STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 18 February 2013

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, 18 February 2013[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 15 February 2013

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 15 February 2013
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Dow Jones 13,981.76 +8.37 (0.06%)
[font color=red]S&P 500 1,519.79 -1.59 (-0.10%)
[font color=black]Nasdaq 3,192.03 0.00 (0.00%)


[font color=green]10 Year 2.00% -0.01 (-0.50%)
[font color=red]30 Year 3.19% +0.01 (0.31%)[font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[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.



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[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. Cheap shot--but a true conflation

Maybe the suckers have been edumacated enough, this time.

[Demeter]

2. G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan

http://news.yahoo.com/g20-defuses-talk-currency-war-no-accord-debt-075651623--finance.html

The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.

Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.

Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.

"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."

I SMELL FEAR OVER THE CHARACTERISTIC ARROGANCE....

[Demeter]

3. Japanese Economy Shrinks and Remains in Recession

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/business/global/japanese-economy-contracts-and-remains-in-recession.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=2&

Japan’s economy remained mired in recession late last year, shrinking 0.4 percent in annualized terms for the third straight quarter of contraction on feeble demand at home and overseas. The government reported Thursday that growth for all of 2012 was 1.9 percent, after a 0.6 percent contraction in 2011 and a 4.7 percent increase in 2010 and a 5.5 percent contraction in 2009. The figures were worse than expected, as many analysts had forecast the economy may have emerged from recession late last year as the Japanese yen weakened against other major currencies, giving a boost to Japanese export manufacturers.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in late December, is championing aggressive spending and monetary stimulus to help get growth back on track. He has lobbied the central bank to set an inflation target of 2 percent, aimed at breaking out of Japan’s long bout of deflation, or falling prices, that he says are inhibiting corporate investment and growth. But the Bank of Japan was not expected to announce any major new initiatives from a policy meeting on Thursday. The current central bank governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, is due to leave office on March 19, and Mr. Abe is expected to appoint as his successor an expert who favors his more activist approach to monetary policy.

Last year began on an upbeat note with annual growth in the first quarter at 6 percent as strong government spending on reconstruction from the March 2011 tsunami disaster helped spur demand. But the economy contracted in the second quarter and deteriorated further as frictions with China over a territorial dispute hurt exports to one of Japan’s largest overseas markets.

Despite the dismal data for last year, many in Japan expect at least a temporary bump to growth from higher government spending on public works and other programs. An index measuring consumer confidence, released this week, jumped to its highest level since 2007, the biggest increase in a single month.

[Demeter]

4. Why Japan Can't Quit Nuclear Power By Olga Belogolova

http://news.yahoo.com/why-japan-cant-quit-nuclear-power-143033191--politics.html

THE LONG, SAD STORY

[Demeter]

10. First rule of currency war: Don’t say currency war

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/first-rule-of-currency-war-dont-say-currency-war-2013-02-18?siteid=YAHOOB

The Group of 20 has spoken, and it has effectively proclaimed that it’s more afraid of stalling economic growth than overheated rhetoric about the threat of a so-called currency war.

In the statement issued Saturday, G-20 finance ministers and central bankers effectively told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to go ahead and pursue policies that will result in a weaker currency — provided that he doesn’t actually talk about the level of the yen... Call it a bargain. The G-20 is willing to tolerate a much weaker yen if it helps restore growth to one of the world’s major economies. But the weaker yen — or a weaker dollar or a weaker pound or even a weaker euro, for that matter — must result from growth-oriented policies. A weaker currency can be a means to an end but not the end in itself.

As Kit Juckes, head of foreign exchange at Société Générale, put it in a note early Monday: “The conundrum is clear — the world’s leaders from G-7 to G-20 approve of policies to boost growth, while disapproving of policies to boost growth at the expense of others.

“So while currency manipulation is bad, zero rates and [quantitative easing] are good in times of trouble. And if those policies happen to cause a currency to weaken, well, that’s OK” in the eyes of the G-20, Juckes said.

