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To: ~digs who wrote (17388)	1/21/2004 1:56:51 PM
From: Bucky Katt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48461

As you may know, my journalist sister is back in India for 3 months of Yoga instruction, and I think you will find these economic insights from her blog of interest> 16 Jan. Lots of load-shedding (power outages) lately; this computer has a tendency to go blue and shut off, so this will be brief.... W is here -- has been coming for years -- and brought a real firecracker with him, named V. I think there are more people here from Chicago than Helsinki (tre unusal). We met them last night (when X was eating hte bindi) and this AM we had an hours-long breakfast, with lots of schtick and laughing our asses off. Again we were at the German Bakery (which sells chai by the pot), looking out over the blue blue sea. (BTW we can hear the sea from our rooms at the Sky Palace; it soothes the insomnia that I now have after kicking Tylenol PM). I still need to explain more about Bangalore and how difficult it is for regular upper class folks to get housing and servants now that the IT people have all come back from Silicon Valley and are commanding the huge salaries and how weak the dollar is and how L. explained today that it's because of Bush's reelection plan to jump start the economy by making it easier for other countries to buy our shit, thus creating jobs and making people wanna vote for him, ugh.... This means that it is costing, if not an arm and a leg, than at least a few teeth to take the worshop here. So far tho it's well worth every cent; again I had another very intense, deep practice today despite the very aromatic woman on my left and sick sneezing man on my right (kept turning my head away when he'd let one go). And so far no pain in backbend....(knocking wood now). 21 Jan. Spent the afternoon buying books, making a call to the US (where it was 1'45 AM, oops), eating (and expelling) iddly and hanging out in my room. I ventured out an hour or so ago for a tender coconut on the beach, where I met a German man who told me about a type of alpine skiing where you walk up the hill yourself. He said not many Americans are traveling abroad. I said it was because of the weak dollar. He said no, they're afraid of air travel. And then it all became clear: Bush's reelection plan is to keep us scared so we don't travel and find out how weak the dollar is (and how upset the rest of the world is with the US right now). Meanwhile our foreign goods are cheap, they fly off the shelves and jobs are created in 'Merica. Life looks good so people actually elect him this time around. O for an absentee ballot.... Diatribe is finished. Can I just say I can see the beach from where I am typing this? There's a breeze, the sun is going down, and there is a beautiful pink glow to everything. Feeling very lucky to be an ugly 'Merican right now....(and knocking wood at this very moment).

To: ~digs who wrote (17388)	1/22/2004 3:54:27 PM
From: paret	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 48461

MarketWatch.com commentator Calandra resigns Internal probe sparked by SEC request for records CBS MarketWatch.com ^ \| 01/22/04 \| CBS MarketWatch By CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 2:43 PM ET Jan. 22, 2004 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Thom Calandra, chief commentator for CBS MarketWatch and one of the founders of its parent company, resigned Thursday amid an internal probe into his trading activities that was sparked by a query from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Calandra, 47, who for the last nine months was the author of a subscription newsletter, The Calandra Report, said in a letter to the company that he was resigning immediately. According to the company, Calandra told MarketWatch.com executives in late December that he received a letter from the San Francisco office of the SEC. The agency asked for records of his personal stock trades, copies of his newsletter and copies of the e-mail alerts he occasionally sent to his subscribers. MarketWatch.com (MKTW: news, chart, profile) launched an internal investigation the following day. The SEC has in the past probed records of newsletter editors to determine whether they improperly profited from trading stock in companies they wrote about. "I've worked hard for the past eight years helping to build MarketWatch and for the last year I've worked hard creating The Calandra Report," Calandra said. "While it's been tremendously rewarding professionally, it has also been stressful. And the SEC's informal inquiry adds to this stress. So I've decided to take this time off to focus on my family, whom I adore. I look forward to the conclusion of the SEC's inquiry." MarketWatch.com said it received a letter last week from the SEC asking for a copy of its policy regulating trading by journalists and for any e-mails involving Calandra that discussed that policy. The policy, which is posted online, prohibits journalists from trading shares of any company if they are aware that a story about that company is going to be published. They are also prohibited from trading shares of that company for 48 hours after a story appears. Beat reporters are also barred from owning shares of companies within the industries they cover. As a newsletter writer, Calandra was allowed to purchase the stocks that he covered as long as he disclosed his intentions to his readers, the company said. MarketWatch.com said it ordered Calandra to stop trading entirely two days after he received the SEC letter. "We have told the SEC we will cooperate fully," said MarketWatch.com CEO Larry Kramer. "We are confident we have appropriate policies. What we don't know is whether they were followed, and that's what we're trying to find out." Calandra's resignation comes amid growing scrutiny in the business press of trading activity by journalists. Two weeks ago, CNBC tightened its trading policy for journalists, effectively barring any of its reporters from owning shares of stock. Other news organizations said they are also considering tougher policies, and MarketWatch.com Editor-In-Chief David Callaway said his journalists will soon be covered by a new, tougher policy drafted after a request last fall from the company's board of directors. Callaway said that, because he is participating in the company's internal probe, he will recuse himself from involvement in covering the story. Any future developments will be reported by MarketWatch journalists who will be kept out of internal discussions and will be assigned to cover the story as completely, and as objectively, as is possible, he said. MarketWatch.com shares were down 7 percent at $10.16. Calandra, a former columnist for The San Francisco Examiner and an editor for Bloomberg News in Europe, was one of three founders of MarketWatch.com, joining in 1996 when the company was known as DBC News and was a unit of Data Broadcasting Corp. Data Broadcasting is now a part of British publishing and education giant Pearson Plc. Pearson is a significant shareholder in MarketWatch.com. Calandra was the original editor-in-chief of the Internet financial-news company and guided it through the development of the CBS MarketWatch Web site and the initial public offering of MarketWatch.com in January 1999. Calandra gave up day-to-day management of the news organization in April 2000 when he moved to London for MarketWatch.com to start a joint venture with The Financial Times, a unit of Pearson. The online venture, FTMarketWatch, was folded into the Financial Times after a year. Calandra returned to San Francisco in May 2001 to become chief commentator for CBS MarketWatch. While he no longer directed news coverage, Calandra retained his editor's title until March 2003, when he launched The Calandra Report, a newsletter that departed from CBS MarketWatch's straight news format and featured Calandra's own stock recommendations. The Calandra Report focused on dozens of companies, most of them small-cap stocks and many involved in the minerals and mining business. MarketWatch.com said in a press release that it would discontinue the newsletter and provide prorated refunds to subscribers.