What Obama Needs From Business Leaders OR What Can They Do for Obama

It's not exactly an apology tour, but the Business Relations Repair Initiative is fully underway.
Since his re-election, President Barack Obama has hosted at least a dozen CEOs at the White House and
called several others to hear their ideas about reinvigorating the stagnant economy. The purpose seems obvious: After excoriating "fat-cat bankers" and overpaid CEOs during his first term, the president needs to repair relations with business leaders who collectively have far more power to lower unemployment and boost growth than he does.

[ENJOY: Political Cartoons on the Fiscal Cliff]
Wheter the outreach is symbolic or substantive remains to be seen, but Obama seems to realize he needs more help from the business community than he may have thought when he first took office in 2009. Above all, businesses need to do one thing if Obama is to achieve many of his second-term economic goals: Spend more money.Business spending helped end the Great Recession in 2009 and initiate a tepid recovery. In 2011, there wasa spike in business spending, which for a while made it seem like a booming recovery, with robust hiring, might be just around the corner.
[READ: Why A Lot of CEOs Favor Higher Taxes]
But businesses pulled back for much of 2012, and in recent months there's been a worrisome drop in spending on things like computers, vehicles, capital equipment and commercial construction. "We've seen the sort of move down that you normally see when the economy is heading into recession," says Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for forecasting firm IHS Global Insight.
Part of that downturn could easily be caused by the approach of the "fiscal cliff," the big set of tax hikes and spending cuts that will go into effect in 2013 if Congress does nothing to prevent a big hit to the economy. If there's no deal to forestall some of those changes, it will turn economic growth negative and promptly cause a recession.Many analysts expect some kind of last-minute compromise that will avert a recession. But CEOs get paid to prepare for worst-case scenarios, and besides, many companies can put off spending for a while, as they wait to see whether Congress will torpedo the economy. That's bad for the economy, but for most individual companies, it's a prudent way to handle a risky policy standoff in Washington.
CEOs are also worried about the chronic debt crisis in Europe, which has officially entered a recession. And China is still struggling with a cooling economy and a possible real-estate bubble of its own.
[RELATED: How Much the Fiscal Cliff Will Cost You]
For Obama, convincing business leaders to spend more money may be the single-biggest thing he can do to jump-start the economy. If anybody's got the wallet to juice growth, it's corporate America. Big companies have nearly $2 trillion cash on hand, and many of them have cut costs so much that they're now poised to invest and hire more—if only they had confidence the economy is truly on the mend.
If the fiscal cliff is the only barrier to a better economy, then making a deal with Congressional Republicans would be the best way for Obama to swing business leaders to his advantage. Many CEOs would be happy to have any deal, as long as it creates a stable business environment with predictable policies. Of course, they wouldn't mind if it included reforms such as a lower corporate tax rate, smaller deficits and even some corresponding tax hikes, if that helped fix the government's finances.
Simply asking business leaders for their support won't cut it, though. Like many ordinary Americans, CEOs are fed up with warring politicians who seem to put their own interests above national priorities. If Washington can't solve the sorts of problems that companies confront all the time, then those businesses might sit on their money indefinitely, or find a better place to spend it than the United States.

How Can Sam Sung Works For Apple? (TWEET)

As the Apple-Samsung court battle rages on, a Twitter user has revealed a rather humorous coincidence with this priceless photograph

The photo, which was tweeted on Saturday, has become quite the viral sensation, with more than 850 retweets. It has also been posted on Reddit so many times that an exasperated user on the social news site called it the "most reposted post ever.As Business Insider notes, however, it is still unclear as to whether the name card is genuine.Nonetheless, the news site confirms that "the Pacific Centre Apple Store is in Vancouver, British Columbia [and] the phone number and address are correct." The site also claims to have found a LinkedIn account for "someone by the same name" who is also located in Vancouver.

Thousands of Chinese protest & smash police cars;after a traffic accident

BEIJING -- Thousands of residents protested in a southeastern Chinese city after a traffic accident, smashing police cars and overturning three police vans, police and residents said.



The reason for the protest in Fuan city in Fujian province was unclear. Police said it was instigated by “a handful of lawless people.” One resident said people became angry because police and paramedics took nearly an hour to arrive to help the injured, while a Hong Kong-based human rights group said it was to do with corruption.



But such protests have become increasingly common in China, and Saturday's violence is another reminder that the country's new leadership has to deal with underlying social discontent that often boils over. People are fed up with corruption and high-handed officialdom, pensions that have not kept pace with inflation and families being forced from their homes to make way for developments.

Residents said police were stopping cars and checking people for driving after drinking on Saturday evening when the accident happened on a main road in Fuan.