“Currency war” is a term that was coined in 2010 by Brazil’s finance minister in response to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quantitative-easing strategy...

The Fed’s aggressive easing undercut the dollar. Loose policy among other major economies helped create a flood of funds into developing economies, such as Brazil, making for an unwelcome rise in the value of their currencies...

[siligut]

5. White House Warns Of Sequestration's Effects

The White House and congressional Democrats are sounding the alarm bells over the consequences of the sequester, the across-the-board cuts to the budget that are scheduled to go into effect in March.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said the cuts would offset "pretty good" economic activity over the past few months. He said President Obama had a plan to cut an addition $1.5 trillion from the deficit.

-snip-

"HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan says it will mean a 5 percent reduction in funding for recovery from superstorm Sandy, and that some 100,000 homeless or formerly homeless, including veterans, would be removed from their current housing and shelters. The government also says because USDA food inspectors face layoffs, some meat processing plants wont be able to open, leading to higher food prices. Senate Democrats have proposed avoiding the sequester by spreading the cuts out and raising some taxes, but Republicans say that idea is a nonstarter."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/02/17/172247486/white-house-warns-of-sequestrations-effects

[Hugin]

9. I've been considering starting a "Sequestration Watch" here in the Economics Group.

The GOP leadership in Congress is being far too coy trying to have their cakewalk and eat the Federal Employees with the matter and the Corporate Media is fully complicit.

[Demeter]

14. I'm tired of watching

But it is amusing how they writhe upon their own petards....

[siligut]

31. A "Sequestration Watch" would be great

As Demeter points out it is boring and I do not even find it "amusing how they writhe upon their own petards." But it is very important and will matter if it happens and I want to be prepared.

[siligut]

34. Obama just now repeated that Congress is the problem

He called it a manufactured problem created by rigid ideology and some other derogatory, but totally true, term.

He was explicit in the problems that the cuts would cause.

[xchrom]

6. A Vast Political Espionage Scandal Is Unfolding In Spain

http://www.businessinsider.com/now-a-vast-political-espionage-scandal-to-top-off-the-sordid-corruption-scandal-in-spain-2013-2

Spain just can’t catch a break—a horrid economy with dizzying unemployment, collapsing banks, a prime minister and ruling party tarred by corruption....

Now a political espionage scandal has blown up, scattering debris and money laundering allegations far and wide.

Unemployment in Spain was 26% in December, youth unemployment 55%. GDP last quarter dropped for the fifth month in a row (-0.7%), the steepest decline since the financial crisis.

Consumer spending plunged 10% in December from prior year—following a hike in the value-added tax. And the budget deficit target of 6.3% (not counting the billions plowed into bailing out the banks) is skidding out of reach.


Read more: http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/2/15/now-a-vast-political-espionage-scandal-to-top-off-the-sordid.html#ixzz2LFayJXn0

[Demeter]

7. Good Morning, X!

I have to tell you what I saw when the girls and I went shopping (finally)...

Marshalls has these dainty evening bags that have clasps in the shape of brass knuckles, that you can fit your fingers through. It's appallingly practical, for those that need that kind of thing....



Also available at Amazon.com, where I got the picture, lots of other styles here:

http://www.shopwiki.com/l/KNUCKLE-CLUTCH-BAG

[xchrom]

13. GASP -- to die for! still sick. nt

[Demeter]

15. Poor baby! Have you sought medical help?

Sometimes it really does help.

[xchrom]

27. Yeah. Appointment in the morning. Thanks. Nt

[siligut]

32. Now when a lady hits someone with her purse . . .

She can really do some damage.

[Demeter]

8. ME, TOO!

[Tansy_Gold]

12. None fake here

New roof going on this week, and I have to try to work during the process. (Pretending to work would be easy; actually working while they're banging away on the roof? maybe not so easy).

