Marketplace - American Public Media

It's international quiz time on the Marketplace Morning Report. Stephan Richter, editor-in-chief of the online international affairs magazine, The Globalist, brings us the questions below. 

Which of the following emerging market economies is perceived to have the highest level of corruption in its public sector?

a. China
b. Russia
c. Brazil
d. India

Which of the following emerging market economies is perceived to have the lowest level of corruption in its public sector?

a. China
b. Russia
c. Brazil
d. India

Click on the audio player above to hear the answers and learn more about corruption around the world. Quiz answers are based on Transparency International's 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Today India launched seven satellites into space. It's the latest mission for India's space agency, which has its eyes on Mars at the moment.

The BBC's Shilpa Kennan in Delhi joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the breadth of India's space program and how it fits into the budget of the emerging economy.

This final note today, in which Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, says about lawmakers what a lot of people here have been thinking.

Johnson went before the London Assembly today -- the city's version of a legislature -- to talk about a budget cut that's coming. Assembly members apparently had no questions for him, which brought this response from the notoriously outspoken Johnson: "Are you saying they don't have the guts to put questions to me? Great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies."

Next member of Congress we get on the show, I'm totally calling them a great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jelly. Totally.

Martha Stewart is back in court next week. She will be testifying in a lawsuit between Macy’s and JC Penney. The retail chains are battling over who has the right to carry Stewart’s line of products.

Last year Martha Stewart renewed an agreement giving Macy's exclusive rights to sell her line of cookware, home décor and textiles. Under that agreement the only other place Stewart could sell those products is in her own stores.

Stewart’s lawyers argue that she is simply doing what her contract allows -- selling her products in her own store. At issue is the location of the store.

“If it was located next to JC Penney that would be fine. This just so happened that it’s located within JC Penney,” says Dave Reibstein who researches product line strategy at the Wharton School.

JC Penney is calling the Martha Stewart store within a store a boutique.

Kevin Keller, a professor of marketing at Dartmouth College, says the struggling retailer has a lot at stake in this case.

“They’ve invested in this. This is something they see as part of their strategy going forward and clearly want this to happen," says Keller.

Stewart told Macy’s about her plans to partner with JC Penney the night before the deal was announced. Reading from a script, she said that it would be good for both companies, “even though you might not agree.”

Barring any last minute settlement, BP will be back in court today. This time it’ll be fighting tens of billions of dollars in civil claims related to the 2010 Gulf oil spill. And just like the oil spill clean up, the civil trial is expected to be long and complicated.

Edward Sherman, a law professor at Tulane University Law School, says, assuming neither side blinks, “the first phase alone will probably take three months.” And that’s just to figure out which companies get how much blame.

It could be a year (or years) before we all know how much BP is going to have to pay up and before all the plantiffs -- the feds, the states, private businesses and individuals -- get their money.

So why fight it out?

“From a fianancial standpoint, that might benefit BP if they fight this to a bitter end and reduce the settlement,” says Morningstar analyst Stephen Simko, “but at the same time that would obviously keep them in the news and the oil spill in the news for a long time to come.”   

And with a potential settlement, BP’s calcuation isn’t the only one. You’ve got a whole lot of people fighting over a whole lot of money.

It’s messy. Just like the oil spill.

One under-reported tech story of last week was NASA losing direct contact with the International Space Station for nearly three hours. The reason for the communication outage? One of those pesky software updates, just like the ones you get on your home computer. The onboard communication system malfunctioned while the software was loading.

NASA’s experience lead to the question: When it comes to software patches, how up to date are you?

Chester Wisniewski, a computer security expert at Sophos, says software updates are much more serious than just a chance to add a shiny new feature.

"It's a pretty high priority issue when you have those things pop up," says Wisniewski. "There were some emergency Java updates available from Oracle and criminals were already using flaws in the software before the update was available."

According to Wisniewski, security vulnerabilities are almost always at the root of updates, and he says companies are trying to make it easier for users to get the latest fixes. For its part, Microsoft releases all of its updates in a bundle on the second Tuesday of every month, a day known as “Patch Tuesday.”

To learn more about software security, click on the audio player above.

Silicon Valley companies sure know how to use silicon for profit. They are also very accomplished at reducing their tax bills. An investigative reporter in Northern California did some digging and calculated how much some big technology companies have saved in U.S. taxes by stashing a chunk of their profits overseas.

