New FTC Spanish-Language Video Tells How to Spot and Report Imposter Scams

New FTC Spanish-Language Video Tells How to Spot and Report Imposter Scams Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, today introduced a new Spanish-language video about imposter scams at the Legislative Summit hosted by the National Association of Hispanic Publishers and the National Newspaper Publications Association. The video is a first-person account from a Latina who was harassed by scammers impersonating court officials and lawyers, who tried to coerce her into paying hundreds of dollars for a debt she didn’t owe. The impersonators threatened severe consequences – including arrest and an investigation into her family’s immigration status – if she didn’t pay. “Fraud Affects Every Community: Imposter Scams” is part our Fraud Affects Every Community video series, featuring people from different communities sharing their first-hand experience with scammers. The videos are available at ftc.gov/EveryCommunity. The Federal Trade Commission works to promote competition, and protect and educate consumers. You can learn more about consumer topics and file a consumer complaint online or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).  Like the FTC on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, read our blogs and subscribe to press releases for the latest FTC news and resources. Contact Information MEDIA CONTACT: Frank Dorman Office of Public Affairs 202-326-2674 For Consumers Blog: Avoiding imposter scams Video: Fraud Affects Every Community: Imposter Scams Avoiding imposter scams [video] by Alvaro Puig Consumer Education Specialist, FTC We hear first-hand stories from people around the country about how scammers are targeting people in every community. And while the techniques the scammers use may vary, there’s one thing these scams have in common: sometimes, the first step in avoiding a scam is talking about it with someone you trust.

Wall Street Tours the Tesla Factory—and Loves What It Sees (BW)

Lots of robots, lots of new capacity, and buzz.

Wall Street analysts have been touring Tesla’s massive factory in Fremont, Calif., and they're returning with the same conclusion: Elon Musk's electric-vehicle company is getting ready for something big. In a sign of this enthusiasm, Robert W. Baird & Co. upgraded its Tesla rating on Monday morning following a factory tour. 

Tesla spent some $1.6 billion on major upgrades last year as it prepares to launch its first attempt at a mass-market car—the Model 3—on March 31.1 The transformation is striking, according to auto analysts at Stifel Financial Corp., Credit Suisse Group AG, and Baird. The firms are telling investors that Tesla is learning from the mistakes that delayed its previous launches and is on track to make the shift from producing tens of thousands of $80,000 cars to hundreds of thousands of $35,000 cars—assuming the Model 3 proves a success with drivers.2

Here are some of the changes the analysts witnessed on Teslas factory floor and in discussions with Tesla's new chief financial officer, Jason Wheeler.  

'Stunning Progress'

Last week, Stifel analysts returned from their fourth visit in four years to Tesla’s flagship factory in Fremont. “In roughly one year since our last visit,” wrote analyst James Albertine, “the progress witnessed is truly stunning."  Tesla shares have jumped 45 percent in the past month as Musk, the chief executive, sought to reassure investors that the company is still on track after the challenging and much-delayed launch of the Model X luxury SUV.  

New Aluminum Stamping Press

Stifel and Credit Suisse both noted Tesla's new aluminum stamping press, which Credit Suisse's Galves says has 10 to 20 times the output of  Tesla's older machine. The bodies of the Model S and Model X are both made of aluminum, which costs twice as much as steel but weighs less. Tesla hasn't yet disclosed the composition of the Model 3. Keeping the weight down on electric vehicles helps achieve the maximum range on the battery, but maintaining a balance between cost and performance is crucial for a mass-market plug-in car.

Paint Shop

Tesla has built a new state-of-the-art paint shop that's capable of scaling up to 500,000 cars a year. That happens to be Tesla's production forecast for 2020, a 10-fold increase from last year's sales. If Tesla is to achieve that lofty goal, paint jobs won't be a holdup.

Faster Assembly Lines

Tesla's assembly lines are faster and more automated than those observed during a tour 18 months ago, according to Credit Suisse's Galves. The body assembly line is now rated to produce about 175,000 cars a year, with final assembly capability of more than 100,000 cars. 

'Dimensional Design Studio'

This new area of the factory is a place where Tesla engineers can "stress test vehicle design features in a controlled environment on site," said Albertine. 

