Last Wednesday, a Twitter fight erupted between technology experts Michael Arrington, founder and former editor of TechCrunch, and Vivek Wadhwa, a technology researcher and writer, after a screening of documentary, “The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley.”

Arrington said a few very clear things about his view of the state of diversity in Silicon Valley. Among them: There may be very few African-Americans in Silicon Valley, but despite this Silicon Valley is a pure meritocracy, and one becomes successful because he or she has a “big brain.” Vivek disagreed. As an Indian-American entrepreneur, he said he sees significant bias in Silicon Valley, and even recounted a specific instance where he was told, “You people don’t make good CEOs.”

First, let me say, I think Arrington truly believes everything he has said about the tech world being a meritocracy. Lots of people believe it.

But not me. I would more properly say that tech markets are a meritocracy. There are very few businesses where an individual in his or her bedroom can create a piece of software that can potentially touch millions of people, and do this without seeking any additional capital. No matter how talented you are, if you want to open a hot new restaurant or a shoe factory, you need lots of money before you start. Not necessarily so with software.

Consumers and businesses, for the most part, don’t care about the ethnicity of their software or Internet service vendor. Users want solutions. So if an entrepreneur can get a great product completed cheaply, he or she can often compete on a totally even footing with anyone else. Even if the entrepreneur ultimately needs capital, explosive initial success knocks down all known barriers.

But the market makers operate in a world that is not particularly evenhanded. The market makers are the folks who help new young companies and entrepreneurs by providing insight, mentoring, capital and relationships. This part of the tech world is driven by all the same biases that exist in the nontech world. And it is much harder for even the most talented African-Americans in the tech world to gain access to influential, insightful, connected mentors, let alone investors.

Why is this? For the most part, people want to work with people who are “like them” or who fit a pattern that appeals to them. There is an actual term for this among tech investors called “pattern matching.” It’s the idea that, without objective facts, one can decide whether someone is likely to be successful based on indirect criteria. In other words, when they see a particular pattern of “personhood,” they are excited.
These patterns are discussed openly in the tech industry around issues like age. Since it is only moderately politically incorrect to suggest that younger entrepreneurs are “better,” it is done all the time. The best example of this might be Mike Moritz from Sequoia Capital, perhaps the most influential of all venture funds, admitting in a Building 43 interview that they have a strong bias toward very young entrepreneurs.

But if you believe that age is the only criteria that venture capitalists use for pattern matching, I wanna smoke some of what you’ve got.

To be clear, I am not saying any venture capitalist says at a partner meeting, “You know I really like this company’s product, but did you notice he’s a Negro?”

Never happens.

But I firmly believe, based on my 25 years in this industry, that market makers, both investors and the people who help you get ready to approach them, seek out entrepreneurs who appeal to them on some less than objective, visceral level, who feel “comfortable” to them. They don’t need to actively filter out undesirable profiles. They just focus on what does appeal to them.
They focus on the “patterns” they find appealing — age is arguably a part of many investors’ ideal pattern, but so are perhaps unacknowledged criteria like race, gender, cultural affinity, etc. On some level this should not be shocking, as it reflects socialization that all of us must work hard and consciously not to act on.

Is this racist/sexist/ageist? Well, in this context, using incendiary labels is only likely to make people more defensive. The bigger question is, is it a problem? Absolutely.

It’s not just a personal impression. In a recent study, industry analyst CB Insights found that less than 1% of all venture capital money went to digital start-ups with African-American founders in 2010.

Is it possible to overcome these barriers? I have. I have developed successful, best-selling, award-winning products and I have raised tens of millions of dollars. But it is only by a sheer persistence and focus that few other people — white, black, or otherwise — have. I would never suggest that I am smarter than anyone else, but my Arnold-Schwarzenegger-in-”Terminator”-like determination has made my successes possible. Yes, I have definitely had help and support, but compared to some, not so much.

In fact, some people get far more support than others. For example, when a top tier venture capitalist writes a $5 million check to a 19-year-old with a barely beyond napkin stage idea, no customers and a fragile technology because they “present well,” then clearly something else is at work beyond merit. This exact scenario may not be common, but it does happen. But it does not happen for African-American, or for that matter, Latino or female entrepreneurs.

