STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 1 February 2013

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 1 February 2013[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 31 January 2013

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 31 January 2013
[center][font color=red]
Dow Jones 13,860.58 -49.84 (-0.36%)
S&P 500 1,498.11 -3.85 (-0.26%)
Nasdaq 3,142.13 -0.18 (-0.01%)


[font color=green]10 Year 1.98% +0.01 (0.51%)
[font color=black]30 Year 3.17% 0.00 (0.00%) [font color=black]


[center][/font]

[HR width=85%]

[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
[center]


[/center]

[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

[/center]

[center]

[/center]

[HR width=95%]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
[center]
Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
[/center]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
[center]
The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
[/center]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
[center]
Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


[/center]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
[center]
LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
[center]
Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
[/center]

[div]
[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.



[HR width=95%]


[center]
[HR width=95%]
[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]

[Demeter]

1. You can't take it with you--Mr. CEO

and if you want to, Dubai will make sure you suffer for it.

[Demeter]

2. Since X always gives us insight into the day by photo, this is what I feel like

Will someone PLEASE turn off the jet stream, for a couple of weeks?

Maybe a good night's sleep will help.

[xchrom]

34. oh -- honey -- i feel your pain...

the wind came back with a vengeance this morning -- the Do is in permanent rearrangement syndrome.

[AnneD]

45. When I was young, I was a Deadhead,

these days I am a Greatful Bedhead.

[xchrom]

46. i try to carry a wig in my handbag.

you know...you just never know -- and sometimes it just won't comb out.

[AnneD]

50. I always carry...

an emergency TIARA.

[xchrom]

65. !

[jtuck004]

3. Obama's Jobs Council Fail

Their headline seems tough, but apparently it's too difficult for these titans to come up with a freakin' list that doesn't just benefit the wealthy.

Mother Jones, here.
The president's feckless jobs council is set to expire this week. That might be for the best.
By Erika Eichelberger | Wed Jan. 30, 2013 3:01 AM PST

President Barack Obama's jobs council, a panel formed in January 2011 to gather outside expertise on job creation, is set to expire Thursday. It appears unlikely [1] that the president will renew it for another term, but experts say that the council has been such a loser that its death might actually be a good thing.
...
"It's almost an insult," to have someone like Immelt head the panel, Baker says. "I mean, there are arguments for outsourcing, but to put someone in the job of doing that as head of the jobs council really is kind of of a joke." (When reports came out that GE also used tax loopholes and creative accounting to avoid paying taxes in the United States [8], there were calls for Immelt to resign [9].)
...
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, one of the two labor leaders on the panel, slammed its last report, taking particular issue with its corporate tax-cut proposals: "By reducing overall revenues these reforms could easily have the opposite [of the intended] effect…starving the government of the revenue it needs to create good jobs and upgrade our infrastructure and education systems, thereby making the United States a less attractive place to invest." When asked for the labor federation's stance on the expiration of the panel, a spokesperson directed Mother Jones to that assessment.
...
Baker says it might be nice if Obama used the end of the jobs council's term to reorient it towards actual job creation, but he's not too optimistic. Ultimately, he says, it's probably better to let the council fade into the ether. The whole exercise turned out to be mostly "a symbolic gesture," he says—"and not even a very good symbolic gesture."

They could hire some unemployed folk to make calls (ask them for ideas too), maybe work with volunteers at a local college. Call looking for ideas, a month or so ought to do it. There is already the get out the vote organization, there should be enough left of that to get a phone bank and some volunteers together. It would be classy if the budget was higher than pizza and soft drinks, really pay people, kinda like the other guys. Respectful. But one does the best they can with what they have, eh?

Put up a website, email, start asking some of the unemployed folk around the country what needs to be out there to get them better, (not just busy and poor. Those will be many of the numbers in the BLS report shortly.). Maybe call a few community organizers. Call some retired neighbors - they actually lived through a time when most people could get jobs, so their experience might be invaluable. In the November BLS survey 26 million people said they want a job, should be easy to find some. Do more than these bozos did in two years ('course, they had jobs, so maybe that was expecting too much).

1 - Single Payer healthcare at Medicare prices (subsidized for a 3 years) for anyone who starts even a little company. If they form a cooperative, it's offered for everyone and their families. It's a loan if they can pay it back.

2 - $3000 a month to anyone that starts a business.Offer it to 10 million households in a lottery. They just have to try to create a plan and work it for 3 years. We could pay it the same way we send currency into a country we are at war in, nobody seems to say much about those $.

3 - We made $26 trillion available to save banks from their own fraud. Lets set aside another $26 to rebuild and recapture a few of the industries that make sense for our future. Maybe we make damn sure there are enough sales of something like Solyndra that they don't fold. Sell inexpensive to expensive electric trucks and find a way to compete against the world as a cooperative. Teach everyone about...

There are lot of ideas, you just have to trust people and invest in them.

[Demeter]

6. Typical for this Administration to Create Potemkin Commissions

I have no hope, I see no future---Hotler

[Hotler]

33. Damn it! I didn't mean for my shit attitude to be contagious. Sorry.

I really do try and see and find the good every day. It helps if I stay away from reading the news and have short beer or a shot of tequila early, not a lot, just a little. I hope your day goes well and your weekend better. Peace.

[Demeter]

39. You are merely the Voice

Obama is the cause.

[tclambert]

4. Wow, CEOs must work really hard and be really, really smart.

400 times more than the average worker. 400 times more than the average worker.

Or maybe they are just 400 times more virtuous than the average worker.

I bet the CEOs whine that they deserve 500 times more.

[Demeter]

7. How About 400 X more greedy and corrupt and selfish and evil and short-sighted and don't-give-a-care

and so forth

[Roland99]

5. US Futures up on job hopes

S&P 500 +0.3%
DOW +0.4%
NASDAQ +0.3%

[Demeter]

8. Iceland’s Lessons on How to Fix a Bank Crisis

PLEASE NOTE THAT ICELAND IS NOT OUT OF THE WOODS FINANCIALLY OR LEGALLY BY ANY MEANS, YET.

ON THE OTHER HAND, THEY ARE THE ONLY NATION MAKING A TRUE RECOVERY FROM THE GLOBAL DEPRESSION 2.0



SEE VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH ICELAND'S PRESIDENT AT LINK

There are two reasons why this is such an interesting interview.

Firstly, Mr Grimsson raises some very good points about the effect a large financial services industry on the rest of the economy. He also asks the important question as to why exactly a private bank should be treated differently from any other private enterprise even if has some strategic importance and why exactly national citizens should suffer due to poor business practices. In that regard, Iceland, much like Sweden, has become a model of what should be done after a banking crisis. In short, the aim of the game is to save the banks, but not the bankers.

There is, however, one small problem with Mr Grimsson’s points. He appears to be doing some fairly large historical revisionism in the account of what actually happened. The Icelandic government was not ‘wise’ in it’s implementation of a non-orthodox approach at all. It actually attempted to keep some of the banking system alive, including giving them money along with ‘un-lawful’ loans and part of the IMF program that came later was used save a number of building societies.

It is correct to state that Iceland didn’t bail out its three large banks that collapsed in October 2008, but this was simply because at 900% of GDP it was absolutely impossible. The Government did initially attempt to save Glitnir, but it became apparent very quickly that the central bank did not have the foreign reserves available to keep the banking system alive.

In the end Iceland did become a lesson for the rest of the world in how to best manage the crisis, but the initial response certainly wasn’t planned and certainly wasn’t due to the wisdom of the government. If you are interested in reading some future information I recommend you SEE LINK.


Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/icelands-lessons-on-how-to-fix-a-bank-crisis.html#xYPo1CF7lqMRtt4x.99

[Demeter]

9. Marcy Wheeler: Lanny Breuer Now Blames 94 US Attorneys for Immunizing Banksters

Remarkably, on the same day two Senators (one of them named in the article) reminded Eric Holder that Lanny Breuer said this,

I think I and prosecutors around the country, being responsible, should speak to regulators, should speak to experts, because if I bring a case against institution, and as a result of bringing that case, there’s some huge economic effect — if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly, counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly — it’s a factor we need to know and understand.

The WaPo managed to ask no direct questions about this quote–or some of the obviously spiked cases against big banks–in this sloppy fellation of Lanny Breuer. Granted it does ask about the Frontline show itself (though, refreshing as it was, Frontline focused on just one aspect of the mortgage fraud that Lanny’s department ignored; it’s pretty clear WaPo’s Sari Horwitz doesn’t even begin to understand that, though).

In a “Frontline” program on PBS last week, Breuer and the Justice Department were harshly criticized for not bringing criminal prosecutions against any Wall Street executives in connection with the 2008 financial collapse. Curiously, rather than admit he consults with regulators and experts before he charges banksters, rather than repeat his theory that all it takes to deter CEOs (as opposed to little people) is to chat them up,

Look, I want to be clear, I don’t want to suggest for a moment that we don’t–and we will–aggressively pursue cases criminally but, I guess both as a defense lawyer, which I was for many years, a white collar defense lawyer and now as AAG, I don’t think we should completely discount the deterrent effect when we investigate cases even if we don’t bring them.

If a CEO or CFO of a major institution feels that he or she is subject to criminal liability, when we interview them or put them in the grand jury, they have lawyers and this is hanging over their head for years and years. It may be at the end we decide not to prosecute the company or the individual but I think it’s really inaccurate to suggest that that doesn’t have a very strong effect. I’m not sure CEOs on Wall Street right now feel as if they can do what they want and there’s no deterrence.

Lanny instead adopted a new excuse to deny responsibility for letting the most destructive criminals in the country walk free (note, Lanny appears to be ignorant of SarBox regulations that wouldn’t even require this kind of intent):

“I understand why people are upset,” Breuer said. “But we have 94 U.S. attorneys and they don’t report to me. Not one of them determined that there was a criminal case to be had. These are very complicated cases and they were just simply, on the merits, not cases that could be brought criminally.”

Breuer said Wall Street executives would have been prosecuted if the investigators could have proved criminal intent. “I have the same DNA in all of these cases,” Breuer said. “It’s just not plausible that in one area we would be overly scared and in all the other areas we would be aggressive.”

Well okay then. In this article, Lanny takes or is given credit for the BP pleas, two Medicare cases, 40 corporate cases (by Robert Khuzami, almost all of which resulted in settlements), the La Cosa Nostra take down, and LIBOR “prosecutions” (reportedly DOJ will charge UBS shortly). Of those, I’m only aware of the BP investigation being led by a task force rather than a traditional US Attorney structure. Yet Lanny wants to claim credit for all these prosecutions and settlements, but blame his US Attorneys–all 94 US Attorneys (!) when we’re really talking maybe 4 or 5 who would face a complex bankster case, and really just New York’s Preet Bharara, whom Lanny himself gave jurisdiction over some of the highest profile cases–for not prosecuting the banksters.

It’s not Lanny’s fault the banksters have gone free, you see, it’s the fault of people like John Leonardo, Arizona’s US Attorney, Alicia Limtiaco, Guam’s US Attorney, or Felicia Adams, Northern Mississippi’s US Attorney, all of whom had no hint of jurisdiction in these cases. This, in spite of the fact that Lanny has repeatedly admitted being personally involved in the bankster cases. This, in spite of the fact that Lanny did play a leadership role in one of the few cases that had a similar task force structure as BP–the mortgage fraud settlement. In that case, Lanny under-resourced the investigative team, ensuring it would be unable to do adequate investigation to reach adequate settlement. And he didn’t even show up for the big announcement that–basically–the settlement was immunizing the banksters for stealing millions of people’s homes. Somehow, now that it’s time to claim credit, Lanny has forgotten about that willful attempt to help banks bury their crimes. Lanny has, in the past, clearly admitted to actions that led directly to amnesty for banksters. But in his effort to shore up his reputation as he heads out the door (though not until March 1, unfortunately), he’s gonna blame everyone else for the fact that, on his watch, the most destructive criminals in the country got a pass.


Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/marcy-wheeler-lanny-breuer-now-blames-94-us-attorneys-for-immunizing-banksters.html#p5UdZuYT1Sxw2XhB.99

[Demeter]

10. Banks Don’t Commit Fraud; Banksters Commit Fraud: Response to Yglesias

http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/01/31/banks-dont-commit-fraud-banksters-commit-fraud-response-to-yglesias/

The often interesting Matthew Yglesias wonders “Are Banks Too Big To Prosecute?”.

See here:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/30/too_big_to_prosecute_can_the_government_bring_serious_criminal_charges_against.html.



Here’s his thesis: Sure, Megabanks committed tons of fraud. But we cannot prosecute banks for the fraud because that would bring them down. And the bigger they are, the more fraud they perpetrated, but the bigger the insolvency hole if we investigated them. So best to bail them out and look the other way.

But here’s the deal: Banks don’t commit fraud. Banksters commit fraud.

This is what all the gun nuts are teaching us. Guns never kill people. Insane people kill people. Guns are just a tool that allows the insane to kill massive numbers in schools, shopping malls and offices. Since Sandy Hook, the gun nuts have been out in full force, spraying bullets all over the US to quickly do as much killing as possible before the Communist Obama takes away their guns. Every day another mass murder. Now a rational person might think this works against the gun-nut NRA lobby. Not at all, folks. It just proves their point. You need more guns to protect yourself from errant gun nuts. Besides, who would take an AK-47 into a kindergarten or Sears to commit mass murder?

Why, the mentally ill, of course, as the deliciously named Wayne LaPierre keeps telling us (simultaneously recalling the macho John Wayne, while the French pierre—rock or stone—reminds one variously of The Rock or Rock Hudson, both icons in their own right). So to preserve the Constitutional right to arm yourself with military assault weapons, we’ve got to lock up anyone suspected of mental illness. Your right to weapons of mass murder trumps the right of the mentally ill to fresh air. They all ought to be locked up to prevent freely available weapons of mass destruction from getting into the wrong hands. Such is the thinking of the NRA. One wonders why someone who is not mentally ill should believe that amassing assault rifles is not an indication of mental illness. But I digress.

Back to Iglesias. His argument would appear to be this: We wouldn’t want to punish a bank for fraud because “Had you secured criminal convictions against these megabanks, you’d have had to nationalize them and assume their liabilities or else face an economic catastrophe.” Ergo, do not prosecute illegal activities at the megabanks.

Here’s the deal: Banks don’t commit fraud; they are used as weapons for fraud by the top bank management to commit fraud. Those in the top management of the megabanks are the ones who are committing the fraud. The banks are just assault rifles, harmless when left in the locked closet. They become dangerous only at the hands of the Hanks, Bobs, Jamies, and Lloyds. So who do you prosecute? The weapon or the one who pulls the trigger, spraying bullets all over the shopping mall The Obama administration (backed by Yglesias) argues that you should just forgive (nay, bail-out) the triggermen who ran the banks. Let them walk away with their hundreds of millions and billions stolen from customers. That will teach them a lesson!

