We retained our AAA rating, despite Standard and Poor downgrading of the US in August.

The negative outlook means that Fitch thinks there is more than a 50 percent chance we could be downgraded in the future. With federal debt projected to reach 90 percent of GDP and 20 percent of tax revenue taken up by debt interest by the end of the decade, the outlook right now isn’t great.

“Failure to reach agreement in 2013 on a credible deficit reduction plan and a worsening of the economic and fiscal outlook would likely result in a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign rating,” David Riley, a managing director at Fitch, said in the report.

The failure of the so-called Supercommittee to agree any sort of debt reduction plan has shaken confidence internally and throughout the world. Despite our national debt reaching $15 trillion, our political leaders cannot seem to come to a consensus on how to tackle it.

While we wait for them to make their minds up, the economy can go nowhere. While nobody can understate the challenges the committee faces, it’s difficult to believe that a group of supposedly intelligent people cannot come to some kind of agreement for the good of the country.

Fitch warned that deficit reduction efforts “will not be credible” if they rely on cutting discretionary spending on its own. Economists have said Congress needs to quickly move to slash entitlement spending on expensive programs that offer little to the economy as a whole.

The failure of the Supercommittee to reach a compromise “underlines the challenge of securing broad-based consensus on how to reduce the outsized federal budget deficit,” Riley said.

We are still the economic powerhouse of the world, but confidence in our political leadership and our economy is still low. While our people and our manufacturing capacity sit idle, tax revenues will remain lower than they should be. Combined with the lack of any real momentum means the economy will recover, albeit at a much slower pace.

Fitch imply the outlook is down to Congress to handle quickly and efficiently. Cuts are going to have to be made, and deep ones. We need to reduce spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security but in a way that doesn’t leave our people too hard up.

Failure to tackle these fundamental issues will likely result in a downgrading of our credit rating according to the report.

“In Fitch's opinion, such a level of government indebtedness would no longer be consistent with the U.S. retaining its 'AAA' status despite its underlying strengths,” Riley said.

That means higher interest payments on money we owe, and a lengthening of the time it will take to pay back the staggering amount of money our government owes.

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When hearing the words "email archiving" many often think of saving their reviewed emails to specific folders or making sure that they keep their inbox clean by deleting files after they have been read. While both of these are certainly a part of email archiving, there is so much more to true email management than just moving emails around or deleting them.

In a business environment it is often critical not just to archive your emails, but to back them up as well. With three basic methods available for email archiving, the method that you select will certainly have different levels of cost associated with them as well as having different levels of maintenance requirements and risks from fire and water damage or cyber attacks. Three distinct methods for archiving emails are:

• On-site management
• Software-as-a-Service contracting
• Using a free hosting service

On-site management

Many major corporations with deep enough pockets to support their own specialized IT department and the associated hardware, software, and servers elect to control their email archiving internally. With the highest level of control, this method also requires the company to take on all of the associated risks that come along with managing their own email archiving system.

Some of the concerns that one needs to address when making the decision to bring their email system in-house, in addition to having to purchase the hardware and software themselves, are issues like backing up the system regularly, protecting the hardware with the installed software from fire and water damage, and managing firewalls and using anti-spyware programs to protect against cyber threats. With today's mobile applications placing additional demands on tradition computer systems setup to network office computers, there are far more ways for hackers to look for ways to sneak into your system today with WiFi and mobile apps.

Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) offsite email archiving

In the middle of the three options is the ability to contract with an outside firm to manage your email archiving for you. For a fee that is significantly less than the cost of developing your own internal hardware/software email system, there are companies that specialize in helping you to have a much more secure system than one can expect from a free hosting service. Using file encryption methodologies, secure firewalls, and maintaining anti-spyware resources far superior to free hosting sites, they provide a level of protection to your email archiving that is simply not available from free hosting sites.

Free hosting sites

Many of the major search engines offer some type of associated email system along with their service to attract others into using their search engines. One only needs to read the fine print in their disclaimers to know that one assumes all of the risks from cyber attacks when they use a free hosting service. Although efforts are made to keep these systems free from cyber attacks they are also a prime target for many hackers as well. The number of people that have their email archives and logins hacked surprises most people when they hear the numbers. It only takes getting bitten once to know that there are better ways to manage email archives than going the free route, but they are however free.