So the bottom line is, if the level of determination that I have was required from everyone, no matter their race, on some kind of moderately equal basis, it would indeed be a level playing field — a meritocracy. But it’s not.

It all sounds eerily familiar. A new iPhone. Massive sales. Then, an apparent glitch that, while it doesn’t affect everyone, is prevalent enough to irk customers and catch the eyes of tech journalists everywhere.

Poor battery life on the iPhone 4S, released on October 14 to great fanfare and record sales, has been the new model’s Achilles’ heel in the minds of many users.

While complaints about the perceived problem haven’t reached the fevered pitch that last year’s iPhone 4 release saw about its so-called “death grip” problem, they don’t seem to be going away.

There were, of course, the expected number of early-adopter quibbles with the phone: from troubles with new carrier Sprint, to a sometimes slow-moving camera, to limits on the voice-activated Siri “personal assistant” outside the United States.

But as most of those gripes either got sorted or users got used to the limitations, complaints about the phone’s battery life have persisted.

A post on the Apple support forums, begun on October 15 to discuss battery problems, was still active Tuesday — two weeks and 185 pages worth of comments later.

“I purchased what I thought was a top-of-the-line product only to be terribly disappointed,” one user wrote Tuesday. “This is my first iPhone and may well be my last.”

Battery life was a frequent complaint about the iPhone 3GS, but concerns about the phone’s short battery life seemed to have been addressed on the next-generation iPhone 4.

According to Apple’s official specs, the iPhone 4S should have enough juice in the battery for up to eight hours of talk time, six hours of Internet surfing, 10 hours of video viewing and 200 hours on standby. (All activities on a 3G connection — 2G and wireless have different figures).

All of those numbers are within an hour or so of the iPhone 4, except for one. The older phone’s specifications promise 300 hours of standby power: a full 50% more than the 4S.

Users complaining on the Apple forum and elsewhere say that their phones aren’t lasting anywhere near even that reduced length of time. Various independent tests of the new phone have suggested that some phones have problems with poor battery life, while others don’t.

The general consensus among tech-inclined owners is that the problem may not lie with the battery itself, but with the way the phone utilizes Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 5.

Specifically, the theory goes, its location-based services are a power drain. If the phone is constantly trying to pinpoint where it is, it will suck power even when the user isn’t actively doing something with the phone. (For a comparison, think about how quickly your battery drains when you forget to turn off Wi-Fi searches while you’re driving.)

The new phone also has a more powerful processor — the same one that’s in the iPad 2. That could cut battery life, even though Apple CEO Tim Cook specifically said that it wouldn’t during the iPhone 4S unveiling event last month.

Apparently, reading from the well-worn Apple playbook, the company has not commented publicly about the battery complaints. Messages and e-mails to Apple seeking comment on these complaints were not returned.

It’s unclear whether the company acknowledges there’s a battery problem (although there have been reports that Apple is contacting iPhone 4S users to try to get to the bottom of it).

And while it’s too early for direct comparisons, the extended silence looks remarkably like the public-relations two-step that was Apple’s handling of the iPhone 4′s antenna issues. (As you may recall, Consumer Reports and others said the iPhone 4 had antenna problems that caused it to drop calls. People dubbed the situation “Antennagate.”)

First, the company refused to publicly acknowledge the issue. Then, there was a software patch apparently aimed at fixing it (although Apple never explicitly said so).

There would eventually be a news conference in which then-CEO Steve Jobs spent most of the time denying there was any real problem, then announcing that the company would give away free bumpers — minimalist iPhone cases — to prevent dropped calls.

But before that, there were the private e-mails and public statements saying, in essence, that users were holding their phones wrong.

Then, weeks after the free-bumper news conference, Jobs and others doubled back, saying that there was never really much of a problem and discontinuing the freebie program.

As Apple’s silence persists (the company has said in the past that it spends time researching potential problems before addressing them publicly), users and observers are complaining and speculating in the vacuum. And that’s not always pretty.

“It hits you when you least expect it. It slips away under a mask of dormant inactivity. And it can ruin your entire day,” TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook wrote Tuesday. “It’s your iPhone 4S battery life, and it sucks.