Given, however, that no one around me seems to have anything other than vague goals of simply staying awake and entertained, I'm not too enthusiastic. About anything.

[Demeter]

16. And it's too cold for enthusiasm, anyway.

22F with a windchill of 12F...will this never end?

[DemReadingDU]

17. So not just me with lack of enthusiasm

I thought it was I didn't want to clean anything

[Demeter]

18. Hoping for a Meteor to Strike Because Life is Hard? You're Probably Out of Luck

http://www.alternet.org/hoping-meteor-strike-because-life-hard-youre-probably-out-luck?akid=10072.227380.06n5uK&rd=1&src=newsletter796377&t=16&paging=off

Humanity has a better chance than the dinosaurs...“We can find these objects, we can track their motions, and we can predict their orbits many years into the future,” noted Robert Naeye of Sky and Telescope in an essay called, Lessons from the Russian Meteor Blast. “And in the unlikely event that we actually find a dangerous object on a collision course with Earth, we might actually be able to deflect it if given sufficient warning time. Now, every government in the world is keenly aware of the possibility of meteor explosions over its territory.” The Russian parliament is also keen on the idea. “Instead of fighting on Earth, people should be creating a joint system of asteroid defense,” its affairs committee chief Alexei Pushkov wrote on his Twitter account late Friday. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin on Saturday reiterated the idea and proposed a global defense system to counter space threats. And on CNN, Lawrence Krauss, professor of physics and director of the Origin Project, talked about how human technology has advanced to the point of predicting and, more interesting, deflecting oncoming meteorites that could cause the earth “significant damage.”

“We have to think about it seriously,”he said. “It’s not science fiction. We can send a rocket out and land on a meteor or impact with it.” If the meteor is far enough, “A small rocket running for a while can cause a small angular change.. enough have it miss the earth.”

Meanwhile a new program called ATLAS is about to be launched. According to The Guardian, “The University of Hawaii has proposed a cheaper, simpler system known as Atlas - Advanced Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System - to be constructed with the help of a $5m grant from NASA.” Its aim is to create a warning system on oncoming asteroids and find ways to save earth from the impact...So welcome to the age of empyrealization—an age of man’s increasing awareness and interactions with the heavens. We grow cognizant that we exist on intimate levels with the rest of the universe, that we are interacting with it, and, increasingly, having an effect upon it as it does upon us. The word doesn’t exist yet in the dictionary, but for that matter neither did globalization 3 decades ago.

Unlike the dinosaurs, we have, in effect, become active agents in changing our destiny. A giant meteor wiped out 90 percent of life on earth 65 million years ago because the dinosaurs didn’t collectively create a missile shield to deflect the meteor. Humans, on the other hand, with our orbiting telescopes and space probes, and our growing awareness of the threat from space, can track large foreign objects coming millions miles away and are talking about collectively deflecting those that could do us harm....Whether or not we can deflect a large meteor as in the hollywood movie, Armageddon, remains to be seen. But brilliant minds are at work. And nothing like an external threat to galvanize humanity.

**********************************************************

Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005) and “East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres.” His next book, “Birds of Paradise Lost,” is due out in 2013.

[Demeter]

19. BUT WHY BOTHER? The NDAA and the Death of the Democratic State / By Chris Hedges

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/ndaa-and-death-democratic-state?akid=10072.227380.06n5uK&rd=1&src=newsletter796377&t=18&paging=off

If the corporate state is handed the tools to use deadly force to criminalize dissent, then our decline will be one of repression, blood and suffering...The fate of the nation, we understood, could be decided by the three judges who will rule on our lawsuit against President Barack Obama for signing into law Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The section permits the military to detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, who “substantially support”—an undefined legal term—al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” again a term that is legally undefined. Those detained can be imprisoned indefinitely by the military and denied due process until “the end of hostilities.” In an age of permanent war this is probably a lifetime. Anyone detained under the NDAA can be sent, according to Section (c)(4), to any “foreign country or entity.” This is, in essence, extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens. It empowers the government to ship detainees to the jails of some of the most repressive regimes on earth.

