Weekend Economists on the Hunt for Red October 4-6, 2013

[Demeter]

Last edited Sat Oct 5, 2013, 09:54 AM - Edit history (1)

(oddly enough, this picture is from The Hindu newspaper. Perhaps they aren't so anti-smoking as the West)


Yes, it is a HORRIBLE pun on my part. Yet how could I resist? While the author of The Hunt for Red October is laid to rest, we are entering a real Red October, one of bloodshed, potential for bloodshed, and bloodthirstiness, not to mention the usual avarice, coveting, and theft. But first, we remember....

Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. (April 12, 1947 – October 1, 2013) was an American author best known for his technically detailed espionage and military science storylines that are set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games which bear his name for licensing and promotional purposes. Seventeen of his novels were best-sellers, with over 100 million copies in print. His name was also a brand for similar movie scripts written by ghost writers and many series of non-fiction books on military subjects and merged biographies of key leaders. He was a part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles and Vice Chairman of their Community Activities and Public Affairs committees...wikipedia

So, a Man of the 1%, or at very worst, the 10%, though he didn't start out wealthy. And yet, he had vision: a vision of what is, what could be, what would be; and the gift of story-telling. No doubt that's how he kept his sanity, while in his original line of work: insurance.

Clancy was born at Franklin Square Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in the Northwood neighborhood. Clancy was the second of three children to Thomas, who worked for the United States Postal Service, and Catherine who worked in a store's credit department. His mother worked in order to send him to the private Catholic Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Maryland, graduating with the class of 1965. He then attended Loyola College (now Loyola University) in Baltimore, graduating in 1969 with a degree in English literature. While at university, he was president of the chess club. He joined the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps, however he was ineligible to serve due to his nearsightedness, which required him to wear thick eyeglasses. After graduating he worked for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1973, he joined the O. F. Bowen Agency, a small insurance agency based in Owings, Maryland, founded by his wife's grandfather. In 1980, he purchased the insurance agency from his wife's grandmother, and wrote novels in his spare time. While working at the insurance agency, he wrote The Hunt For Red October.

Clancy's literary career began in 1982 when he started writing The Hunt for Red October which in 1985, he sold for publishing to the Naval Institute Press for $5,000. The publisher was impressed with the work; Deborah Grosvenor, the editor at the Naval Institute Press that read through the work, said later that she convinced the publisher that "I think we have a potential best seller here, and if we don’t grab this thing, somebody else would," and considered that Clancy had an "innate storytelling ability, and his characters had this very witty dialogue". The publisher requested Clancy to cut numerous technical details, amounting to about 100 pages. Clancy, who had wanted to sell 5,000 copies, ended up selling over 45,000. After publication, the book received praise from President Ronald Reagan, calling the work "my kind of yarn", subsequently boosting sales to 300,000 hardcover and 2 million paperback copies of the book, making it a national bestseller. The book was critically praised for its technical accuracy, which led to Clancy meeting several high-ranking officers in the U.S. Military.

Clancy's fiction works, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears, have been turned into commercially successful films with actors Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck as Clancy's most famous fictional character Jack Ryan, while his second most famous character John Clark has been played by actors Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber. All but two of Clancy's solely written novels feature Jack Ryan or John Clark.

The first NetForce novel was adapted as a television movie, starring Scott Bakula and Joanna Going. The first Op-Center novel was released to coincide with a 1995 NBC television mini-series of the same name (Tom Clancy's Op-Center) starring Harry Hamlin and a cast of stars. Though the mini-series did not continue, the book series did, but it had little in common with the first mini-series other than the title and the names of the main characters.

With the release of The Teeth of the Tiger, Clancy introduced Jack Ryan's son and two nephews as main characters; these characters continue in his three latest novels, Dead or Alive, Locked On and Threat Vector.

Clancy wrote several nonfiction books about various branches of the U.S. armed forces (see non-fiction listing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy ). Clancy also branded several lines of books and video games with his name that are written by other authors, following premises or storylines generally in keeping with Clancy's works. These are sometimes referred to by fans as "apostrophe" books; Clancy did not initially acknowledge that these series were being authored by others, only thanking the actual authors in the headnotes for their "invaluable contribution to the manuscript".