More Robots 

"Robotics systems are customized, production processes are revolutionary, and attention-to-detail/supply chain management is improving by the minute," wrote Stifel's Albertine. "We do not believe this production process is one competitors can easily recreate." Tesla's manufacturing skills will help the company reach its target of more than 25 percent gross profit margins on the Model X, according to Baird's Kallo. 

More Humans 

Tesla expanded its workforce by 29 percent last year, to 13,058, according to company filings. That's up from fewer than 900 employees in 2010. The workers have been consolidated within the Fremont facility, with "several football-field sized areas spanning the entry to the facility with desks, computers and seemingly invigorated staff," Albertine said. "There was an energy and buzz within the facility that is hard to imagine as an outsider."

Batteries

Tesla is already shifting battery production work to its massive "gigafactory" under construction in Nevada. After the factory tour in Fremont, Baird's Kallo came back convinced that battery costs are already just half the industry average and are falling more quickly than most estimates. "This should allow Tesla to produce the Model 3 with healthy margins, and to invest in vehicle aesthetics and performance, placing it above competing vehicles," he wrote in a note to investors on March 14. He upgraded his rating on the stock to "outperform" and raised his price target to $300. The stock rose 3.8 percent, to $215.47, on Monday morning. 

Lessons From the Model X

Tesla's luxury SUV, the Model X, has seen long delays and a slow rollout due to several engineering choices, including complex vertically opening "falcon wing" doors, monopost rear seats, and the largest piece of windshield glass in the industry. All three analysts noted seeing the Model X in production lines but still at a relatively slow rate compared with the Model S. Albertine counted roughly five or six Model S sedans in production for every Model X.

Wheeler, Tesla's new chief financial officer, assured the analysts that lessons have been learned. It appears, wrote Galves, that the engineers at Telsa led the planning meetings for the Model X, with insufficient input from the financing, manufacturing, and purchasing departments. Now those groups seem to have an equal voice. "Model 3 launch timing and ease of mass production is significantly more important than it was for the Model X," Galves wrote. "On the Model 3, management indicated that there is a clear focus on ease of build, on-time launch, and cost."  

Google's Chris Urmson explains self-driving car crash

During a presentation at Austin's SXSW, Google's director of its self-driving car project, Chris Urmson, explained exactly what happened when one of its self-driving cars collided with a bus.

Taking the stage at Austin's SXSW festival, Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, explained precisely what happened during a recent collision between a self-driving car and a bus. He talked further about the progress of self-driving car technology and how even that incident was a crucial learning experience for the technology.

The collision occurred on February 14 between a Lexus RX 450h which Google had modified with sensors and controls to enable self-driving, and a city bus in Mountain View, California. The low-speed collision resulted in minor damage to both bus and car, but no injuries. The collision was the first caused by one of Google's self-driving cars after having covered 1.4 million miles of real world testing.

At SXSW, Urmson explained that the company had taught its cars to move next to the curb when planning a right turn, sidling by traffic stopped at a traffic light, much as human drivers do. As the car proceeded along the curb, it sensed a few sandbags on the road ahead of it, so decided to stop and wait for the lane next to it to clear.

After the light turned green, the traffic began moving. The car detected a city bus coming up the lane, and made the assumption the bus driver would slow down. As Urmson told it, the bus driver assumed the car would stay put, and kept on going. The car pulled out, hitting the side of the bus at about 2 mph.

In the wake of that collision, Urmson said his team "implemented 3,500 new tests to make sure this won't happen again."

This graphic shows what Google's self-driving car "saw" through its sensors just before it collided with a city bus.

Deep learning technology is playing an important part in Google's self-driving car project, and the experience of the car involved in this collision will be transmitted to every other car in Google's fleet as a new set of driving parameters. Urmson said that all the Google cars currently self-driving on public roads are collecting experiences from real-world situations, and sharing them through deep learning technology.

The cars not only drive 10,000 miles a week, but Google also runs 3 million miles of simulation driving in a computer every day.

