Students pile back into banking jobs – with £50,000 starting salaries the lure
May 17, 2011 No Comment
Class of 2011 make record number of job applications, survey finds, but finalists snub public sector It’s as if the credit crunch never happened. Amid rumours of £50,000-a-year starting salaries, investment banks are back on campus this year and once again the top destination for student jobseekers. A survey of final-year students at 30 sought-after universities, published on Wednesday, finds that among those already looking for jobs, investment banking is the most popular choice – with 8.5% applying. The revival of interest in banking – after a sharp dip during the last two years’ recruiting seasons – appears to have influenced students’ views on pay. The class of 2011′s expectations for starting salaries have risen to an average of £22,600, the first increase for three years. Finalists at the London School of Economics, Imperial College London, Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick and University College London have the highest hopes on pay, anticipating earning at least £25,000 a year on graduation. After five years in work, graduates expect to be earning an average of £39,900, and a sixth of this year’s leavers believe their salary will be £100,000 or more by the age of 30. The burden of debt is also heavier, according to the surveyby High Fliers Research. Predicted student debt has risen by 4% to average £18,700, £800 more than 2010. Martin Birchall, managing director of the market research company, said: “During 2008-09, applications for investment banking fell by a third. When we spoke to people in March, more people had applied for banking than any other sector. “At least three banks are rumoured to be paying £50,000 starting salaries, and that’s before any bonuses. All of the banks were back on campus with a vengeance in the last 12 months, promoting themselves very hard. Most of the best-known City names are recruiting at 2006-07 levels.” While investment banking is the most popular sector among early applicants, media, teaching and marketing are expected to emerge as the most popular sectors when students who defer applying until finishing their exams begin sending out their CVs. The survey finds that finalists began job hunting earlier and made a third more applications than last year, taking the total to an all-time high of 343,000 in March, compared with 257,000 last year. The results, based on face-to-face interviews with nearly 18,000 finalists, show 37% made early job applications, applying to employers at the beginning of their final year. This compares with 31% who applied early in 2009. Fewer students have applied for graduate positions in the police and the armed forces, while the number keen to work for the government or elsewhere in the public sector has dropped by a fifth. The exception is the NHS, which is attracting greater interest this year. The proportion of finalists expecting to enter the graduate job market this year has increased, with 40% saying they will either start a graduate job or look for work after university, compared with 36% in 2010 and 2009. A further 25% are planning to pursue postgraduate studies, 8% to take temporary or voluntary work, 13% to take time off or go travelling, while 14% of finalists are undecided. Students at four London colleges including Imperial and LSE, Bath, Loughborough, Aston, and Sheffield universities expected to have the largest debts in 2011, averaging between £20,000 and £30,000 on graduation. The lowest predicted student debts were at Strathclyde and Glasgow, where many undergraduates live at home. Scottish students, and EU students in Scotland, do not have to pay tuition fees. High Fliers Research noted that increasing numbers of employers – particularly in banking, consulting and engineering – frustrated by the relatively small number of British students able to speak foreign languages, are turning to European universities to recruit graduates who can offer languages in addition to other academic achievements. The universities minister David Willetts said: “I am pleased to see indications of increasing confidence in the graduate employment market … Graduates are rising to the challenge of a difficult market with a record number making early job applications. A degree remains a good investment and is one of the best pathways to achieving a good job and rewarding career. “Improving information for prospective students about what they can expect at university and from their degrees is a key part of our future plans for higher education. It is also important for students to develop the wider skills that are valued by employers, and to think about boosting these skills while they study.” Students Higher education Graduate careers Job hunting Work & careers Banking Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Sen. Jon Kyl hinted on FOX News Sunday that the rightward ‘Gang of Six’ aren’t making much progress in their efforts to come up with a deficit-reducing compromise bill that will possibly cut benefits for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. All I can say is: Hallelujah! FOX News Sunday: Wallace: Senator Kyl, you are a member of the bipartisan congressional group that is meeting with Vice President Biden trying to work out raising the debt limit, cutting the deficit. Have you made any real progress yet, sir? KYL: We’re focused right now on things we agree on. And there are some things, but it’s pretty small ball compared to the overall job that we’re going to have to do. We’re talking maybe about, optimistically, a couple hundred billion dollars when there’s probably $2 trillion in savings that we’ve got to achieve in order to really get a handle on our out-of- control spending. If it’s pretty small then that’s