By 1988, Clancy had earned $1.3 million for The Hunt for Red October and had signed a $3 million contract for his next three books. By 1997, it was reported that Penguin Putnam Inc. (part of Pearson Education) would pay Clancy $50 million for world rights to two new books, and another $25 million to Red Storm Entertainment for a four-year book/multimedia deal. Clancy followed this up with an agreement with Penguin's Berkley Books for 24 paperbacks to tie in with the ABC television miniseries Tom Clancy's Net Force aired in the fall/winter of 1998. The Op-Center universe has laid the ground for the series of books written by Jeff Rovin, which was in an agreement worth $22 million, bringing the total value of the package to $97 million.

In 1993, Clancy joined a group of investors that included Peter Angelos and bought the Baltimore Orioles from Eli Jacobs. In 1998, he reached an agreement to purchase the Minnesota Vikings, but had to abandon the deal because of a divorce settlement cost.

In 2008, the French video game manufacturer Ubisoft purchased the use of Clancy's name for an undisclosed sum. It has been used in conjunction with video games and related products such as movies and books...

We'll follow his story, and many more, to the bitter end (or surprise twists, as it may befall).

His website: http://www.tomclancy.com/

[Demeter]

1. We Live Under a Total Surveillance State; Can We Prevent a Full-Blown Police State?

WHEN I THINK ABOUT IT, TOM CLANCY BEARS AS MUCH RESPONSIBILITY AS ANYONE IN GOVERNMENT FOR OUR CURRENT MILITARIZED PSEUDO-DEMOCRACY. HIS MILITARY ROMANCES (FOR LACK OF A BETTER TERM) SUPPLEMENTED AND SUPPORTED THE BANKSTERS GRASPING FOR EVERY LAST NICKEL IN THE WORLD...AND I THINK IT'S TOO LATE, AS FAR AS THE POLICE STATE GOES....

I DOUBT THAT TOM CLANCY WOULD EVER HAVE PEEKED OVER HIS BUNKER AT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY...THE CIVILIAN SIDE, AND THE DAMAGE THAT HIS HEROES CAUSED.....DEMETER


We Live Under a Total Surveillance State in America -- Can We Prevent It from Evolving into a Full-Blown Police State?

http://admin.alternet.org/activism/we-live-under-total-surveillance-state-america-can-we-prevent-it-evolving-full-blown-police?akid=10971.227380.DMFr-i&rd=1&src=newsletter900814&t=4&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark

Editor's Note: This is the conclusion of an original AlterNet series on the U.S. Executive Branch. Part 1 was “How The U.S. Executive Branch Threatens U.S. National Security,” Part 2 “The World's Most Evil And Lawless Institution," Part 3 “A Clear and Present Danger to Our Democracy“ (WHICH SEEMS TO HAVE A NEW TITLE) “New Hope For Defending Democracy Against Executive Power."

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/executive-branch-threatens-us-national-security
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/executive-branch-evil-and-lawless
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/why-us-executive-branch-clear-and-present-danger-our-democracy


Fred Branfman's writing has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, and many other publications. He is the author of Voices From the Plain of Jars, and can be reached at [e-mail]. http://www.alternet.org/authors/fred-branfman

if you aren't familiar with Branfman's work, here's some background from his long-time colleague and collaborator, Noam Chomsky: Branfman “worked for years, with enormous courage and effort, to try to expose what were called the ‘secret wars’ against Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The secret wars were perfectly public wars which the media were keeping secret, government. And Fred … finally did succeed in breaking through, and helped prompt a tremendous exposure of huge wars that were going on.”

“Knowledge (of) the scale of our capability would raise public awareness generating unwelcome publicity for us and our political masters."—Classified UK NSA document

“To approve such a program, the Court must have every confidence that the government is doing its utmost to ensure that those responsible for implementation fully comply with the Court’s orders. The Court no longer has such confidence."—U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Order, p. 12, 3-9-2009