Section 1021(b)(2) was declared invalid in September after our first trial, in the Southern District Court of New York. The Obama administration appealed the Southern District Court ruling. The appeal was heard Wednesday in the Second Circuit Court with Judges Raymond J. Lohier, Lewis A. Kaplan and Amalya L. Kearse presiding. The judges might not make a decision until the spring when the Supreme Court rules in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, another case in which I am a plaintiff. The Supreme Court case challenges the government’s use of electronic surveillance. If we are successful in the Clapper case, it will strengthen all the plaintiffs’ standing in Hedges v. Obama. The Supreme Court, if it rules against the government, will affirm that we as plaintiffs have a reasonable fear of being detained.

If we lose in Hedges v. Obama—and it seems certain that no matter the outcome of the appeal this case will reach the Supreme Court—electoral politics and our rights as citizens will be as empty as those of Nero’s Rome. If we lose, the power of the military to detain citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military prisons will become a terrifying reality. Democrat or Republican. Occupy activist or libertarian. Socialist or tea party stalwart. It does not matter. This is not a partisan fight. Once the state seizes this unchecked power, it will inevitably create a secret, lawless world of indiscriminate violence, terror and gulags. I lived under several military dictatorships during the two decades I was a foreign correspondent. I know the beast...MORE

“What our case comes down to is: Are we going to have a civil justice system in the United States or a military justice system? The civil justice system is something that is ingrained in the Constitution. It was always very important in combating tyranny and building a democratic society. What the NDAA is trying to impose is a system of military justice that allows the military to police the streets of America to detain U.S. citizens, to detain residents in the United States in military prisons. Probably the most frightening aspect of the NDAA is that it allows for detention until ‘the end of hostilities.’ ” --Attorney Carl Mayer

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

[Hugin]

28. Ah, well... It's the difference between being a Deer and an Educated Deer.

They're both frozen wide-eyed in the middle of the road. The Educated Deer knows it's a car that's about to hit.

[Demeter]

33. That describes me perfectly--an Educated Deer

Now I just gotta get some weapons training...

[westerebus]

29. It's a epidemic...

Spring needs to get here like now.

[bread_and_roses]

20. Bitter cold here too - and I am so weary ...

... not so much the cold - it's expected, this time of year, the "Iron months" between Jan and April 1 - though when March arrives I do breathe a sigh of relief. March is often dreadful, here, but we know April is on the way ...

I am just so weary of the endless lies and obfuscations and the constant extolling of the "free-market" and "entrepreneurs" from our Dear Leader. It sickens me. And it sickens me that our so-called "news" - including National Propaganda Radio - will repeat whatever Conservative lie the Rs promote - like "raising the minimum wage will kill jobs and put people out of business" - without noting the obvious: they say this EVERY time and it never happens. But no, they say it, the "news" repeats it .... a "Groundhog Day" without the humor ....

Sorry I haven't been doing my share around here. Am in retreat for the time being, just hunkered down, as we say, trying to get through.

[Demeter]

22. Getting through is the important job

everything else is secondary and subject to change without notice...just drop a note if you can, telling us you're still with us...

[Demeter]

11. Reaganism After Reagan By RAMESH PONNURU

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/opinion/updating-reaganomics.html?_r=0


TODAY’S Republicans are very good at tending the fire of Ronald Reagan’s memory but not nearly as good at learning from his successes. They slavishly adhere to the economic program that Reagan developed to meet the challenges of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ignoring the fact that he largely overcame those challenges, and now we have new ones*. It’s because Republicans have not moved on from that time that Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, in their responses to the State of the Union address last week, offered so few new ideas.

