably generate simultaneous ecological and evolutionary responses in the Yellowstone wolves.

• Changes in mean environment conditions will impact the size of the Yellowstone wolf population more than will changes in the variability of environmental conditions.

• A single environmental change may impact various wolf characteristics differently, depending on which particular aspects of wolf biology it impacts.

For example, suppose environmental conditions in a "good year" helped increase the population size of Yellowstone wolves by increasing their survival rates. Also, suppose that a grey coat color would confer a survival advantage to wolves. Then, under those particular "good" conditions, an increase in the size of the wolf population would be expected to produce an increase in the prevalence of grey coats among the wolves.

By contrast, suppose that certain environmental conditions in a "good year" helped increase the population size of Yellowstone wolves by increasing the availability of their prey. Because the availability of prey and coat color are not related to one another, under those particular "good" conditions, an increase in the size of the wolf population would not be expected to produce an increase in the prevalence of grey coats among the wolves.

Coulson says that increasing the specificity of the model's predictions requires collecting more data on the ecological and evolutionary responses of Yellowstone's wolves to various environmental conditions and on the relationships of these responses to one another.

As part of this effort, the Yellowstone Wolf Project research team is currently studying the differential impacts of various environmental changes on ecological and evolutionary characteristics of Yellowstone wolves during various stages of their life cycles. The team is also working to identify the types of environmental conditions--such as the sizes of various populations of prey species and the amount and residence time of snow on the ground--that define good, bad and intermediary years for wolves.

The researchers hope that the once the methods developed through this study are refined, they may be applicable to other types of species, such as insects or crop pests, that live in other types of ecosystems.

What's more, Coulson suggests that these methods may ultimately help answer questions about human populations. As just one example, the methods developed through this study might ultimately be used to help predict the impacts of the ongoing obesity epidemic on survival and fertility rates and the resulting influence of those variables on the growth rate of selected human populations.

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National Science Foundation: http://www.nsf.gov

Thanks to National Science Foundation for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115655/New_insights_into_responses_of_Yellowstone_wolves_to_environmental_changes

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BOJ's Nishimura warns of risk of broad credit crunch (Reuters)

KYOTO, Japan (Reuters) ? There is no quick fix to Europe's debt woes that threaten to escalate into a more widespread credit crunch, Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Kiyohiko Nishimura warned on Wednesday, voicing policymakers' growing concern about the deepening damage from the crisis.

Nishimura, known as one of more pessimistic board members, also said Tokyo must take appropriate action if currency moves are out of line with economic fundamentals in an attempt to keep markets on guard against another yen-selling intervention in the event of a renewed yen spike.

"Europe's sovereign debt problems are essentially the result of expanding imbalances in the region ... thus we need to be aware that there is no immediate silver bullet for solving its problems," Nishimura said in a speech to business leaders in Kyoto, western Japan.

"We need to brace ourselves for global financial market tension remaining high for a long time. We must be mindful of the risk of some shock triggering a widespread credit crunch," said Nishimura, who is one of the BOJ's two deputy governors.

Nishimura became the latest of the BOJ's nine-member policy board to warn that the euro zone debt crisis posed the biggest risk to Japan's economy with repercussions already felt widely across the globe.

IMF ROLE

Japan's economy has rebounded from a recession triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami but is expected to slow sharply this quarter as the initial spurt driven by companies restoring supply chains and production facilities tails off.

Data released earlier on Wednesday showed factory output rose more than expected as automakers continued to restock inventory overseas after restoring supply chains hit by the March earthquake.

Nishimura stuck to the BOJ's view that the world's third largest economy is set to resume a moderate recovery supported by the strength of emerging economies and reconstruction work.

But he added that the forecast faced various uncertainties with Europe's debt crisis seen weighing on global growth and on Japanese exports as the yen continues to draw safe-haven demand.

"We need to be mindful of the fact that the yen will likely draw demand as a relatively safe currency as risk aversion increases among global investors amid continued tensions in global markets," Nishimura said.

"If the yen rises sharply in a way that deviates from economic fundamentals, companies may accelerate the pace at which they shift production overseas in an irrecoverable way."

Concern about the impact of the yen's strength and Europe's debt crisis on Japan's economic recovery prompted its rating agency R&I announce a review for a possible downgrade of its AAA rating for the nation's debt.

"R&I positively views the fiscal consolidation stance of the (Prime Minister Yoshihiko) Noda administration, which took office at the end of August," it said in a statement.

"Nevertheless, with a delay in implementing measures for earthquake reconstruction and the persistently strong yen, the economic recovery lacks strength. Furthermore, the deepening European sovereign debt crisis and other factors are increasing uncertainty about external demand."

The BOJ, which meets for a rate review on December 20-21, could offer additional stimulus to help sustain the economy's recovery depending on how share prices and the yen perform, analysts say.

Europe's sovereign debt crisis has shown little sign of letup with investors fleeing the euro-zone bond market, causing yields in Italy to spike.

In Brussels, European finance ministers agreed to strengthen the euro zone's bailout fund and said they could ask the International Monetary Fund about more aid as bond yields surge across the region.

Nishimura said it would be natural to expect the International Monetary Fund to play a role in helping resolve Europe's debt woes, adding that in general Japan should do what it can to expand the global lender's functions.

Japan intervened in the currency market and eased monetary policy in October to ease the pain on the export-reliant economy from sharp yen rises and slowing overseas growth.

The BOJ kept monetary settings unchanged this month but has signaled its readiness to ease policy again if Japan's economic recovery comes under threat.

Nishimura surprised markets by proposing unsuccessfully in April that the BOJ should boost its asset purchases. He did not repeat the proposal in subsequent meetings and has voted with the majority.