***

For those alarmed by the steady growth of lawless, violent and authoritarian U.S. Executive power for the last 50 years, the events of the past few months have been exciting. The emergence of a de facto coalition of progressives and conservatives opposing the National Defense Authorization Act law giving the Executive the right to unilaterally detain or execute American citizens without a trial, and NSA mass surveillance of phone and Internet data, has been unprecedented, and offers the first hope in 70 years that Executive power can be curbed, The most important development has been the public and congressional reaction to President Obama's proposal to strike Syria. A huge majority of the American people opposed even a limited military action by the Executive Branch. Reading the polls, the President decided to seek congressional authorization for a limited military action. For the first time in living memory, Congress clearly opposed him. It is too soon to say what this will mean for the future, but the implications clearly extend beyond just this particular strike or President....The fundamental issue involved amidst the ongoing cascade of revelations about NSA wrongdoing is this: what must be done to roll back the Executive Branch's creation of a surveillance state, which is just one more major economic crisis or 9/11—as even centrists like Bob Woodward and Tom Friedman warn—from becoming a police-state....Politically, it is impossible to envision ending the surveillance state without a broad left-right coalition both in Congress and among the public devoted to doing so. But it will be difficult to maintain a coalition of progressives and Tea Partiers, liberals and conservatives, who neither trust nor respect one another—particularly when fought by an Executive that will hit back against attempts to control it with everything it has.

The technical questions are even trickier. How does Congress write and pass laws to prevent Executive Agencies from undertaking surveillance and population control measures when, to paraphrase Congressman Keith Ellison, "Congress doesn't know what it doesn't know"? How can Congress control Executive wrongdoing when Executive officials invoke the mantra of national security to avoid providing it with information? Had Edward Snowden not risked life imprisonment or worse to reveal that the U.S. Executive Branch has created a surveillance state, we would still know virtually nothing about it. The ranking Senate and House Intelligence committee chairs, Dianne Feinstein and Mike Rogers, would still be covering up Executive wrongdoing, and even those members angered at its criminality would still be muzzled from saying anything. The Judiciary would still not only be rubber-stamping Executive actions, but expanding Executive Branch power. The mass media would still be routinely conveying its denials of wrongdoing to the American people whenever the issue arose...If even the secret FISA Court no longer has confidence in the Executive, neither can the rest of us. During the 1960s, the FBI regularly used its secret intelligence to blackmail and threaten not only activists but politicians, presidents and Martin Luther King, Jr. As Internet security expert C.J. Radford has written, “the issue is what happens if this data, and these capabilities, fall into the wrong hands. A malicious government employee, a change in government, court rulings, regulations or leadership could all open this information, and these capabilities, up to cross agency analysis, open use, or criminal activity.”


...The following steps are needed.

The Bottom Line: No Bulk Collection Of Americans' Phone And Internet Metadata, Destroy Files That Exist


Institute Genuine Congressional Oversight


A. Elect Committees Who Oversee Not Promote Executive Wrongdoing, Beginning By Replacing Senator Dianne Feinstein And Rep. Mike Rogers.


B. Indict Executive Branch Officials When They Commit Perjury


C. Give Congress the Right to Declassify Data Indicating Waste, Fraud, Abuse and Crimes By the Executive


D. Congress Must Have The Capacity To Genuinely Oversee Executive Agencies



Give the Judiciary the Capacity to Genuinely Oversee Executive Agencies Like the NSA


Provide Strong Whistleblower Protection


Restructure the Present System of Classification



Conclusion: A Non-Violent Call to Arms

The unprecedented coalition of liberals/progressives and conservatives/Tea Partiers which on July 24 almost passed a bill forbidding NSA spying on innocent Americans has offered the only hope that the U.S. Executive Branch's danger to democracy can be challenged.

Executive power is so great that a major moral and political struggle will be necessary to bring it under meaningful democratic control. Only a major "Coalition for Freedom" inside Congress and on the streets of America can prevent it from choking off what remains of democracy. Is democracy worth fighting for? Only if millions of us decide it is will America become a functioning democracy.


DETAILS AT LINK

[Demeter]

3. It's a wonderful weekend for a bank failure---Will the FDIC strike?

We are basking in the Indian Summer of Tropical Storm Karen (I'm so proud!) and suffering the first of a series of viruses (damn school year--there's a crud that lasts a month, they tell me. Since the Kid has been sick for 2 weeks now, and finally given it to me...it's not flu, but if it lasts that long, it might as well be).

It's a bit early to know, so check back later!

[bread_and_roses]

24. I have that - over a month for me

but I don't start from a healthy base. Hope you don't succumb to it and that kid is well soon.

[DemReadingDU]

2. What caused his death?

anybody heard anything?

[Demeter]

4. Wiki says "a brief illness"

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/10/02/author-tom-clancy-dies-at-66/2907629/

VIDEO CLIP AND OBIT

Tom Clancy Dies – What Killed Famous Author?