Wanting to avoid being tested, a driver in a sedan accelerated away and police started chasing the car, said a resident, who would give only his surname, Lin. About three motorcycles were hit during the chase, said Lin, adding he wasn't sure who hit them.

“About 10,000 to 20,000 onlookers became angry because police officers and paramedics took nearly one hour to arrive,” said Lin.

He estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 people clashed with police and overturned three police vans.

Photos carried by online southeastern news sites showed hundreds of people swarming across a wide street with two vans thrown onto their sides. In one photo, three people stood on top of an overturned van.

China downgrades strength of domestic security honcho

BEIJING -- China confirmed on Monday that it had downgraded the position of domestic security chief as part of a move to a new and smaller top elite, an expected move that reflects fears the position had become
too powerful.The official Xinhua News Agency said in a brief announcement that Zhou Yongkang's position as head of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, a sprawling body that oversees law-and-order policy, had been taken over by Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu.The hulking, grim-faced 69-year-old Zhou had to retire along with most members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the inner council at the apex of power, at this month's 18th Party Congress, due to his age. He turns 70 in December.
Meng, however, is only a member of the new Politburo, the 25-member body which reports to the down-sized Standing Committee, putting him on a tighter leash and returning to a pattern the party kept to for much of the 1980s.Reducing the party's Standing Committee from nine to seven members came as part of a once-in-a-decade leadership change announced last week, which saw Vice President Xi Jinping raised to head of the ruling Communist Party.Reuters reported in August that Zhou's position was likely to be downgraded and Zhou replaced by Meng.Zhou had been on the Standing Committee since 2007 while also heading the central Political and LegalAffairs Committee.That double status allowed Zhou to dominate a domestic security budget of US$110 billion a year, exceeding the defense budget.Zhou was implicated in rumors that he hesitated in moving against the politician Bo Xilai, a former candidate for top office who fell in a divisive scandal after his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman.Security forces also suffered a humiliating failure earlier in the year when they allowed blind rights advocate Chen Guangcheng to escape from 19 months of house arrest and flee to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.Since the 1990s, China's efforts to stifle crime, unrest and dissent have allowed the domestic security apparatus — including police, armed militia and state security officers — to accumulate power.In another announcement, Xinhua said that Zhao Leji had replaced Li Yuanchao as head of the party's organization department that oversees the appointment of senior party, government, military and state-owned enterprise officials.Zhao had been party boss of the northern province of Shaanxi and is close to president-in-waiting Xi.There was no announcement on where Li, a reformer who has courted foreign investment and studied in the United States, may go. He missed out on a spot on the Standing Committee despite being tipped to enter it.Standing Committee positions will officially be released in March at the annual meeting of parliament, though there is no doubt Xi will become president and Li Keqiang will take over as premier from Wen Jiabao.Over the next few days and weeks state media should announce the positions of the other members of the Politburo.

China department stores wheel out the big guns in war against e-commerce

Traditional department stores in China are flexing their muscle to regain their place on the retail battlefield, as the breakneck growth of e-commerce takes its toll.The risks faced by brick-and-mortar retailers have
recently been amplified by a string of somber sales figures, especially after online vendors, fueled by the Singles' Day bonanza on Nov. 11, delivered an enviable performance over the past weekend.A department store in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, offers a 52-percent discount on Nov. 11, Singles' Day, to compete with e-commerce giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. that used the occasion to promote their sales with deep price cuts.That day, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. alone generated 19.1 billion yuan (US$3.06 billion) in sales, triple the combined revenue of around 5,000 retail outlets in Shanghai during the eight-day National Day holidays in early October.
During the holidays, from Sept. 30 to Oct. 7, the nation's 100 major retailers saw their sales increase by 8.49 percent year-on-year, according to China National Commercial Information center.
This was a rare occurrence of growth since the introduction of the Golden Week more than a decade ago.
But problems are likely to loom larger for traditional retailers as online merchants sprint ahead. Driven by an urgent desire to boost their sales, stores are jostling to offer the deepest discounts to drum up consumer interest.Feeling the pinch due to the e-commerce boom, Hong Kong-headquartered New World Department Store China Ltd. has stepped up promoting its annual discount gala in Shanghai more than a month earlier than previous years.Likewise, the three outlets of Pacific Department Store Co. Ltd. in Shanghai plan to knock up to 50 percent off women's sweaters and offer special discounts on jewelry and cosmetics.According to the company, the 17-day promotion aims to expand its consumer base and retain customers by encouraging shoppers to register for a membership card that entitles them to discount coupons.
The move is, put bluntly, to tackle the growing challenges posed by the exploding development of e-commerce, said Yan Chengda, deputy general manager of the company.
Clothes are generally the least immune items to pressure from the thriving online business, so we are offering deep discounts,” Yan added.