NEW YORK Premarket trading was halted Monday in MF Global, a trader in commodities and derivatives, that is reported to be near a bankruptcy filing and asset sale.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York suspended MF Global from conducting business with the Fed.
Shares of MF Global fell 16% Friday to $1.20

MF Global has until Monday to find a buyer or file for bankruptcy. According to media reports, MF Global (MF) is on the verge of making a deal that would sell many of its assets to Interactive Brokers (IBKR) as part of a bankruptcy filing package.

MF Global, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, was halted because of news pending.
MF Global’s warning bells

MF Global is run by Jon Corzine, former Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) Chief Executive who has also served as New Jersey governor and U.S. senator.

The company is one of several Wall Street banks suffering from exposure to Europe’s financial crisis. It was forced to take write-offs on the value of its European bonds as part of last week’s agreement to resolve the debt crisis.

The son and wife of convicted stockbroker Bernie Madoff said they had no inkling he was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme until he came home on a December night three years ago and gathered the family together.

“He said, ‘I have a confession to make. I’ve been running a Ponzi scheme.” He said, ‘$50 billion dollars,’” recounted Madoff’s wife, Ruth, in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday night.

Madoff’s youngest son, Andrew, also appeared on the show — their first television interview since Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 of running the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.

“He said, ‘Everything I’ve been doing is all a big lie,’” Andrew Madoff recalled. “And then he just started sobbing. And I was– I– I was shocked. I– it was– I felt like my head exploded. I mean, I– I don’t think if he had told me he was an alien I could’ve been more surprised.”
Ruth Madoff was too taken aback to comprehend the significance of his admission, the son said: “‘What’s a Ponzi scheme?’ was her first question.”

“I said, ‘It’s all fake.’ It means dad’s not been doing what he says he’s been doing,” Andrew Madoff recalled telling his mother. “My brother was trembling with rage. He was absolutely furious. Mark was the first one to stand up and say, ‘I’m out of here,’ and I immediately followed and walked out.”

That night, Ruth and Bernie Madoff went to the company Christmas party, stayed half an hour and came home.

The next morning, the FBI arrived to arrest Madoff — turned in by his two sons.

On December 11, 2010 — two years to the day his father was arrested — Mark Madoff’s body was discovered hanging from a ceiling pipe in his Manhattan apartment, while his 2-year-old son slept in another room.

Ruth Madoff said she blamed herself for her son’s suicide and for not cutting off contact with her husband as her son had once wished.

“I just wish, until my dying day, that I had done what he wanted,” she said. “It’s the most awful thing that could happen to anybody. Suicide of a child.”

Madoff, 73, is at Butner Federal Correction Complex, a medium-security prison in eastern North Carolina.

He is serving a 150-year sentence after bilking investors out of their money by masquerading as the head of a legitimate investment firm while using funds from new investors to send payments to his earlier investors, falsely portraying them as proceeds when they were actually stolen money, prosecutors said.

“I can’t explain it,” Ruth Madoff said. “I mean I trusted him. Why would it ever occur to me that it wasn’t legal? The business was — his reputation, was almost legendary. Why would I ever think that there was something sinister going on?”

The wife and surviving son both say they will never forgive Madoff for his crimes and for what he has done to their family.

“What he did to me, to my brother, and to my family is unforgivable,” Andrew Madoff said. “What he did to thousands of other people, destroyed their lives — I’ll never understand it. And, I’ll never forgive him for it. And I’ll never speak to him again.”

Madoff’s criminal activities spawned a tidal wave of civil actions against the family, accusing them of profiting from the Ponzi scheme.

As public outrage mounted over the crime, Ruth Madoff and her husband attempted suicide.

“I don’t know whose idea it was, but we decided to kill ourselves because it was so horrendous what was happening,” she said. “”We had terrible phone calls. Hate mail, just beyond anything and I said ‘I just can’t go on anymore,’” she said.

“We took pills and woke up the next day….It was very impulsive and I am glad we woke up.”

The “60 Minutes” interview coincides with Monday’s release of the new book about the Madoff family, “Truth and Consequences” — a tell-all memoir, written with the family’s cooperation.

