The Struggle for Talent in Latin America: University of Miami, November 12th, 2014

Inbound Trade Mission from Prague, Czech Republic - November 4th, 2014 (Miami-Dade County)

TUEDSDAY, NOVEMBER 4^TH, 2014 9:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.

Location:  Conrad Miami Hotel, 1395 Brickell Avenue, Miami, FL, 33131

Matchmaking appointments will be made with the businesses listed below on a first come, first served basis, free of charge

Pre-qualified companies can confirm appointment time by contacting:

Adam Peters, Trade Development Specialist – EDIT 305 375-5420 or apeters@miamidade.gov

Registration closes Friday, October 31st, 2014.

Economic Development and International Trade Unit,

Business Affairs Division, Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources

111 N.W. First Street, 12^th Floor · Miami, Florida 33128-1994

www.miamidade.gov/business/international-trade.asp

Middle-class adults have $20K saved for retirement (USA Today)

A third aren't contributing anything to a 401(k), IRA or other retirement savings plan.

 Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY

Middle-class people in the USA have a median of $20,000 saved for retirement, far short of the $250,000 they think they'll need during that time of their lives, a new survey shows.

A third (34%) of working middle-class adults aren't contributing anything to a 401(k), IRA or other retirement savings plan, according to the survey of 1,001 adults, ages 25 to 75, with a median household income of $63,000. The survey was conducted by Harris Poll for Wells Fargo (WFC).

Those who are putting away money for retirement are currently saving a median of $125 every month, the survey shows. About 61% say they're not sacrificing a lot to save for retirement, but 38% are sacrificing to tuck away money for their golden years.

And 55% say they plan to save later for retirement in order to make up for not doing enough now.

"The main message here is people are putting off saving, and they are losing the benefit of long-term compounded earnings," says Joe Ready, director of institutional retirement for Wells Fargo. "Kicking the empty can down the road is going to be detrimental to their retirement security. It's really a problem."

Other survey findings:

• 31% of employed middle-class adults say they won't have enough money to survive in retirement.

• 70% have a 401(k) or equivalent plan available to them through their employer, and a majority of them (93%) are currently contributing to their plans. On average, those who have access to a 401(k) plan saved 10 times more than those who don't have a plan.

• 50% of middle-class adults in their 50s say they will work until they are at least 80 years old because they will not have enough saved for retirement.

Research shows that the No. 1 factor in saving for retirement is your contribution rate, Ready says. "You have to save your way to retirement. That's the hard work. Investments matter, but savings matter more."

USA TODAY contributor Regina Lewis explains how to avoid retirement myths. (Money Quick Tips, USA TODAY)

How Climate Change Is Fueling the Miami Real Estate Boom (BusinessWeek)

By Robert Meyer October 20, 2014

Miami Beach, Florida

As a city sitting virtually at sea level, Miami has been called ground zero for the problems posed by climate change, a place where rising sea levels threaten its future existence. The latest forecast of sea level rise from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, predicts that by later this century, global sea levels will be two feet higher than they are today, quite possibly higher. Under that scenario, the nuisance flooding in Miami that periodically comes with high tides will be a daily affair, the storm surge impact of hurricanes will be amplified, and lower-lying areas of the city will be uninhabitable. That’s actually not the worst of it: Under higher sea levels, the Biscayne Aquifer—where southeast Florida draws its drinking water—will increasingly suffer from saltwater intrusion, a problem for which there is no foreseen solution other than the investment of billions of dollars in water treatment facilities.

As bleak as this future would seem to be, few with real skin in the game in Miami—residents, real estate investors, and companies—are backing away from long-term investment. Exhibit A: Miami has been undergoing a nearly unprecedented surge in real estate construction, with planning discussions centering less on who will leave first and more on how high new projects can be built. Among the projects under way, for example, is an 80-plus-story behemoth in Brickell Center, the city’s urban core. If Miami is on the verge of being a modern-day Atlantis, those who would have the most to lose are apparently not buying it.

Why this apparent deafness to the dire warnings? Well, here’s a paradox. If one talks to developers and city commissioners in the area, it’s hard to find evidence of overt denial of current and future risk; Miami was a city, after all, almost completely destroyed by a hurricane in 1926, and most concede that a recurrence is a matter of when, not whether. Likewise, few deny that the city’s unique geography makes it vulnerable to the effects of rising sea levels. It’s a long-term problem that the planning commissions of Miami and Miami Beach acknowledge exists and threatens to get worse.

