[PRCo] Book Reading

[Jim Holland]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fred Schneider
>
> -------  [Snipped]  -------
>
> There was an item in our local paper today indicating that money spent on books has declined by 14%, adjusted for inflation, from 1985 to 2005, simply because people have quit reading.   It also noted that between 1992 and 2002 those in the college age group who have read a book voluntarily dropped from 59% to 52%.   That does support a need for larger pictures, doesn't it?
.
National Snooze~!~!~!*
*.
.
"""A  Picture  Is  Worth  1,000--Words~!~!~!"""
.
....... About 500 words to a page using Word Count in my word processor, 
12-point Times Roman, single spaced.
.
....... I'm  Not  Against  Pictures~!~!~!~!
.
.
PS:  DO  Have extensive  *Non-RailFan_Library*  (but admit I donut read 
as much as I used to~!~!~!)
.
.
.
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

http://tinyurl.com/394avc


  Government Study: Americans Reading Less

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

Monday, November 19, 2007


(11-19) 14:42 PST New York (AP) --

The latest National Endowment for the Arts report draws on a variety of 
sources, public and private, and essentially reaches one conclusion: 
Americans are *reading* less.

The 99-page study, "To Read or Not to Read," is being released Monday as 
a follow-up to a 2004 NEA survey, "*Reading* at Risk," that found an 
increasing number of adult Americans were not even *reading* one book a 
year.

"To Read or Not to Read" gathers an array of government, academic and 
foundation data on everything from how many 9-year-olds read every day 
for "fun" (54 percent) to the percentage of high school graduates deemed 
by employers as "deficient" in writing in English (72 percent).

"I've done a lot of work in statistics in my career, and I've never seen 
a situation where so much data was pulled from so many places and 
absolutely everything is so consistent," NEA chairman Dana Gioia said.

Among the findings:

_ In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24, the college 
years, read a book voluntarily, down from 59 percent in 1992.

_ Money spent on books, adjusted for inflation, dropped 14 percent from 
1985 to 2005 and has fallen dramatically since the mid-1990s.

_ The number of adults with bachelor's degrees and "proficient in 
*reading* prose" dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.

Some news is good, notably among 9-year-olds, whose *reading* 
comprehension scores have soared since the early 1990s.

But at the same time, the number of 17-year-olds who "never or hardly 
ever" read for pleasure has doubled, to 19 percent, and their 
comprehension scores have fallen.

"I think there's been an enormous investment in teaching kids to read in 
elementary school," Gioia said. "Kids are doing better at 9, and at 11. 
At 13, they're doing no worse, but then you see this catastrophic 
falloff. ... If kids are put into this electronic culture without any 
counterbalancing efforts, they will stop *reading*."

Publishers and booksellers have noted that teen fiction is a rapidly 
expanding category in an otherwise flat market, but the NEA's director 
of research, Sunil Iyengar, wondered how much of that growth has been 
caused by the "Harry Potter" books, the last of which came out in July.

"It's great that millions of kids are *reading* these long, intricate 
novels, but *reading* one such book every 18 months doesn't make up for 
daily *reading*," Gioia said.

Doug Whiteman, president of the Penguin Young Readers Group, a division 
of Penguin Group (USA), said sales of teen books were the strongest part 
of his business. But he added that a couple of factors could explain why 
scores were dropping: Adults are also buying the "Potter" books, thus 
making the teen market seem bigger on paper, and some sales are for 
non-English language books.

"There are so many nuances," Whiteman said. "*Reading* scores don't 
necessarily have any relevance to today's sales."

The head of Simon & Schuster's children's publishing division, Rick 
Richter, saw another reason why sales could rise even as scores go down: 
A growing gap between those who read and those who don't. Richter 
considers it "very possible" that the market is driven by a relatively 
small number of young people who buy large numbers of books. Test 
scores, meanwhile, are lowered by the larger population of teens who 
don't read.

"A divide like that is really a cause for concern," Richter said.

The report emphasizes the social benefits of *reading*: "Literary 
readers" are more likely to exercise, visit art museums, keep up with 
current events, vote in presidential elections and perform volunteer work.