In the interview, correspondent Morley Safer asked, “You know, there’s a lot of a people out there who are saying, or will be saying as they watch this, “This is all a charade. This was something that the Madoffs set up to get themselves off the hook.’”

“I wish it were,” Andrew Madoff said. “I wish it were. I wish none of this was real. You know, I knew– I knew absolutely nothing about this– before my father shared the information with me. And it was– it was the most shocking and– and terrible moment of my life.”

(Financial Times) — Japan’s Ministry of Finance intervened in the currency market for the first time since August to weaken the yen, sending the currency down as much as 5.1 per cent against the US dollar.

Jun Azumi, finance minister, confirmed that the Bank of Japan was acting on the MoF’s orders to halt the yen’s “speculative” rise, after the currency touched 75.35, a new postwar high, earlier in the day. The action had an immediate effect, sending the yen down to 79.49.

The Japanese currency climbed last week even as the BoJ eased monetary policy, increasing the size of its asset-purchasing programme by 10 per cent, and in spite of economic data from the US that were mostly encouraging.

Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist at Barclays Capital, said the traditional correlation between the dollar/yen rate and US-Japan yield gaps had broken down in recent weeks, suggesting that the direction of the currency was not being steered by fundamentals.

“To some extent, [today's action] fills the gap between the actual dollar/yen level and the rational level suggested by yield differentials,” said Yunosuke Ikeda, head of FX strategy at Nomura.

Still, the timing of the move came as a surprise to some, given that the Nikkei index and yen crosses had both been relatively steady. “This is likely to have been a single-shot intervention. Repeated currency intervention is likely to be regarded as currency manipulation, which is not allowed under the G7 framework,” said Mr Ikeda.

“In recent cases of intervention, the government’s style has been minimum frequency, but maximum size,” said Mr Yamamoto of BarCap. “If today’s intervention stops the downward movement in dollar/yen, there will be no follow-through tomorrow, but it all depends on how the currency moves in later sessions.”

The last minutes in the life of Steve Jobs were still filled by the epiphanies and moments of inspiration that fed his inventor’s mind, according to an intimate portrait provided by Jobs’ sister in a eulogy published Sunday in The New York Times.

Mona Simpson’s eulogy — originally read during Jobs’ memorial service on October 16 — is a sister’s celebration of a brother she knew only later in life, and a lament of losing a best friend. It weaves in words what she believed were the foundations of Jobs’ genius: his humility and hard work, his love of learning and his family.

“I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him,” said Simpson in her eulogy. “They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.”

Simpson, a writer, and Steve Jobs did not meet until they were adults. Their early family history was fragmented, but set the stage for what later became a deep-rooted friendship between two estranged siblings. After Steve Job’s birth, his parents gave him up for adoption. Simpson was born later, and the parents subsequently divorced.

One day, Simpson said in her eulogy, when she was living in New York and writing her first novel, a lawyer gave her a call to inform her that her “long-lost brother” was rich and famous and wanted to contact her.

“Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like (actor) Omar Sharif,” said Simpson.

“The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool,” said Simpson. “The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without trying,” she said.

The man who came to meet her — her brother — was Steve Jobs.

“Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother,” Simpson said in the eulogy as published in the Times.

“When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif,” she said.

When they first met, Simpson said, she told her brother she had considered buying a computer but had waited.

“Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was going to make something that was going to be insanely beautiful,” she said.

Jobs’ life was not always a smooth ride, his sister said in her eulogy. He skidded through volatile times with Apple executives and eventually was ousted from the company he had founded.

“When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited,” said Simpson.

“He was hurt but he still went to work … Every single day,” she said.

Simpson said Jobs was sentimental and he spent much time talking about love. He found a partner in life, Laurene Powell, whom he married in 1991, his sister said.

“His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere,” she wrote.

When Jobs’ struggle with pancreatic cancer took a turn for the worse, he called his sister and asked her to hurry to his Palo Alto, California, home.

His tone, Simpson said, was “like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.”

Even as he struggled physically in his last hours, his sister said, “there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.”

“He was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.”

