US faces federal shutdown; Siemens to axe 15,000; Austerity was never the answer; Google at 15 eyes the future

1 US faces federal shutdown (Janet Hook & Kristina Peterson in The Wall Street Journal) The nation braced for a partial shutdown of the federal government, as time for Congress to pass a budget before a Monday midnight deadline grew perilously short and lawmakers gave no signs Sunday they were moving toward a resolution. Leaders of both parties said they wanted to avoid the first federal closure since 1996, but their public appearances seemed aimed more at affixing blame for the impasse.

The prospect of legislation was remote, as the House legislation included a one-year delay of the new federal health law that Democrats have vowed to reject, as well as a repeal of the new law's tax on medical devices. The tense maneuvering has surrounded a bill that otherwise might be uncontroversial: an extension of current funding for the government for the early months of the new fiscal year, which begins Tuesday. But a determined faction of conservative Republicans has argued that the deadline gives the party its best opportunity for derailing the new health law before one of its central elements, health-insurance marketplaces for individuals, are launched Tuesday.

Some Republicans held out hope that the prospect of a government shutdown would pressure Senate Democrats to make even a symbolic concession to their demand for changes in the Affordable Care Act, perhaps by agreeing to the repeal of the medical-device tax intended to help fund the law. A shutdown would prompt federal agencies to suspend a large range of activities and furlough at least 825,000 of the US government's more than two million workers, according to plans filed with the White House. However, much of the public would be unaffected, as services deemed essential would continue, among them those related to national security, mail delivery, air traffic and law enforcement.

The stalemate was a monument to problems that have increasingly gripped US politics, especially over the last three years of divided government. The growing polarization of the parties, a diminished willingness to compromise on spending and an epidemic of brinkmanship have made it more difficult for Congress to address even the most routine budgeting questions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373104579105483307740074.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_LEFTTopStories

2 Siemens to axe 15,000 jobs (BBC) German industrial giant Siemens is to cut up to 15,000 jobs as part of a cost-cutting programme. It will cut about 4% of its 370,000-strong workforce but aims to avoid compulsory redundancies, according to a company spokesman. The firm will shed 5,000 jobs in Germany and another 10,000 jobs abroad.

It comes after Siemens axed its former chief executive, Peter Loescher, earlier this year over falling profitability. Siemens and its unions have reached an agreement over about half of the job cuts and a deal on the other half will follow, the spokesman told news agencies. The firm has issued two warnings about profit margins during the last fiscal year. Mr Loescher, led the company from 2007 and the Austrian was the first person recruited from outside the company to run the business.

3 Austerity was never an answer (Michael Burke in The Guardian) George Osborne claims that the recovery has begun and that this was due to his austerity policy. This is factually incorrect on both counts. Britain has entered its sixth year of slump and remains more than 3% below its previous peak level. Apart from Italy, this is the worst performance in the G7.

But it is also incorrect to state that the recovery owes anything to austerity policies. The final data for the second quarter shows government consumption has been rising since the end of 2011 and largely accounts for the very modest rise in GDP over that period. Government consumption has risen by £7.7bn in real terms while GDP has increased by £11.7bn at the same time.

British government finances are notoriously opaque so it is very difficult to see where this money has gone. It is possible that the sharp rise in temporary, part-time and low-paid jobs has had the effect of pushing up the cost of benefits to those in work. This is in effect a subsidy to weak or extremely exploitative employers. Despite cuts to basic services there is too a vast increase in waste in the education and health budgets, arising from their creeping privatisation.

No economy can sustainably grow without increasing production and productive capacity through investment. But thanks to government policy, the British economy has entered one of its frequent bouts of consumption-led upturns, which are destined to bust. Yet now that government day-to-day spending has increased, there is no going back.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/29/george-osborne-austerity-gdp

4 Google at 15 eyes the future (Dawn) Google celebrated its 15th birthday Thursday with a trip down memory lane, and an update to the search engine formula which helped spawn the tech giant. Google, which has grown into one of the world's biggest companies, is not content to just look at the past. It announced an upgrade to its main search engine, referred to as 'Hummingbird' with new ways to integrate its use across different devices. Since 1998, the tech world has changed dramatically and Google said its search engine has been constantly improved.

Google has quietly retooled the closely guarded formula running its Internet search engine to give better answers to the increasingly complex questions posed by Web surfers. The changes could have a major impact on traffic to websites. Hummingbird represents the most dramatic alteration to its search engine since it revised the way it indexes websites three years ago as part of a redesign called ''Caffeine,'' according to Amit Singhal, a company vice president. He estimated that the redesign would affect about 90 percent of the search requests Google gets. Any reshuffling of Google's search rankings can have sweeping ramifications because they steer so much of the Internet's traffic.

http://herald.dawn.com/