As a counter-example to the bus collision, Urmson pointed out a successful example of a self-driving car avoiding a more dangerous collision, where Urmson said he, as a human driver, would likely have failed. In this instance, the car, driving on a one-way street, approached a four-way intersection. Its sensors showed other traffic, including a bicyclist in the lane ahead of it and a pedestrian in one of the crosswalks. Suddenly, another bicyclist came out of a cross-street at the intersection, turning left the wrong way on the one-way street. The car recognized the danger and stopped, avoiding hitting the wrong-way bicyclist.

Urmson emphasized that the goal of Google's project is safety, an attempt to eliminate, or at least mitigate, the 1.2 million traffic deaths that happen every year around the world.

Tell the FCC to Modernize Lifetime Today

This month, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on the proposal to modernize the Lifeline program to include broadband Internet.   For decades, the Lifeline program has successfully helped families across America pay for basic telephone services that connect them to emergency services, doctors, schools, job opportunities, and more. But in 2016, people are using the Internet for many of these services, so families need to have the choice of using the subsidy for Internet access. Nearly 4000 people have signed our Change.org petition asking the FCC to vote yes on the proposal to bring millions of Americans. We will be submitting the petition to the FCC next week, but we still need 1000 signatures to reach our goal. Thank you to the thousands of supporters who signed our petition. If you already signed, please spread the word and share the message on social media so we can reach our goal. If you haven't signed, now's your chance! Every voice will count when the FCC considers the proposal this month. You can tune into the FCC open meeting to watch the vote here on March 31st and follow along on social media using #FCCLive. Thanks, Public Knowledge Tweet this: Tell @FCC to modernize the #Lifeline program to include #BroadbandAccess!  Sign the @publicknowledge petition today: https://goo.gl/AqeI06

Public Knowledge · 1818 N St NW, Suite 410, Washington, DC 20036, United States This email was sent to fernando@camacol.org. To stop receiving emails, click here. You can also keep up with Public Knowledge on Twitter or Facebook.

CFOs fear tech disruption, but aren't doing anything about it

A recent report from Accenture Strategy said 24% of CFOs fear their business will be eliminated by disruption and 58% believe their industry is in danger, but most are doing nothing to stop it.

According to a new Accenture Strategy report released on Tuesday, 24% of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) believe that disruption will destroy their company, but most aren't doing anything to stop it.

The report, titled CFO Reality Check: Good Intentions in Cost Management are Not Good Enough, showed that despite this fear of disruption, only 6% plan to prioritize strategic cost management in 2016. Strategic cost management is a way of analyzing cost drivers in order to lower costs and maximize the value of a business's assets, which can help a business stave off disruption by staying efficient in spending.

SEE: Quality assurance checklist for outsourced projects (Tech Pro Research)

The CFOs in the following industries were the most concerned about their businesses being disrupted:

• Insurance - 40%
• Energy - 31%
• Consumer Goods - 23%
• Automotive and Industrial - 23%

In terms of industry-wide disruption, 58% of CFOs believe that their industry will be disrupted and 41% believe that disruption will eventually take out their competitors. Additionally, almost 60% of CFOs feel that strategic cost management must play a role in how they respond to disruption, but they don't seem to be ready to put it into action.

In the report, Accenture Strategy senior managing director Christian Campagna said that the role of the CFOs has been shifting over the past decade. CFOs now have more say in the overall direction of the business (not just its finances), and that shift has led many CFOs to begin focusing on digitally-driven strategic cost management to help their company grow and stay agile.

"More than half of CFOs already have performance objectives in place that make them responsible for strategic cost management on a daily basis," Campagna said. "The challenge will be to consistently perform against those set objectives."

Aneel Delawalla, managing director for Accenture Strategy, described the shift as CFOs evolving from "corporate bean counter to enterprise value architect."

Accenture's argument in the report is that strategic cost management, using digital technologies, is one of the main strategies that will help organizations fight off competitive disruption. That is opposed to ad hoc cost cutting, where cuts are made as needed to stay in budget with less regard for an overall strategy.

The report found that more than half of the surveyed CFOs who are using strategic cost management are primarily moving to mobility (54%) and cloud (52%) as part of their strategy. Over the next three years, the report said, robotics and big data analytics will also play a key role.