When Reagan cut rates for everyone, the top tax rate was 70 percent and the income tax was the biggest tax most people paid. Now neither of those things is true: For most of the last decade the top rate has been 35 percent, and the payroll tax is larger than the income tax for most people. Yet Republicans have treated the income tax as the same impediment to economic growth and middle-class millstone that it was in Reagan’s day. House Republicans have repeatedly voted to bring the top rate down still further, to 25 percent. A Republican Party attentive to today’s problems rather than yesterday’s would work to lighten the burden of the payroll tax, not just the income tax. An expanded child tax credit that offset the burden of both taxes would be the kind of broad-based middle-class tax relief that Reagan delivered. Republicans should make room for this idea in their budgets, even if it means giving up on the idea of a 25 percent top tax rate.**

When Reagan took office, he could have confidence in John F. Kennedy’s conviction that a rising tide would lift all boats. In more recent years, though, economic growth hasn’t always raised wages for most people. The rising cost of health insurance has eaten up raises. Controlling the cost of health care has to be a bigger part of the Republican agenda now that it’s a bigger portion of the economy. An important first step would be to change the existing tax break for health insurance so that people would be able to pocket the savings if they chose cheaper plans.***

Conservative views of monetary policy are also stuck in the late 1970s. From 1979 to 1981, inflation hit double digits three years in a row. Tighter money was the answer. To judge from the rhetoric of most Republican politicians, you would think we were again suffering from galloping inflation. The average annual inflation rate over the last five years has been just 2 percent. You would have to go back a long time to find the last period of similarly low inflation. Today nominal spending — the total amount of dollars circulating in the economy both for consumption and investment — has fallen well below its path before the financial crisis and the recession. That’s the reverse of the pattern of the late 1970s.


******************************************************

Ramesh Ponnuru is a columnist for Bloomberg View and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

*******************************************************

*ALLOW ME TO POINT OUT THAT OUR "NEW CHALLENGES" STEM FROM THE CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION THAT REAGAN IMPOSED UPON THE AMERICAN ECONOMY DURING HIS REIGN OF TERROR UPON THE 99%....

**BY ALL MEANS, LET'S STARVE THE GOVERNMENT SOME MORE!

***THERE'S BEEN NO ECONOMIC GROWTH...THE WATER IN THE BATH TUB HAS BEEN SLOSHING AROUND, WHILE THE 1% DRAIN OFF EVERYTHING.

MORE FREE-MARKET CLAPTRAP

[Demeter]

21. The American Housing Market is Set to Screw People Far into the Future By Sam Pizzigati

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/american-housing-market-set-screw-people-far-future?akid=10072.227380.06n5uK&rd=1&src=newsletter796377&t=14&paging=off

...segregation still stains America, and not just the lingering legacy of the racial segregation that Americans battled decades ago. America now faces a stark income segregation as well — and this income segregation is getting worse. Last week, researchers from the U.S. Census Bureau released a new report that details one aspect of this new segregation: the concentration of high-income households by metro area.

How concentrated have these high-income households become? The new Census study, the first ever to examine where America’s most affluent 5 percent live, offers a rather dramatic picture. In some U.S. metro areas, the new data show, you can knock randomly on 100 doors and expect to find only one household making at least $191,469, the income threshold for entering America’s top 5 percent between 2006 and 2011. In other metro areas, that same door knocking would turn up as many as 18 households making near $200,000 and above.

Affluence in America today almost totally bypasses broad swatches of the nation.... Affluence is settling instead in a relatively few pockets, places like Silicon Valley in California and the hedge-fund-happy suburbs around Stamford, Connecticut. Our contemporary income segregation becomes even more intense when we drill down from the metro to neighborhood level. Sociologists Sean Reardon and Kendra Bischoff have been doing this drilling, using Census tract data.