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Where locals disagree with outsiders, however, is about how best to deal with the problem. Rather than sounding alarms and cutting back on development, there’s an implicit sense that the best approach may be, ironically, to do the opposite. And while a strong case can be made that this behavior has no rational basis, it may represent Miami’s best long-term hope for dealing with the threats posed by climate change, one that other cities might be advised to mimic: The best strategy, in fact, may be to foster a collective belief that there’s no threat—or at least not one serious enough to lose sleep over.

Before I explain why, let me first address the two standard explanations for the building boom, explanations that are indeed part of the puzzle. The first is that real estate developers, by their nature, are gamblers with short planning horizons. In the late 2000s, the real estate and equities crash quickly wiped out many builders. One might assume that would have made them skittish. To the contrary, the quick recovery that followed taught most that big risks are worth taking, and are survivable. While developers today may concede that sea levels are rising, it’s a risk that lies well beyond their investment horizons, and in any case is dwarfed by the more immediate risk of a returning recession.

The second explanation is that many of the buyers for all the new condo units arecash investors from Latin America, and the risks of Miami real estate—overdevelopment, speculation, environmental unsustainability—remain small relative to similar investments back home. No one is saying that real estate isn’t risky in Miami, or that sea level rise is fiction. What they are saying is that all investment carries risk, and development there is a bet they’re prepared to take.

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But there’s another rational reason why even risk-averse residents in South Florida might, paradoxically, hope that buyers and sellers remain collectively naïve, or at least act as if they are, about the risks of sea level rise. South Florida relies almost exclusively on real estate taxes to fund public infrastructure. If the threat (or reality) of sea level rise suppresses property valuations, there will be less public money to address the risk. As an illustration, the head of public works for Miami Beach recently argued that the city would be wise to accelerate its investments in storm water drainage improvements ($100 million now and $400 million planned) simply because the city has the tax base to afford it—something it could not necessarily count on in the future.

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Because buyers and sellers in Miami Beach have yet to connect the dots between nuisance flood events and the future consequences of sea level rise, property buyers continue to be drawn to the area, and development projects continue unabated—both of which are essential for a continued healthy tax base. If and when buyers and sellers do connect the dots, everything changes: Doing so could spark a rapid downward wealth spiral that, once initiated, would be difficult to reverse. Lowering property valuations would reduce the city’s tax revenue which, in turn, would leave it with less money to shore up the city against sea level rise. The city would then be forced to choose between two losing remedies: increase taxes on those who choose to stay, or decline to make the needed improvements. Both, of course, would only exacerbate the problem. Miami’s best move at that point would be to go hat in hand to the state and federal government for a bailout, but that seems unlikely. Quite aside from the “I-told-you-so” reactions that such pleas might evoke, almost all coastal communities would be facing similar problems and asking for commensurate help. Miami Beach as we know it now could cease to exist long before the Atlantic reclaims Collins Avenue.

Given this, South Florida’s best shot at coping with the long-term environmental threat may be a strategy that no doubt seems perverse to environmentalists: aggressively foster a collective belief that sea level rise is not something we urgently need to worry about. South Florida is potentially facing a huge adaptation bill down the road, and paying for it will require a healthy tax base. Keeping that tax base flush depends on a cooperative equilibrium where buyers and sellers maintain an optimistic view that it’s tomorrow’s problem, one that will be easily tackled when the time comes. This keeps the coffers filled and provides the resources needed to pay for the engineering adaptations required to keep the game going.

In this light, Miami’s construction cranes aren’t monuments to climate change denial.  Quite to the contrary—they’re the instruments that may, indirectly, allow the city to survive global warming. Controlled ignorance, in some cases, can be a good thing.

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Meyer is the Gayfryd Steinberg Professor of Marketing and co-director of the Wharton Risk Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Google unveils Nexus 6 phablet, Nexus 9 tablet; lands with Android Lollipop (ZDNet)

Summary: Google finally catches up with the rest of the smartphone space by offering its home-brew phablet, along with the next iteration of its tablet and Android operating system.

Despite little fanfare and a muted announcement, Google said on Wednesday it was ready to lift the veil on its latest Nexus devices.

