As investors continue to worry about the strength of Europe’s economy, seven out of 91 banks have failed a stress test, meaning they would collapse if there was another downturn. The European Union said on Friday that test results confirm the overall resilience of the continent’s banking system.

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Most European banks pass stress test : Video

PHILADELPHIA � A college student returning to school after the winter break fell victim to a prank at Philadelphia’s airport by a Transportation Security Administration worker who pretended to plant a plastic bag of white powder in her carryon luggage.

The worker is no longer employed by the TSA after the incident this month, a spokeswoman said.

Rebecca Solomon, 22, a University of Michigan student, wrote in a column for her campus newspaper that she was having her bags screened on Jan. 5 before her flight to Detroit when the employee stopped her, reached into her laptop computer bag and pulled out the plastic bag, demanding to know where she had gotten the powder.

In the Jan. 10 column for The Michigan Daily, she recounted how she struggled to come up with an explanation, wondering if it was bomb-detonating material slipped in by a terrorist or drugs put there by a smuggler.

“He let me stutter through an explanation for the longest minute of my life,” Solomon wrote. “Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded with him to understand that I’d never seen this baggie before.”

A short time later, she said, the worker smiled and said it was his.

The worker “waved the baggie at me and told me he was kidding, that I should’ve seen the look on my face,” she said.

Solomon said she asked to speak to a supervisor and filled out a complaint, and during that process was told that the man was training TSA workers to detect contraband. Two days later, she said, she was told he had been disciplined.

“I had been terrified and disrespected by an airport employee,” she said. “He’d joked about the least funny thing in air travel.”

There was no answer Saturday at a telephone listing for Solomon at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. An e-mail message seeking comment from her was sent Saturday by The Associated Press, and a telephone message was left at her parents’ home in suburban Philadelphia.

TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis told The Philadelphia Inquirer she did not dispute the student’s account and said the employee was no longer with the agency, though she declined to say whether he had been fired or quit. She also declined to identify the worker or his job title, citing privacy laws.

“TSA viewed this behavior to be completely inappropriate and unprofessional,” Davis said in a statement. “The employee was immediately disciplined by TSA management at the Philadelphia airport.”

TSA representatives did not return calls Saturday seeking comment.

___

On The Net:

http://www.michigandaily.com/content/personal-statement

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TSA Student Prank: Airport Worker Pretended To Plant Bag Of White Powder In Rebecca Solomon’s Luggage

Conan’s gone and Leno’s in. These past weeks have been tumultuous, but what’s done is done. And until Conan finds some new digs (Fox, please), all we can do is wish him well. That, and give NBC the finger, which is exactly what the singer of “Hey There, O’Brien” does in this heartfelt tribute to Coco.

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A Heartfelt Ballad Sends Coco On His Way (VIDEO)

On Thursday, President Barack Obama proposed new rules to curb a number of Wall Street’s risky–and highly profitable–trading activities. One target: The secretive trading operations within banks that use large doses of leverage, or borrowed money, to make huge bets on the market. Wall Street says the regulations are unnecessary, and since the financial crisis struck, most banks have cut back on these trading outfits. But when the downturn first hit in the summer of 2007, several of them were among the first to suffer, and collectively they lost billions over a matter of days.

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The Quants Book Review: How A Group Of Mathematicians And Computer Scientists Nearly Destroyed Wall Street

EARNINGS PREVIEW: Siemens Profit, Sales To Fall Amid Downturn

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EARNINGS PREVIEW: Siemens Profit, Sales To Fall Amid Downturn

AP – Candy maker Hershey says it has no immediate plans to make an offer for British competitor Cadbury, making it all but certain that Kraft Foods Inc.’s $19.5 billion bid will proceed without competition.

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Hershey has no immediate plan for Cadbury bid
(AP)

AP – More hungry diners gobbling its cheap eats helped McDonald’s Corp.’s sales and profit grow in its fourth quarter, the company said Friday in an earnings report showing it continued to weather the downturn better than many competitors.