Back in 1970, the pair have found, 65 percent of America’s families lived in “middle-income” situations, neighborhoods where incomes range from 80 to 125 percent of the median, or most typical, income of the larger metro area. By 2008, only 43 percent of U.S. families lived in middle-income neighborhoods. Meanwhile, over that same span, the share of families living in either poor or rich neighborhoods essentially doubled. In 2008, note Reardon and Bischoff, nearly one in three U.S. families in metro areas “lived in neighborhoods at the extremes of the local income spectrum,” in poor neighborhoods with incomes under 67 percent of the metro median or in affluent neighborhoods with incomes above 150 percent of that median. Today’s affluent, Reardon and Bischoff observe, actually live more segregated lives than America’s poor. These affluent have become “much less likely” to live in mixed-income neighborhoods than poor families...Average Americans, for their part, are paying a heavy price for this growing segregation. The more isolated the rich become, the more they withdraw into their own private worlds and the less interest they have in supporting public services that can benefit the wider community.

MORE

Sam Pizzigati is the editor of the online weekly Too Much, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

[Demeter]

23. The Minimum Wage, Guns, Healthcare and the Meaning of a Decent Society By Robert Reich

http://www.nationofchange.org/minimum-wage-guns-healthcare-and-meaning-decent-society-1361024552

ONE MIGHT CALL IT THE REAL PURPOSE OF THE STUDY OF ECONOMICS...

Raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 should be a no-brainer... RAISING IT TO $20 WOULD BE JUSTICE FOR ALL... Republicans say it will cause employers to shed jobs, but that’s baloney. Employers won’t outsource the jobs abroad or substitute machines for them because jobs at this low level of pay are all in the local personal service sector (retail, restaurant, hotel, and so on), where employers pass on any small wage hikes to customers as pennies more on their bills. States that have a minimum wage closer to $9 than the current federal minimum don’t have higher rates of unemployment than do states still at the federal minimum. A mere $9 an hour translates into about $18,000 a year — still under the poverty line. When you add in the Earned Income Tax Credit and food stamps it’s possible to barely rise above poverty at this wage, but even the poverty line of about $23,000 understates the true cost of living in most areas of the country. Besides, the proposed increase would put more money into the hands of families that desperately need it, allowing them to buy a bit more and thereby keep others working.

A decent society should do no less. Some conservatives say “decency” has nothing to do with it. Who has the right to decide what’s decent? We should let the “market” decide what people are paid. This is one of the oldest conservative canards in existence, based on the false claim that there’s something called a “market” that exists separate from society. But there’s no “market” in a state of nature, just survival of the fittest. A society necessarily determines how the “market” is to be organized. Standards of morality and decency play a large role in those decisions. We set minimum standards for worker safety and consumer protection. We decide young children shouldn’t be in the labor force. We do our best to prevent certain things from being bought and sold — such as slaves, dangerous narcotics, babies, votes, sex with children, machine guns, nuclear material. We decide citizens shouldn’t have to buy certain things that should instead be available to everyone free of charge (paid in effect by all of us through our taxes) – such as clean drinking water, K-12 schools, safe bridges, protection from violence, public parks.

Opinions may differ about what decency requires, and we hash it out in a democracy. We might decide certain minimum standards are too costly or inefficient, or can’t be enforced, or impose unwarranted constraints on our freedoms. Different societies come up with different answers. Handguns are banned in most other advanced nations, for example. Workers have more protections than they do in the United States. Minimum wages are higher. Taxes on the wealthy are higher. Healthcare is more universally available.

Every society must necessarily decide for itself what decency requires. That’s the very meaning of a “society.” Don’t fall for the mindless assertion that “markets” know best. Markets are human creations, requiring human beings to decide how they are structured and maintained. The questions we face – whether to raise the minimum wage, restrict the availability of guns, expand healthcare coverage, and countless other decisions – inevitably require us to define what we mean by a decent society.

[Demeter]

24. We Can Work Less, Make More Money and Save the Planet

http://www.alternet.org/economy/we-can-work-less-make-more-money-and-save-planet?akid=10062.227380.xiyx9D&rd=1&src=newsletter795084&t=16

I am greatly pleased to see such interest in CEPR’s recent report on work hours and climate change. All evidence points to the idea that gradually reducing annual labor hours per worker will reduce the amount of climate change with which the world will have to cope. But this does not mean that ordinary workers will have to make a sacrifice. Rather, this is about how workers may choose to enjoy the fruits of increased productivity—if only they are given the chance to share fully in economic progress.