a very good thing. I’d rather have no deal than a compromise that will hurt the working class of America and help destroy our social safety nets. Sen. Durbin is buying into the austerity gasbags and throwing his progressive values down the tubes. Here’s Senator Kyl saying that increasing revenues by tax increases is off the board. WALLACE: Senator Kyl, you know, I think a lot of people are looking to see is there going to be give from both sides, which I think most outside observers would think there is going to have to be to get a deal. We do have a divided government.Question: is there a single tax of any significance that you would be wiling to raise as part of a deal? KYL: No. In terms of tax rates, Republicans agree with the president that we need tax reform in order to eliminate loopholes so that we can reduce rates. But you don’t want to raise tax rates in order to try to raise revenues. That simply relieves the burden from Congress to affect the spending, savings, that we need to do and puts the burden back on the taxpayers again.When I talked about a couple of hundred — trillion dollars in savings, that’s the down payment. Over 10 years, we’ll have to do probably double that, if not more. In order to get back to the historic level of spending that we’ve had in this country of a little bit over 20 percent.The Paul Ryan budget gets us under 20 percent of GDP over 10 years. The Obama budget keeps us at levels above 23 percent of GDP. It’s about 25 percent right now. Spending is the problem. Not revenue.So, no, we will not agree to raise tax rates in order to generate revenues to prevent us from making the savings that we need to achieve. After listening to what Kyl has just said, why does Sen. Durbin get all excited over the prospect that a ” stage has been set ” for meaningful conversations? It’s utterly ridiculous. DURBIN: Well, elimination is not necessary for the critical programs, but reform is necessary. I just listened very carefully to what Jon Kyl said. And I believe he has set the stage for us to enter into a meaningful conversation. And it has to be a conversation where Democrats are prepared to talk about the future of major entitlement programs, reform that is not going to deny the basic protections, which we put in the programs, but acknowledges the fact that we have serious economic problems ahead of us if we don’t have some reform in both Medicare and Social Security. Comments like these from Durbin get me very nervous. All the Republicans in Congress, including those on the most dangerous Gang in America, are refusing to raise taxes at any level. How is it possible to have a serious negotiation on any type of reform if revenue raising isn’t part of a deal? And reforming the tax code is not the be-all-end-all solution that will save our country. WTF is wrong with Sen. Durbin? His pandering to Kyl for a deal is really sickening.
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Since there’s nothing else in the political world that warrants a thorough debate, TV heavy-weights Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly battled it out over rapper Common being invited to the White House last Wednesday. Conservative pundits are riled up over the White House extending an invitation to Common to a poetry slam, supposedly because of
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Bizimungu, who prepared lists of Tutsis to be ‘exterminated’ in 1994 mass slaughter, sentenced to 30 years in prison One of the primary architects of the Rwandan genocide has been sentenced to 30 years in jail for his part in the killing of 800,000 people. Augustin Bizimungu, a former head of the army, and Augustin Ndindiliyimana, an ex-military police leader, were found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity by the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Tuesday. Hutu militias carried out the mass slaughter of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus between April and June 1994, triggered by the shooting down of a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana . Bizimungu and Ndindiliyimana are two of the most senior figures to be sentenced by the ICTR, set up in Arusha in neighbouring Tanzania to prosecute the ringleaders. Bizimungu, 59, appeared unmoved when the judge ruled that, as army chief, he had complete control over the soldiers and militia who perpetrated the massacres. The 56-page indictment said he prepared lists of Tutsis to be “exterminated”, referring to them as “cockroaches” – a term notoriously used by those behind the genocide. He failed to stop the rape and sexual abuse of women and girls. Bizimungu was a regular at the cocktail bar of the Mille Collines hotel when it gave refuge to hundreds of desperate people, a story told in the film Hotel Rwanda. Its manager, Paul Rusesabagina , plied him with drinks to keep him in check. “I was with General Bizimungu and got him a drink,” Rusesabagina recalled in an interview with the Sunday Times in 2005. “He then told one of his bodyguards, ‘Go up there and tell those boys that anyone who kills a person in this hotel, I will kill him – anyone who fires even one shot, I will shoot him.’ “I am not ashamed to say that I have shared a drink with General Bizimungu. If I had not, I could not have saved people. I had to.” The court on Tuesday dismissed Bizimungu’s not guilty plea and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. Martin Ngoga, Rwanda’s chief prosecutor, told Reuters: “It is a welcome decision by the ICTR. In its own circumstances that is a big sentence, even if many people would think he deserved the highest.” The court ordered the release of Ndindiliyimana, given his command over the police was limited and because he had consistently supported reconciliation before 1994 and opposed the massacres. He had already spent 11 years in jail following his arrest in Belgium in 2000. Two other senior army officers were also found guilty of crimes against humanity, in part for their role in an attack that led to the death of up to eight Belgian UN peacekeepers. They were each sentenced to 20 years behind bars. Bizimungu managed to evade capture for eight years until he was caught with Unita rebels in Angola in 2002. He topped a list of wanted genocide suspects and the US had put a $5m (£3m) bounty on his head. His trial lasted another nine years. There was a generally positive reaction to the verdicts. Tim Murithi, head of the transitional justice in Africa programme at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, said it was “a punitive rebuke to military leaders who are implicated in perpetrating mass atrocities. “However, the prosecution of a small elite of political and military leaders does not address the immediate issue of how to promote nationwide healing and reconciliation. In some instances across Rwanda the foot-soldiers who were commanded by Bizimungu are still living in the same vicinity as their victims.” Murithi added: “While the prosecution of Bizimungu and other leaders in the security forces is a necessary step in the restoration of stability in Rwanda it must be coupled with a grassroots-driven process of national reconciliation.” Leslie Haskell, a researcher in the African division at Human Rights Watch , said: “We welcome these sentences because they involve two of the most senior figures that were before the ICTR accused of genocide.” A spokesman for Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire , who headed the UN peacekeeping mission during the genocide, said: “General Dallaire never comments on cases before the courts or on sentencing. However, he welcomes the evidence that no crimes against humanity go unpunished as there is no immunity for these crimes.” Rwanda War crimes Africa Human rights David Smith guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Freshman GOP Rep Loudly Booed As She Laughably Compares Ryan’s Medicare Plan to Coverage Congressional Members Receive
May 17, 2011 No CommentWhile Senate Republicans like Scott Brown are taking a pounding for embracing Paul Ryan’s crazy budget plan to gut Medicare, their counterparts on the House side are once again facing intense scrutiny at the local town halls. Actually, they are just facing heat from angry constituents who are upset over realizing that their community interests are being sold out to big corporations in the new GOP controlled Congress. Think Progress reported earlier today that Representative Ben Quayle (R-AZ) was laughed at for denying existence of billions in special oil subsidies. Now comes the word that Republican representative Jaime Herrera Beutler faced a “boisterous” crowd at her first Vancouver town hall event in Washington where she got ripped apart for defending Ryan’s plan to gut Medicare (emphasis added): Saying she wanted to “share with you what I walked into” when she entered Congress, she spent the first 40 minutes of the 75-minute session on a power-point presentation with graphs and pie charts that showed the projected increase in Medicare spending by 2020, the breakdown of discretionary and nondiscretionary federal spending, and the increase in the amount of U.S. debt owed to foreign governments. “My first priority is to preserve and protect Medicare for the present generation and for future generations,” she said. But when she insisted that the Republican budget blueprint for 2012 “protects Medicare,” a chorus of boos and catcalls and shouts of “liar” erupted in the auditorium. Unfazed, she repeated her argument that the budget blueprint written by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which would convert Medicare to a voucher program and let seniors use the vouchers to buy insurance on the private market, actually ensures that Medicare will be there for future generations. She compared the Ryan plan to the health care coverage members of Congress receive. ‘You get to choose your plan. It’s really that simple,” she said. But the audience was openly skeptical. The note about Ryan’s plan being comparable to health-care coverage that congressional members will receive is nothing short of a preposterous lie. As has been covered by bloggers such as Ezra Klein, Ryan’s plan will “end Medicare as we know it .” It’s clear that these Republicans are getting desperate and flustered. They used to be smooth liars all larded up with Frank Luntz’s talking points. The pressure is getting so intense that they are stumbling, bumbling and fumbling away, looking not just crazy but petty amateurs in the process. The pressure needs to remain on these guys including “Leaders” such as Boehner who have embraced the Ryan plan, but are still shying away from directly appealing to their Senate colleagues to support the craziness. No wonder number of Senate GOPers are either being shy about touching the Ryan plan or publicly staying away from it . They do not want to risk taking heat in their own states, thereby looking like clumsy and crazy liars in the process — as the Herrera Beutlers of the world are doing.
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Hosting openly-gay CNN anchor Don Lemon on her Monday night show, HLN's Joy Behar lamented that Lemon will have to interview GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum “who seems like a big homophobe.” The liberal host advised Lemon that “you're going to have people sit there with you like Rick Santorum who seems like a big homophobe, and others because they're running for president or whatever, and will talk about gay marriage, et cetera. How do you feel that you'll be able to handle that easily?” (Video below the break.)