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Theme parks are a good place to use lanyards for keys and other items that you need to keep track of. Kids will find Disney lanyards of many of the familiar characters from Snow White to the favorites of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. The theme park ideas for lanyards do not stop there for there are many more kinds to pick from. Kids lanyards with cute teddy bears, unicorns and animals are popular. The choices are nearly overwhelming but they can be found for almost any color and design that you want.

Movie lanyards are another way to have something important for your child that they can keep and it does not take up a lot of room or cost a great deal of money; both important qualities in the economy of today. Many lanyards for kids are sold to raise money for school events such as field trips and supplies. This is a way to help out your child by helping the school raise the money they need.

Lanyards are also great for small children if they are sized to fit the child so there is no danger of him or her becoming choked. Babies who use pacifiers often have them attached to a small bit of ribbon or lanyard that is clipped to the clothes being worn. The length is too small to cause a problem and it is good way to keep that pacifier clean.

Kids who have cameras will find wrist lanyards handy to keep from accidentally dropping the camera or other electronic device they are using. More and more employees and members of households are using lanyards to hold the flash drives that information is stored on for their computers. Teens will also like some of the cartoon characters that younger kids will enjoy. The toymakers of LEGO are another popular item for lanyards, especially if the figurine will fit on the end of the lanyard.

Kids for an activity can make lanyards and this is the fun part of the craft. It also serves to keep kids busy and occupied for a while, which is always a good idea for summer break. Lanyards are used with certain musical instruments such as the saxophones as a means of providing support while it is being played. The lanyards also offer a great place to hold collector pins from different areas or places that have been visited.

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However, you could spend a fortune on web design and put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the effort and still find that the response to your site is a little less than you would have liked. In fact, you could have the best looking website in the world, complete with user friendly features, custom designed server side applications and every bell and whistle you care to name and still have it fall flat in terms of attracting readers and/or customers. No matter how wonderful your site may be, it really doesn't matter if no one actually knows it's there chicago web design.

This brings us to the point: how to get visitors to your site and build or expand your audience or if your website is for your business, to drive sales and build brand awareness among consumers. While every element of web design is important, there is one thing which many newly minted website owners, including businesses and online entrepreneurs fail to take into account when designing and building their website: SEO.

In case you're not familiar with the term, SEO is an acronym which stands for search engine optimization, which is a term which covers a wide variety of different practices aimed at driving traffic to websites by making them easier to find via search engines. There are a lot of different things you can do to optimize your site and make it more attractive to Google and other major search engines and if possible, the best time to start implementing SEO techniques is as early as possible. If you already have a website, don't panic; you can still optimize your site. However, if you're building a new site, it's a good idea to include search engine optimization in your web design game plan. Think of it as the last, but by no means least, step in the process of building a website. Read on for a few things you can do to help your site raise its profile and start bringing in more visitors:

Create a Sitemap:

A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like: a sort of map of the pages on your website, including internal and external links. A sitemap helps search engines understand the structure of your site as well as helping the search engine robots to determine you're your site is about. Submitting your sitemap to the major search engines (and minor ones too, if you have the time to do so) will help your site to be indexed more quickly so it can be found by your potential readers or customers. Most web hosting companies offer tools which can automatically generate a sitemap in the XML format used by Google and other search engines.

Robots.txt:

Another element your site needs in order to be properly optimized for the search engines is a robots.txt file. This is a small text file in the root directory of your website which does something very important: it tells the search engines where to look and where not to look when indexing your content. For instance, you don't really need (and usually don't want) the search engines indexing folders of images, JavaScript files or other content which isn't relevant to people searching for your site.

You can also use this file to deter certain search engines from indexing your site - and yes, there are reasons why you might want to do this, though that's a topic for another day. The instructions in your robots.txt file are sometimes ignored by search engine robots, but you'll definitely do better in the search engines if you take the time to create this important file.

Meta tags:

The header section of the HTML code for every page of your website should contain the appropriate meta tags; these are invisible to people visiting your site, but not to search engines. Your meta tags tell search engines what the topic of each page is, so the content of your tags needs to be relevant to the content on the page. These tags include the title tag, which is the most important; if at all possible, the most important search term you want people to find your site with should be included in this tag. The other tag to pay close attention to is the meta description tag, which should be a brief summary of the page.

This discussion barely scratches the surface of all there is to know about optimizing your site for the search engines, but these are good areas to begin delving deeper. No web design is complete without taking care of your site's SEO - more so than almost anything else, good search engine optimization techniques will help your site to become a success.

