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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (684813)	11/14/2012 11:14:28 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1577031

Cuban-Americans stun Republicans By Richard McGregor in Washington More Cuban-Americans, once a reliable conservative bulwark in Florida, voted for Barack Obama in Tuesday’s election than Mitt Romney, underscoring the breadth of the demographic wave that engulfed the Republican party. Mr Obama is leading Mr Romney by 50,000 votes out of 8.3m ballots cast in final counting in Florida, the only state yet to be decided, and is expected to be declared the winner within days. Exit polls in Florida by Fox News and the Pew Research Centre both recorded Mr Obama beating Mr Romney with Cuban-Americans by 49 per cent to 47 per cent. Other exit polls, including one by the Miami Herald, showed the vote to be more even or with Mr Romney slightly ahead with Cuban-Americans. But even parity is a triumph for the Obama campaign given the longstanding loyalty of anti-communist Cubans to the Republicans. “This marks a dramatic realignment of politics in that state,” said Jim Messina, the Obama campaign manager. Republicans will be worried that a community they had long been able to rely on was turning away from the party in Florida, the largest of the swing states and always a prize in the presidential poll. Exit polls outside Florida show that more than 70 per cent of Hispanic, and also Asian-American, voters backed Mr Obama. Blacks supported the president in even larger numbers. In Ohio, considered the most important swing state going into the election, the Obama campaign machine managed to chalk up an increase over the numbers of African-Americans voting in 2008, when their numbers were swelled by pride in supporting the first black president. Blacks represent 12 per cent of the population in Ohio but they made up 15 per cent of the voters on Tuesday, according to exit polls, cancelling out gains Mr Romney had made in the state with other voters. The strong support for Mr Obama from minority voters was the key to his win, putting him across the line in states as varied as Virginia and Nevada, and offsetting a decline in support for the president among whites. In Florida, there were several local factors in play with the Hispanic vote, which has a larger Cuban and Puerto Rican component than other states. In depth US elections 2012 President Barack Obama defeats Mitt Romney to win a second term in office Paul Ryan, Mr Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, had voted a number of times to end the longstanding US embargo on communist Cuba, which had been in place for decades since Fidel Castro came to power. “That did their ticket a lot of harm with Cubans and allowed us to at least get a hearing with them about many other economic issues,” said an Obama campaign official in Florida. Furthermore, longer-term trends point to a more fundamental problem for Republicans. Unlike older members of the community, who fled Cuba and have direct memories of communist rule, most second-generation Cubans do not vote according to memories of their parents’ homeland. “They are much more similar in voting patterns to Hispanics in the rest of the country,” said the Obama official. The Obama campaign registered, or re-registered, 360,000 Hispanics in Florida since 2008, many of them young voters who overwhelmingly backed Mr Obama. Florida’s leading Republicans, such as senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban émigrés, and Jeb Bush, the former governor, have long taken a more liberal line on immigration than their party does nationally. Mr Rubio and Mr Bush will now have a stronger hand in internal party debates about the need for immigration reform, something that Mr Obama is bound to push in the early years of his second term. Many business groups will support them, because they have long pushed for reform of a system that has left the US with no way to deal with more than 10m illegal immigrants living in the country, other than deportation, which is not a practical option. ft.com

To: bentway who wrote (684813)	11/15/2012 11:23:59 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577031

Ceasar fiddles while Rome burns.............literally. Eurozone back in recession in Q3 Eurozone back in recession as official figures show 0.1 percent quarterly contraction in Q3 By Pan Pylas, Associated Press \| Associated Press – 4 hours ago LONDON (AP) -- The 17-country eurozone has bowed to the inevitable and fallen back into recession for the first time in three years as a sprawling debt crisis took its toll on the region's stronger economies. And with surveys pointing to increasingly depressed conditions across the eurozone at a time of high unemployment in many countries, there are fears that the recession will deepen, and make the debt crisis even more difficult to handle. Official figures Thursday showed that the eurozone contracted by 0.1 percent in the July to September period from the quarter before as economies including Germany and the Netherlands suffer from falling demand. The decline reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, was in line with market expectations and follows on from the 0.2 percent fall recorded in the second quarter. As a result, the eurozone is officially in recession, commonly defined as two straight quarters of falling output. "We can dispense with the euphemisms and equivocation, and openly proclaim that the euro area economy is indeed in technical recession," said James Ashley, senior European economist at RBC Capital Markets. Because of the eurozone's grueling three-year debt crisis, the region has the focus of concern for the world economy. The eurozone's economy is worth around €9.5 trillion, or $12.1 trillion, which puts it on a par with the U.S. economy. The region, with its 332 million population, is the U.S.'s largest export customer, and any fall-off in demand will hit order books. While the U.S has managed to bounce back from its own savage recession in 2008-09, albeit inconsistently, and China continues to post still-strong growth, Europe's economies have been on a downward spiral — and there is little sign of any improvement in the near-term. The eurozone has managed to avoid returning to recession for the first time since the financial crisis following the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, mainly thanks to the strength of its largest single economy, Germany. But even that country is struggling now as confidence wanes and exports drain in light of the debt problems afflicting large chunks of the eurozone. Germany's economy grew a muted 0.2 percent in the third quarter, down from a 0.3 percent increase in the previous quarter. Over the past year, Germany's annual growth rate has more than halved to 0.9 percent from 1.9 percent. Perhaps the most dramatic decline among the eurozone's members was seen in the Netherlands, whose economy shrank 1.1 percent on the previous quarter. Five eurozone countries are in recession — Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Cyprus. Those five are also at the center of Europe's debt crisis and are imposing austerity measures, such as cuts to pensions and increases to taxes, in an attempt to stay afloat. As well as hitting workers' incomes and living standards, these measures have also led to a decline in economic output and a sharp increase in unemployment. Spain and Greece have unemployment rates of over 25 percent. Their young people are faring even worse with every other person out of work. As well as being a cost to governments who have to pay out more for benefits, it carries a huge social and human cost. Protests across Europe on Wednesday highlighted the scale of discontent and with economic surveys pointing to the downturn getting worse, the voices of anger may well get louder still. "The likelihood is that this anger will continue to grow unless European leaders and policymakers start to act as if they have a clue as to how to resolve the crisis starting to unravel before their eyes," said Michael Hewson, markets analyst at CMC Markets. The wider 27-nation EU, which includes non-euro countries, avoided the same fate. It saw output rise 0.1 percent during the quarter, largely on the back of an Olympics-related boost in Britain. The EU's output as a whole is greater than the U.S. It is also a major source of sales for the world's leading companies. Forty percent of McDonald's global revenue comes from Europe - more than it generates in the U.S. General Motors, meanwhile, sold 1.7 million vehicles in Europe last year, a fifth of its worldwide sales. finance.yahoo.com