Now, we don’t want to carry the analogy too far. We’ve got lots of gun nuts accumulating assault rifles and as well lots of banksters accumulating banks. Going forward what do you do to constrain them? Reduce the lethality of the weapons they have at their disposal. The NRA is right about one thing. There’s a lot of crazies out there. But you cannot lock them all up in anticipation that some of them might use the weapons at hand.

Makes much more sense to:

a) Investigate and prosecute to the full extent of the law those that use weapons of mass destruction (such as AK-47s and financial derivatives); and

b) Remove the weapons of mass destruction (AK-47s and financial derivatives).

[xchrom]

11. Edith Piaf L'Hymne à l'amour

[Demeter]

15. what a way to wake up!

Much better than this:

which is how my life has imitated art, this winter...

[xchrom]

18. !

[siligut]

43. It's Groundhog Day for Herbalife

That pyramid scheme is getting extra loud play as a result of the hilariously unprofessional argument between Ackman and Ichan on live TV.

[Demeter]

12. Philip Pilkington: Purging Economics of Religion – A Rebuttal to Robert Nelson’s Defence of The Grea

Recently I stumbled upon what appeared to be an interesting book entitled “Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond” by Robert Nelson, an economics professor at the University of Maryland...I asked a few heterodox economists if they had heard of it. To my disappointment one of them told me that, while the author obviously had a point, he was part of a school called the “New Institutionalists.” They are wedded to many of the neoclassical ideas which are in turn quasi-religious (witness, for instance, Bill Black’s coinage, “theoclassical”). Unfortunately, my friend proved right. While the book is interesting and contains many valuable observations, it is nevertheless orthodox in its thinking. The author, while firmly aware of many similarities between economics and religion makes two enormous mistakes both of which are tied up with one another.

First of all, the author does not properly deal with the true kernel of what makes neoclassical economic discourse similar to that of religion. In this regard he merely scratches the surface. He picks out many similarities between the two discourses and does provide a good case that economics has become a modern religious system, but he never identifies the aspects of neoclassical theory that lead to this. Secondly, and tied to this, he ends up in many ways glorifying the religious aspects of economics...The reason that the author appears to uphold this view is that he seems to believe that economics could not be much else other than a theology. He seems to think that the nature of economic thought is to provide a set of moral guidelines that economists can preach. This seems odious. While I can fully appreciate that people do need moral truths with which to live their lives, I do not think it is the place of the economist to provide these.

In what follows I hope to show the key feature which makes neoclassical economics a theological rather than a rational doctrine – the key feature being the neoclassical concept of market equilibrium. In doing so I shall also lay out a different concept of equilibrium which, if properly applied, would ensure that economists could cease thinking in theological terms altogether. That this will take the form of a dialogue with Nelson’s book is because, while I firmly disagree with his methods and find his conclusions slightly regressive and even primitive, all in all he has written a very relevant and valuable book that I would encourage others to read...

...LARGE ECONOMIC THEORY EXPOSITION...


...It is, of course, up to the reader what they think economics should be. Should it be a collection of fairy tales about harmony and market equilibrium or should it be the serious study of stocks and flows at a macroeconomic level? The reader can decide that for themselves. Being what I consider a child of Enlightenment I believe that religion has no place in economics but, just as some people prefer Intelligent Design to evolution, others are perfectly free to disagree. What they must understand however is that, first of all, what they are engaging in is theology – the Intelligent Design crowd are content in admitting that and the market equilibrium theorists should be too. Secondly, they must understand that there is an alternative ready and waiting should they ever decide to emerge from the Dark Ages. Then at least we are in a position to have an honest debate: what should economics be, religion or science?


Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/philip-pllkington-purging-economics-of-religion-a-rebuttal-to-robert-nelsons-defence-of-the-great-chain-of-being.html#mMXK0aMyUIOkuoSB.99

[DemReadingDU]

13. Barclays boss waives bonus as bank rocked by new Qatar allegations

2/1/13 Barclays boss waives bonus as bank rocked by new Qatar allegations
Antony Jenkins' decision to waive his bonus was announced shortly after it emerged the bank is under investigation over Qatar's investment at the height of the financial crisis

Antony Jenkins, the chief executive of Barclays, will waive his 2012 bonus as the bank took another reputational hit after it emerged the bank is under investigation over its relationship with Qatar at the height of the financial crisis.

The Qataris were key contributors to a crucial £7.3bn lifeline to Barclays following the credit crunch which allowed the bank to avoid a taxpayer bailout.

The Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Services Authority are looking at whether Barclays lent Qatar funds to invest in the bank, The Financial Times reported.

Jenkins' decision to waive his bonus was announced shortly after the story appeared and ahead of his appearance before MPs and peers next week on the banking standards commission. The head of the bank's remuneration committee, Sir John Sunderland, appeared before the commission on Wednesday when he faced scrutiny about his plans to offer Jenkins a "seven figure" bonus for 2012.

Jenkins was promoted to chief executive at the end of August after Bob Diamond quit in the wake of the bank's £290m fine for rigging Libor.

Barclays would not comment on the latest twist in the investigation into the fundraising and neither would the SFO or the FSA. In July the bank had admitted that its finance director, Chris Lucas, and former directors were under investigation by the FSA about the 2008 fundraising and disclosures that were made about fees "under certain commercial agreements" in June and November that year. By August, the SFO had launched an investigation in to the payments.

The latest allegations appear to be the latest strand in that inquiry and the FT said that the identity of any borrowers and size of the alleged loans are unclear.

more...
http://m.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/01/barclays-qatar-serious-fraud-office-fsa

[Demeter]

17. A clear question of where one's loyalties lie...

what an idiot!

[xchrom]

14. Euro zone inflation shows surprise fall

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2013/0201/breaking27.html


Euro zone inflation fell more than expected in January in a sign that companies were cutting prices to entice shoppers at a time when joblessness remained at a record level at the end of 2012.

The rate of consumer price inflation in the 17 countries using the euro fell to 2 per cent in January compared to a year ago, the EU's statistics office Eurostat said.

The reading, Eurostat's first estimate, was lower than the 2.2 per cent level forecast by economists polled by Reuters, which was also December's level.

Unemployment remained at a euro-era high of 11.7 per cent in December, Eurostat also said, slightly lower than the 11.9 per cent level expected by economists, but still higher than the European Commission's year-end 11.3 per cent prediction.

[xchrom]

16. Time for Honohan to get tough with useless bankers

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2013/0201/1224329515717.html

ECONOMICS: This week the Central Bank/Financial Regulator yet again expressed its displeasure at the pace with which the banks are restructuring their non-performing loans (NPLs). I am getting very tired of hearing those who are charged with regulating the banks trumpeting their own impotence.

Two weeks ago the Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan, at whose desk the buck for sorting out the banks ultimately stops, gave evidence to a Joint Oireachtas Committee. Before analysing what he had to say on dealing with the NPL problem, a few words about the governor are in order.

Honohan is an internationally recognised expert on the economics of finance and has spent a good portion of his career dealing with banking crises across the world. It would have been hard to find anyone better qualified to take on the job of reforming the Central Bank.

Second, his staffing of the top layer of the institution – with a blend of insiders and outsiders, natives and non-natives, youth and experience – could not have been better. Finally, he has amply demonstrated his independence from Government in a manner none of his predecessors would ever have contemplated.

[Demeter]

19. 4 Ways the Austerity Obsession in Washington Could Cost You Your Job

http://www.alternet.org/economy/4-ways-austerity-obsession-washington-could-cost-you-your-job?akid=9999.227380.sHdQo5&rd=1&src=newsletter787219&t=17&paging=off

1. Austerity costs jobs

This economy is still sputtering. Over 20 million people are in need of full-time work. While corporate profits are at record heights as a percentage of the economy, wages are at record lows and falling. An alarmed Federal Reserve has kept interest rates close to zero. Housing prices have started to come back. But companies are cautious, looking for customers before they do much expansion. In these circumstances, cuts in government spending and hikes in taxes on working people cost jobs. Government workers and contractors get laid off. Small businesses feel the pinch as the afflicted tighten their belts. Interest rates can't go lower; business doesn't get any more confident. And as the last three months showed, it doesn't take much to push a slow growth economy into decline.