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Royal Wood Golf and Country Club is a golf and living community located south of Naples, Florida, composed mainly of single-family homes and condominiums. It’s location offers easy access to the city of Naples, and is just a short drive from the stunning Gulf of Mexico.

The Royal Wood Golf and Country Club is an 18 hole, par 70 course, measuring more than 6,000 yards. It was designed by noted golf course architect Dr. Michael Hurdzan, and offers all levels of players an interesting challenge. All residents at Royal Wood are club members, and can enjoy a number of amenities at the club including fine and casual dining, and a state-of-the-art fitness center. Lovers of tennis will also enjoy the tennis courts available.

Royal Wood Golf and Country Club is just outside of Naples, Florida. The city offers many attractions, including shopping, bars, clubs, restaurants and entertainment. It is perhaps best known for its sun-drenched gulf coast beaches. High-culture lovers will enjoy a night out at the Naples Philharmonic or the many art galleries throughout the city.

Just a short drive to the west, the Picayune Strand State Forest provides a number of outdoor recreational opportunities for residents of the area. There is much to see and do in the Naples and Fort Myers area. It’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular.

Homes here are priced for all levels of buyers and tend to go quickly. The prices range from $89,900 to $399,900.

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For those of you who have been using Windows 7, you quickly would have realized the versatility of this operating system. In fact, I feel it is the friendliest multi-monitor operating system to date. Did I just mention multi-monitors? Yes, in fact, even Microsoft describes this setup as one of the better ways to improve productivity.

Talking about the technicalities, a single Windows 7 based multi-monitor system can support up to 16 video displays.  Furthermore, interface enhancement software that uses high-resolution multi-monitor systems make it even friendlier and powerful. Besides, as the processing power of desktop graphics continues to improve, allowing a single system to render millions of pixels simultaneously.

Now where do you use multi-monitor systems? If you are a game enthusiast, nothing would appeal to you more than a multi-monitor system. Imagine having multiple views on different monitors of the same game. Design and graphic professionals can use multiple monitors for working on design aspect on one monitor and dealing with the programming part on the other. You really need not hide one window and work on the other. Programming professionals can deal with coding on one of the monitors and simultaneously look at the documentation on the other monitor.

But professionals who truly need multi-monitor setups are stock market traders. At any point during the trading hours, an expert and efficient trader needs to view multiple graphs and charts simultaneously. Before multi-monitor systems became popular, it was done crudely by using different machines. But that definitely is passé. Based on what I have seen and experienced, at least two monitors are needed for efficient trading. However, if you are using it for your clients, you will need at least three monitors – two for you and one for your client.

Because high-resolution multi-monitor systems use a single Windows desktop, they are extremely user-friendly. Besides, the multi-monitor platform also provides a great deal of flexibility. This approach to creating a video wall makes use of single windows desktop to run the whole show makes it easy to master and use.

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A solar backup generator uses a solar panel as its power source. Solar panels contain solar cells that need to be exposed to direct sunlight. These solar cells absorb sunlight and use its energy to produce electricity. This can then be used to power your home or office directly, or stored in a battery for later use.

A solar backup generator is far superior to gas generators because of the following features:

•         Produces electricity free of charge

•         Doesn’t produce harmful emissions

•         Operates noise-free

•         No need for gas, so saves costs

•         Little maintenance needed

•         No problems in starting under cold weather conditions

The cost savings that comes from producing solar electricity means the generator will save you enough money to pay for itself in just a few years. Using a solar generator means you will forever be free from paying electricity and gas bills for your backup needs, and will never have to worry about another power outage again. The only costs you will need to bear are the costs of purchasing the unit and its initial set-up.

Since there is no motor or moving machinery in a solar backup generator, there are no time-consuming startup procedures. In the case of a power outage, the generator provides instant backup power. Your main appliances will remain on. It is possible to buy a system where the generator will switch to the backup power seamlessly so sensitive appliances won’t be damaged. A stable voltage means there is no need to fear power surges or drops.

In most cases, the equipment for a solar backup generator is very lightweight and can be easily dismantled. There is no expertise required to operate the generator. Anyone can set it up and start using it. Having a DC mode is a real plus as it enables you to charge and operate appliances simultaneously. The relative light weight of the equipment gives it increased portability over gas or diesel powered machines. You can quickly disassemble and transport the generator to another location if you need to.

The only drawback of a solar backup generator is that they don’t always produce enough power to run high voltage appliances for very long. However the amount of power it can produce depends entirely on the size of your solar panels, so if your power needs are significant, it’s possible to scale the panels to suit.

