The final quarter marks the traditional time of year when kids dive into leaf piles, heating bills rise and investors with taxable accounts sell underwater stocks to help lower their tax bills. They shouldn’t have too much trouble finding candidates this year. Despite a recent uptick, most major indexes remain in negative territory for 2011, and with market volatility in high gear more dips could be on the way. Tax loss harvesting helps ease the pain of a down market by allowing investors to use the losses to offset gains and up to $3,000 of ordinary income on their tax returns. But you have to wait at least 30 days after the sale of a losing stock to buy back the same security. Otherwise, the IRS calls it a “wash sale” and you can’t deduct the loss. While someone might use a similar stock as a placeholder in case the market bounces back, that option isn’t ideal because performance can vary significantly among stocks in the same industry. Mutual funds covering similar investment turf don’t always move in sync either. Exchange-traded funds adapt to the strategy more easily. Since there are more than 1,300 of them, it’s fairly easy to find one that has the look, feel and performance of another security but is different enough to use as a substitute, either temporarily or for the long-term, without drawing IRS scrutiny. “ETFs have made tax loss harvesting a lot simpler than it used to be,” says Charles Zhang of Zhang Financial in Kalamazoo, Michigan. “It’s not that hard to find one that’s a good stand-in.” Zhang and some other advisers say using two ETFs or mutual funds based on the same index would probably violate the wash sale rule. To be sure, you might not want to sell iShares S&P 500 or a mutual fund based on the index, for example, and immediately replace it with SPDR S&P 500. But you could go with a pretty close match. A number of broad-market ETFs, such as SPDR Dow Jones and Vanguard Large Cap follow the S&P 500 fairly closely even though they’re based on different indexes. (The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a review of some more arcane types of ETFs, but is not expected to have concerns about these mainstream types of ETFs.) Zhang recently used the strategy by substituting Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF for an emerging markets mutual fund that had lost money, and has switched out a position in on oil industry ETF with another in the same industry. “Even though they’re based on different indexes their performance is almost identical,” he says. He might go back to the investment he sold after the 30-day blackout period or simply hold on to the new ETF, depending on which one he likes better. Eric Johnson, principal at Signature, a wealth advisory firm in Norfolk, Virginia, has used sector ETFs when clients have large stock holdings in banks such as Bank of America or Morgan Stanley. Usually, the stock blocks come from previous employers or inter-generational family holdings. To harvest the loss Johnson sells the individual stock and then buys Financial Select Sector SPDR. “It’s not unusual for us to get back into the original stock later on, particularly if the client has a sentimental attachment to granddaddy’s bank,” he says. ETFs can also be used to diversify out of large single stock positions that have lost money. Someone who wants to maintain exposure to a particular sector without courting issue-specific risk might sell the losing stock, harvest the loss, and stay in the substitute ETF. Frank Armstrong, President of Investor Solutions in Coconut Grove, Florida, uses ETFs as part of a strategy to avoid annual mutual fund dividend and capital gains distributions. At the end of the year, he explains, many mutual funds pay out such distributions, which are taxable, as new fund shares, and the share price falls by the same amount. So shareholders don’t really make any money on that transaction, even though they will owe taxes on those payouts. If the sale of the fund shares results in a tax loss, Armstrong’s firm will sell the shares before the dividend payout date and buy an ETF with a similar investment mission as a placeholder. By doing so, he harvests the loss and avoids the dividend distribution. (This strategy won’t work for investors who have gains in the fund.) After the payout is made, he’ll move back into the fund shares if more than 30 days have passed since the original sale. “Avoiding the dividend and moving into an ETF has saved some of our clients a ton of money,” he says.