2. More austerity is already being inflicted

Last quarter's decline took place before the tax hikes agreed to in December's "fiscal cliff" deal. The increase of tax rates on the top 1 percent will have little effect on demand, since someone making over $400,000 can afford the hit. But the end of the payroll tax holiday cost the typical family 2 percent of their income, with the change visible in their January paychecks. For a family earning $50,000, that represents a $1,000 loss of income -- and will be felt.

3. Even more austerity soon come

House Republicans devoted their retreat to reordering the serial fiscal hostage taking they have planned for the next five months. The proper etiquette of hostage taking, they determined, begins with the threat of deep automatic cuts of military and domestic spending -- the sequester -- on March 1, then moves to the threat to shut down the government by the end of March, and finally to the threat to default on the national debts and shudder the global financial system in mid May. This reordering, they believe, gives them greater leverage to extort deep and unpopular cuts in spending, particularly Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The mainstream media hailed this as a sign of their new maturity. Republican leaders have already begun threatening to let the full sequester -- $85 billion in across the board spending cuts from the military and domestic spending -- take place on March 1. This represents over 7 percent of annual spending on the military and 5 percent on domestic governance. To achieve those cuts with half of the fiscal year already behind us will require massive lay-offs -- furloughs without pay -- of workers, 15 to 20 percent of food and drug inspectors, air traffic controllers, park rangers, Social Security administrators and more. Across the board cuts means that the vital gets slashed at the same rate at the wasteful. Cuts in housing vouchers will leave millions homeless. But overseas tax dodges will remain in place. In a weak economy, already in decline in the last three months, this is worse than reckless; it is lunacy. Democrats have succumbed to the austerity hysteria as well, if in less virulent form. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supports cutbacks, but wants the deep sequester cuts replaced "in short increments" with packages of spending cuts and revenues like repealing oil and gas subsidies. The president wants a "balanced" plan that combines spending cuts and revenue from loophole closings, shutting down overseas tax havens and the like. This allows a more rational policy of cutting waste and loopholes rather than essential services and military preparedness. But it still will cost jobs. More austerity is on the way.

4. The deficit hawks are delusional

Serial hostage taking is a truly inane way to run a government. What is striking, however, are the purblind delusions about deficits. We're forced to these measures, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan says, because deficits are out of control and will soon, eventually, sometime lead to America becoming Greece, with the dollar losing all value. It is a testament to the depths of his delusion that Ryan has been saying this for years, despite all evidence to the contrary. The reality is the reverse. Ryan prides himself on his Ayn Rand devotion to free markets, but he's ignoring what the markets are saying. Out of control inflation hasn't broken out. Investors are not panicked. They are still willing to park their money in U.S. bonds for essentially no real return. Investors are saying that America isn't Greece; it's the rock of Gibraltar. One reason is that the deficit isn't out of control. As the Congressional Budget Office reports, the annual deficit is down by 25 percent since 2009. It is coming down faster than any time since the demobilization at the end of World War II. Our median term debt is essentially stabilized as a percent of GDP. Our long-term debt projections are completely a question of fixing our broken health care system. The pace of the decline of annual deficits already exceeds prudent speed limits, contributing to faltering and inadequate jobs growth, leaving Americans struggling with mass unemployment, increased insecurity and declining wages. The major threat to declining deficits is an economy that stalls and goes back into recession. And that is exactly the warning that is flashing from the last quarter's decline....

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

20. Can a Small Community Throw a Monkey Wrench Into the Global Fracking Machine?

http://www.alternet.org/fracking/can-small-community-throw-monkey-wrench-global-fracking-machine?akid=9999.227380.sHdQo5&rd=1&src=newsletter787219&t=15&paging=off

While New Yorkers anxiously await Governor Andrew Cuomo’s decision on whether to lift the state’s de facto moratorium on high-volume slick-water horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” Woodstock, the iconic counter-culture capital of the world, has become the first municipality to call for legislation to make fracking a Class C felony.

Woodstock’s action is just one small town’s response to a rapidly escalating global war over fracking. To both sides in this war—environmentalists and citizens who oppose fracking on the one side and the gas industry and its supporters on the other—the upcoming ruling to allow or ban fracking in New York is being viewed as (you should pardon the expression) a watershed event.

Decisions made in Albany and in towns like Woodstock will likely determine whether fracking goes full steam ahead everywhere, or whether its momentum can be slowed or even stopped. New York, after all, has a rich history of environmental activism and democratic movements, and anti-fracking activism has spread like wildfire over the last couple of years. New York is also home to abundant supplies of clean freshwater, an essential resource that is in crisis globally and that could be endangered by the practice....MORE

[Roland99]

21. US Jan Jobs (+157k) >>>>

* U.S. economy adds 157,000 jobs in January
* Jan. average workweek unchanged at 34.4 hours
* Jan. average weekly pay rises 4 cents to $23.78
* 2012 job growth 335,000 higher vs. prior estimate

[Demeter]

22. Whole Foods is under investigation for 45 violations of federal labor law

PROVING THAT A FOOD NAZI IS A NAZI, AFTER ALL...

http://www.alternet.org/food/exposed-how-whole-foods-and-biggest-organic-foods-distributor-are-screwing-workers?akid=9999.227380.sHdQo5&rd=1&src=newsletter787219&t=5&paging=off

Exposed: How Whole Foods and the Biggest Organic Foods Distributor Are Screwing Workers

“The union is like having herpes. It doesn't kill you, but it's unpleasant and inconvenient, and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover." -- John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods Market (WFM) CEO John Mackey has done a brilliant job of creating the illusion that his empire is all about abundance, bounty and the good life. But there’s nothing bountiful or good about the way the second-largest non-unionized food retailer exploits workers.

United Natural Foods Incorporated (UNFI), the largest multi-billion dollar wholesale distributor of organic and “natural” foods in the U.S., is currently under investigation for 45 violations of federal labor law, including physically threatening immigrant workers in California who were trying to form a union. The company recently fired its underpaid and overworked unionized workers at its Auburn, Wash., distribution center for going on strike, and illegally hired non-union replacement workers.

What happens when companies like WFM and UNFI, which have carefully cultivated their public progressive images, start acting like Walmart? When union-busting and labor exploitation are accepted as “business-as-usual” in the green economy, it makes us all look bad. It discredits organics and Fair Trade by creating the impression that consumers don’t really care how their healthy organic food was produced. That the entire industry cares only about profits. Ethics and workers be damned...MORE

[Demeter]

25. The Judicial Assault on Unions

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/judicial-assault-unions?akid=9995.227380.CGNMZZ&rd=1&src=newsletter786907&t=10&paging=off


It should come as no shock that Republicans in Congress would like to see the power of labor further diminished. The same is true of governors and state legislatures in red and purple states such as Wisconsin and Indiana. But now conservative courts have joined the fray. Just this past week, the National Labor Relations Board was put in legal limbo — with the possibility that more than 300 of its decisions over the last year could be nullified — as a result of a federal appeals court in ruling in the nation’s capital that President Obama’s recess appointments to the Board were invalid. Among the decisions that could be vacated are three recent rulings in which the Board had assumed a powerful role in telling companies that they can’t issue blanket prohibitions on what their employees say on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The Board said workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution, whether the discussion takes place at the office or on social media.