Matt Drange with the Center for Investigative Reporting joined Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio to discuss which companies -- Apple, Google, and Cisco to name a few -- may be taking advantage of these tax structures.

One week. That's how long we've got until the sequester, until the cuts start happening.

Ashton Carter is the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the guy whose job it is to run the Pentagon day-to-day and find the $46 billion or so the military's got to cut. He said the department is ready to "execute sequester," but he feels it's unfortunate the way it's being done.

"There is no manual; I don't think anyone's ever done anything this way -- and for a very good reason, which is it's a really dumb way to do things," Carter said. "We've cut our budget before -- we did last year -- but we didn't do it the sequester way. We had a chance to do it strategically and to ask the right question, which is: What does the country need?"

He said the uncertainty from the sequester will have an effect on individuals serving in the military.

"It certainly plays out on morale, it plays out on their family, and very worryingly to me, it will inevitably play out on their willingness to stay in," he said.

Carter also warned that defense subcontractors who don't have the financial resources to survive the cuts might not want to do business with the U.S. government anymore, because it'll be an unreliable customer.

And furthermore, he said: "You have to remember, the whole world is watching this. Our friends are watching it, our allies are watching it -- and our enemies are watching it as well. And that too causes lasting reputational embarrassment.

Have you ever cruised through a neighborhood and come across a dilapidated house that’s stinking up the whole street? It’s probably waiting to be foreclosed on. The problem is, many times, the process of foreclosure can cost more than the property is worth -- so the mortgage lender just walks away.

It’s called a “Bank Walk Away.” But why would a bank just walk away from a foreclosure? It usually happens in working-class neighborhoods with old housing stock that’s not worth a lot of money. Because the banks actually lose money on the foreclosure, it’s cheaper to do nothing.

That was the situation at 212 East Geer Street in Durham. The walk away property sat right next door to Frank Burgess.

“There were tenants here, but they weren’t the nicest, or the cleanest," Burgess says. "Because they would put the baby pampers, toss them right over the railing, cause I cleaned, I don’t know how many trash bags of just, baby pampers.” 

Burgess is a city bus driver. It took him and his wife a while to settle on their dream home on East Geer. But that was soon followed by bad neighbors and bad loitering.

“All of the drug activity, prostitution, the alcohol," Burgess recalls. "It was daunting, me and my wife, we just felt like, it’s our home, we’re staying in it.”

Records show the East Geer property was purchased seven years ago with financing from Countrywide Mortgage Corporation. A couple of years later, the owner filed for bankruptcy and stopped making payments. The property soon became Bank of America’s responsibility.

Peter Skillern runs a nonprofit called Reinvestment Partners that just happens to be one block from the problem house on East Geer Street.

As Skillern puts it, “We’ve made every effort to communicate with each of the banks. It’s taken quite a bit of work.”

Reinvesetment Partners was finally able to buy the house a few weeks ago  It cost $27,000 at a foreclosure sale, that’s about a third of what the old owner paid in 2006.

“We spoke to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the N.C. Attorney General’s office. We filed a local complaint at the court," Skillern says. "We’re very pleased that Bank of America finally did respond and we have been able to resolve the issue.  But it was an example of the extraordinary efforts it takes to resolve these problems.”

East Geer is now a success story. But the latest General Accounting Office report says there are 38,000 bank walk aways across the U.S. People on the ground say that estimate is on the low side.

Rick Hester sees this first hand as the housing code administrator for the city of Durham.

“I do know that we probably run across two or three a week," Hester says. "The name is still in the old owner, but we know the bankruptcy has been filed they just haven’t closed on it.”

Hester wants to get these houses in the hands of people who’ll fix them up and get them back on the tax rolls. He says it’s about finding good neighbors for hard-working people like Frank Burgess. 

“I’m a city bus driver so a lot of people in the town know me from driving the bus. They’re like, 'Bus driver what are you doing here?' But, I love the house, I love where it is and we’re not going to let anyone run us off from it.”

Burgess says he doesn’t plan on going anywhere soon.

Apple has them and so does Microsoft. And the word is, Google’s gonna have ‘em soon too.

“The rumor started circulating around a week ago about a Google Store, and I think is a terrific idea for Google,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at the Altimeter Group.

That rumor stirred up again with the unveiling of Pixel, which will cost about $1,300. Pixel is part of Google’s Chromebook line of computers, which are cloud-based. That means your spreadsheets won’t be on your hard drive but will live online much like your email.

