Healy said there could be other job cuts at the company in the future as officials deal with oil prices that have jumped to more than $140 a barrel. He said the hope would be to achieve any further job cuts that are necessary through attrition.
"We're looking at other areas of the company," Healy said.
News of the planned job cuts comes after AirTran told employees Wednesday that it is seeking to cut its overall employee pay by about 10%, and it warned that it may need to cut wages further in the future.
AirTran executives said cost-saving efforts the carrier has already implemented — reducing capacity by 15%, cutting costs, raising $150 million in cash by selling stock, capping a portion of the company's fuel exposure with hedges, and raising ticket prices and fees — have not been enough to deal with the impact of oil prices that have doubled in the last year.
AirTran to cut 180 pilots, 300 flight attendants
ATLANTA — Discount carrier AirTran Airways is cutting 480 jobs, or more than 5% of its work force, amid difficult financial times due largely to soaring fuel prices, a company executive said Monday.
The Orlando-based airline told employees that 180 pilot jobs and 300 flight attendant jobs will be eliminated effective Sept. 6, according to Kevin Healy, senior vice president of marketing and planning for AirTran Holdings Inc. Flights also will be reduced in September, Healy said.
AirTran is offering an early out voluntary program for employees with at least five years of service. Eligible employees who are accepted for the program will receive six to 12 months of medical benefits and six to 12 months of flight privileges, Healy said.
AirTran has about 8,900 employees, including 1,450 pilots and 2,000 flight attendants.
By Harry R. Weber, AP Business Writer
AirTran to cut 300 flight attendants
Grizzly Bear Market
A review of the three worst bears since 1940 shows how bad things can get. In 2000-02, stocks ran into trouble when investors drove prices of tech stocks — and most stocks, for that matter — to unsustainable levels relative to their earnings. When the tech bubble burst, it took the whole market down, causing a 49.1% drop over 31 months.
The 1987 bear was different, lasting just three months, but most of the overall 33.5% decline occurred in one day: the Oct. 19, 1987, market crash.
The 1973-74 bear market was caused by a host of factors familiar today. Inflation was out of control. Oil prices went through the roof, thanks to the Arab oil embargo. The economy slumped into recession. The stock downdraft lasted 21 months and knocked stocks down 48.2%.
In general, it takes investors 3.3 years, on average, to get back to even after a bear market decline, says James Stack, editor of InvesTech Research.
And investors who think it's not too late to play defense with stocks already down 20% should think again. The two sectors that hold up best in the run-up to a 20% decline — consumer staples and health care — actually fall the most from the 20% threshold to the end of the bear, says Paul Hickey of Bespoke Investment Group.
"Once an official bear market hits, investors begin to dump everything," he says.
NEW YORK — The serial killer of stock prices is back, causing acute financial and emotional pain.
As happens every five years or so, stocks are now in a bear market, one of those dreaded events that separate investors from their money. The last bear, sparked by the crash of tech stocks and corporate scandals, lasted 2½ years, ended in October 2002 and cut stock prices in half.
The current bear market, defined as a drop of 20% or more, has knocked the Dow Jones industrials down just 20.3% and is more akin to a cub bear. The question now is whether the slide, caused by a combination of falling home prices, a credit crisis and record oil prices, will turn into a grizzly bear.
Thus, it's a good time to roll out the bear market pain meter. Indeed, a look at history can give investors an idea of how long the slide could last and how much money they might end up losing.
The average decline of the Standard & Poor's 500 index in bear markets dating to 1940 is 34.1%, S&P says. The good news? This decline isn't as bad. The S&P, down 19.3% from its high, still isn't in an official bear. The bad news? "The question is, how long does the decline last?" says Hugh Johnson of Johnson Illington Advisors. Meanwhile, the market "is going down, and it's pretty painful."
Employers cut 438,000 jobs this year
Employers shed 62,000 workers in June — the sixth straight month of job losses — as the construction and manufacturing sectors continued to struggle, the Labor Department said Thursday. - WASHINGTON
The unemployment rate held steady at 5.5%, though the report showed that 52,000 more jobs were lost in May and April that had earlier been estimated.