For businesses looking to engage with strategic cost management, Accenture recommends three steps to take:

1. Pass a digital stress test - Plan for digital disruption and take into account what aspects of the business and cost structure must be changed in order to survive.
2. Create a 'digital-first' plan of action - Reorient your cost base and cost structure to focus on each business area being digital at its core.
3. Obsess over customers - Strategic cost management helps the business, but the customer experience shouldn't suffer for it.

The results of this report were compiled from a survey conducted with 216 CFOs of organizations that have global annual revenues greater than $1 billion.

Shale Oil Isn't Saudi Arabia's Only Nemesis (BW)

• Even when glut stops growing, market might shrug: SocGen
• History shows oil rebound will hinge on stockpiles: Goldman

Even if Saudi Arabia wins its struggle with U.S. shale producers over market share, it will face a new billion-barrel adversary.

It won’t be regional nemesis Iran, a resurgent Iraq or long-standing competitor Russia. The answer will be more prosaic: Even when overproduction ends, a stockpile surplus of more than 1 billion barrels built up since 2014 will remain, weighing on prices. Inventories will keep accumulating until the end of 2017, the International Energy Agency forecasts, and clearing the glut could take years.

“We may get to the end of the year, and even though supply and demand are in balance, the market shrugs and says ‘So what?’ because it’s waiting for proof of inventory draw-downs,” said Mike Wittner, head of oil markets at Societe Generale SA in New York. “Moving from stock-builds to balance might not be enough.

Since it was unveiled in late 2014, Saudi Arabia’s strategy to bring the world’s oversupplied oil markets back into balance by squeezing competitors with lower prices has proved grueling, dragging crude down to less than $30 a barrel last month. While a gradual decline in U.S. production signals supply will stop growing, the second act of the process may prove the longest as stockpiles slowly contract.

For a historical precedent, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. points to the oil glut that developed in 1998 to 1999 as demand plunged in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. Crude prices kept falling even as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries made output cuts in March and then June of 1998, slipping below $10 a barrel in London in December of that year. It wasn’t until stockpiles in developed economies started dropping in early 1999 that the recovery took shape.

Between late 2014, when developed-world stockpiles were at about average levels, and the end of this year, global inventories will have swelled by about 1.1 billion barrels, IEA data shows. Another 37 million will be added in 2017. Taking the agency’s projections for how quickly inventories will then fall, and estimates from Energy Aspects Ltd. that 290 million barrels will flow into China’s strategic reserves, it will take until 2021 to clear what’s accumulated.

The latest data from the American Petroleum Institute show the build-up in the U.S. is only getting bigger, with the nation’s crude stockpiles ballooning by 9.9 million barrels last week. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were little changed at $34.38 a barrel at 12:03 p.m. in New York.

“For the previous eight quarters to this one, we have had global implied stock-builds, so we have accumulated a lot of oil,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, head of commodity markets strategy at BNP Paribas SA in London. “It’s going to take a lot of time to work out that excess oil from the system.”

Missing Barrels

Inventories could erode as early as this summer because the decline in U.S. shale output will probably be steeper than is widely assumed, according to Vienna-based consultants JBC Energy GmbH, which predicts prices could rebound to $50 a barrel in June. Much of the surplus the IEA estimates accumulated in the fourth quarter of 2015 hasn’t actually appeared in storage, suggesting the excess is smaller than thought, Standard Chartered Plc says.

“The most likely explanation for the majority of the missing barrels is simply that they do not exist” and are the “result of underestimation of demand and overestimation of supply,” said Paul Horsnell, head of commodities research at Standard Chartered. “They imply that the global market will swing back into deficit well before consensus.”

Saudi Arabia repeated last week that it won’t speed up the re-balancing process by reducing its own supply. While the kingdom and some other OPEC members have agreed with Russia to freeze output at January levels, a coordinated cut is “not happening,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston on Feb. 23.

Inventories started to swell in 2014 as the wave of supply unleashed by the U.S. shale oil boom, coupled with other new output, outpaced growth in global oil demand by a factor of three. The pile-up continued in 2015 as OPEC members like Saudi Arabia and Iraq raised production to defend their share of world markets. Tanks are poised to fill even more as Iran -- freed as of last month from international sanctions -- pushes new exports into a market that’s already saturated.