Kirthi Kalyanam, a professor at the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University, says the stores would be the perfect place for Google to sell its infamous Google Glass, a wearable computer that sits on your face like eyeglasses.

"Google is pushing the boundaries of what cannot be done and as they push the boundaries, they come with products that are very hard for people to envision or understand," said Kalyanam.

He adds that products like Google Glass will probably need dedicated sales people and a sophisticated display, something big-box retailers like Best Buy can’t provide. But Google might be late to the store trend, says Trip Chowdhry. He's an analyst at Global Equities Research. He says Google risks looking like an Apple wannabe, like Microsoft and its stores.

"The days of opening stores is over. Microsoft is losing because there’s nothing much that they’re offering," Chowdhry said.

He says it’s not just about having products but getting people to buy them.

Apple has them and so does Microsoft. And the word is, Google’s gonna have ‘em soon too.

“The rumor started circulating around a week ago about a Google Store, and I think is a terrific idea for Google,” Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at the Altimeter Group.

That rumor stirred up again with the unveiling of Pixel, which will cost about $1,300. Pixel is part of Google’s Chromebook line of computers, which are cloud-based. That means your spreadsheets won’t be on your hard drive but will live online much like your email.

Kirthi Kalyanam, a professor at the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University, says the stores would be the perfect place for Google to sell its infamous Google Glass, a wearable computer that sits on your face like eyeglasses.

"Google is pushing the boundaries of what cannot be done and as they push the boundaries, they come with products that are very hard for people to envision or understand," said Kalyanam.

He adds that products like Google Glass will probably need dedicated sales people and a sophisticated display, something big-box retailers like Best Buy can’t provide. But Google might be late to the store trend, says Trip Chowdhry. He's an analyst at Global Equities Research. He says Google risks looking like an Apple wannabe, like Microsoft and its stores.

"The days of opening stores is over. Microsoft is losing because there’s nothing much that they’re offering," Chowdhry said.

He says it’s not just about having products but getting people to buy them.

Earlier this week, a report by the cyber security firm Mandiant pointed to China as the source of several cyber attacks on the U.S. One of the targets of those attacks is the power grid. Although no one has successfully pulled off a large-scale disruption of the power, there have been blackouts caused by weather. Hurricane Sandy had millions of people living by candlelight. So just how vulnerable is our power grid?

The National Research Council recently issued a 168-page report -- "Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System." It found the system to be highly vulnerable for two reasons.

Number one: The system is physically vulnerable, particularly the system's large high voltage transformers. Granger Morgan is one of the authors of the report. He says many of these transformers are at facilities in wide open spaces. "So a small number of people who knew what they were doing could do very large and very disruptive damage to the system."

Repairing broken transformers could leave large numbers of people without power for weeks or even months.

The second vulnerability is to cyber attacks. "All the hype is about cyber attack," says Morgan. "But physical attacks can take the system down for weeks or months and it's almost impossible to see how you do that with cyber attack."

Whether from the Internet or the ground, the solution to these vulnerabilities is to break up the system into smaller micro grids.

Enter the bureaucracy -- the government, utilities and regulators. The electric utility industry has a self-regulatory body called the North American Elecrtic Reliability Council (NIRC). There's also the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and then there are the state governments.

"A lot of the nuts and bolts and making sure that the equipment is secure will be decided at the state level," says Richard Caperton, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress.

Ninety percent of the U.S. power grid is privately owned. There isn't much financial incentive for utilities to break up their systems into micro grids. That means the government will have to coordinate with regulators and utilities to make the necessary changes. In other words, it's not a quick fix.

Attention: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants you.

This week they called for consumers' suggestions for policies to ease repayment of student loans, which they say are preventing young borrowers from climbing the economic ladder. Last year, for the first time, the amount of student loans taken out passed the $100 billion mark. And this year, also for the first time, total outstanding student loans will exceed $1 trillion. That's more than the entire American population owes on credit cards. This is a crisis, right? Well, the Atlantic Monthly begs to differ. They argue that the numbers tell a very different story -- a story they illustrate with an infographic in the March issue of the magazine. Derek Thompson is a business editor for The Atlantic.

