Texas business

Texas Economy Continues to Expand at a Moderate Pace 

TexasBusiness.com    November 12, 2011

Related Articles

reports: Texas economic growth continues at a moderate rate, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Conditions in the housing market are improving, with increased home sales and lower inventories; house prices, however, are stagnant. Despite recent weakness in oil prices, energy activity remains strong. Concerns regarding the European debt crisis, continued sluggishness in the national economy and prospects of further job losses in the state and local government pose notable downside risks.

Employment
In September, Texas gained 800 jobs at a 0.1 percent annual rate. Employment was largely flat because local education lost 16,100 jobs due to state budget cuts. Meanwhile, the private sector gained 24,000 jobs at a 3.3 percent annual rate. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 8.5 percent.

Over the first nine months of 2011, total nonfarm jobs have grown at a modest 2.1 percent annual rate (Chart 1). The oil and gas extraction and mining support sector outperformed other sectors, with 17.6 percent annual growth in employment. Professional and business services grew at a 5.7 percent annual rate, and trade, transportation and utilities grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate. Sectors that have lost jobs this year include government and information.

Manufacturing
Jobs growth in manufacturing decelerated in the third quarter, with weaknesses in durables, high-tech and chemicals. Dallas Fed Beige Book contacts also noted a slowdown in the high-tech sector due to global demand weakness. The Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey’s production index remained positive in October at 4.1, but edged down from 5.9 in September, suggesting slightly slower but positive growth.
Construction and Housing
While construction employment growth remains relatively flat, residential construction is showing signs of improvement. Residential contract values jumped 10.7 percent in September (Chart 2). Single-family housing permits increased 2.6 percent in September and 11.8 percent in August after falling for three months. Multifamily permits have been on the rise since first quarter 2010, fueled by robust demand for apartment rentals.

Existing-home sales continue to trend upward, although home sales declined 2.1 percent in September after three months of increase. Home inventories remain unchanged at 7.1 months of supply. The S&P/Case–Shiller home price index for Dallas ticked up in August but is still down 1.9 percent from August 2010.

Commercial Real Estate
Commercial real estate has come a long way since prices bottomed out in late 2009. Since that time, office property prices have risen and capitalization rates for office properties—the required rate of return that investors use to price commercial properties—have come down in Dallas and Houston, in line with national trends (Chart 3). Second-quarter data on industrial availability and apartment vacancies indicate that conditions are much improved since last year. Despite an improvement in commercial real estate conditions across most major segments, overall market sentiment still remains cautious due to uncertainty regarding Europe and the national economy.

Energy
Dallas Fed Beige Book contacts report that energy activity continues to be strong in Texas. Even with the recent softening in oil prices, the rig count has soared to a new post-recession high (Chart 4).

Exports
Texas exports ticked up in July and August after declining in May and June (Chart 5). Exports are up by less than 1 percent (non-annualized) year to date. Continued export growth faces headwinds from two sources: a slowdown in Mexico and a stronger dollar.

Retail
The Beige Book reports that retail sales continued to grow in September although at a slightly slower pace than in August. The Dallas Fed’s Texas Retail Outlook Survey indicates that retail sales grew at a slower pace in October compared with September.
Prices
Helped by a recent drop in commodity prices, price pressures appear to have moderated. According to the Beige Book, there were some reports of an uptick in food, apparel and jewelry prices, but overall price pressures remained insignificant.
Outlook
The outlook for the Texas economy is mixed. The Texas Leading Index fell in September for the fourth month in a row. However, the six-months-ahead index for all three Dallas Fed Texas Business Outlook Surveys remains positive, pointing to continued growth.

Siri Update

Siri, Read My Mind: Did Hackers Just Build a Brain-Powered iPhone?

• Apple's iPhone 4S scores consumer approval

• 

If you believe this video -- and that's a big if -- the era of thought-controlled phones has begun. A pair of hobbyist hackers claim to have taken Siri, the iPhone 4S feature that obeys voice commands, and turned it into an app that obeys brainwave patterns.

[More from Mashable: Apple Admits iOS 5.0.1 Did Not Fix All Battery Issues]

"It works! It really works! It's so freaking amazing," Josh Evans and Ollie Hayward announced Tuesday on the blog they created to chronicle what they call "Project Black Mirror."

In the accompanying YouTube video, Evans wears EEG pads on his forehead and squints in concentration. A circuit board attached to an iPhone on the table beeps shortly later, and a mechanical voice says "calling Graham," the third member of the project, whose phone then rings.

[More from Mashable: Did the iOS 5 Update Solve Your iPhone Battery Issues? [POLL]]
The hackers explain that they used the EEG pads to record the "signature brain patterns" of 25 Siri-based commands. By pairing the signatures with the commands, they effectively create a brain pattern-to-voice dictionary.
That means their system doesn't necessarily know what a person is thinking, but it knows that certain electrical activity in the brain translates to certain commands.
When the system identifies the electrical signature in the brain, it feeds the appropriate command to a sound synthesizer chip, the audio output of which is plugged into the iPhone's microphone jack.

---

The Case For

---

It's hardly an implausible system. Computer interfaces controlled by electrical energy in the brain have been in development for years. A company called Emotiv created an EEG-based videogame controller in 2009. Emotiv founder Tan Lee talks about the technology in this TED video. Scientists at the Honda Research Institute unveiled a technology in 2009 that makes its robot, Asimo, responsive to thought commands. It also used EEG technology to translate electrical signals into commands.