Meet the Nexus 6 "phablet" smartphone, and the Nexus 9 tablet. Both will run the latest version of Android, dubbed "Lollipop," in line with its candy-themed naming scheme.

Read this

Google's Nexus 6 phablet, Nexus 9 tablet: in pictures

• Read more

In a blog post announcing the new devices, Android chief Sundar Pichai said: "Lollipop is designed to be flexible, to work on all your devices and to be customized for you the way you see fit." 

According to recent reports, the quiet unveiling was due to a scramble in the last few days to get the final bits ready for the next-generation Android release. That softened any announcement Google was gunning for, said Forbes on Tuesday. 

Google's Nexus 6 "phablet" phone, built by Motorola, which this year was sold off to Lenovo, features a 5.9-inch quad-HD display with a resolution of 1,440 x 2,560 pixels, or 493 pixels-per-inch. It also comes with a Snapdragon 805 quad-core 2.7Ghz processor, and Adreno 420 graphics.

The Nexus 6 boasts a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The phone requires just 15 minutes of charging for six hours use. Google says that it's ready for 24 hours of use from a full charge.

With dual-front facing speakers, the phone offers stereo sound.

The Nexus 6 will be available for pre-order in late October, and will be out in stores in November. It's available on AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular, but subject to carrier release times.

Unlocked versions will be available through the Google Play Store. 

Meanwhile, the Nexus 9 tablet includes an 8.9-inch IPS LCD display. Weighing in at just over one pound, it's powered by a 64-bit dual-core Nvidia Tegra K1 processor and an Nvidia Kepler graphics chip.

It has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls. The tablet also comes with 16GB or 32GB storage options.

Google's Nexus 9 tablet, developed by HTC despite little experience in the space, comes in a brushed aluminum frame, instead of the anticipated all-metal design, which helps keep the price of the device down. 

Read this

Google's big Android Lollipop challenge: Make Material Design stick

• Read more

There is no expandable storage, so choose your model wisely.

The Nexus 9 will be available on October 17 for pre-order. 

The long-awaited revamped tablet arrives a day after Apple is expected to reveal its latest iPads, which are slated to include with a beefed up A8X processor — slightly better than the iPhone 6's chip, along with its Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

Both devices, the Nexus 6 phablet and the Nexus 9 tablet, will run the latest version of Android Lollipop.

Android Lollipop boasts a number of new features, including a universal user interface and experience across devices, better multitasking, and better enterprise features. The Android operating system also comes with device encryption, just like Apple's iOS 8. Both Apple and Google implemented this in the wake of government intrusions.

The latest version of Android will be initially available on Google's latest own-model Nexus devices, including the older Nexus 5, and will roll out to other manufacturers from there.

Work Opportunity Tax Credit and Federal Bonding program

Sube todo lo quieras que te esperare al bajar: Por: Ricardo Tribín Acosta

E   N       M   I       O   P   I   N   I   O   N

La arrogancia del poder a veces no tiene límites. Las gentes con características de soberbia se convencen así mismas que todo lo que logran en la vida se debe únicamente a su gran inteligencia y capacidad de hacer las cosas, lo cual oscurece la posibilidad de ascender con humildad en los diferentes pasos que contiene la gran escalera de la vida.

Al comienzo todo va bien y la aparición de unos egos endiosados los hace creer equivocadamente este aserto y siguen por consecuencia lógica sin descanso en su carrera hacia el “éxito”. Muchas veces olvidan de donde vienen y por ello no resulta raro que hasta su propia familia, incluidos sus padres, ignoren en su enloquecido crecer.

Todo lo anterior funciona a la perfección hasta que, como algo de común ocurrencia, les acontece una situación que no saben manejar y entonces es cuando “caen como cocos después de haber subido como palmas”. Allí es donde solo recogerán su propia siembra de abandono y rechazo pues son tantas las heridas que han dejado en su camino que prácticamente nadie quiere relacionarse con ellos en el asfalto.

Por lo anterior es importante procurar ser amable con las personas que se encuentren en el ascenso al éxito, porque se volverán a encontrar precisamente en el descenso al fracaso, y allí será el lamento y el crujir de dientes, o la satisfacción de la solidaridad, si aquellas reconocen que fuimos amables y humildes en la parte de arriba de nuestras carreras.

http://ricardotribin.blogspot.com

Miami, Octubre 11 de 2014