"So the sticker price of lots of school is $50,000-60,000 a year. I think one year at Harvard right now costs about $57,000, which is right in line with a lot of these elite, private institutions. But that's the sticker price and not a lot of people end of paying the sticker price. In fact, I think the average costs of these schools is much closer to $20,000 even after you include all the various amenities and the costs of living. What we wanted to look at was, OK, we know that people are afraid of this student debt crisis and that the number is especially big because in the recession a lot of kids went back to school and so student debt continued to rise. But when you look at exactly what students are getting in exchange for their debt. It does seem like a pretty good bet, especially when you compare it to all sorts of other investments that you can make with money," says Thompson.

 Thompson says he doesn't want to downplay the huge amount of money that students pay to attend college. Of course, education is expensive, but he notes that students do have a long time to pay back the money. "Getting student debt, essentially investing in an education, does tend to pay off down the line in higher wages, which you can use to pay off the student debt that you've acquired," says Thompson.

Forty-three percent of students owe $1,000-$10,000 after graduating, but tuitions are rising. At what point is the student loan too burdensome?

"One fact that I would look at is what economists call the college premium. You can basically think of it is as the bonus that you should expect to get from going to college. That college premium has stayed pretty strong throughout the recession and throughout the last 10 years," says Thompson.

And what about parents who are bankrupting themselves to pay off their kids' student loans? Instead of facing a student aid crisis, could we be facing a middle class collapse crisis?

"The thing that a lot of economists say is where do you start to fix the middle class crisis? You start with giving the middle class  more skills. You start with improving what they call the human capital of the middle class. You give them the capacity to start their own jobs and be smarter and more clever and skilled in the jobs that they're working in. And I don't know the best way to do that, except to say that we seem to have a college system that, for all of its faults, is still the envy of the world," says Thompson.

Yes, we know. Fact-checking kills a good policy fight. It gets in the way of echo-chambers, and is certainly a job-killer for the bumper sticker industry. Official Washington operates as a thriving eco-system for old, bad, partial and mis-information, and no one changes their mind anyway.

Still, today’s oil and gas debate provides ample opportunity for some equal-opportunity myth-busting. We’ll updating this page, so keep stopping by. For now, we ask our 'friends-of-the-Petro-state-podcast' to highlight some energy and environment myths and misperceptions:

• Ethan Zindler, Bloomberg New Energy Finance: Ready, aim, fire...on coal

Zindler says the first myth is that the Environmental Protection Agency is "killing the coal industry." The reality is that natural gas prices have just absolutely plummeted and natural gas has become so competitive with coal for power generation.

• Zindler, Bloomberg New Energy Finance: Clean energy = overpriced energy
  

Zindler says that all we really want to do is track the costs and the amount of money. He adds, "The thing that kind of makes me nuts is when I hear people misquoting the actual data and facts about how much clean energy costs right now. I’ll give folks the benefit of the doubt, which is that they’re always not as on top of the latest research, but I repeatedly hear numbers cited that are two or three years old for the cost of say, wind generation or solar generation."

"It’s like saying oh yeah, my iPhone, it can only do 3G because that is what the iPhone 3 could do eighteen months ago – it literally is that same kind of technology evolution," he adds. "So, if you’re not getting the latest information, if you’re not within three to six months of the data you’re citing then you’re doing a disservice to people and that definitely came up in the debate over extending the production tax credit its comes up in discussions about solar as well."

Check out BNEF's chart below (note onshore wind and PV solar):

• John Hanger, former environmental chief of Penn.: Drilling/Fracking is totally, safe

"Okay, the part of the impression and sometimes explicit words from the gas industry that I think is just wrong is -- at least the impression that has left with many audiences -- that gas drilling has no impacts and all. 'The processes are 100 percent perfectly safe,'" Hanger says, "And that’s just not accurate – there are very good companies working hard on safety and they have a good safety record, but the impact, it will never be zero, no matter how well it’s regulated. For me, it’s important to recognize that and work hard to reduce the rate of accidents and spills and to reduce the impacts and maximize the benefits."

• Zindler, Bloomberg New Energy Finance: Government help = funding failed ventures like Solyndra

"There’s no question there were some big mistakes made around Solyndra. I won’t even sort of try to defend that, but the aim of what that program has tried to do, in terms of supporting next generation technologies is actually fairly unique," Zindler says. "And one of the things that our firm does is look around the world, at all kinds of policies and while there are a lot of countries that talk about doing things like having a green bank or these other kinds of things, the loan guarantee program was actually the very first to really put some real money, some real muscle into trying to do this."

