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To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (46230)	1/11/2002 3:30:31 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

Sept. 11 to cost U.S.cities 1.6 mln new jobs--study NEW YORK, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The Sept. 11 attacks will cost U.S. cities an estimated 1.6 million new jobs this year, with the hotel, restaurant and airline industries taking the brunt of the impact, according to a think tank study released on Friday. New York and cities heavily dependent on tourism and travel, such as gaming mecca Las Vegas and golf-vacation destination Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, will be hardest hit, according to the report by the Milken Institute, based on Santa Monica, California. ``The attacks of September 11 devastated several key industries and the cities dependent on them,'' said Ross DeVol, an economist at the institute and the principal author of the report. The study surveyed the economies of 315 metropolitan areas and, after subtracting the effects of the recession, predicted the slump in job creation. In addition to 95,000 jobs already eliminated in New York City, 150,000 fewer new jobs are predicted for the metropolitan area in 2002. The long rescue and recovery process at ``ground zero'' will delay the city's reconstruction and economic recovery for several months, the report said, while the psychological trauma of the events will slow the pace of businesses returning to the downtown financial district. Also, because the Big Apple is viewed as the business capital of the world, ``disaster in New York affects business confidence in every major city,'' the study said. After New York, vacation destinations dependent on air transportation, hotel, amusement and dining dollars will be the hardest hit, losing almost 800,000 jobs that would have been created but for the events of Sept. 11. ``With its large gambling industry and related infrastructure primarily accessible by air, Las Vegas is the single most vulnerable metropolitan economy,'' the report said. One of the nation's fastest growing areas before the attacks, Las Vegas will have 5 percent fewer new jobs in 2002 than it would have had without the attacks, it said. DeVol cited fewer attendees at an annual consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas this week as a recent example of the city's troubles. Next behind Las Vegas, Myrtle Beach is projected to have 3.6 percent fewer new jobs this year, with the New York metropolitan region next at 3.4 percent. Los Angeles will lose 69,000 new jobs, and Chicago 68,000, according to the report. The Milken Institute was founded by former ``junk bond'' king Michael Milken in 1991. biz.yahoo.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (46230)	1/11/2002 6:35:29 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

GM Veers Towards Fuel Cells Cars wired.com 10:45 a.m. Jan. 7, 2002 PST After 100 years of making gasoline-burning cars, General Motors sees a not-so-distant future when vehicles powered by hydrogen will revolutionize the industry and make transportation more affordable for the world's population. GM, the world's largest automaker, unveiled a fuel cell vehicle at the Detroit auto show on Monday. The company said the fuel cell could rewrite the rules of how automakers design cars and make them much cheaper to build. Because fuel cells consume hydrogen and emit only water and heat, automakers have talked for years about the arrival of the cleaner technology over the next decade as a way to make cars more environmentally friendly and curtail the need for foreign oil. GM (XGM) said its Autonomy fuel cell car, which the company claims is the first vehicle designed exclusively for the fuel cell, could have a far broader impact. Autonomy houses all the essential elements of the car, including the fuel cell to provide power, in a skateboard-like chassis between the four wheels and under the body and seats of the vehicle. The chassis could be fitted with a wide variety of bodies, such as a minivan interior for a family in the United States, or a pickup truck bed for hauling livestock in China, GM said. Because the Autonomy chassis has a 20-year lifespan, a growing family could change from a sporty sedan to a larger sport utility vehicle by switching the body, a far cheaper alternative to buying a new vehicle. Or if the vehicle needs more power, the fuel cell can be expanded. "This is more than just a technological or design experiment," said Larry Burns, GM vice president of research and development and planning. "Our end goal is nothing short of reinventing the automobile." A vehicle using the Autonomy chassis could look completely different from those on the road today. Because the gasoline-burning engine is gone and the controls -- such as steering and braking -- are operated by electronic wires rather than mechanical connections, car designers are free to come up with new interpretations of cars and trucks. "From a design perspective ... almost all restraints are gone," said Wayne Cherry, GM vice president of design. "No one ever said before, 'Let's take a clean sheet of paper and design around a fuel cell.'" Although fuel cells are more expensive than gasoline engines, the costs of owning a vehicle could be driven down by the flexibility of the Autonomy, the elimination of many mechanical parts and the long life cycle of the vehicle, GM said. Currently only about 12 percent of the world's population owns a vehicle. "There's plenty of room to design costs out of this," Burns said. "It's potentially a stimulus for significant growth in automobile demand worldwide." Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited.

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (46230)	1/11/2002 6:39:42 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Greenspan Says U.S. Economy Still Faces Near-Term Risks A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE News Roundup Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan moved Friday to curb Wall Street's expectations of an imminent economic recovery, saying the U.S. economy faces "significant" near-term risks despite some signs of improvement recently. Making his first public comments on the economic outlook in three months, Mr. Greenspan warned that the improvement reflected in the latest economic data could prove to be temporary. "I would emphasize that we continue to face significant risks in the near term," Mr. Greenspan said, speaking at a business conference in San Francisco. He identified some of those threats as weak corporate profits and business investment, and restrained household spending caused by rising unemployment. But he said there are tentative signs that a recovery could be somewhere on the horizon. "If the recent, more favorable developments continue and gain momentum, uncertainties will diminish," he said. See the full text of Greenspan's speech. Mr. Greenspan's comments appeared to leave the door open to another interest-rate cut, possibly at the Fed's next meeting on Jan. 29-30. The current recession, which ended a record 10-year period of U.S. prosperity, has officially been dated as starting last March. But Mr. Greenspan noted in his comments that the economy has been struggling with weak growth ever since the summer of 2000. The Fed began aggressively cutting interest rates in January 2001, reducing its target for the federal-funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other, from 6.5% at the start of last year down to the current level of 1.75%, the lowest in 40 years. Mr. Greenspan said that before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, there were signs that the economy had begun to stabilize, but those gains were wiped out with the severe jolt dealt to consumer and business confidence by the attacks. But economists have expressed guarded optimism that a recovery could begin soon, and investors have sent stocks higher in recent months largely on that hope. Mr. Greenspan cautioned that economic forecasting has been made even more difficult by the "major uncertainty that we all must deal with these days -- the specter of further terrorist incidents on American soil. It simply is not possible to predict whether there will be any such incidents or to forecast their possible consequences for the economy." Mr. Greenspan, as he has done in other remarks since Sept. 11, did contend that the significant rebound in the growth of American workers' productivity in recent years is likely to continue. The big improvement in productivity has, in part, quelled worries about inflation dangers. Mr. Greenspan said that in recent weeks there have been signs that the economy is now stabilizing after huge job losses in the two months immediately after the terrorist attacks. He noted that consumer spending, which stayed strong through much of last year, is continuing to rise, although at a more subdued rate. Such spending, he said, will be helped by substantial declines in energy prices. But he said that the unemployment rate, which hit a six-year high of 5.8% in December, is likely to continue rising even after the recovery begins. He noted, however, that new claims for unemployment benefits have tapered off recently. "To be sure, a great deal of real economic pain has been felt over the past year and a half," he said.