By Barry Malone I never know how to behave when I go to write about hungry people. I usually bring just a notebook and a pen because it seems somehow more subtle than a recorder. I drain bottled water or hide it before I get out of the car or the plane. In Ethiopia a few years ago I was telling a funny story to some other journalists as our car pulled up near a church where we had been told people were arriving looking for food. We got out and began walking towards the place, me still telling the tale, shouting my mouth off, struggling to get to the punch line through my laughter and everybody else’s. Then there was this sound, a low rumbling thing that came to meet us. I could feel it roll across the ground and up through my boots. I stopped talking, my laughter died, I grabbed the arm of the person beside me: “What is that?” And I realized. It was the sound of children crying. There were enough children crying that — I’ll say it again — I could feel it in my boots. I was shamed by my laughter. Inside the churchyard there were tents and inside the tents children were dying. Rows and rows of women sat on the ground cradling delicate babies. An aid worker told us we had ten minutes and so we went to work. Camera shutters clicking, pens scratching: “What’s her name? How far did she walk? How many of her kids are dead?” Some journalists leaned down over the mothers to talk to them, some stuck cameras inches from their faces. I stood further away when taking the photos, I sat down in the dirt to interview people. I thought I was better, but I wasn’t. I was just more conceited. I remember looking up and seeing a girl who worked at a U.N. aid agency crying. I motioned to her to get out — her tears as self-indulgent as my sitting in the dirt. And then we leave. Thank you, we say. Thank you for talking to me. Thank you for holding up your dying baby for my camera. And thank you for your dignity. Thank you for giving it to me. Thank you for letting me have it. Because that’s the thing. An Ethiopian girl told me last week that she cried as she watched foreign journalists interviewing a Somali woman in a Kenyan refugee camp. “All she had left was her dignity,” she said. “And then they took that, too.” She was right. And I knew that I had done that. Many, many times. I used to tell myself that it was okay because what I did was important. A U.N. official once excitedly phoned me at 7am to tell me the U.S. had donated millions of dollars to his agency because someone from the government had read a story of mine in the Washington Post. Another aid worker approached me in a bar in Addis Ababa. “Hey! That story you wrote about that woman? That woman who had a kid die every year for the last four years and now only has one left? Awesome, man! Awesome!” Her name was Ayantu. I don’t know if her son, Hirbu, is still alive. Last weekend I was there again. The U.N. loaded me and some other journalists onto one of their planes in Nairobi and we flew to a tiny village near Somalia to meet people suffering from hunger, to ask them our questions, to find the sorriest tales possible. We jumped into an imperious row of white jeeps when we landed and swept into the village. Doors flew open, everybody walked very fast, everybody was very important. I saw six people all firing their cameras at one bemused woman. I saw aid workers fawning over the head of the World Food Programme. I saw soldiers fanning out to protect us. And then I saw the man with the iPad. I stood and stared for some time, enjoying the deliciousness of what was one of the strangest things I had ever seen in my life. I raised the camera. This is what I’ll write, I thought. Not about another Ayantu. Not again. Because it’s a cycle. African governments know that drought is coming and they don’t prepare. Foreign charities working there talk about long-term plans to help people become self-sufficient but they’ve been failing to achieve them for 20 years. It’s as much about politics and war and poor economic policies as it is about no rain. I’m no expert but I know that much. I also know it’s wrong that every few years we’re faced with an “emergency” that could have been prevented, that aid groups must frantically try to raise money to respond, that journalists need to find emaciated babies at death’s door and film and photograph and write about them before the world gives a damn. Part of me felt bad for publishing the photo of the man with the iPad. Because he was a good person doing his job. And because we are the same. He comes with an iPad, I come with a notebook. Both of us steal dignity and neither of us belong.