With his family surrounding him, Simpson said, Jobs’ last words were: “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow. “

The arrests occurred thousands of miles apart, but the scenes were similar in Oregon and Texas early Sunday: In the dark of night, police told Occupy demonstrators to leave protest sites. Those who refused were handcuffed and arrested.

Authorities in Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas, say protesters were trespassing and violating city rules. Demonstrators say authorities were infringing on protesters’ rights to assemble.

Police arrested more than two dozen people who refused to leave a park in northwest Portland, Oregon, after warnings that the park closed at midnight, police said.

Authorities in Portland “gave protesters numerous opportunities to simply walk away or choose to be arrested,” Mayor Sam Adams affiliate KPTV.

“This tonight was, I think, an unnecessary confrontation that we worked really hard to minimize,” he said.

Occupy Portland offered a different take.

“Six mounted police and approximately 65 police in riot gear pushed supporters to the sidewalks and conducted the arrests over a period of several hours,” the group said in a statement.

A Twitter post from the group as police entered the park said, “This is what a police state looks like.”

Police also arrested 38 people in Austin, Texas, who had set up a table with food and other items outside City Hall two days after the city issued rules saying food tables at the event must be put away between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. When the group was asked to leave the area, the 38 refused and were arrested, police said.

“A number of individuals decided to try to prevent the police from taking the food table, so they formed a ring around it. That’s when they (police) started pulling people out arresting them,” Occupy Austin member Ronnie Garza affiliate YNN.

Group members questioned the legitimacy of the city’s new guidelines, saying they were not passed by a City Council vote, YNN reported.

“These were arbitrary rules that came from City Hall which is what spurred people to resist in a non-violent way,” Garza said.

Austin Police Chief Aft Acevedo told YNN police were doing their jobs.

“We steam clean the plaza for health and safety reasons three times a week. The Occupy Austin members have always been very cooperative,” he said. “Tonight, it looks like a few people decided to exercise civil disobedience and have been arrested.”

Austin police arrested four more people Sunday afternoon, according to officer Dennis Farris.

Of the 38 arrested earlier, he said they are in the process of being released. If they return to the protest, they will be given “every opportunity to leave,” said Farris. “We’re going to bend over backwards.”

Demonstrators across the country are protesting corporate greed and corruption. Many say the nation’s wealthiest 1% hold inordinate sway over the remaining 99% of the population.

Scores of protesters have been arrested nationwide during the weeks-long “Occupy” movement.

On Friday, police said 51 demonstrators in San Diego, California, were arrested for various charges, including encroachment, unlawful assembly, illegal lodging and/or some form of obstruction of officers.

Three others were arrested on similar charges in Tampa, Florida, according to a police statement.

In Atlanta, police arrested demonstrators at a downtown park overnight Tuesday. The arrests came after Mayor Kasim Reed said he sent ministers to the park “to see if we can find a way to resolve this amicably.”

In Nashville, Tennessee, authorities arrested more than two dozen protesters overnight Saturday, after they again defied a curfew imposed by the state’s governor.

Twenty-six people received citations for trespassing, while two others were cited for public intoxication, according to Tennessee public safety spokeswoman Dalya Qualls.

On Thursday, Oakland, California, Mayor Jean Quan apologized for authorities’ confrontations with demonstrators, who were tear-gassed. The clashes led to the hospitalization of an Iraq war veteran.

Marine veteran Scott Olsen suffered a skull fracture Tuesday night after allegedly being struck by a tear gas canister in Oakland, according to witnesses.

Despite recent crackdowns against demonstrators nationwide, the loosely defined “Occupy” movement does not appear to be losing steam.

In New York, where the Occupy movement was born, protesters braved snow, sleet and rain during an unusually early snowstorm in the Northeast this weekend.

Activist Angela Davis addressed the crowd on Sunday, stressing the importance of taking time to build real community.

“I’m persuaded that this is the beginning of something really wonderful, really vast, really great. And I should say that it connects with movements that are happening in other parts of the world,”.

Sydney — Australia’s Qantas Airways said it plans to resume flights Monday afternoon after a government labor board ordered it to end a dispute with its unions that grounded the airline over the weekend.