A solar backup generator comes in many different sizes base on your load requirements. They can be sized from a few inches to a few feet. The larger your power requirements, the larger the generator.

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If you are tired of overspending then it’s about time you consider imposing spending limits on yourself. This is a harsh but effective way to start your savings plan, as overspending is the major reason for money problems. Setting a spending limit takes willpower, but it will enable you to overcome money problems in an organized manner.

Where to Start?

You can start the process by documenting each of your regular monthly expenses. This includes everything from the money you spent on entertainment to the gas  you paid for to get there. This might look like overkill, but it’s important in accounting for each expense, whether large or small.

You can make a rough calculation of the total spending and then compare it to your total monthly income. A better way of accounting for your expenses is to divide expenses into broader categories. You can do that by adding all expenses related to food and groceries into one and the spending on gas and utility bills into another. These broader categories will enable you to have a better overview of all expenses.

Setting Spending Limits

Once you have assessed the expenses, it will be time to set the spending limits. It is important that you set spending limits for each category. You can set a monthly food budget, and allocate money for entertainment and other activities. You should ideally budget something for enjoyment otherwise you’ll likely get fed up of this style of money management quite quickly.

These limits will serve as the benchmark for each category and you should then be able to manage your finances with relative ease.

The real test comes when you have to keep to these limits each month. This is where you can falter on following the benchmarks and fall by the wayside. Sticking to the plan is down to you and how much you want to improve your situation. Your goal should be to remain under the spending limit at all costs.

Using Online Tools

You might not be able to remain under your spending limit or remain oblivious of any breaches if you are doing it on paper. Without being able to see the bigger picture, it’s often difficult to maintain perspective on things.

This is where online financial management tools come into play. They offer a streamlined and secure way of managing your money, from anywhere at any time. A budget calculator is a perfect tool to start with.

An online tool can help you in tracking each aspect of your daily and monthly expenses. You can add details of your expenses on that basis into the online tool and it will compute them against the corresponding limit.

You can see the results in the form of tabular or graphical presentation. Some online tools also send emails if you overshoot your limit or show the graphs in red. These are useful for both maintaining control and as a mental prompt if you begin to relax a little too much.

You can use spending limits to drastically reduce your spending and adopt a streamlined approach to budgeting. It takes organization and willpower, but will see your finances improve within a few weeks.

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Raggle-taggle of 'household names' offered big sums in direction of WikiLeaks founder's failed bail plea

The already curious case of Julian Assange took one more bizarre twist yesterday when the court discovered that a raggle-taggle of "household names" have been prepared to stake their status in his situation, offering sureties for the courtroom using a complete worth of £180,000.

Despite claiming not to know Assange, the film-maker Ken Loach along with the socialite and charity fundraiser Jemima Khan stood before Westminster magistrates and presented huge  sums in direction of Assange's bail, though bail was  later refused.

Providing £20,000, Loach explained he didn't know Assange apart from by reputation, but additional: "I think the perform he has completed has been a public service. I believe we're entitled to know the dealings of these that govern us."

Khan supplied an extra £20,000, "or much more if will need be".

Inside a statement later, she stated: "I make no judgment of Julian Assange as an individual as I've in no way met him. I'm supplying my help to him as I believe from the universal correct to freedom of knowledge and our proper to become instructed the truth."

On her Twitter feed final month, Khan requested if Assange was "the new Jason Bourne", a reference towards the fictional motion hero developed by the thriller author Robert Ludlum. The post has because been deleted.

The journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who also presented £20,000, explained he knew Assange as being a journalist and individual pal and had a "very high regard for him".

The largest donation of £80,000 was offered by an unknown American relation who didn't desire to be named simply because of anxiety for his safety.

Patricia David, a professor, along with the top lawyer Geoffrey Sheen each and every provided up £20,000 surety on grounds that that they had invested their lives fighting for human rights.

Outdoors court Pilger said: "This organization in Sweden can be a travesty; an harmless man has a correct to become free.

"Having his freedom taken absent is outrageous. Sweden really should be ashamed. This is not justice - it is outrageous."

He extra: "Behind this he has manufactured plenty of enemies, the principal one being the warmonger, the united states."

Howard Riddle, the decide at the courtroom in Horseferry Street, London, commended 4 of the sureties for their willingness to help "out of concern for human rights" and without having private information of Assange.

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