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three appointments last January were illegal, the court’s ruling would leave the Board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. If the Supreme Court upholds the decision, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified. Union officials voiced concern on Friday that if the federal court’s ruling denies the NLRB a quorum, it could take years for the Board to be able to act in legal disputes involving unionization drives or elections, strikes or the firings of pro-union workers. Republicans and big business, in contrast, were elated. Most hold the view that a neutered and non-functioning NLRB is better than one controlled by Democrats. Without a quorum, workers will experience delays that can potentially drag on for years. And should the President make new appointments to the Board, a filibuster will likely greet them in the Senate.

It should be noted that the court went beyond the narrow dispute at issue and issued a far more sweeping ruling than expected. The panel’s reasoning would virtually eliminate the recess appointment power for all future presidents at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to win Senate confirmation for nominees. In this way, it bears a striking similarity to two recent Supreme Court cases, Citizens United v. FEC and Knox v. SEIU...

MORE AT LINK

MICHIGAN'S RIGHT TO WORK FOR LESS LAW IS IN COURT TWICE:

THE ACLU IS SUING TO INVALIDATE IT BECAUSE IT WAS PASSED ILLEGALLY, AGAINST THE OPEN MEETING LAWS. POLICE LOCKED OUT THE PUBLIC FROM THE STATE HOUSE WHILE THEY RAILROADED IT THROUGH.

THE GOVERNOR IS TRYING FOR A PRE-EMPTIVE SUPREME COURT RULING THAT IT'S JUST HUNKY-DORY...

WISH MICHIGAN LUCK. IT'S GONNA NEED IT.

[westerebus]

38. That sheds a new light on Harry Reid's killing the filibuster reform.

Wouldn't want to offend they PTB with some vote on NLRB.

[Demeter]

40. Harry Reid is an Ass

He's always been an ass, he's too old to change, but evidently not yet old enough to die, which would be the only way to get him out of the picture.

The only time Harry can bestir himself is when he's being primaried.

[Demeter]

23. Jen Sorensen on Dirt-y Politics

THIS IS AN ISSUE IN MICHIGAN, WHERE PROPOSALS TO SPLIT THE ELECTORAL VOTE BY CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS HAVE ALREADY SURFACED...

[AnneD]

51. I remember reading...

a novel by Philip Roth, The Boys in the Gang...about Richard Nixon (ironically before Watergate). One of the themes was the Silent Majority and one of the things he wanted to do was give the fetus the right to vote. Roth was so far ahead of his time. Maybe that is why the GOP are pushing for those trans vaginal ultrasounds?

[xchrom]

24. China manufacturing growth in slowdown

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21288946

China has reported a small slowdown in manufacturing growth, underlining the challenges its new leaders face in spurring economic growth.

China's Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), which surveys big firms, fell to 50.4 in January from 50.6 in December.

However, HSBC said its PMI for China, which surveys smaller firms, rose to 52.3 in January, from 51.5.

Analysts said volatility in the two measures was normal and the underlying trend was that of a recovery.

[xchrom]

26. Exxon Profit Rises as Cheap U.S. Oil Lifts Refining

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-01/exxon-profit-rises-as-cheap-u-s-oil-lifts-refining.html

Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the world’s biggest energy company by market value, said fourth-quarter profit rose to a five-year high as growing supplies of cheap U.S. oil boosted margins from refining crude into fuels.

Net income increased to $9.95 billion, or $2.20 a share, from $9.45 billion, or $1.97 a share, the Irving, Texas-based company said in a statement today. Per-share profit was 20 cents higher than the average of 20 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Profit from processing crude into gasoline, diesel, heating oil and other fuels quadrupled in the quarter compared with a year earlier, as U.S. refinery margins rose 46 percent, in part because of rising oil supplies from shale formations. Crude futures traded in New York declined by 6.2 percent during the quarter to average $88.23 a barrel, bucking the international trend that saw the global benchmark rise 1 percent to average more than $110.

Oil and gas output from Exxon’s wells fell 5.2 percent to the equivalent of 4.293 million barrels of crude a day from 4.53 million a year earlier, according to the statement.

[Demeter]

27. Did we fight ourselves and lose? Controlling the Lucifer Effect ROBERT C. KOEHLER

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17778-controlling-the-lucifer-effect

The president negotiates our withdrawal from Afghanistan, proclaims mission accomplished — and the wars of the last decade continue winding down to nothing. We’ll be leaving behind an unstable country with one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates and hundreds of armed insurgent groups. We haven’t rescued or rebuilt the country or accomplished any objective that begins to justify the human and financial cost of this adventure. We just lost. But we’re the most powerful nation on the planet. How is that possible? And, as Tom Engelhardt asks, “Who exactly beat us? Where exactly is the triumphant enemy?” He goes on, in an essay that ran this week on Common Dreams: “Did we in some bizarre fashion fight ourselves and lose? After all, last year, more American servicemen died from suicide than on the battlefield in Afghanistan; and a startling number of Americans were killed in ‘green on blue’ or ‘insider’ attacks by Afghan ‘allies’ rather than by that fragmented movement we still call the Taliban.”

Did we fight ourselves and lose? This is a question for the millennium — a question in which the human future hangs in the balance. A rich, arrogant and unbelievably powerful nation, riding a tide of opportune vengeance, pursuing its global interests, invades a poor, backward country, then a year and a half later invades another. It pours multi-trillions of dollars into the adventure and unleashes the most sophisticated high-tech weaponry the world has ever seen. On the home front, the war is backed by at least 80 percent of the population. It’s a good war, a righteous war, proclaimed by the prodigious public relations arm of the military-industrial consensus as a “war on terror” . . . a war on evil itself.

And we lost. Or sort of lost — at least in the sense that we didn’t win. As Andrew Bacevich wrote in 2010: “By 2007, the American officer corps itself gave up on victory, although without giving up on war. First in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, priorities shifted. High-ranking generals shelved their expectations of winning . . . . They sought instead to not lose. In Washington as in U.S. military command posts, the avoidance of outright defeat emerged as the new gold standard of success.” His essay was titled, “Is War Becoming Obsolete?” That is, is war becoming an ineffective means of achieving, not merely the aims of its own propaganda (the defeat of evil), but its actual, limited goals of regional dominance, the looting of natural resources, the containment of geopolitical rivals? And if so, does it matter?

Beyond such questions, I sense that a larger question lurks: Might it be that war isn’t something we wage, so much as a force that wages us? And if that’s the case, it doesn’t particularly matter whether we win or lose because it’s not in our control anyway, at least not in the way we think it is. War has been obsolete for at least the last century, in that the damage it inflicted shattered winner and loser alike, almost to the point of mutual suicide — not counting the United States, which emerged powerful and prosperous and on top of the world after World War II. It took another half-century or so for the lose-lose nature of war to catch up to us, and thus for us to begin noticing its obsolescence. This may be a good time to begin assessing the nature of our loss in the war on terror, beyond the non-achievement of geopolitical ends and non-fulfillment of whatever our mission actually was. Certainly this loss includes expenditures in the trillions of dollars, contributing enormously to the national bankruptcy....MORE...And there’s only one answer: Stop inventing enemies, whom we proceed to dehumanize. Once we begin the dehumanization process, we lose — not just figuratively, but literally, and in almost incalculable ways. Philip Zimbardo coined the term “the Lucifer Effect” to describe the sadistic corruption that consumes good-hearted men and women when they are given overwhelming power over others. We wage war thinking we can control the Lucifer Effect. We’re always wrong.