"The fact that they’ve had some losers, frankly should have been expected. And I think it was expected internally, it may not have been articulated externally by the administration, but the reality of it is that program has planted some very important seeds in a lot of ways and we will not know whether some of these were successful, who knows for the next several years maybe five or ten years."

• Hanger, former environmental chief of Penn.: Natural gas is the dirtiest fuel
  

"I often hear that gas drilling is the single worst possible energy source, it’s poisoning our waters and that we can immediately replace it and implicitly coal and oil with renewables. The risk is so high that we should stop it immediately. And that’s just not true either, at least when you compare risks that we accept from all our other energy choices," Hanger says. "I live in the Three Mile Island evacuation area. Three Mile Island’s a nuclear plant. It had a meltdown. There are lots of old coal fire power plants operating this morning that have no pollution controls or very few pollution controls on them. They are putting out huge amounts of mercury soot, and other pollutants that according to the EPA and very good science cause 34,000 premature deaths a year.

"Corn ethanol and big hydro have massive water impacts much bigger than gas drilling. So I’m not belittling or minimizing the impacts from gas drilling. They exist. But to exaggerate them and not recognize that those impacts are actually less and the risks are less than other forms of energy that we are totally dependent on right now. I don’t think it is correct or in some cases it’s just not honest," Hanger adds.

Again, we'll keep doing this until Washington runs out of myths, as in never. So check back.

As a teaser, we in the next few days will get other analysts' take on shale gas and manufacturing renaissance (hint: maybe not), and whether new fracking regulations kill the natural gas industry.

As a culture, we're kind of a little bit obsessed with big navy ships. They're in, like, a million movies. Cher sang on one for a music video. We play basketball games on them now.

But you know who's the most obsessed? Politicians.

Candidate Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his V.P. running mate in front of the USS Wisconsin. President Obama gave a veteran-supportive speech on the USS Vinson. President George W. Bush announced the end of combat operations on the USS Abraham Lincoln. And President Obama will go to the USS Lincoln in Hampton Roads, Va., Tuesday to talk about the sequester problem.

The basic reason is because aircraft carriers are awesome, and politicians want to be awesome, too.

"It's like a spacecraft but here on earth," says Sean Bercaw. He's both a ship captain and a former naval officer who teaches nautical science. "Their scale, their magnitude, is humongous. It's hard for us to get our brain around."

And by extension, politicians want that sense of presence.

"Aircraft carriers are a symbol of American power and strength," points out David Gergen, longtime political advisor to several presidents and who now directs Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership.

"You wrap yourself in the flag and title of commander-in-chief," he says. "There's a certain totem aspect to these carriers."

Gergen says the tradition goes back to President Ronald Reagan and perhaps before; "the last three presidents have turned to aircraft carriers as props."

Sean Bercaw says the use of battleships as a form of messaging goes even further back. "One of the more famous platforms was at the end of World War II," he says, "where the Japanese emperor signed their defeat on the battleship Missouri." (That's, incidentally, the same ship that Cher sang on, FYI.)

In terms of marketing value, it's priceless, but it doesn't have to cost all that much. According to the Navy, if they approve you, the Navy won't charge you anything to use its ships in a movie or speech except what it costs to get your equipment on board. That can cost a lot if you have a lot of equipment -- $150,000 to rent a crane, for example. It cost around $3 million to put on the NCAA Carrier Classic games in 2011 and $2 million of that went to getting stuff set up on the ship.

With such scale, Gergen says "there is a risk of grandiosity" for politicians.

Like when George Bush landed on the USS Lincoln and gave a speech with a "Mission Accomplished" banner in the background.

What's in a name? There's got to be a better one for the 'sequester' cuts that are set to roll out beginning March 1, if Congress doesn't act in time. Speaker of the House John Boehner is using "Obamaquester;" Marketplace listeners have their own lists going.

Names aside -- how much of an impact will the sequester have on our economy?

"The fundamentals of the economy actually look pretty good...well, they would look good if it weren't for the politicians," said Fortune magazine's Leigh Gallagher. "We were really kind of gaining a lot of momentum on this recovery -- certainly if you look at the stock market, that's a completely different story. But these budget cuts, I'll call them, are not going to be good on top of the tax increase -- the payroll tax increase had already had an impact," she said. "I think the uncertainty...that's going to impact everything."