Qantas jets will resume service over the next 24 hours in a “safe and phased approach,” company CEO Alan Joyce told reporters Monday morning.

Labor relations tribunal Fair Work Australia ordered an end to the labor dispute “to avoid significant damage to the tourism industry” after Qantas grounded its jets Saturday afternoon.The airline grounded 447 flights since Saturday and announced it would be locking out its unionized pilots, engineers, ramp, baggage and catering crews effective Monday evening amid a dispute with the unions that has dragged on for 14 months, the board said.

Qantas argued that the unions’ demands would leave the airline “seriously impaired or destroyed.” The labor board gave the two sides three weeks to reach an agreement, with a possible three-week extension if talks were making progress.

The decision “provides certainty for Qantas passengers,” Joyce said in a statement following the decision. He apologized to passengers and said flights would resume as early as Monday afternoon.

The Australian and International Pilots Association said it hoped for a “positive outcome” from the talks, calling the decision to ground the airline a “gross overreaction” to its demands. “It is a sign that the current management has lost touch with the traveling public, its workers and the basic Australian ethos of free speech,” the union said in a statement.

At Sydney airport, columns of “canceled” illuminated the departure board. Throngs of weary passengers crowded the help desk to rebook with other airlines, as suitcases lay scattered all over the floor.

“It makes me wonder whether I would book with Qantas again,” said Isabelle Storer, who was stuck at the airport with her husband after a visit to the United States.

Their connection to Adelaide was canceled, leaving her frustrated because her husband needed medical treatment, she said.

Passenger Ron Fuller waited at the airport, albeit more optimistic.

“For a month or two, everyone will be anti-Qantas, there’s no doubt about that,” Fuller said. “But emotion probably gets in the way sometimes.”

The labor dispute involves three unions representing air and ground staff of Australia’s largest domestic and international airline.

Union officials have accused the airline of planning to outsource ground jobs at a cost of thousands of Australian jobs and of putting profits first. Pay and working conditions have also been at the center of the disputes.

The industrial action is aimed at ensuring Qantas will not have enough funds to set up overseas operations that will jeopardize job security, union officials said.

The move comes at an embarrassing moment for Australia, which is hosting dozens of heads of government and their staffs for the Commonwealth meeting in Perth.

Qantas CEO Joyce has come under fire for grounding the fleet, which was preceded by weeks of tension between the airline and its workers.

It’s “a maniacal overreaction,” said Richard Woodward, vice president of the Australian and International Pilots’ Union.

The decision to ground the Qantas fleet, stranding thousands of passengers around the world, was unnecessary and grossly irresponsible, he said in a statement.

In a statement, the Transport Workers Union of Australia described the cancellations as “disgraceful” and aimed at destroying the airline.

Qantas, which has its headquarters in Sydney, is the second oldest airline in the world, and marked its 90th anniversary last year.

It employs about 32,500 people and flies to more than 180 destinations worldwide, according to the company website.

NEW YORK– Stocks are poised to end October with one the best monthly performances on record, but the market’s wave of uncertainty is far from over.

Investors are relieved that European officials finally agreed on a plan of action aimed at tackling Europe’s debt crisis last week. But they aren’t yet convinced that the measures go far enough, as details about the plan and how it will be implemented remain unsettled.
“We have to keep our eyes and ears open for more risks in Europe,” said Tom Schrader, managing director at Stifel Nicolaus. “There’s a plan to bail out Greece, but there are still major issues in Italy and Spain, which are much bigger.”

The spotlight will remain on Europe next week, as leaders of the G-20 nations gather in Cannes, with Europe’s debt crisis dominating their agenda.
Euro rescue plan ‘sugar rush’ wears off

And with increasing signs of a recession in Europe, investors will also be tuning in Thursday to the European Central Bank’s rate decision. It will be Mario Draghi’s first news conference as he takes the reins from outgoing ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet.

The U.S. central bank will also be in focus. The Federal Reserve concludes its two-day meeting on Wednesday. While interest rates are widely expected to hold steady, investors will be keen to hear Chairman Ben Bernanke’s assessment of the economy amid on-and-off fears of another recession.