* Looks to attract investment to boost growth, more jobsBy Joseph Guyler DelvaPORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Haiti is “open for business” after its parliament approved a new government’s ambitious plan to relaunch the economy after last year’s catastrophic earthquake, Haitian leaders said on Saturday.After an all-night session, the impoverished Caribbean country’s Chamber of Deputies overwhelmingly endorsed the program of Prime Minister Garry Conille and his new cabinet.The Senate already had approved the program, which foresees boosting economic growth in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state to more than 9 percent annually, from around 6 percent expected this year after the 2010 contraction inflicted by the crippling earthquake.Hoping to attract foreign aid and investment in a tough international economic climate, Conille’s government plans to modernize infrastructure and technology and establish urban and rural development zones and industrial manufacturing parks to create 1.5 million jobs in five years.”This strategy aims to create thousands of jobs, causing a revolution of inclusive growth,” Conille told the parliament, saying he would seek partnerships with the private sector in a program to reduce Haiti’s widespread chronic poverty.The new cabinet headed by Conille, 45, a doctor and U.N. development expert, will be sworn in on Tuesday.Parliament’s confirmation of Conille’s cabinet and its policy blueprint will be a relief to foreign governments and donors who have been awaiting the installation of the new administration to tackle Haiti’s huge reconstruction task following the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.Since President Michel Martelly took office in May vowing to “rebrand” Haiti from a development basket-case to a Caribbean success story, fractious lawmakers in parliament rejected his two previous picks for prime minister before Conille.This raised fears among diplomats and donors that the same political squabbling and instability that have dogged Haiti for decades could torpedo Martelly’s ability to steer the country’s post-quake rebuilding.On a visit to neighboring Dominican Republic on Saturday, Martelly, who won a presidential run-off in March, welcomed parliament’s endorsement of the government and its program.”This is a signal to the world that Haiti is really open for business and that Haitians can put their differences behind them to work for the common good and interest of the Haitian people,” he told Reuters.”If we had had a government earlier we could have done much more by now. It took time, but in the end it is better to take the time to do it right than do it fast but wrong,” he added.”NO FORCED EVICTIONS”Martelly, a former pop star whose election followed a turbulent U.N.-backed vote process, has moved to draw a line under Haiti’s frequently violent political past. He met former presidents this week to seek reconciliation.But the aims of the Conille government program look ambitious for a small nation that is one of the planet’s poorest despite being a mere two hours flying time from the richest power, the United States.The CIA’s “World Factbook” lists Haiti’s estimated 2010 unemployment rate at 40.6 percent and notes more than two- thirds of the Haitian labor force do not have formal jobs.The agency adds that 80 percent of Haiti’s population live under the poverty line, with 54 percent in abject poverty.In his speech to parliament, Conille also pledged to resettle the more than 600,000 homeless earthquake survivors still living in tent and tarpaulin camps in and around the quake-scarred capital of Port-au-Prince.”By the end of President Martelly’s five-year-term, the issue of the displaced people will have been solved. There will be no forced evictions without a predetermined alternative,” the prime minister said, referring to evictions ordered by some landowners of some of the quake homeless camps.Conille said his government would launch a national house-building program in a country where massive migration to the hilly capital had spawned sprawling shantytowns vulnerable to hurricanes, floods and mudslides.The new government will be taking office as the United Nations is moving to reduce its peacekeeping force in the Caribbean state, because of what it says is an improved security situation.

* Shortfall in computer, math and science training* Siemens has more than 3,000 jobs open* Study sees a shortage of up 1.5 mln workers in 2020By Lucia MutikaniWASHINGTON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - U.S. manufacturers are failing to fill thousands of vacant jobs, surprising when 14 million people are searching for work.Technology giant Siemens Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany’s Siemens AG , has over 3,000 jobs open all over the country. More than half require science, technology, engineering and math-related skills.Other companies report job vacancies that range from six to 200, with some positions open for at least nine months.Manufacturing is hurt by a dearth of skilled workers.”What we have been saying for quite a while is that even though there is a high unemployment rate, it’s very difficult to find skilled people,” said Jeff Owens, president of ATS, a manufacturing consulting services company.A survey by ManpowerGroup found that a record 52 percent of U.S. employers have difficulty filling critical positions within their organizations — up from 14 percent in 2010.Owens said his company, which counts manufacturing behemoths Caterpillar and Motorola among its clients, has at any given time about 200 open positions .”We are pro-actively working to fill them. It can take 90 to a hundred days, probably, to fill them,” he told Reuters. “We are creating jobs. We just don’t necessarily have the right people to fill them.”On average, companies