---

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at [e-mail], visit his website at commonwonders.com or listen to him at Voices of Peace radio.

[xchrom]

28. Billionaire Kuok Says His Empire Can Last ’Generations’

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-31/billionaire-kuok-says-his-empire-can-last-generations-.html


Western Europe's tallest office building will be home to one of Robert Kuok's new luxury Shangri-La hotels. Six are scheduled to be opened worldwide during the third quarter.

When billionaire Robert Kuok introduced a luxury hotel brand in 1971, he named it Shangri-La, after the fictional utopia in which inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity.

Ensconced in his executive suite 32 floors above Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor -- the room decorated with a pair of elephant tusks gifted by the late Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first prime minister of Malaysia -- the world’s 38th-richest person appears to have defied the aging process himself.

Kuok had accumulated a fortune of $19.4 billion as of Jan. 31, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Trim, dapper and straight backed at 89, he shows no signs of stopping there, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its March issue.

This year, the media-shy Malaysian-born magnate will likely open his 71st sumptuously appointed Shangri-La. Six of them are scheduled to be opened in the third quarter alone, including one perched in the Shard, the 72-story London skyscraper that’s the tallest office building in Western Europe.

[AnneD]

53. See also...

Easter Island, Anasazi's, Inca Empire, Aztec Empire, Bantu, Roman Empire, Egypt Empire...etc.



"There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in
the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS." Gandhi

[Demeter]

61. Ozymandias, phone home!

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Percy Bysshe Shelley

[Demeter]

29. THIS TIES IT ALL TOGETHER--AND PUTS THE BLAME ON REAGAN, WHERE IT BELONGS

Mass Killings: Why American Men Are "Going Postal"

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14183-mass-killings-why-american-men-going-postal

...Why destroy the lives of strangers? Where does such murderous rage come from?

In order to try to engage that question we can begin by looking at the common traits of the murderers. Being male is something all but one shared, and being white - or Asian, in the case of two - is also something shared. That is a remarkable fact hidden in plain sight. It is all the more remarkable because the race and gender of the perpetrators was not discussed. Surely, if all of the mass killers were African-American that would have been noticed. If all those people were killed by white women or immigrants, that too would have been a topic of discussion, to say the least. Somehow the fact that the killers were white men seemed unremarkable. That is a clue to consider.
What could make US white males so angry?

American white men and Asian men have lost the family wage and with it their hegemonic positions in what was once secure employment. The have simultaneously lost their dominant positions in intimate and family life. The key figure in the economic and social disempowerment of US workers was Ronald Reagan, who began his presidency by firing the mass of striking air traffic controllers and destroying their union. With the destruction of the Air Traffic Controllers Union, Reagan shot his first round into the body of labor. The chance to negotiate union wages and job conditions was gravely wounded. More shots followed.

Mass killings became a new phenomenon in the 1980s when Reagan's platform of disempowerment of white, male workers, began. Asian men had at that point also been largely included in the hegemonic gender. It was the US Post Office workers who put mass killing on the American map. In 1986 the phrase, "going postal" was born when a postal worker named Patrick Sherrill fired 50 shots on his job site. He murdered 15 postal workers and wounded more. The first man Sherrill shot to death was his supervisor. Sherrill's second murder victim was the grandson of Reagan's hero, the football star Knute Rockne, who was the topic of Reagan's most famous movie Knute Rockne, All American. This was described brilliantly by Mark Ames, in Going Postal, a powerful and neglected book. Reagan's "reforms" included changing the time-honored practice of promoting experienced postal workers to supervisory positions from within the ranks of the postal workers union. Instead, supervisors without experience in the postal system were recruited. They were characterized by harassment to produce greater productivity and a generally adversarial relationship to workers. Under Reagan, the postal system was changed from a social service into a supposedly self-sufficient or profitable business.

Reagan began the process of destroying the safe secure jobs that created middle-class families. He began a trend that has continued since, a trend of lowering real white male wages. Male wages have remained flat since the 1970s. White male mass killings have grown exponentially. Flat real wages wiped out the chance that a man's family wage could support his family. Millions of women were pushed out of the home and into the labor force. Women benefitted with independence, but also suffered with divorce and poverty. White and Asian men have lost their dominant position at work and at home. The rage of American white men may well have something to do with their humiliation and loss of dominance. Four-fifths of the jobs lost in our current recession have been male jobs in manufacturing, construction and big-ticket sales. The decisions to export American jobs were based solely on corporate profit regardless of the extensive social and personal damages those decisions produced. Within capitalism that is how decisions are made...

ALSO MENTIONED: REAGAN'S GUTTING OF MENTAL HEALTH SERVICE, UNIONS, AND MORE...AND OF COURSE, GUN CONTROL

[xchrom]

30. Reshaping Panama Canal Trade Means Boom in U.S. Gas to Asia

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-01/reshaping-panama-canal-trade-means-boom-in-u-s-gas-flow-to-asia.html

Six years after the Panama Canal began a $5.25 billion expansion to capture shipments of Asian- made goods to the U.S. East Coast, the flow of liquefied natural gas in the opposite direction promises to be a better bet.

Shipments of the fuel, along with rising commodity and energy cargoes between the U.S., Latin America and Asia, are likely to provide the largest sources of demand growth when the project is complete in June 2015, Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano said in an interview. Shipping containerized goods, which generate most business for the 50-mile link, has yet to return to the same level as 2007, two years before the global economy had its worst recession since World War II.

The shift shows how rising U.S. shale-gas output is reshaping global energy markets. The Panama Canal enlargement is central to the change because the route cuts voyages by more than 7,500 nautical miles (8,500 miles) to Asia, where fuel demand is growing fastest. The waterway, handling 5 percent of world trade and shipping 333 million metric tons in the year to Sept. 30, is used by as many as 14,000 ships a year, connecting 160 countries and 1,700 ports, according to its website.

“This could be a significant boon to our business,” Quijano said in the telephone interview on Jan. 17 from Balboa. “There’s been a lot of interest in going through the expanded Panama Canal with LNG cargo from the Atlantic going to Asia.”

[Demeter]

31. Looking for Mister Goodpain By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/krugman-looking-for-mister-goodpain.html

Three years ago, a terrible thing happened to economic policy, both here and in Europe. Although the worst of the financial crisis was over, economies on both sides of the Atlantic remained deeply depressed, with very high unemployment. Yet the Western world’s policy elite somehow decided en masse that unemployment was no longer a crucial concern, and that reducing budget deficits should be the overriding priority. In recent columns, I’ve argued that worries about the deficit are, in fact, greatly exaggerated — and have documented the increasingly desperate efforts of the deficit scolds to keep fear alive. Today, however, I’d like to talk about a different but related kind of desperation: the frantic effort to find some example, somewhere, of austerity policies that succeeded. For the advocates of fiscal austerity — the austerians — made promises as well as threats: austerity, they claimed, would both avert crisis and lead to prosperity.

And let nobody accuse the austerians of lacking a sense of romance; in fact, they’ve spent years looking for Mr. Goodpain.

The search began with a passionate fling between the austerians and the Republic of Ireland, which turned to harsh spending cuts soon after its real estate bubble burst, and which for a while was held up as the ultimate exemplar of economic virtue. Ireland, said Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank, was the role model for all of Europe’s debtor nations. American conservatives went even further. For example, Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, declared that Ireland’s policies showed the way forward for the United States, too. Mr. Trichet’s encomium was delivered in March 2010; at the time Ireland’s unemployment rate was 13.3 percent. Since then, every uptick in the Irish economy has been hailed as proof that the nation is recovering — but as of last month the unemployment rate was 14.6 percent, only slightly down from the peak it reached early last year.