"This should explode the notion that *reading* is somehow a passive 
activity," Gioia said. "*Reading* creates people who are more active by 
any measure. ... People who don't read, who spend more of their time 
watching TV or on the Internet, playing video games, seem to be 
significantly more passive."

Gioia called the decline in *reading* "perhaps the most important 
socio-economic issue in the United States," and called for changes "in 
the way we're educating kids, especially in high school and college. We 
need to reconnect *reading* with pleasure and enlightenment."

"'To Read or Not to Read' suggests we are losing the majority of the new 
generation," Gioia said. "The majority of young Americans will not 
realize their individual, economic or social potential."


\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

http://tinyurl.com/22rnwf*
*


  Auto sales could hit 15-year low

By Ben Klayman /Sun Nov 18, 8:10 PM ET/

DETROIT (Reuters) - Three top investors in the automotive industry 
painted a grim picture on Sunday for the sector in 2008, with one 
executive predicting a possible slump in U.S. sales to levels not seen 
in 15 years.

The weakest forecast is for a possible 9.4 percent decline. But all 
three -- Jerry York, an adviser to billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian; 
financier Wilbur Ross; and Thomas Stallkamp, a former Chrysler president 
-- were more pessimistic than many in the battered industry.

"While I am very negative on the autos sector over the next 12 to 18 
months, I'm just not sure how bad it could be," York, a former board 
member of General Motors Corp and chief financial officer of Chrysler, 
said at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit. "We all know housing is a 
debacle."

U.S. light auto sales could slip to 15.5 million or less next year, York 
said. That would be down from near 16 million this year, a drop of 3 
percent to mark the second consecutive annual decline and the lowest 
tally since 1998.

Stallkamp, a partner at private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, which 
owns several auto parts makers, said the market could slump to 14.5 
million, the lowest level since 1993.

"I'd say it's somewhere between 14.5 (million) and 15 (million), 
somewhere in there and it's hard to tell," he said. "Today, I'm a little 
more towards 14.5 (million)."

Such a decline would be felt throughout the sector, CSM Worldwide auto 
analyst Michael Robinet said.

"That would certainly be one of the worst years on record given the 
gravity of the industry," he said.

U.S. auto sales fell almost 11 percent in 1991, when the economy was in 
recession.

Ross, an investor who specializes in restructuring troubled businesses 
and has assembled an auto parts empire through acquisitions, said the 
U.S. consumer was "pretty well tapped out" as he predicted auto sales 
would slip a few hundred thousand units from this year.

Most automakers have predicted U.S. auto sales next year in the range of 
just under 16 million to 15.5 million, with Japan's Nissan Motor Co Ltd 
at the low end.

However, the crumbling U.S. housing market is spooking consumers, the 
investors said.

"I hope I'm wrong on 14.5 (million) to 15 (million)," Stallkamp said. 
"But I think the mortgage issue is going to freak people out and that 
will hit pretty hard in '08."

Ross called it "a sort of poverty effect from house prices going down."

The U.S. automakers' market shares will suffer more than foreign rivals 
in such a weak market, Stallkamp said.

"You're going to see some continued retrenchment in construction and the 
building trades that will hit the Big Three particularly," he said.

The investors see the Big Three U.S. automakers cutting factory 
production instead of returning to overly generous discount deals such 
as GM's zero-percent financing offers, first rolled out after the 
September 11, 2001, attacks.

"I think you're going to see less discounting in general," Ross said. 
"Now that they have a little better control of the factories and now 
that the factories are a little more right sized."

None of the three predicted a recession for the U.S. economy in 2008, 
but York said "it feels like it's on the way."

Stallkamp, on the other hand, sees global credit markets stabilizing in 
the first half of 2008, with the holiday shopping season a key 
indicator. He sees U.S. auto sales coming back in 2009.

The U.S. automakers, already slashing jobs and factory production, will 
"have to get smaller faster" and push for more sales overseas in a 
weaker market, Stallkamp said.

"Maybe I'm too pessimistic on how low it's going to go," he said of the 
U.S. market. "Maybe I live in Michigan. This is a pretty crummy place to 
be right now."