Wage growth was tepid. Average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers rose 3.4% during the past year and average weekly earnings gained just 2.8%. Wages are lagging inflation as gasoline, energy and food prices surge.
"Over the past year the number of unemployed has increased by 1.5 million to 8.5 million and the unemployment rate has increased by 1 percentage points to 5.5%," says Steven Wood, chief economist of Insight Economics. "In the post World War II period, every time the unemployment rate has jumped by a full percentage point in the course of a year, the economy has slipped into recession."
So far this year, the economy has lost a total of 438,00 jobs, an average of 73,000 a month.
Financial Readiness
Home is where most people feel safe and comfortable. But sometimes — say, when a hurricane, flood, tornado, wildfire, or other disaster strikes — it’s safest to pack up and go to another location.
When it comes to preparing for situations like weather emergencies, financial readiness is as important as a flashlight with fully charged batteries. Leaving your home can be stressful, but knowing that your financial documents are up-to-date, in one place, and portable can make a big difference at a tense time.
Here are some tips for financial readiness in case of an emergency:
Conduct a household inventory. Make a list of your possessions and document it with photos or a video. This could help if you are filing insurance claims. Keep one copy of your inventory in your home on a shelf in a lockable, fireproof file box; keep another in a safe deposit box or another secure location.
Buy a lockable, fireproof file box. Place important documents in the box; keep the box in a secure, accessible location on a shelf in your home so that you can “grab it and go” if the need arises. Among the contents:
- your household inventory
- a list of emergency contacts, including family members who live outside your area
- copies of current prescriptions
- health insurance cards or information
- policy numbers for auto, flood, renter’s, or homeowner’s insurance, and a list of telephone numbers of your insurance companies
- copies of other important financial and family records — or notes about where they are — including deeds, titles, wills, birth and marriage certificates, passports, and relevant employee benefit and retirement documents. Except for wills, keep originals in a safe deposit box or some other location. If you have a will, ask your attorney to keep the original document.
- a list of phone numbers or email addresses of your creditors, financial institutions, landlords, and utility companies (sewer, water, gas, electric, telephone, cable)
- a list of bank, loan, credit card, mortgage, lease, debit and ATM, and investment account numbers
Social Security cards
- backups of financial data you keep on your computer
- an extra set of keys for your house and car
- the key to your safe deposit box
- a small amount of cash or traveler’s checks. ATMs or financial institutions may be closed.
- Consider renting a safe deposit box for storage of important documents. Original documents to store in a safe deposit box might include:
- deeds, titles, and other ownership records for your home, autos, RVs, or boats
- credit, lease, and other financial and payment agreements
- birth certificates, naturalization papers, and Social Security cards
- marriage license/divorce papers and child custody papers
- passports and military papers (if you need these regularly, you could place the originals in your fireproof box and a copy in your safe deposit box)
- appraisals of expensive jewelry and heirlooms
- certificates for stocks, bonds, and other investments and retirement accounts trust agreements
- living wills, powers of attorney, and health care powers of attorney insurance policies
- home improvement records
- household inventory documentation
- a copy of your will
Choose an out-of-town contact. Ask an out-of-town friend or relative to be the point of contact for your family, and make sure everyone in your family has the information.
After some emergencies, it can be easier to make a long distance call than a local one.
Update all your information. Review the contents of your household inventory, your fireproof box, safe deposit box, and the information for your out-of-town contact at least once a year.
Source by : How-Prepared-Are-You-
Safelist Marketing - 4 Ideas for Success
Because there are so many different ways to market an Internet business safelist marketing can be overlooked. This could be a mistake because there are many successful Internet marketers using safe list marketing successfully.
In this article lets take a look at four ideas for using safelist marketing successfully.
1. Getting your email opened is always going to be the key to any type of marketing involving it. Successfully marketing using safe lists will mean you need to get your e-mails open.
The best way to do this is to join a credit based marketing program. These work on the premise that you earn credits for sending e mails by reading the emails of the other members. The more credits you have the more emails you will be able to send.
You can do the math, but obviously the more e-mails you are sending the more chances you have that they will be read and someone will see something that appeals to them about your products.