In June, the Fed cut its growth forecast, estimating that the nation’s gross domestic product will rise between 2.7% to 2.9% in 2011. According to the latest government reading, U.S. GDP picked up 2.5% during the third quarter, up from the disappointing 1.3% growth in the second quarter and the anemic 0.4% pace in the first three months of the year.

Investors will also be listening for any hints the Fed chief may make about a third round of bond buying, or QE3, to help stimulate the economy.

As long as the Fed maintains its outlook for slow, but still positive, economic growth, further intervention from the Fed is likely off the table, said Thomas Nyheim, portfolio manager at Christiana Bank & Trust Company.

The biggest beast facing the economy is still the nation’s sluggish job market. The unemployment has been stuck above 9% since May 2009, and it’s not expected to drop off anytime soon.

In the highly anticipated jobs report due Friday, analysts expect unemployment held steady at 9.1% in October, as the economy added 88,000 jobs.

“If the job report comes in below expectations, it would cast another pall over markets,” said Stifel Nicolaus’ Schrader. “A worsening job markets would create more uncertainty about whether we’re going to have another recession.”

New York — Demonstrators encamped in a Lower Manhattan park faced New York’s first snow storm of the season Saturday without the benefit of propane tanks and generators that they had been using to cook food and keep warm.

“It’s pretty dirty, and we’re all freezing cold,” said Alec Courtney, who says he runs a shoe-shine stand at the city’s Zuccotti Park to make money. “We just try to huddle together.”

Courtney, a resident of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, says he’s been camping at the park for the past 20 days and plans to stay there — despite the inclement weather — to support “the cause.”

The group has rallied against what it describes as corporate greed while asserting that the nation’s wealthiest 1% hold inordinate sway over the remaining 99% of the population.

A day earlier, up to 40 firefighters removed the group’s propane tanks and six generators, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. That left the demonstrators to battle the cold weather seeping through their tents, blankets and sleeping bags.

“These are fire hazards (and) against the law,” Bloomberg said during his weekly WOR-AM radio show Friday. “Our first concern is safety.”

Demonstrators described the removal as an attempt to restrict Internet use and make their lives more difficult as a cold front moved into the region.

Early cold blast hits Northeast

The early season snowstorm was the result of unseasonably cold air mixing with a storm system on the East Coast. Forecasters predicted power outages and downed trees in some areas.

Zuccotti Park — the Occupy Wall Street movement’s original home base in the city’s financial district — appeared soaked and windswept by late Saturday afternoon, as protesters battled the elements and huddled inside tents to keep warm and dry.

Despite such challenges and recent crackdowns against demonstrators nationwide, the loosely defined “Occupy” movement does not appear to be losing steam.

Police fired pepper spray and used pepper-ball guns against demonstrators in Denver, Colorado, on Saturday.

Protesters there tried to occupy the Colorado Capitol, which is not allowed, and officers pushed them back, police spokesman Matt Murray said.

At that point, officers moved toward an encampment to remove tents that had been set up illegally, he said. One officer was knocked off his motorcycle and injured, while two others were kicked in the head during the ensuing melee, according to Murray. Seven people were arrested.Murray said police are telling protesters they can stay, but their tents have to go.

“All we’re trying to do is have a peaceful protest and they (the police) are attacking us,” protester Sean Drigger affiliate KUSA.

In Seattle, protesters marched through the city and set up camp at Seattle Central Community College, what they described as their new base.

In Nashville, Tennessee, authorities arrested more than two dozen protesters overnight Saturday, after they again defied a curfew imposed by the state’s governor.

Twenty-six people received citations for trespassing, while two others were cited for public intoxication, according to Tennessee public safety spokeswoman Dalya Qualls.

One other person was handed a citation for criminal impersonation of a law enforcement officer, she said.

On Thursday, Oakland, California, Mayor Jean Quan apologized for authorities’ confrontations with demonstrators, who were tear-gassed. The clashes led to the hospitalization of an Iraq war veteran.

Marine veteran Scott Olsen suffered a skull fracture Tuesday night after allegedly being struck by a tear gas canister in Oakland, according to witnesses.

Olsen has become an icon of the “Occupy” movement, which remains active from coast to coast.