---

The Case Against

---

But Honda also said the real-life applications of the technology were limited. That was partly because of the way our thoughts get easily distracted, and partly because brain patterns can differ greatly between two people who are thinking the same word. In other words, anyone who wanted to use the technology would need to train it.

Jonathan Hefter, the CEO of technology company Neverware, says that if Project Black Mirror does work, it probably has similar limitations and is unlikely to be capable of executing a large number of commands.

"Black Mirror does not seem to be using a general dictionary of human thought, what we would call mind reading," he says. "Their EEG can't really tell the difference between you thinking about a movie you like and a song you like. 'Mind reading' will require a much higher resolution scanner, like an fMRI or an embedder array, and a common map and dictionary of what our natural thoughts look like."

US

Buffett Broadens Portfolio by Spending $23.9B

  Nov 7, 2011 

Enlarge image

Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg

 

Play Video

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Olivia Sterns reports on Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s recent stock purchases and Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett's call for higher taxes on the most wealthy Americans. Buffett, 80, is spending on stocks and takeovers as near-record low interest rates limit returns in fixed income. Buffett spoke in an interview with Charlie Rose yesterday. Bloomberg's Linzie Janis also speaks. (Interview excerpts. Source: Bloomberg)

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) invested $23.9 billion in the third-quarter, the most in at least 15 years, as he accelerated stock purchases and broadened the portfolio beyond consumer and financial-company holdings.
Berkshire bought almost $7 billion of equity securities in the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with $3.62 billion in the second quarter and $834 million in the first, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company said Nov. 4 in a filing. Stockholdings labeled “commercial, industrial and other” soared 62 percent in the three months to $17.4 billion on a cost basis, surpassing equity investments in financial and consumer-product firms.
“He sees something, and it’s big,” said Thomas Russo, a partner at Berkshire investor Gardner Russo & Gardner.
Buffett, 81, drew down Berkshire’s cash as Europe’s debt crisis and Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. pushed stocks to their worst quarterly performance since 2008. The investments disclosed Nov. 4 include $6.9 billion of equities, $5 billion for preferred shares and warrants in Bank of America Corp. and the acquisition of Lubrizol Corp. for about $9 billion.
Buffett is expanding a portfolio that for more than 20 years has included equity stakes in Coca-Cola Co. (KO), the world’s largest soft-drink maker, and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), now the No. 1 U.S. home lender. The chairman and chief executive officer acquired a power company in 2000 and railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe last year.
“Historically he has preferred consumer products and banking to industrial companies,” said James Armstrong, president of Berkshire shareholder Henry H. Armstrong Associates. “But the market changes, so the names he comes up with changes.”

UK

Best Buy Agrees to Buy Carphone’s Mobile Venture, Will Shut Stores in U.K.

Q  Nov 7, 2011 9:38 AM ET

Enlarge image

Best Buy said today it will pay 838 million pounds for the 50 percent stake in the venture. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

Best Buy Chief Executive Officer Brian Dunn. Photographer: Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

Shoppers carry their purchases from a Best Buy Store in Thurrock. Source: Getty Images for Best Buy

Best Buy Co., the world’s largest consumer-electronics retailer, agreed to buy Carphone Warehouse Group Plc (CPW)’s stake in their U.S. mobile-phone joint venture for 838 million pounds ($1.34 billion) and close the U.K. stores it opened less than two years ago.
The cash transaction for the 50 percent stake in the venture, which was formed in 2006, is expected to add to earnings in fiscal 2013, excluding items, Minneapolis-based Best Buy said today in a statement. Carphone Warehouse will return almost all of the proceeds to shareholders, according to a separate statement.
Best Buy Chief Executive Officer Brian Dunn is betting on mobile phones in the U.S., where slumping television sales and competition from Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) have led to five straight quarterly declines at stores open at least 14 months. The 11 “big box” stores that are being closed in the U.K. have been pinched by a decline in consumer spending.
“The investment community has wanted to see Best Buy take full control of the U.S. mobile business where there’s still strength at least for the near term,” Joe Feldman, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group in New York, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “Closing the U.K. stores signals the highly competitive market and the tough economic environment.”
Best Buy rose 0.4 percent to $27.42 at 9:33 a.m. in New York. Carphone Warehouse advanced 1.2 percent to 349 pence in London trading.

Mindshift Acquisition

Best Buy will incur expenses of about $2.6 billion, including $1.2 billion to write down Best Buy Europe’s goodwill. Excluding restructuring charges and other items, the deal will boost profit by about 5 cents a share in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012.
Separately today, Best Buy agreed to buy mindSHIFT Technologies Inc., a provider of information technology services to small and medium-sized businesses, for $167 million, according to a statement.

Microsoft

TechNewsWorld > Top Stories

Microsoft Issues Fix to Keep Duqu at Bay

Monday - November 7, 2011

Microsoft on Friday released a temporary fix for a Microsoft Word vulnerability that allows the Duqu worm to attack PCs. The flaw, in TrueType font parsing, could let an attacker run arbitrary code in kernel mode, installing programs; view, change or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights, Microsoft said. The vendor stated that it's aware of targeted attacks that try to use the vulnerability, but there hasn't been much impact on Windows users so far. "It's important to note that the associated risk is minimal for the public," Microsoft's Jerry Bryant said.