On April 2, by a vote of 52 to 46, the Senate adopted a sense of the Senate amendment to the Budget Resolution (S Con Res 86) sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) that called for a change in budget law to allow savings from the elimination of discretionary spending...
Trade Radar Operator submits: Consumer discretionary stocks have been in the news lately. As oil prices moderated and the U.S. dollar appreciated, the stocks shot upward. The consumer discretionary ETFs, naturally, followed suit.There are a number of fund companies that offer ETFs focused on the consumer discretionary sector. They...
Question-and-Answer SessionOperator [Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from George Notter with Jefferies & Company. George Notter Hi, thanks very much. I guess I wanted to ask about the order guidance for Q4 and thereafter if you think about your signaling products, where do you think you kind...
May 24, 2007 (Intax - ABIX via COMTEX) -- Australian accountants and tax agents should be very careful when documenting discretionary trust distribution resolutions. While few resolutions are scrutinised, it is likely that many would fail to stand up to an Australian Taxation Office inspection. Discretionary...
Daniel Miller submits: Consumer Discretionary stocks have surged during the past month, more than any other Global Industry Classification Standard [GISC] sector, nearing their previous advance of 8.9 percent in October 2003. As of Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary Index has risen 7.5% so far during the month...
Recently there has been a flurry of articles criticizing discretionary overdraft services. My first reaction was to view the authors as zealot community activists with a paternalistic approach as self-appointed guardians who feel they, knowing what's best, must protect the uninformed public from themselves. However, I couldn't dismiss the...
Accenture has developed a number of unique IT capability diagnostics that focus on the value delivered rather than benchmark how much is spent. The Accenture IT Investment and Spending Diagnostic, for example, evaluates current discretionary and non-discretionary spending. More importantly, the diagnostic provides a portfolio view of discretionary spending, showing...
Three months from now, brokers will no longer be allowed to make discretionary trades in regular brokerage or trading accounts. A new rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission will require registered reps to employ fee-based advisory accounts when using discretion. "Most brokers are also registered as investment advisers,"...
Senate Passes Budget Resolution Along Party Lines On April 7, by a vote of 51 to 45, the Senate passed the Budget Resolution (H Con Res 290) for Fiscal Year 2001. - The resolution would allocate $600.5 billion in discretionary spending-over half of that for defense-and create a Medicare prescription...
Dan Weiss submits: Markets were generally higher during the month of August with the broad Russell 3000 Index climbing by 1.5%. Much like July, we saw a reversal of what we saw in the first half of the year with sectors that were generally strong in the first...
NEW YORK -- Acadia Realty Trust (NYSE:AKR - "Acadia") today announced the formation of its third discretionary investment fund, Acadia Strategic Opportunity Fund III LLC ("Fund III"). Fund III will be capitalized with $500 million of discretionary institutional capital, which will enable Acadia to acquire or develop approximately $1.5 billion...
This paper addresses two questions related to the use of discretion over revenues. First, do firms use discretion in revenues to manage earnings to meet earnings targets? Second, do firms manage revenues to meet revenue targets? To answer these questions, the author models a common form of discretionary revenues and...
"For BCM to be truly effective, organizations need a central department or initiative that has both executive-level support and adequate resources. But in many cases, BCM efforts do not get what they need because they are considered discretionary projects that do not contribute directly to the organization’s profitability. Yet, at...
ERISA provisions on fiduciary liability can be very confusing. This article looks at the blurred lines surrounding plan design and fiduciary liability-or are they blurred? It discusses about plan design is a settlor function, not a fiduciary function. In other words, plan design is left to the employer as the...
Some of the lingo used in the Nation's Capital during the recent debate over a federal budget resolution reveals the perverse perspective professional politicians have developed when it comes to spending taxpayers' money."Discretionary" spending, they tell us, includes everything they spend on defense and homeland security. "Mandatory" spending, by contrast,...
A number of increasingly sophisticated technologies are now being used to support complex decision-making in a range of contexts. This paper reports on a project undertaken to provide decision support in discretionary legal domains by referring to a created model that involves the interplay and weighting of relevant rule-based and...
News Advisory: Conference Call Briefings -- Bush Budget Cuts All Domestic Discretionary Program Areas Outside Homeland Security, Except Space Exploration -- Proposed Caps Would Reduce Discretionary Spending by 2009 to Levels Measured as a Share of the Economy, Not Seen Since 1963 TO BE HELD: Monday, March 1, 2004 at...
In his petition for rehearing, Drake argues, among other issues, that the court misapplied FAA's discretionary rights and gave the agency more discretionary authority than it actually has. He also argues that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the FAA, that DOT had indicated that...
Market Folly submits: I just wanted to take two seconds in what was a bloodbath of a day [Monday] and point out a chart that is trending higher. Surprisingly enough, it comes from the consumer discretionary sector: Aeropostale ARO. While ARO might be one of the few...