Continue reading …Newsweek Slams ‘Theological Bully’ Franklin Graham, Tilting His Politics ‘Hard to the Right’
May 17, 2011 No CommentNewsweek religion editor Lisa Miller wrote a story on “The Fight Over Billy Graham's Legacy,” but the most notable thing that comes out of it is Miller's loathing of Rev. Franklin Graham (no relation). Miller clearly believes he's mangling his father's moderation, especially when it comes to Islam: Franklin — who’s been accused of being a rhetorical and theological bully , saying, for example, that Islam is “wicked and evil”— agrees with the assessment that he is less gentle than his dad. “We preach the same Gospel,” Franklin says, but “Daddy hates to say no. I can say no.” Franklin adds that he is much more engaged in the day-to-day management of the BGEA than his father ever was, and through the efforts of his humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse has much more experience on the front lines of global conflicts, such as those in Rwanda and the Middle East. This perspective, he argues, justifies his harder edge. “I’ve been doing a different kind of ministry,” he says. “That has shaped my views on a lot of things.” To MIller, Franklin Graham was on the “hard right” — possibly because he could be friendly with Sarah Palin. And what of the criticism that Franklin, a Christian minister, takes political sides in a way that his father did not? Billy Graham formed friendships with many politicians, and had intimate (though complex) relationships with both Richard Nixon, a Republican, and Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat. Franklin’s political friendships lean hard to the right. He most recently expressed support for the quixotic presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, telling Christiane Amanpour, “The more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself, you know, maybe the guy is right.” How Donald Trump is “hard to the right” is anyone's guess (but guess that's a birther reference). Franklin Graham also praised Palin and MItt Romney on ABC, so he didn't really “express support” for the Trump candidacy. He just viewed him favorably, and said “sure,” he might support Trump. Miller can whack the “theological bully,” and ignore how he told Amanpour in that interview “I love Muslim people. I don't believe that Mohammed can lead anybody to heaven. I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the light. That's what I believe.” (Miller probably still finds that exclusive claim to sound like bullying.) She added: “Franklin says the rules of political engagement have changed since his father was a public figure. “It’s sad to see how polarized our nation has become. If a political party doesn’t like you, then they start attacking you,” he says. “I like the president. He’s a nice man. I just disagree—strongly—with the spending that both Republicans and Democrats alike are responsible for. It’s not right.” This is the paragraph where Graham's friendship with Palin was explored: Most of Graham's visitors come through the back door, as it were, arranged by the children as special favors to special friends. As kids, the siblings — Gigi, Anne, Bunny, Franklin, and Ned — bickered ruthlessly, “grumbling, interrupting, slurring each other,” according to their mother's journals. Now they're grown, ranging in age from 53 to 66, but the rivalry continues. As in so many famous families, each child struggles with how best to wear the family name. Franklin, who has a second home in Alaska (and plans to ride his motorcycle there this summer) has long been friendly with Sarah Palin, and in 2009 helped orchestrate a much-publicized visit between the former governor and his father. Palin, who was on her book tour, came with her parents and her aunt Sally, Franklin says, and she brought Billy a Carhartt jacket. “Sarah Palin loves my father, and like a lot of people she grew up watching him on television. It was just family time.” After the visit, Billy Graham released a statement saying, “Sarah and her family will always be welcome in the Graham home.” This bit of stagecraft looked to some like an anointing. To others, it looked like partisan meddling by Franklin . Miller also underlines how Graham's children haven't built lasting marriages like their father, and have addiction problems. This isn't the way, say, the Kennedys are portrayed by Newsweek: Billy Graham has not lived a faultless life, but he did act carefully to protect his legacy and the significance of his reputation. In private, aware of his own human weakness, he instructed his ministry staff never to leave him alone in a room with a woman who was not his wife. In these last years, he speaks frequently of Ruth and of his yearning to go home to heaven to see her. His children have not been so cautious. Bunny, Gigi, and Ned are divorced and remarried. Ned, whose ministry builds and encourages Christianity in China, has spent time in rehab for prescription drugs, and Franklin admits to having had an appetite for alcohol as a younger man. Among Graham’s 19 grandchildren, at least three have become Christian preachers. But according to a 2008 story in The Columbus Dispatch , there has been drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, and eating disorders in that generation as well. Gigi and Ruth have made ministries out of helping families endure such struggles. “I’m just not comfortable being thought of as coming from a wonderful family,” says Gigi. “We’re not exempt from some of the problems that everyone has. We’re empathetic to, sympathetic to, all the problems that people have today. We support one another, love one another when we’re going through some of the things we’re going through.” Franklin sees these family troubles somewhat differently. He and his siblings “don’t see each other that often. I think some of them have made bad choices in life, but I’m responsible for my life. I have to stand before God and give an accounting of my life.” He pauses, then adds, “I love my sisters and would do anything I could to help them.” You're supposed to catch Miller's drift that forgiveness and love doesn't seem to be there for brother Ned. Earlier: NPR Star Terry Gross Horrified at 'Very Extreme' Franklin Graham Ruining U.S. Image Mike Malloy: Franklin Graham Should Blow His Own Brains Out
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