Throughout the 1950s, workers in the United States enjoyed fewer hours of labor than almost every country in Western Europe. On average, an employed American worked 1,909 hours in 1950. Only Sweden—at 1,871 hours—worked less. By contrast, Greeks averaged 2,712 hours that year; the Irish put in 2,753.

Today, workers in Greece are second only to Poland for the longest working hours in all Europe and labored 330 hours longer in 2012 than their American counterparts. However, productivities of these countries have climbed dramatically since 1950 as hours have fallen. In each hour of work in 2012, each American produced 3.2 times as much as in 1950. This allowed workers to build 2.9 times as much in each year— and do so in 200 fewer hours than in 1950. In this way, American workers labored a bit less and still prospered materially.

These same Americans might have enjoyed a little more time off and still produced far more than did workers in 1950. Over those same 62 years, the average French work-year fell by 684 hours and still workers produce 4.7 times as much in a year...MORE

[Demeter]

25. Workers Forced to Wear Electronic Bands That Track Everything They Do (Including Bathroom Breaks)

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/work-becoming-more-prison-some-workers-forced-wear-electronic-bands-track-everything?akid=10072.227380.06n5uK&rd=1&src=newsletter796377&t=6&paging=off

The Irish Independent reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. These unforgivable lapses in productivity impact workers' performance score, which management then apparently uses to terrify them into working faster. "The devices give a set amount of time for a task, such as 20 minutes to load packets of soft drinks. If they did it in 20 minutes, they would get 100pc, but would get 200pc if they were twice as fast," writes the Independent. Although TESCO denied that bathroom breaks impact productivity scores, one former staffer the Independent spoke with said he got a "surprisingly lower" score when he took a bathroom break.

...since the introduction of the device workers faced increasing pressure to produce more and more. But working people close to death has some downsides for companies. Studies show that work stress is linked to physical and mental ailments, from sleep deprivation to chronic disease. In the end, stressed, sick workers saddle companies both with rising health costs (for those that actually pay for employee health expenses) and the costs of high turnover. According to the CDC, excessive workloads and changing demands are the biggest triggers of work stress.

Using machines to extract as much labor as humanely possible from workers has a long history. (Even the clock has ignobly served as a tool of managerial abuse -- in some industrial towns factory owners were known to change the town clock to cheat workers out of time off.) As surveillance technology advances, companies can increasingly track all aspects of their workers' time and activity. Frederick Taylor -- who pioneered the idea of parsing worker time down to seconds -- and Henry Ford would be jealous...

MORE

[Demeter]

26. Here's Why Obama Won't Say Whether He Can Kill You With a Drone: Because He Probably Can

AND HE ALREADY SAID HE WILL---ASK THE JONAS BROTHERS!

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/why-obama-wont-give-straight-answer-drones

During a Google+ "Fireside Hangout" Thursday evening, President Barack Obama was asked if he believed he has the authority to authorize a drone strike against an American citizen on US soil. He didn't exactly answer the question. The Council on Foreign Relations' Micah Zenko transcribed the whole exchange. Lee Doren, a conservative activist, asked the question; here's Obama's answer:

First of all, I think, there’s never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil. And, you know, we respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counterterrorism operations outside the United States. The rules outside the United States are going to be different then the rules inside the United States. In part because our capacity to, for example, to capture a terrorist inside the United States are very different then in the foothills or mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan.

But what I think is absolutely true is that it is not sufficient for citizens to just take my word for it that we are doing the right thing. I am the head of the executive branch. And what we've done so far is to try to work with Congress on oversight issues. But part of what I am going to have to work with congress on is to make sure that whatever it is we’re providing congress, that we have mechanisms to also make sure that the public understands what’s going on, what the constraints are, what the legal parameters are. And that is something that I take very seriously. I am not someone who believes that the president has the authority to do whatever he wants, or whatever she wants, whenever they want, just under the guise of counterterrorism. There have to be legal checks and balances on it.