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta, James B. Kelleher and Kevin 
Krolicki; Editing by Braden Reddall)

(For summit blog: http://summitnotebook.reuters.com/)



\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

http://tinyurl.com/2q4rtd


  Builders offer cuts of as much as $150,000 on some housing units

Marni Leff Kottle, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Developers have moved beyond free stainless steel appliances and granite 
countertops to lure buyers and are now offering something less trendy 
but perhaps more welcome - deep discounts.

The credit crunch has shrunk the pool of potential buyers in a market 
that was already struggling with excess inventory and developers are 
pushing to clear their books by the end of the year. That has sent new 
home prices in the Bay Area down by as much as 20 percent from their 
highs two years ago, according to Joseph Perkins, chief executive of the 
Home Builders Association of Northern California.

Sales at condominium projects in the region's urban cores such as San 
Francisco and San Jose are still moving, albeit more slowly, but 
developers in the Bay Area's far suburbs say they're struggling to close 
deals.

And that has led builders - from national publicly traded companies to 
smaller regional players - to dangle price cuts of as much as $150,000 
on some projects in the far reaches of the Bay Area.

"There is a massive amount of inventory sitting out there that is not 
being sold, particularly out in the East Bay," said Christopher 
Thornberg, a principal at the consulting firm Beacon Economics. "You're 
talking total meltdown."

The median price of a new home in the Bay Area's nine counties was 
$610,000 in September, according to DataQuick Information Systems. 
That's a 6.6 percent increase from $572,500 in 2006, but it's still 
below the high of $641,750 in 2005.

The number of new homes sold in the Bay Area fell 17.8 percent to 999 in 
September and is down 42 percent from its 2005 high, according to DataQuick.

Home builders say they don't expect a quick turn around, but they do 
think the market has just about bottomed.

"It is a very tough market at the moment - virtually every indicator 
shows that the housing market is in a deep recession," said Perkins. "I 
see next year as transition year. If we haven't bottomed out, we will 
bottom out some time in the first two quarters of next year."

By the middle of 2009, home price appreciation will return to historic 
levels of 6 to 8 percent a year, Perkins said.

But some economists said that new-home prices still have a long way to 
fall. Prices rose much faster than incomes during the first half of the 
decade and that has put houses - particularly those in new communities 
that cater to first-time buyers - way out of reach, Thornberg said.

"The prices that are being charged are still so far out of whack," 
Thornberg said. "That works when you have crazy credit available, but 
what's going on right now is quite the contrary."

Developers are using a variety of tools - from two-day fire sales to 
offering to pick up mortgage payments - to reel in buyers.

Shea Homes Inc., of Walnut in Los Angeles County, has 20 projects in its 
Northern California division spread through the Bay Area and beyond.

The company began advertising an end-of-the-year sale in September with 
Bay Area homes marked down, in some cases by as much as $150,000.

The promotion was set to end Oct. 31, but probably will continue for the 
next few weeks for buyers who are able to commit to a closing before the 
new year, said Ashley Cook, marketing manager for the company's Northern 
California group.

Shea has listed markdowns on at least 23 Oakley homes on its Web site. A 
five-bedroom house in Shea's Summer Lake community in Oakley, for 
example, is being offered for $657,581, an 18.6 percent discount from 
it's nearly $800,0000 price before the sale began in September.

"It's that time of year where we are trying to get some sales and 
closing for end of year so that we can go into 2008 with less inventory 
and fewer homes on the books," Cook said.

Outside the Bay Area, the cuts are even steeper. Shea is offering as 
much as $200,000 off homes at a project in West Sacramento.

Yet it is the discounts themselves that are making some would-be buyers 
nervous.

Some are reluctant to commit because they are afraid that after they 
close, prices could continue to fall, Cook said.

"Obviously, one of the concerns about buying right now is what if prices 
do continue to go down," she said. "Most builders handle that on a 
case-by-case basis."

People who commit to a home early - and may wind up paying a higher 
price - also have more choices, Cook said.

