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Xerox announced today they will lay off 2,500 workers world wide. This comes as a result of the company taking a $100 million charge to enable restructuring in the fourth quarter. The majority of cuts will be in the service side of the Xerox business, despite a growth in this section for the company. Services now account for more than half of Xerox's revenue. Employment in Rochester is primarily centered on the technology side of the business, or the company's legacy side, Xeroc officials say. No details have been released on the impact of any reductions in the Rochester area.

There's A Lot More To The Stock Market Sell-Off Than The Fiscal Cliff Comstock PartnersNovember 16, 2012 While the fiscal cliff problem has absorbed almost all of the financial media comment since the election, there's a lot more to the stock market decline that has virtually gotten lost in the discussion. The market actually topped on September 14th and has trended down ever since. Most importantly, the U.S. economy was a lot weaker than the consensus believes before Hurricane Sandy became a factor. In addition Fed policy is becoming increasingly ineffectual, earnings forecasts are coming down, Europe is officially in...

Three hours west of Washington, D.C., U.S. Route 50 emerges from the West Virginia forest in a gentle curve. On the south side of the highway rises an enormous natural gas drilling rig. To its left and slightly behind it is a gas separation plant under construction. This is the “wet gas” portion of the Marcellus shale-gas play that underlies Appalachia. The separation plant will divide the wet gas into propane, pentane, butane and the like. In front of the rig and closest to the highway is a kind of filling station with color-coded fittings instead of hoses on the...

President and CEO of Greater Lafayette Commerce Joe Seaman said there is a sea of manufacturing opportunities in this region of Indiana. However, with the opportunities there comes what employers call a major 'skills gap.' "The biggest challenge we've had is finding the skilled labor to fill those jobs," Seaman said...... One of the solutions to this problem has been a collaborative effort between the city of Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, WorkOne, dozens of manufacturers and Ivy Tech.

Just telling it like it is — I like his style. Per Politico: John Metz, a restaurant franchisor who operates 48 locations of Hurricane Grill & Wings, several dozen Denny’s locations and a few Dairy Queens, told The Huffington Post Thursday that he’d join the growing list of restaurateurs piling purported Obamacare costs onto their customers and staff. In his case, though, he’s going to label it so all of his customers know about it. “If I leave the prices the same, but say on the menu that there is a 5 percent surcharge for Obamacare, customers have two choices....

Experts are warning of a coming crisis: a shortage of truck drivers. The Associated Press reports demand is so high that more than 100,000 trucking jobs are expected to go unfilled each year through 2016. Mohammed Khan, the Director of the Great American Truck Driving School in Detroit told WWJ’s Sandra McNeil he’s seen a 50-percent jump in enrollment at his school since 2010. “People do want to become truck drivers. The fact is that the demand just ups the supply right now,” said Khan. ”There are a lot of truck driving jobs that are wanting because they just can’t...

The Federal Reserve is asking 30 big banks to make sure their capital can withstand a deep recession in which the unemployment rate rises to 12%. The Fed, which first required big banks to conduct “stress tests” in 2009, laid out three scenarios lenders have to test against. The goal is to ensure that the firms have enough capital to continue operations during stressful economic times.

Barely had the counting ceased in last week’s presidential election when the news took a somber turn. Two of the next day’s headlines read “Back to Work, Looming Fiscal Crisis Greets Obama” and my favorite, “America has Sown the Seeds of Its Own Demise.” Politicians either celebrated or decried the results, but regardless of party affiliation most warned of formidable challenges and a perilous future. How did it come to pass that even the resolution of a contested election brings almost zero relief from the relentless focus on problems and threats? How did a country that for much of its...

ITW Consumer has warned the state of Florida of 73 layoffs and the closure of their Riviera Beach facility earlier this year. Illinois Tool Works, ITW's parent company, announced a change in strategies and its decision to phase out operations in Florida earlier this year, according to the Worker Adjustment & Retraining Notification notice filed with the state on Wednesday. ITW's functions will be relocated to Ohio and Connecticut. The company stated that it plans to cease ITW Consumer operations by the end of February. The first run of separations were effective at the end of August and October. Additional...