Doren isn't the only one who wants an answer to this question. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has placed a hold on John Brennan, Obama's nominee for CIA director, "until [Brennan] answers the question of whether or not the President can kill American citizens through the drone strike program on U.S. soil." Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) posed that exact question to Brennan in a written questionnaire, but his answer was as opaque as Obama's. "This Administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so," Brennan wrote.

So why didn't Obama just say, "no, the president cannot deploy drone strikes against US citizens on American soil"? Because the answer is probably "yes." That may not be as apocalyptically sinister as it sounds.

"Certainly, we routinely 'targeted' U.S. citizens during the Civil War," says Steve Vladeck, a law professor at American University's Washington College of Law. "Even if the targeting was with imprecise 19th-century artillery as opposed to 21st-century unmanned arial vehicles." If he had the technology, President Abraham Lincoln would most likely have been within his authority to send a drone to vaporize Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Drone strikes in the modern context, however, aren't being used against uniformed commanders of a traditional military force. Instead, we're talking about strikes that target individuals suspected of being part of terrorist organizations where "membership" is an inherently more nebulous concept. There are two government agencies known to conduct drone strikes, the CIA and the Department of Defense. CIA involvement in a domestic drone strike is probably off-limits, says Paul Pillar, a former CIA official who is now a professor at Georgetown University. The idea is really far-fetched anyway, Pillar argues. "I expect that if the CIA were to do anything like that within the U.S. it probably would violate some of the legal restrictions that are placed on all of the agency's activities as far as inside-U.S. operations are concerned," Pillar wrote in an email to Mother Jones. "Nothing like this is ever going to arise as far as drone strikes are concerned, so I don't see it as a live issue."

Since the CIA is probably out, that leaves the military. Congress has long held that the president has the authority to use the military domestically in some circumstances. The Posse Comitatus Act, passed after Reconstruction to limit the use of military force on US soil, states that the military can be used to enforce the law "in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress." The last time this happened was 1992 when, citing the Insurrection Act, President George H.W. Bush called out the National Guard to suppress the Los Angeles riots in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict...

SOUNDS SINISTER ENOUGH TO ME

[DemReadingDU]

30. Greek Heiress Sues After Chalet’s Picassos, Monets Vanish

2/17/13 Greek Heiress Sues After Chalet’s Picassos, Monets Vanish

A Greek heiress is fighting a legal battle in Switzerland to find out what has become of a collection of Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Cezanne and Degas art that she says should be part of her inheritance.

Aspasia Zaimis’s uncle, Basil Goulandris, was a billionaire shipping magnate who spent the winter months in the Alpine resort of Gstaad with his wife Elise. The Greek couple amassed a billion-dollar collection that they displayed in their chalet. Basil Goulandris died in 1994; his wife Elise in 2000. Zaimis, a legatee in Elise Goulandris’s will, contends that one- sixth of the collection should be hers after her aunt’s death.

“I am determined to find the paintings which were in the Gstaad home before my aunt’s death,” Zaimis said by phone from Greece. “I believe with all my heart that the paintings were part of my inheritance.” Her quest has uncovered a paper trail leading from the Aegean island of Andros to Swiss depots; from a Panama trading company to a Liechtenstein foundation, according to two people familiar with the lawsuit who declined to be identified by name.

The case now winding through a Lausanne court is examining whether a sale contract dated 1985 for 83 masterpieces -- at a price far below their value -- is genuine, the people said. “I do not believe that Basil sold his collection,” Zaimis said. “They were so proud of it. I cannot imagine he would have sold it for this price.”

lots more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-18/greek-heiress-sues-after-chalet-s-picassos-monets-vanish.html