usually take seven weeks to fill job openings.MISMATCH OF SKILLS AND JOBSMost of the jobs hard to fill are for skilled trades, Internet technology, engineers, sales representatives and machine operators.Yet American colleges are producing fewer math and science graduates as students favor social sciences, whose workload is perceived to be manageable, leading to a skills mismatch.Math, engineering, technology and computer science students accounted for about 11.1 percent of college graduates in 1980, according to government data. That share dropped to about 8.9 percent in 2009.An aging population of skilled workers is adding to the problem. As the baby boomers retire, there are fewer skilled workers available to replace them.”Many of the younger kids that are coming out of college have been discouraged to go into manufacturing,” said Dennis Bray, president and CEO of Contour Precision Group.”A lot of the college graduates have chosen a curriculum and degree that does not give them the necessary science and math skills to be of immediate benefit to companies such as ours.”Contour Precision, based in Clover, South Carolina, does contract work for the energy and aerospace industries. It is currently looking for six technicians. It has had positions open since last year.Unemployment in manufacturing is at 8.4 percent, below the overall rate of 9.1 percent. According to the Labor Department’s latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, there were 240,000 open jobs in manufacturing in August up 38.7 percent from a year ago.The problem is sufficiently serious that businesses are pushing Congress to address the issue of visas and help them hire more high-skilled foreigners.STRUCTURAL UNEMPLOYMENT?These companies’ inability to fill open jobs suggests that part of the unemployment problem confronting the nation could be more of a structural nature rather than a downturn in the business cycle.Two years after the end of the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, about 14 million Americans are still unemployed.In September, nearly 45 percent of them had been out of work for six months or more. The longer people are out of the workforce, the more dated their skills become, making it even harder to reintegrate them into the labor market.The types of jobs available are also changing.Medium-skilled repetitive tasks that can be computerized continue to disappear. First, it was from from the factory floor, but it also affects the back office, where processing and support jobs are declining.The strongest job growth is concentrated in healthcare and the scientific, technical and computer fields, which usually require at least a post-secondary education.”The old jobs are not coming back. We need to invest in education and training to get people prepared to fill these high-skilled, high-wage jobs of the future,” said Eric Spiegel, president and CEO of Siemens Corp.Siemens is recruiting in states where unemployment is high. Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Georgia and New York have jobless rates that range from 8 percent to 12.1 percent.According to the Conference Board, workers with computer and math or science skills have a far better chance of getting a job, with one worker applying for every three of these types of jobs advertised. In contrast, there are roughly three people for every advertised job in sales.PLENTY OF WELL-PAYING JOBSFew of the thousands of jobs open in the manufacturing sector are low-wage positions.Workers at the very low levels can earn as much as $30 an hour, with annual salaries for engineers ranging from $75,000 to $100,000. At Siemens, the average potential salary offered for its open positions is $89,000 a year.Manufacturing lost its appeal during the 1990s when companies started moving production to Asian countries like China, in search of cheap labor. But rising wages in China are forcing some companies to bring production back home.Although manufacturing accounts for about 12 percent of U.S. gross domestic product and about 10 percent of total non-farm employment, it has been the main pillar of support for the economy and one of the highest-paying sectors.The shortage of skilled workers is also compounded by the depressed housing market, which is making it tough for Americans to relocate to where the jobs are.The housing market crash has left many people with home loans owing financial institutions more than what their houses are worth, making it difficult for them to sell.BRING IN THE ARMYIn hopes of addressing the skills gap, companies such as Siemens and ATS are turning to the military, targeting veterans. Siemens is embarking on apprenticeship programs, while ATS is running training programs for young people.”We have found that veterans have extensive technical training and experience that they gain through military service, and these skills are extremely valuable to us and match up well with many of our over 3,000 open positions,” Spiegel said.Siemens has hired 450 military veterans so far this year.Others are teaming up with professional bodies like the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), which has developed online courses to support its members.”We are not filling the pipeline with enough candidates for these positions. This problem has been ongoing for the last three or four years,” said Mark Tomlinson, CEO of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.But the long-term solution lies in revamping the nation’s education system to meet the current challenges and invest more in vocational training, industry leaders say.”Often people say we do have vocational training, but it’s geared towards yesterday’s technology and yesterday’s job opportunities,” said ATS’s Owens. “I am not sure the educators are on the mark with what exactly needs to be taught for today’s environment.”