(Editing by Michael Watson and Tomasz Janowski)

Corrects paragraph 2 to say "appropriate" policy action instead of "resolute."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111130/bs_nm/us_japan_economy_boj

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Strong global sales boost Tiffany's 3Q results (AP)

NEW YORK ? Foreign tourists in the U.S. and luxury shoppers globally continued to snap up jewelry seller Tiffany & Co.'s baubles in the third-quarter, sending the jewelry seller's profit up 63 percent.

The luxury retailer known for its iconic turquoise box raised its full-year forecast as a result performance. But selling more high-priced jewelry like engagement rings and high-end statement jewelry cost the company more to make, and gross margin ? the percentage of each dollar in revenue the company actually keeps ? declined slightly.

In addition, Tiffany forecast fourth-quarter earnings below expectations. The fourth quarter includes the key holiday selling season.

Its shares fell $6.40, or 8.7 percent, to close at $67.22 Tuesday.

Still, Tiffany's results to date show the luxury shopper is spending freely. That segment has rebounded more quickly from the recession than others. High-end jewelry sold better than other categories.

"Increased sales in all regions contributed to the continuation of strong worldwide sales growth in the third quarter," said CEO Michael J. Kowalski.

Tiffany has raised prices twice this year to offset higher prices for precious metal and other commodities. The company said precious metal prices have stabilized and slightly declined, but the company is unlikely to lower prices.

The New York company said that its net income rose to $89.7 million or 70 cents per share in the three months ended Oct. 31, from $55.1 million, or 43 cents per share, a year ago. Analysts expected earnings of 60 cents per share, according to FactSet.

Revenue rose 21 percent to $821.8 million from $681.7 million a year ago. Analysts expected $801.8 million.

In the Americas, sales grew 17 percent to $387.7 million. Revenue in stores open at least one year rose 16 percent. That measure is considered a key gauge of a retailer's financial health because it excludes stores that open or close during the year.

In the U.S. there was growth in all price ranges above $250, particularly higher price points. Engagement rings, high-end statement jewelry ? a category that includes expensive jewels such as an $110,000 platinum and diamond necklace ? and gold jewelry were big sellers. Less expensive silver jewelry ? a category that performed well during the recession ? had a more modest sales increase.

Foreign tourists helped push revenue up 24 percent at Tiffany's New York flagship store.

In Asia-Pacific, revenue rose 44 percent to $183.2 million, helped by strength in the greater China region. Revenue rose 12 percent in Japan and 19 percent in Europe.

But the company said that in the fourth quarter, the company expects net income of $1.48 to $1.58 per share. Analysts expect $1.63 per share.

For the year, Tiffany expects earnings of $3.70 to $3.80 per share, for prior guidance of $3.65 to $3.75 per share. Analysts expect $3.72 per share.

Tiffany, which operates 243 stores globally, expects revenue to rise in the high-teens percentage for the year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111129/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_tiffany

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Strike test for new Greek government (AP)

ATHENS, Greece ? Greece's new coalition government promised rescue creditors it will impose additional "deep and broad reforms," as unions launched a general strike Thursday against the economic austerity.

The 24-hour strike is the first test of union opposition to Prime Minister Lucas Papademos' three-week-old government, and is set to halt most public services. Protest rallies are planned in central Athens to start after 11 a.m. (0900 GMT).

The protest will also halt ferries, disrupt public transport, close schools and leave state hospitals running with reduced staff. Airport traffic, however, is not likely to be affected.

Papademos wrote the leaders of the European Union, European Central Bank and IMF, promising to conclude a massive new bailout deal for Greece and impose tough cost-cutting measures needed to stop the country overspending.

"The government is determined to continue the process of fiscal consolidation and structural reform in order to secure sound public finances and improve the country's international competitiveness," he wrote in a letter, dated Tuesday and made public late Wednesday.

Backed by the country's main Socialist and conservative parties, Papademos now heads negotiations for the new debt deal, amid an escalating crisis in the eurozone that is threatening its largest economies and ultimately the single currency's existence.

The new deal for Greece, to receive euro130 billion ($174.43 billion) in more rescue loans and support for banks, also includes a voluntary write-down of debt held by private holders of Greek bonds.

On Tuesday, eurozone countries approved the release of a crucial rescue loan installment to Greece that will total euro8 billion ($10.73 billion) along with a portion covered by the IMF.

In return for the EU-IMF lifeline, new austerity measures impose job suspensions and pay cuts in the public sector and an emergency property tax that threatens to leave households without power if they delay payment.

"They are creating a situation that can no longer be tolerated, can no longer be endured. Unfortunately people are in a state somewhere between poverty and despair," Ilias Iliopoulos, deputy leader of the civil servants' union ADEDY told AP television.

"The measures are supposed to improve the country's financial situation, but the country is getting deeper into debt, unemployment is rising, and the recession ? unprecedented in recent times ? is worse than anywhere else in Europe. People are falling apart."

Papademos' letter was addressed to top EU and eurozone officials Herman Van Rompuy, Jose Manuel Barroso and Jean-Claude Juncker, was well as ECB president Mario Draghi and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde.

The new coalition government, formed midway through the Socialists' four-year term in office, is due to call early elections at the end of February.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111201/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_greece_financial_crisis

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Video: Technology does not compute

NBC's Rehema Ellis previews her story about a school in California that is a technology free zone. To see Rehema's full report, watch NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight.?????

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Video: Central Banks Fuel Stock Rally

Mark Olson, Treliant Risk Advisors discusses the Fed announcement that lowers the cost of dollar swap borrowing in Europe by 50 basis points, and discussing Wednesday's monster rally, with Jeffrey Kleintop, LPL Financial; Brian Kelly, Shelter Harbor Ca...

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/45501048/

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