After Ireland came Britain, where the Tory-led government — to the sound of hosannas from many pundits — turned to austerity in mid-2010, influenced in part by its belief that Irish policies were a smashing success. Unlike Ireland, Britain had no particular need to adopt austerity: like every other advanced country that issues debt in its own currency, it was and still is able to borrow at historically low interest rates. Nonetheless, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron insisted both that a harsh fiscal squeeze was necessary to appease creditors and that it would actually boost the economy by inspiring confidence. What actually happened was an economic stall. Before the turn to austerity, Britain was recovering more or less in tandem with the United States. Since then, the U.S. economy has continued to grow, although more slowly than we’d like — but Britain’s economy has been dead in the water.

At this point, you might have expected austerity advocates to consider the possibility that there was something wrong with their analysis and policy prescriptions. But no. They went looking for new heroes and found them in the small Baltic nations, Latvia in particular, a nation that looms amazingly large in the austerian imagination. At one level this is kind of funny: austerity policies have been applied all across Europe, yet the best example of success the austerians can come up with is a nation with fewer inhabitants than, say, Brooklyn. Still, the International Monetary Fund recently issued two new reports on the Latvian economy, and they really help put this story into perspective. To be fair to the Latvians, they do have something to be proud of. After experiencing a Great-Depression-level slump, their economy has experienced two years of solid growth and falling unemployment. Despite that growth, however, they have only regained part of the lost ground in terms of either output or employment — and the unemployment rate is still 14 percent. If this is the austerians’ idea of an economic miracle, they truly are the children of a lesser god.

Oh, and if we’re going to invoke the experience of small nations as evidence about what economic policies work, let’s not forget the true economic miracle that is Iceland — a nation that was at ground zero of the financial crisis, but which, thanks to its embrace of unorthodox policies, has almost fully recovered. So what do we learn from the rather pathetic search for austerity success stories? We learn that the doctrine that has dominated elite economic discourse for the past three years is wrong on all fronts. Not only have we been ruled by fear of nonexistent threats, we’ve been promised rewards that haven’t arrived and never will. It’s time to put the deficit obsession aside and get back to dealing with the real problem — namely, unacceptably high unemployment.

[xchrom]

32. Deutsche Bank Said to Limit Immediate Bonuses to $409,000

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-01/deutsche-bank-said-to-limit-immediate-bonuses-to-300-000-euros.html

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Europe’s largest bank by assets, plans to tell employees it will impose a 300,000-euro ($409,000) cap on bonuses paying out this year, said three people with knowledge of the discussions.

The cap, which will apply across the company, may be relayed to employees next week, said the people, asking not to be identified because the plans are private. Senior staff, or what the bank calls “regulated” employees, will receive as much as 150,000 euros in cash, with the balance available in shares in August, the people said.

Banks are under pressure to rein in compensation and tie it more closely to performance after large cash payouts were blamed for encouraging the type of risk-taking that led to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the subsequent financial crisis. Deutsche Bank will pay 3.2 billion euros in bonuses for 2012, down 11 percent from a year earlier, Chief of Compliance Stephan Leithner said yesterday.

The bank had a cap on immediate payouts of 200,000 euros last year, people familiar with the matter said. A Deutsche Bank official in London declined to comment on bonuses.

[xchrom]

35. It’s Good to Be a Goldman Shame on you, Goldman Sachs. Now here's your bonus by Robert Scheer

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/02/01


Goldman Sachs chairman and chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on Wall Street investment banks and the financial crisis. (Photo: AP/Charles Dharapak)

Here’s a get-out-of-jail-free card, and while we’re at it, take this obscenely huge bonus for having wrecked the economy. As the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program pointed out in a devastating report this week, “excessive” compensation was approved by the Treasury Department for the executives of the three companies that required the largest taxpayer bailouts to survive.


n a stinging rebuke of Timothy Geithner’s Treasury Department, the report “found that once again, in 2012, Treasury failed to rein in excessive pay.” Whopping pay packages of $5 million or more were allowed by the Treasury Department for a quarter of the top executives at AIG, General Motors and Ally Financial, the former financial arm of GM.

But that’s nothing compared with the $21 million for last year’s work garnered by Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, which is now free of TARP supervision. In addition to his paltry $2 million in salary, Blankfein received a $19 million bonus for his efforts. Not quite the $67.9 million bonus he got in 2007 before the market crash that his firm did so much to engineer, but times are still hard.

Goldman was the training ground for Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, the two Treasury secretaries who did their best to grease the skids for Wall Street hustlers. It was Rubin under President Bill Clinton who pushed to get the law changed to allow investment banks like Goldman to become commercial banks, and it was Paulson under President George W. Bush who permitted Goldman to take advantage of that loophole and partake in the low interest Fed money available to the commercial banks. Throw in the AIG bailout that allowed the passage of billions of dollars to Goldman, and you get the picture.

[xchrom]

36. Cask Chronicles Duncan Quinn takes bespoke tailoring to the road with a trans-America tour

http://www.coolhunting.com/style/duncan-quinn-cask-chronicles.php?utm_source=Cool+Hunting+Daily&utm_campaign=c7fbda188f-CH+Daily+Email&utm_medium=emailCask Chronicles


Duncan Quinn takes bespoke tailoring to the road with a trans-America tour on a vintage double decker bus



A master of bespoke tailoring, Duncan Quinn can typically be found presiding over the bold interior of his atelier on Spring Street in NYC. The ambience fits Quinn, who made a name by importing Saville Row techniques with the color and flare of a dandyish punk. Quinn recently announced a coast-to-coast tour, which will take him from NYC to LA this spring in a glorious custom 1966 Bristol double decker bus with a mobile shop in tow




Dubbed the Cask Chronicles, Quinn's adventure kicked off last night with a gathering of well-suited guests at the Classic Car Club in Manhattan. The white right-hand drive 1966 Bristol double decker bus is a British relic that Quinn rescued from a Miami rock 'n' roll bar and personally refashioned for his cross-country jaunt. The downstairs includes a full fitting area with fabric books on hand as well as ready to wear items and limited editions. The upper deck has been converted into an invite-only dining area where Quinn will host evening parties with cask-aged cocktails, making for a rather gentlemanly drunk bus.





***some people have the COOLEST ideas

[Fuddnik]

37. Don't like the weather? Blame this guy. Groundhog recipe's.

This is a sample recipe page from Recipe Girl.
View ALL RECIPES
Spice Up Your Recipes With Uncle Steve's:
Dried Chiles Chile Powders Hot Sauce
Grow Your Own Hot Spice With Uncle Steve's:
Hot Chile Pepper Seeds

Woodhucks, groundhogs, whistle pigs, pasture pigs, whatever you call them, have dark meat with a mild flavor and adapt readily to any squirrel or rabbit recipe. The fat is unobjectionable, but generally removed anyway. The 'chuck has scent glands high on the inside of the forelegs and in the small of the back, which must be removed. Generally only the older animals are parboiled or soaked before cooking, although some cooks soak woodchucks as a matter of course in cold salted water for 6 to 12 hours. Older 'chucks (worn teeth and claws are a good indication of age) benefit from parboiling in water to which 1/2 teaspoon or more of baking soda has been added. An adult will weigh 6 to 8 pounds.