2. The way to develop more credits is to not manually sit and read e-mails all day long, but rather to upgrade to a pro member status and earn credits by purchasing them. This works similar to traffic exchanges in that buying credits is a much faster way to get your emails read then it is to earn the credits by manually reading them one at a time.
3. If you are not able to purchase credits then it is important that you earn them by opening emails and reading them from other members. The nice thing about this is that you can invest your time rather than your money to earn credits which can potentially create more e-mails being read of your own.
4. The final thing we want to mention is that the emails that you are sending are extremely important. They need to contain a subject line that catches the attention of the reader, the body needs to contain useful information, and at the end it meets to offer a solution for more information.
If youre not sure how to write e-mails that get results, just pay attention to the ones you are reading from other members. Try a model yourself after the ones that catch your attention.
You can also get good ideas from the various products and programs that you represent. Many of them offer prewritten emails that you can customize to fit your own needs.
This is four ideas for successfully using safe list marketing. Like every other form of marketing on the Internet, you have to work at it to make it successful, and you have to develop the skills and that it takes to be successful as well.
Source by : Safelist-Marketing-4-Ideas-for-Success
What is Loan?
A loan is a type of debt. All material things can be lent; this article, however, focuses exclusively on monetary loans. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower.
The borrower initially receives an amount of money from the lender, which they pay back, usually but not always in regular installments, to the lender. This service is generally provided at a cost, referred to as interest on the debt. A borrower may be subject to certain restrictions known as loan covenants under the terms of the loan.
Acting as a provider of loans is one of the principal tasks for financial institutions. For other institutions, issuing of debt contracts such as bonds is a typical source of funding. Bank loans and credit are one way to increase the money supply.
Legally, a loan is a contractual promise of a debtor to repay a sum of money in exchange for the promise of a creditor to give another sum of money.
Types of loans
1.1 Secured
1.2 Unsecured
2 Abuses in lending
3 United States taxes
4 Income from discharge of indebtedness
Secured
A secured loan is a loan in which the borrower pledges some asset (e.g. a car or property) as collateral for the loan.
A mortgage loan is a very common type of debt instrument, used by many individuals to purchase housing. In this arrangement, the money is used to purchase the property. The financial institution, however, is given security — a lien on the title to the house — until the mortgage is paid off in full. If the borrower defaults on the loan, the bank would have the legal right to repossess the house and sell it, to recover sums owing to it.
In some instances, a loan taken out to purchase a new or used car may be secured by the car, in much the same way as a mortgage is secured by housing. The duration of the loan period is considerably shorter — often corresponding to the useful life of the car. There are two types of auto loans, direct and indirect. A direct auto loan is where a bank gives the loan directly to a consumer. An indirect auto loan is where a car dealership acts as an intermediary between the bank or financial institution and the consumer.
A type of loan especially used in limited partnership agreements is the recourse note.
A stock hedge loan is a special type of securities lending whereby the stock of a borrower is hedged by the lender against loss, using options or other hedging strategies to reduce lender risk.
Unsecured
Unsecured loans are monetary loans that are not secured against the borrowers assets. These may be available from financial institutions under many different guises or marketing packages:
credit card debt
personal loans
bank overdrafts
credit facilities or lines of credit
corporate bonds
The interest rates applicable to these different forms may vary depending on the lender and the borrower. These may or may not be regulated by law. In the United Kingdom, when applied to individuals, these may come under the Consumer Credit Act 1974.
Abuses in lending
Predatory lending is one form of abuse in the granting of loans. It usually involves granting a loan in order to put the borrower in a position that one can gain advantage over him or her. Where the moneylender is not authorized, it could be considered a loan shark.
Usury is a different form of abuse, where the lender charges excessive interest. In different time periods and cultures the acceptable interest rate has varied, from no interest at all to unlimited interest rates. Credit card companies in some countries have been accused by consumer organizations of lending at usurious interest rates and making money out of frivolous "extra charges".
Abuses can also take place in the form of the customer abusing the lender by not repaying the loan or with an intent to defraud the lender.
Source by : What-is-Loan
Fund on Gold
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