Initial jobless claims rose to 439,000, their highest level since May 2011. And no, it isn't due to SuperStorm Sandy. Rather, it was increases in Ohio and Pennsylvania that led the surge. Continuing jobless claims spiked as well, their highest point since March 2012. Meanwhile, the Empire State Manufacturing Survey of General Businesss Conditions improved from -6.16 in October to -5.22 in November. The Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook of General Conditions fell to -10.7 from an October reading of +5.7. Meanwhile, The Dow Jones Industrials continue their post election slide. Oogh!

"President Obama; that's why people aren't buying stocks," says Todd Schoenberger, managing principal at The BlackBay Group. 1. Companies aren't going to hire with the increased expenses associated with Obamacare 2. People aren't going to have money for discretionary spending when taxes going up for the 1% 3. Small business owners won't expand 4. Higher tax rates for individuals making over $250,000 a year will result in a general lack of ambition.

The Department of Labor has announced that new jobless claims rose by a staggering 78,000 in the first week after the election, reaching a seasonally-adjusted total of 439,000. Over the past year, and in the weeks leading up to the election, jobless claims were said to be declining, dipping as low as 339,000, with the media proclaiming that they had reached the "lowest level in more than four years." Now, suddenly, the news seems far less rosy. From the Department of Labor press release this morning: In the week ending November 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims...

(Reuters) - The euro zone debt crisis dragged the bloc into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite modest growth in Germany and France, data showed on Thursday. The French and German economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period but their resilience could not save the 17-nation bloc from contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank. Economic output in the euro zone fell 0.1 percent in the quarter, following a 0.2 percent drop in the second quarter. Those two quarters of contraction put the euro zone's 9.4 trillion euro...

Hope - it appears - peaked at the start of the year in the US, following the global coordinated central bank pump which ramped it from lows to highs within a few months. All that hope - and then some - has now apparently faded. The General Business Conditions expected six months forward dropped to its lowest level since March 2009. What is perhaps worse, given the focus on jobs jobs jobs, is that for the first time since April 2009, the employment outlook for employment turned negative - suggesting firms are looking to reduce employees at the fastest rate...

Conservative pundits like Ann Coulter, Karl Rove, Michael Barron, Charles Krauthammer et al were fairly confident in their predictions that Romney would sweep to victory. Some, like Dick Morris, had even mentioned a possible landslide. The mood around conservatives was increasingly optimistic that the country would be saved. I held back on this hope because most journalists and pundits live in a different world than I and consequently I have a different perspective because I live in the real one. That means living in the neighborhoods with the, "Keep Obama in president, you know, He gave us a phone" citizens....

Marc Faber Warns Global Stock Markets Will Implode Stock-Markets / Financial CrashNov 14, 2012 - 04:09 AM In this "Squawk Box" excerpt, Marc Faber warns investors to prepare for an eventual "'reset" of the global financial system: “The market is going down because corporate profits will begin to disappoint, the global economy will hardly grow next year or even contract, and that is the reason why stocks, from the highs of September of 1,470 on the S&P, will drop at least 20 percent, in my view.” “There will be pain and there will be very substantial pain. The question is...

A Montana state lawmaker is asking that he be paid in gold coins because of his lack of faith in the U.S. dollar amid a rising deficit. Jerry O’Neil, a Republican just reelected in his northern Montana district, says his constituents told him he was not honoring his duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which O’Neil and Gold Standard supporters say requires the government to print money backed by gold. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83767.html#ixzz2CFguWZLo

We've fixed the economy By Bill Bonner - 14 November, 2012 "In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) Dow down 58 yesterday. No panic. Just hesitation... and worry. A TV news report this morning said that Congress only had 18 days to solve the fiscal cliff issue. Seems like plenty of time. But the fiscal cliff is no big deal...

Chipmaker Texas Instruments said Wednesday that it will lay off 1,700 workers in an effort to shift focus away from its struggling mobile business. The job cuts represent about 5% of TI's staff, and they are part of a previously announced restructuring initiative aimed at cutting costs and increasing its presence in the burgeoning embedded device market. Shares of Texas Instruments rose about 1% in afterhours trading. The Dallas-based company had made some headway in the smartphone market a few years ago. But recently the biggest mobile phone makers, including Samsung and Apple have opted to design their own chips...