Jacqueline E. Knight


===================================

Oriental Groundhog

Recipe By: Hunters Information Service

Amount Measure Ingredient Preparation Method
1 Ground hog
2 quarts Water
1/4 cup Salt
1/2 cup Soy sauce
2 cloves Garlic whole
1 Naga Jolokia pepper whole
1/4 Onion
2 tablespoon Uncle Steve's Mild Chile powder
1/4 bunch Parsley whole
4 Beef bouillon cubes
1/4 teaspoon Freshly-ground white pepper
1 cup Beef or chicken broth
Teriyaki glaze

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Cut meat into serving pieces and soak in 1 quart water and salt
for 3 hours. Transfer meat to 1 quart clear water and soak 4
hours. Drain and dry meat. Place meat in a baking pan with beef
broth, soy sauce, garlic cloves, Naga Jolokia pepper, onion, Mild Chile powder,
parsley, bouillon cubes and white pepper. Cover and bake at 350
degrees for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Baste frequently. Brush with
teriyaki glaze while cooking.

===================================

Waco Groundhog in Sour Cream

Recipe By: "Indian Cookin'", compiled by Herb Walker, 1977

Amount Measure Ingredient Preparation Method
1 Groundhog, skinned & cleaned
1/2 cup Vinegar
1 tablespoon Salt
2 quarts Water
2 teaspoons Soda
1/2 cup Flour
1 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Allspice
1/2 cup Bacon fat
3 small Wild onions
1/2 cup Water
1 cup Sour cream

Skin and clean the groundhog. Wash and dry and put in an earthen
crock. Cover with water and a half cup of vinegar and 1 T. of salt.
Let stand in a cool place overnight. In the morning, remove from
brine, wash and pat dry with a damp cloth. In a large soup kettle
combine 2 qt. of water and 2 T. of soda. Bring to a boil, lower the
heat and simmer for 15 minutes, removing the scum as it rises to the
surface. Drain and rinse the groundhog meat and cut into serving
pieces. Combine the flour, salt and allspice and dredge the pieces of
meat in the mixture. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Melt the bacon
fat in a heavy iron frying pan until smoking. jBrown meat on all
sides. Transfer the browned meat into a greased 4 qt. casserole.
Arrange sliced onions on top, add water, cover and bake in a
preheated oven for 2 hours or until the meat is tender. Transfer the
meat to a heated platter to keep warm. Put the casserole on top of
the stove over medium heat and spoon in the sour cream stirring
constantly. Do not let the sauce come to a boil. Put the meat back
into the casserole and simmer for about 15 minutes. Delicious served
with creamed dandelion leaves.

Order Uncle Steve's: Dried Chiles Chile Powders Hot Pepper Seeds
This is a sample recipe page from Recipe Girl.
View ALL RECIPES

[Demeter]

41. That Decides It. I am NEVER coming to dinner!

I appreciate your contribution to the discussion, but....

[Fuddnik]

49. Funny thing,

I got up this morning and turned on the Weather Channel, as usual.

Their "meteorologist" was interviewing Puxatawney Phil and his handler. She observed that spring was just about 6 weeks after Groundhog's Day. The handler replied, "And you figured that out, all by yourself, huh".

[AnneD]

54. "We will wait until morning"...

"What happens in the morning."
"I thought you knew, the sun comes up."
Rex Harrison as Julius Ceasar in Cleopatra.

[siligut]

42. Naga Jolokia pepper= SHU (Scoville Heat Unit) level of over 1,000,000

The recipe forgot to tell the cook to wear gloves while handling the ghost pepper and to then remove them immediately afterward. At least there is no chopping to be done.

The second recipe might taste a little like Stroganoff?

[Fuddnik]

48. I'm going to grow ghost peppers this summer.

I've got several packs of seeds.

www.rareseeds.com
for a free catalogue.

[AnneD]

55. Waco Groundhog....

I thought that was when you put the groundhog in a wooden box with a few briquettes and set the box on fire. Did I miss something?

[Warpy]

59. Groundhog would seem to be one of the gamier rodents

so I'd be inclined to marinate the meat in dairy overnight in the fridge and more inclined to cook it with yogurt or sour cream the next day.

Don't grumble, kiddies, as global warming progresses, a nice groundhog stew might be the best thing you've had all week. Eating one will also remove a major danger from your vegetable garden, those things go through just like lawnmowers.

[bread_and_roses]

44. I see fervent gloating around here re: 14,000 - meanwhile, NY's Gov

("here" being the front page of DU)

ah, yes, all's well with the world - Obama in office and the Market at 14,000! Happy Days, yahooo yahaayyy!

Meanwhile, out here in the real economy, NY's Gov Cuomo (D) is still telling schools they have to cut more - those K-12 eaters have to do their austerity share, don't you know?

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Schools-raise-uproar-for-help-4240643.php

The headliner was Rick Timbs, executive director of the Statewide School Finance Consortium, an advocacy group that calls more equitable aid distribution. Timbs fired up the crowd of school advocates and budget wonks with a PowerPoint presentation that showed the dire state of funding in New York's public schools, which have cut thousands of teachers and programs in the last few years and will have to do so again next year.

... Cuomo said school districts grew accustomed to large annual aid increases in the years before the recession and can no longer calibrate their budgets to those numbers. He said schools continue to sign contracts with their employees that they cannot afford and turn to the state when they can't balance their budget. More districts need to consider consolidation or other significant ways to reduce spending.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Schools-raise-uproar-for-help-4240643.php#ixzz2JfcH6Msx

Meanwhile - where's that Transaction Tax on Wall St. we've clamored for again and again, Andrew? Cuomo is one smart Pol. Of course, he sweetens his discourse with

... He said a repeal of the Triborough Amendment, which keeps employee contracts in place during negotiations, is a "political non-starter" and that repealing expensive special education mandates could harm vulnerable children.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Schools-raise-uproar-for-help-4240643.php#ixzz2JfcsTaIY

(The Tri-B Amendment protects workers under contract - of course, by the time the cuts are all done the public sector unions will be significantly weakened anyway ....

Just a little side-trip on how ludicrous it is for anyone who is WORKING CLASS - that is, anyone who is NOT INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY - to break out the champagne over the Market.

[DemReadingDU]

47. The higher the market goes

the bigger the crash

[Demeter]

62. Irrational Exuberance, anyone?

Goes well with crow. Or groundhog.

[Roland99]

52. 14,000..."hold....hold....Hold!"

[AnneD]

56. Can I moon them now....

[Roland99]

57. You mean you haven't yet??

[AnneD]

58. I don't think...

a crotch shot qualifies....

[Warpy]

60. Yes, today is the day I visit my online account.

It will be nice to be rich for a whole weekend.

It's also going to be nice to rub Republican noses in it all weekend. Not only are gas prices finally under $3/gallon, even with the price of crude back up where it was last summer, they're staying under $3/gallon. I guess the Koch boys aren't manipulating the refined product these days, they lost.

So not only did re electing "Obammy" make us richer, it's saving us money! Take that, you sour, piggy Republicans. A rising Democratic tide raises all boats!

[Demeter]

63. Oh, gas went sky high here just today

I guess they think we'll all be out driving for SuperBowl.

Up 20-40 cents a gallon overnight.

[DemReadingDU]

64. Way up in Ohio too: $3.59

It's not that I even want to go anywhere with 13 degree weather (feels like -2) and 3-4 inches of additional snow to come tonight.

[bread_and_roses]

66. Something like $3.78 (?) here in NY

maybe it was more .... Honest to goddess - I just bought it on the way home, but I don't even look anymore - we have to "pay ahead" everywhere so I give 'em what I've got and pump and takes what I gets ....

I do recall, though, Roland, a few weeks ago we were about where you are now ...

[Roland99]

68. We're $3.45 yesterday

[Warpy]

67. It's still (barely) under three bucks a gallon here

but nobody will be out driving for the StuporBowl around here. They're all going to be indoors, semi comatose in front of the TV, rousing themselves to yell for more beer.

(childhood trauma speaking there)