Assets of major public pension funds fell 8.5% in third quarter

News that the UK did manage to eke out a little growth will give George Osborne some respite in the build up to his Budget following last week’s decision by Moody’s credit rating agency to strip the country of its prized AAA status. In its second estimate of GDP for the final three months of last year, the Office for National Statistics revealed that it had revised its growth calculations for earlier in 2012.

Coach, Inc.’s (COH) profits plummeted 20% and it once again failed to meet revenue expectations for its third quarter of fiscal 2014 (3QFY14; ended on May 29, 2014).

WASHINGTON — After more than a century, the U.S. Census Bureau is dropping its use of the word “Negro” to describe black Americans in surveys. Instead of the term that came into use during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, census forms will use the more modern labels “black” or “African-American”.

Things are getting rather interesting in the Netherlands as low interest rates have increased pension deficit liabilities. Unlike the US and other parts of Europe where deficits are ignored, Dutch law requires 105% funding and the plans fell from 152% funded in 2007 to 102% funded today. This has forced pension plans to cut benefits by as much as 7% for some trades. As might be expected, this has given rise to a 50 Plus Party, which won election to the Dutch parliament for the first time last year on promises to defend the interests of pensioners.

For the first time in three years, US Quarterly Earnings are Poised to Drop. Third-quarter earnings of Standard & Poor's 500 companies are now expected to fall 0.1 percent from a year ago, a sharp revision from the July 1 forecast of 3.1 percent growth, Thomson Reuters data showed on Thursday. That would be the first decline in earnings since the third quarter of 2009, the data showed.

In 2011, the Commerce Department's U.S. Census Bureau continued to provide quality statistics to governments and businesses to inform the decisions that affect everyone’s lives. These statistics touch every aspect of Americans’ lives–health, crime, income, education, labor force participation, housing conditions, consumer expenditures and a host of others.While we have plenty to be proud of, here we highlight some of this year’s big successes.