CNBC's John Carney, though, said he believes everything will be fine. "The actual budget cuts only amount to around $44 billion; it's not a lot of money," he said. "So we can easily take it, even at the full number of $85 [billion], we could take that. Our economy is strong enough right now that it turns out that you know, maybe this whole -- I won't use the 'S' word, I'll call it 'March Madness' -- isn't such a bad idea."

Listen to the full audio above for more analysis on the sequester. The two also offered some good reading for the weekend ahead.

Leigh Gallagher's picks:

• Time Magazine's special report on health insurance: "Why medical bills are killing us"
• A NYT op-ed on better productivity (hint: relax!)
• From the wayback machine, a 1987 look at the Vatican's finances by Shawn Tully that Fortune re-ran last week

And John Carney's suggestions:

• Crunch Time: Fiscal Crises and the Role of Monetary Policy. New paper from David Greenlaw, James D. Hamilton, Peter Hooper and Fred Mishkin that argues that debt becomes a problem when it reaches 80 percent of GDP
• Here's a cheery thought: We're underestimating the chance of human extinction, via The Atlantic
• Crown jewel lock-ups (Harvard Law School Forum): A new era of M&A is seeing the return of an old and controversial form of deal protection

Another real world activity quickly moving online -- gambling. On Thursday Nevada became the first state to legalize online gambling, narrowly beating out its longtime rival, New Jersey. Delaware and California are also likely to follow.  So now you won't have to leave the comfort of your couch to have the casino experience -- minus the showgirls and cirque de soleil. But what does it take to win online?

To answer that, we turn to the Wizard of Odds, Michael Shackleford, an actuary and a former professor of casino math at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Besides wagering at home in your pajamas, does gambling online have an advantage?  

"Assuming a fair game, the odds are generally better online. I attribute that to lower overhead costs with running an online casino. With slot machines, in Las Vegas they generally return anywhere from 88-92 percent whereas an Internet casino will usually from 93-97 percent. The odds are significantly better online in my opinion," says Shackleford.

DATA FROM: Wizard of Odds

But what risks come with Internet gambling?

"Basically the casinos are on the honor system to give you a fair game and I and other watchdog websites have busted casinos often for cheating. Often the way it works out is a player will post a log file of his play, or video of his play, and say this is just ridiculous how much I'm losing. As a mathematician by training, I can look at the log files and analyze what is the probability that a player would lose as much money as he did assuming a fair game. Lots of times the results are just off the chart. Like, the probability of luck this bad in a fair game being one in trillions," says Shackleford. "The regulation is very feeble. I think it's up to independents like me to keep an eye on the business."

How easy is it to cash out winnings online?

"With a good Internet casino, you have to click withdrawal, how much do you want to withdraw, and a check will be on its way," says Shackleford. "With a good casino -- not every Internet casino is a good casino. Some of them may not be you at all. Some of them may drag their feet and make you nag them a few times. For the most part, Internet gambling is unregulated."

Shackleford says Internet casinos subscribe to this philosophy: They want a player's deposit to last a long time and for him or her to get a lot of fun and entertainment out of their money (but eventually lose it). If a player has gotten a lot of entertainment out of their money, he or she is likely to be happy and make another deposit.

Shackleford offers these tips to succeed at online gambling:
1. Look for a good bonus that you can play on a low house advantage game.
2. The two best games to play in an online casino are usually Blackjack and Video poker (Craps is not bad either).
3. Remember that it's fun and to keep it in moderation.

Sequestration doesn’t just refer to budget cuts. You can sequester juries during trials or carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Catholic cardinals are sequestered to choose a new pope.

“It’s all about being kept separate,” says Mignon Fogarty, better known by her online handle Grammar Girl and the author of Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. “It comes from a Latin word that means to remove or separate or keep in a safe place.”

Sequester was first used in reference to budget politics in the mid 1980s. Under President Ronald Reagan, the economy was doing well, says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “But both parties were worried that domestic spending continued to grow, but taxes had been cut significantly.”

So Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. It set targets for deficit reduction and said that if Congress and the President couldn’t agree on how to meet those goals, the money would be automatically taken away. With that, the sequester was born.

Just like now, Zelizer says politicians might have used the word sequester to talk about budget cuts without actually having to say budget cuts.  

