Kyser Center for Economic Research is pleased to provide the December 2015 issue of Business Scan, a compilation of Los Angeles County economic indicators and business trends, including employment, trade, housing, tourism and entertainment.
Author: knjohn
What Just Happened to Solar and Wind is a Really Big Deal | Bloomberg Business
The clean-energy boom is about to be transformed. In a surprise move, U.S. lawmakers agreed to extend tax credits for solar and wind for another five years.
This will give an unprecedented boost to the industry and change the course of deployment in the U.S. The extension will add an extra 20 gigawatts of solar power—more than every panel ever installed in the U.S. prior to 2015, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). The U.S. was already one of the world’s biggest clean-energy investors. This deal is like adding another America of solar power into the mix.
The wind credit will contribute another 19 gigawatts over five years. Combined, the extensions will spur more than $73 billion of investment and supply enough electricity to power 8 million U.S. homes, according to BNEF.
“This is massive,” said Ethan Zindler, head of U.S. policy analysis at BNEF. In the short term, the deal will speed up the shift from fossil fuels more than the global climate deal struck this month in Paris and more than Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan that regulates coal plants, Zindler said.
4 Mistakes That Ruin Business Meetings | Business News Daily
Business meetings have a longstanding reputation for being unexciting. Sitcoms, films and even stock photo collections are filled with scenes of employees looking at the clock, rolling their eyes and falling asleep while the presenter seems to drone on interminably.
Though these staged “boring meetings” may be slightly exaggerated on camera, they’re not too far from the truth: A recent survey by enterprise intranet company Igloo Software found that about half of all employees find meetings to be unproductive. The most common meeting pet peeves reflect this sentiment, with unnecessary meetings (76 percent), meetings going off-topic (59 percent) and people repeating one another (58 percent) topping the list.
British man attempts to avoid parking ticket by leaving cheekiest note | Mashable
LONDON — Getting angry with traffic wardens might not always be the best approach — sometimes, it pays to charm them instead.
One chancer in Liverpool recently went for this approach when he was unable to move his car in time due to having had “a Christmas pint with the lads.”
Operator! Operator! The UberRush Logistics Layer Has Arrived | TechCrunch
The real goldmine for Uber is in becoming the transportation backend for tons of other services, not just its own apps. Now this logistics layer strategy is coming to fruition through a partnership with Operator, the chat-based shopping assistant backed by Uber co-founder Garret Camp.
Together, Uber and Operator they could compete with Amazon’s massive warehouses by aggregating inventory for instant delivery from local shops that are closer nearby.
Today, UberRush begins powering 1-hour delivery for Operator in San Francisco. At first, over 100 of the most popular gifts from the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall and Saks Fifth Avenue will be available for immediate arrival.
3 Ways to Use CRM to Ramp Up Your Sales | All Business
As a female entrepreneur, I, like so many others, have to juggle my time carefully. I’m always looking for strategies to use one thing in many ways. One tool I’ve discovered that can do more than meets the eye is customer relationship management software (or CRM).
A lot of people mistakenly think CRM is only something marketers use, or it’s just a place to throw all your contact information. That’s simply not the case; it’s also a fantastic tool to increase sales for your business. And hey, I’m all about using it for as much as I can, especially if it helps me grow my business!
Today’s CRM solutions are much more sophisticated—not to mention more useful—than their predecessors. Here are three effective ways to use CRM as a sales tool:
11 Tweaks To Your Morning Routine Will Make Your Entire Day More Productive | Forbes
I don’t know anyone who couldn’t use a little boost in their energy, productivity, and self-control.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham recently published findings from their exploration of 83 separate studies on energy and self-control. What they found will change the way you start your day.
The researchers found that self-control and energy are not only intricately linked but also finite, daily resources that tire much like a muscle. Even though we don’t always realize it, as the day goes on, we have increased difficulty exerting self-control and focusing on our work. As self-control wears out, we feel tired and find tasks to be more difficult and our mood sours.
This exhaustion of self-control kills your productivity, and it makes the morning hours, when self-control is highest, the most important hours of the day.
But the trick isn’t just to spend your morning hours working; it’s to do the right things in the morning that will make your energy and self-control last as long as possible.
Inside Seattle’s Bold Plan to Let Its Uber Drivers Organize | WIRED
THE CLASH OVER classifying Uber drivers as independent contractors versus bona fide employees is the signature controversy of the on-demand economy. According to Uber, Lyft, and other on-demand driver companies, the independent contractor model offers the promise of a bright and flexible future in which each worker is a micro-entrepreneur—choosing her own hours and acting as her own boss. The problem, according to Uber detractors: these workers don’t receive benefits. And they can’t unionize.
Los Angeles schools closed after terror threat |Business Insider
Every school in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was closed Tuesday because of what officials described as a “credible” threat of violence.
The bomb threat came in the form of an email sent to a district board member and tied to an IP address in Germany, a spokeswoman for the school district told Reuters.
“The school district received a safety threat that we’re in the process of evaluating and vetting … As you can imagine, we take all threats seriously,” Jorge Villegas, the assistant chief of the LAPD, said at a press conference Tuesday morning.
Weekly Economic Update | LAEDC
v.19 n. 51 – Released December 14, 2015
This Week’s Headlines:
- California Financial Report for November
- Retail Sales in November – Take a Second Look
- Producer Price Index Rises on Strength of Service-Sector Profit Margins
- Consumers Give Credit Cards a Rest in October
- Events of Interest
- February 17, 2016: LAEDC February Economic Outlook
Dispatches From The Front 