"Someone who buys in from the ground up can choose all their options, 
but they may not have gotten as big an incentive as someone who buys a 
finished home," she said. "So maybe that buyer doesn't have the ideal 
cabinets, but for this price, they are willing to make some trade-offs."

A sale the last weekend in October helped AGI Capital, a San Francisco 
*real* *estate* development company, shrink inventory at three projects 
in Hayward. By running ads in movie theaters, on the radio and in 
newspapers, AGI sold 35 percent of the remaining inventory at the three 
projects, said Alexis Wong, the company's chief executive.

The projects - which include 146 condos and townhouses - are now about 
70 percent sold. The advertising campaign began the middle of October, 
targeting the last weekend of the month for the $100,000, two-day-only 
"you snooze, you lose" sale.

During the promotion, prices started at $265,000 and topped out at about 
$500,000, Wong said.

"We felt that if we were going to do a sale, we wanted it to be 
meaningful, we didn't want to just throw in small incentives," she said. 
"We wanted to have an impactful campaign and decided to put out the 
*real* incentive and it turned out to be successful."

Still, Wong said that the Hayward market is far from the region's most 
challenging.

"It's definitely not as dire as some of the more second-tier places in 
eastern Contra Costa county," she said. "There is still activity there 
because Hayward is still a transit hub between the South (Bay) and East 
Bay."

The company's projects in Antioch and El Sobrante are proving an even 
bigger challenge, Wong said.

"I don't think anyone expected the market to look like this when we 
started," she said. "The state of affairs caught us by surprise."

Developers said that the already-depressed new-home market took a turn 
for the worse in the middle of the year when the subprime loan crisis 
led to a sudden tightening in the mortgage market.

"Prior to June, you didn't need much of a down payment," said Steve 
Kalmbach, president of Pulte Homes Inc.'s Bay Area division. "Now it's 
gone too far the other way."

Pulte, the publicly traded developer from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., has 
15 Bay Area projects. The developer is offering a variety of incentives 
designed to combat the difficulties in the credit market.

For example, Pulte is covering closing costs and buying down interest 
rates to help buyers who otherwise wouldn't qualify for loans, he said.

And as part of a Halloween promotion, Pulte offered to pay buyers' 
mortgages for the first 12 months in some projects, Kalmbach said.

Some developers also said that they are paying commissions to *real* 
*estate* agents who bring in buyers.

"We're reaching out to the *real* *estate* broker community and offering 
them good commissions and incentives," said Shea's Cook. "Right now, 
we're running a 5 percent broker's co-op. They get all 5 percent. 
Normally, the 6 percent commission is split between a buyer's and a 
seller's agent. This is 5 percent all to the buyer's agent."

Developers are forced to take such radical steps because unlike 
individual homeowners, who can often postpone their moves indefinitely, 
builders can't sit on inventory.

"Nothing will bankrupt a developer faster than carrying a lot of 
inventory," said Thornberg, the economist. "They are more flexible in 
some senses, but they also have fewer options."

Perkins, president of the Home Builders Association, said that this 
downturn in the new-home market is as bad as anything that members of 
his group have seen over the last 50 years.

"This is not a soft landing we've had," he said. "This is a hard landing."

That means developers have to do what it takes to get homes sold, even 
if it isn't pretty.

"They've got to get that standing inventory off the books," Perkins 
said. "Lenders want to see it off the books and, for public companies, 
investors and Wall Street, want to see it off the books. That pressure 
is the reason you see those full-page ads offering all sorts of incentives."

Still, developers, point to the Bay Area's perpetual housing shortage 
and strong job growth as reasons to remain optimistic that a recovery 
will come sooner rather than later.

"In *real* *estate*, you always have cycles," said AGI's Wong. "The 
market will come back. People are stepping up to the plate and buying 
and the fact is that prices are pretty much as low as they can get. 
Between now and the spring, I think we'll see a lot of projects get 
closed out."

.
.
^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
.
.
Jim  Holland
.
Studying Pittsburgh Railways Company (PRCo)
.
..............................From 1930 -- 1950
.
Pennsylvania  Trolley  Museum  (PTM)
.
http://www.pa-trolley.org/
.
N.M.R.A.
.
http://www.nmra.org/