“It’s inside-the-Beltway rhetoric that’s being used intentionally to try to keep some of this inside the Beltway,” he says.

Senator Phil Gramm from Texas (R), now retired, thinks the name is crystal clear.

“To me, sequester conjured up taking something off the table, withholding something,” he counters.

He’s the “Gramm” in the title of the law and the one who put sequestration in the bill.

“It’s always helpful if when you invent a term, if it already conjures up what you’re try to say,” he adds.

Gramm says the term was actually suggested to him by then House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-TX). They also considered “impoundment,” but it had already been used for something else.

Now, Gramm stands by both the name and the idea behind it: That sequestration should be a last resort, a final backstop on overspending.

“If a sequester is what you got to do to get people’s attention, I would do it,” he says.

While Gramm says he’s more proud of raising two sons, he doesn’t mind being known as the father of sequestration, too.

Today, Olympic medalist and double amputee Oscar Pistorius was granted bail. Pistorius was arrested nine days ago after the shooting death of his girlfriend. You’ve probably heard about this story...in fact, you’ve probably heard a lot about this story. The media frenzy around Pistorius is in full swing -- and some people are even calling this the next O.J. Simpson trial.

Entertainment analyst Robert Galinsky says another O.J. trial might be a stretch, but the Oscar Pistorius story is almost tailor-made for the media.

"Here comes a real-life hero," says Galinsky. "This guy who has overcome being a double amputee, he’s created a success story for himself by being an Olympian, and something major like this happens, it’s a bonanza for the media."

News networks have gotten very skilled at making stories like these -- whether they be natural disasters, celebrity scandals or shootings -- into mega-news events, says Aram Sinnreich, a media professor at Rutgers University.

"These stories all have this kind of car crash quality to them," says Sinnreich. "Like, you don't want to look, but you can't look away." That translates into big ratings and ad dollars. Sinnreich cites the recent story about the stranded Carnival Cruise ship. "CNN actually saw a 74 percent ratings boost during their several day coverage," he says.

Those ratings bumps have now been baked into the business model of 24-hour cable news, says Robert Thompson, a professor of TV and popular culture at Syracuse University. Thompson says networks learned how to make a news event into a media blitz during the murder trial of another famous athlete: O.J. Simpson.

"Many people point to that as the real moment when we reached maturity for this kind of coverage," says Thompson. "These kinds of stories, in effect, become cottage industries."

Thompson points out that O.J.’s trial meant months of gavel-to-gavel coverage -- lawyers and witnesses became mini-celebrities and news stories themselves. Thompson says you just can’t get that kind of mileage out the Greek debt crisis or the dreaded sequester.

Today, Olympic medalist and double amputee Oscar Pistorius was granted bail. Pistorius was arrested nine days ago after the shooting death of his girlfriend. You’ve probably heard about this story...in fact, you’ve probably heard a lot about this story. The media frenzy around Pistorius is in full swing -- and some people are even calling this the next O.J. Simpson trial.

Entertainment analyst Robert Galinsky says another O.J. trial might be a stretch, but the Oscar Pistorius story is almost tailor-made for the media.

"Here comes a real-life hero," says Galinsky. "This guy who has overcome being a double amputee, he’s created a success story for himself by being an Olympian, and something major like this happens, it’s a bonanza for the media."

News networks have gotten very skilled at making stories like these -- whether they be natural disasters, celebrity scandals or shootings -- into mega-news events, says Aram Sinnreich, a media professor at Rutgers University.

"These stories all have this kind of car crash quality to them," says Sinnreich. "Like, you don't want to look, but you can't look away." That translates into big ratings and ad dollars. Sinnreich cites the recent story about the stranded Carnival Cruise ship. "CNN actually saw a 74 percent ratings boost during their several day coverage," he says.

Those ratings bumps have now been baked into the business model of 24-hour cable news, says Robert Thompson, a professor of TV and popular culture at Syracuse University. Thompson says networks learned how to make a news event into a media blitz during the murder trial of another famous athlete: O.J. Simpson.

"Many people point to that as the real moment when we reached maturity for this kind of coverage," says Thompson. "These kinds of stories, in effect, become cottage industries."

Thompson points out that O.J.’s trial meant months of gavel-to-gavel coverage -- lawyers and witnesses became mini-celebrities and news stories themselves. Thompson says you just can’t get that kind of mileage out the Greek debt crisis or the dreaded sequester.