The time it will take to use up what’s sitting in tanks around the world adds to Goldman Sachs’s confidence in its prediction, by now an oil-industry mantra, that prices will stay “lower for longer.”

“The market will have a hard time trading higher once supply and demand shift into a deficit as the inventory overhang will likely act as a drag until stock levels are normalized,” said Jeff Currie, head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs in New York.

How Amazon Shames Warehouse Workers for Alleged Theft (BusinessWeek)

“It’s just letting people know that you’re being watched.”

While waiting to clock in each morning, workers at some Amazon.com warehouses get a steady stream of company-provided reading: the stories of co-workers fired for theft.

In an effort to discourage stealing, Amazon has put up flatscreen TVs that display examples of alleged on-the-job theft, say 11 of the company’s current and former warehouse workers and antitheft staff. The alleged offenders aren’t identified by name. Each is represented by a black silhouette stamped with the word “terminated” and accompanied by details such as when they stole, what they stole, how much it was worth, and how they got caught—changing an outbound package’s address, for example, or stuffing merchandise in their socks. Some of the silhouettes are marked “arrested.”

Theft is a persistent concern for Amazon, with warehouses full of small but valuable items and a workforce with high turnover and low pay. Workers interviewed for this story say the range of thefts posted on the screens is as varied as the company’s sprawling catalog: DVDs, an iPad, jewelry, a lighter, makeup, a microwave, phone cases, Pop Rocks, video games. Several recall a post about an employee fired for stealing a co-worker’s lunch.

The digital bulletin boards also occasionally display information about firings related to workplace violence. There are cheerier announcements, too, such as updates on incentive bonuses or a message about Black History Month. In some warehouses that don’t have flatscreens, workers say, tales of firings are posted on sheets of paper tacked to bulletin boards or taped to the wall.

Many workers say their wages or workloads concern them more than the screens

Former managers in Amazon’s loss-prevention department say the use of theft stories was widespread during their tenure. Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.

Many of the workers say the screens aren’t a top concern compared with wages or workload. “Only people that would have something to say about it is people that’s doing wrong,” says Maurice Jones, a warehouse worker who left Amazon in February. “It’s just letting people know that you’re being watched.”

Yet the tales of theft and punishment are hard for workers to ignore—like a car crash, Jones says. “It could be one lane that’s blocked, but all the traffic slows down because everyone wants to look at it,” he says. “Like, ‘Who was stupid this time?’ ”

For some of the workers, the practice carries a whiff of prison. “That’s a weird way to go about scaring people,” says James McCracken, who, like Jones, used to work at Amazon’s warehouse in San Bernardino, Calif. “I think that’s offensive.”

Security experts say Amazon’s anecdotal warnings are a natural extension of older corporate loss-prevention tactics, such as frisking employees as they leave a store. “There are people who will never steal. There’s a certain percentage of people that will always steal,” says Pat Murphy, the president of LPT Security Consulting. “You’re always trying to influence that middle group by reminding them there is a high probability they will get caught, and if I get caught, these are the consequences.” Murphy, who spent two decades in retail security after leaving the Dallas police force, says that while the psychology of Amazon’s flatscreen messages is familiar, he’s never heard of anything quite like them.

Amazon’s methods can be extreme. In 2010 several Pennsylvania warehouse employees required medical attention after having to stand outside for hours in freezing cold after a fire alarm went off. Workers wearing T-shirts and shorts because of the heat in the warehouse weren’t allowed to go to their cars because, they said, the company was afraid the alarm had been pulled to cover a theft. Amazon said in a statement at the time that employee safety was a top priority and it had developed faster fire alarm procedures.

Antitheft tactics have advanced with technology, Murphy says. In the 1980s retailers tried embedding subliminal messages in the music played in their stores to deter customers from stealing. Today, break-room warning posters and anonymous hotlines are commonplace. “The types of methods used by warehouses and fulfillment centers are only limited by your imagination,” Murphy says, “and whatever the law allows.”

The bottom line: One of Amazon’s latest approaches to deterring theft is to post tales of fired workers where peers can see them.