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McDonald’s profit is $1.22B in 4th quarter
(AP)

goldman sachs earnings

Goldman Sachs earnings are one of the hot topics on the Internet at the present moment. The number one trends on Google Trends is “Goldman earnings.” This is a very important issue right now because the stock market has solid off several times in the last week and many analysts and investors feel that Goldman and Google can do a lot to prop the market back up. Both Goldman and Google report earnings today with Goldman Sachs before the opening bell and Google after the market closes.

Goldman is known for avoiding risk during the subprime mortgage crisis and actually profiting from the downturn. Now that the economy has started to recover Goldman has seen great profits and that is expected to continue. Today Goldman is expected to report over $5.00 a share in earnings just a few short quarters after the credit crisis was saddling all the major investment firms on Wall Street.

read full article: Goldman Sachs Earnings Searches Increase as Investment Bank Reports Today
whatamericaissearching.com

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US Finance : Goldman Sachs Earnings Searches Increase as Investment Bank Reports Today

MUMBAI, India — India’s top three outsourcing companies are ramping up hiring and increasing pay as global corporations, mainly from the U.S., send more work offshore to cut costs as they emerge from the downturn.

Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro expanded their global workforces by an average of 5.1 percent last quarter, together adding 16,701 employees, company documents show – an early sign that the Great Recession may ultimately benefit India as cost-conscious companies outsource more work, just as they did after the dot-com bust.

“Our expectations are for flat to marginally stronger IT budgets with a greater share of offshore spend,” Wipro chairman Azim Premji said in a conference call Wednesday. “Our customers remain focused on cost reduction.”

The employment revival in India’s outsourcing sector, which counts on the U.S. for about 60 percent of global sales, comes as unemployment in the U.S. stagnates around 10 percent – near a 26-year high. Inflation-adjusted wages in the U.S. last year fell 1.6 percent, the biggest decline since 1990.

“When there is a downturn the compulsion to control costs increases,” said Dipen Shah, an analyst at Mumbai’s Kotak Securities. “The demand for offshoring will increase. That will play to the advantage of Indian IT companies.”

He argues that the cost savings from offshoring has helped U.S. companies survive – and that’s good for the American worker.

“You might say jobs in the U.S. are getting displaced by jobs in India, but because of the value provided by Indian companies and lower costs, there are firms who are able to keep their heads above water and continue to employ their existing employees,” he said.

TCS, Infosys and Wipro, whose clients include leading companies like Goldman Sachs and General Electric as well as U.S. government agencies, can do everything from call center management and claims processing to software development and consulting. All three reported stronger than expected results for the December quarter, with revenue and volume growth, signaling that the cost-cutting imperative of this last, lean year may be over for India’s $60 billion software services industry.

After about a year of hiring slowdowns, all three companies are sweetening compensation as the fight to hold on to talented employees in India heats up.

Infosys offered its Indian employees an average 8 percent pay hike in October, their first raise since April 2008, and executives said last week they are considering another raise to combat rising attrition.

“The market is heating up and we want to retain talent,” human resources director Mohandas Pai told reporters.

Infosys last week raised its gross hiring target for the second time this fiscal year, to 24,000 people.

Wipro executives said they plan to offer staffers a raise in February.

Tata Consultancy Services has paid out 150 percent of performance-linked pay – which normally amounts to 20 to 45 percent of compensation – for the last two quarters, and executives say they will raise salaries next quarter, after a year-long wage freeze.

As demand for workers revives, employers have begun to worry about rising staff turnover. Employees who sat tight during the downturn have started to shop around for better jobs and better salaries.

Attrition at Wipro jumped to 13.4 percent last quarter, up from an average of 8.9 percent over the prior three quarters. Attrition at Infosys rose to 11.6 percent last quarter from 10.9 percent the prior quarter. Attrition at TCS has been stable, at around 11.5 percent, though executives say they expect that number to rise.

Indian firms say they are increasing global hiring, including in the U.S., as they pursue higher-end work like consulting. But U.S. employees remain a fraction of total staff.

TCS, for example, recently finished hiring 250 Americans for its Cincinnati campus, but U.S. employees still account for less than 0.5 percent of the company’s global workforce.

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India Outsourcing Companies Ramp Up Hiring As US Demand Grows

Big investment banks in the City of London are jacking up salaries to entice back traders and analysts they lost to boutique firms during the downturn

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London Banks Double Pay to Lure Talent