As you’ve undoubtedly heard, legendary author Tom Clancy has died. He was just 66 years old. While an illness is said to be the official cause of death, that hasn’t stopped the internet from throwing around alternative speculation.

Could Tom Clancy have been murdered by people within the federal government? One theory goes that the author was too good at predicting events and had become a threat to the nation. This man predicted everything from 9/11 to the Bin Laden raid with razor-like accuracy. To silence him, the feds had him killed — and they did so during the shutdown of the government so that as few people as possible could potentially ruin the plot … so says this theory.

Or, could he have committed suicide? Maybe he utilized his amazing speculative ability and saw something disastrous coming. Thus, in order to avoid a more painful demise, he decided to bow out gracefully now.

Personally, I believe the official word that his health failed. Some say it’s fishy that this illness took him so quickly — but that happens all the time, unfortunately.

Regardless of the manner, I hope you rest in peace, Tom Clancy.


http://www.everyjoe.com/2013/10/02/crime/tom-clancy-photos-died-suicide-murder-illness/#1

[Demeter]

5. The 'Faux Friday' Jobs Report: What Economists Can Guesstimate

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/04/229234003/the-faux-friday-jobs-report-what-economists-can-guesstimate?ft=1&f=1001

Thanks to the federal government's partial shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics skipped its monthly Big Reveal at 8:30 a.m. Friday.

There was no September employment report.

Without access to the BLS numbers, data junkies were left to scrounge around for lesser reports. Maybe if they could suck in enough small hits of other statistics, they could feel that old familiar rush?

Nope. Nothing can replace that BLS high.

"You do miss it," said Harry Holzer, Georgetown professor and former chief economist for the Labor Department. "I watch it closely. It's the single best number to explain what's going on" in the U.S. labor market, he said. The BLS report surveys both employers and households. Also, it comes out monthly, rather than quarterly. Holzer said that frequency provides enough snapshots of wages and hours to create a kind of flowing documentary about jobs. So here we are — with no new picture to advance the story.

But instead of dwelling on what we don't have, let's think of this as "Faux Friday" — a day offering plenty of data, just not from the BLS. Simply lower your standards, pop open a near-beer and let's go over the almost-important data that we did get this week:

— ADP's showed a gain of 166,000 private sector jobs for September — in line with what employers had been adding all summer.

— Initial increased by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000 last week. That number, based on state data, was somewhat better than the expected 314,000 new claims.

— PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s of small and medium-size businesses showed 16 percent intend to add full-time employees during the next six months, while 8 percent plan to cut workers.

— The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said for 40,289 layoffs in September, down 20 percent from August.

— Glassdoor, an online site for jobs, released its quarterly , conducted online by Harris Interactive. That showed only 15 percent of employees are afraid of being laid off, the lowest percentage since the fourth quarter of 2008.
JPMorgan Chase trader Frederick Reimer works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The government's monthly jobs numbers won't be released as scheduled Friday, leaving financial markets without key data to evaluate the economy.

So when economists look at such surveys and tabulations, what do they see? Nothing surprising, Holzer said. The reports all suggest that in September, the U.S. economy continued to generate jobs at a pace somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 — right in line what has been happening for months, he said. IHS Global Insight, the forecasting firm, said that "September employment growth, once the report is released, will come in at 150,000" new jobs nationwide. At PNC, chief economist Stuart Hoffman was slightly more upbeat. He said the report will show 180,000 jobs were added, and that the unemployment rate held unchanged at 7.3 percent. But then again, without BLS data, the uncertainty level among economists is greater because they lack revisions to previous data, he said. Each month, the BLS not only reports what it has found over the last four weeks but also revises figures going back a couple of months....MORE BLATHER

[Demeter]

16. The Other Deadline Congress Missed: Welfare Just Lapsed

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/10/01/2712891/shutdown-tanf-welfare-lapse/

Congress didn’t just miss the deadline on Monday night to pass a continuing resolution that would keep the government open. It also missed the deadline to reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, formally known as welfare...TANF plays a role in reducing poverty, which would be 0.3 percent higher without the benefits. It lifted 650,000 children out of deep poverty in 2005. Yet the value of benefits have declined since welfare reform, so it is reaching fewer and doing less to alleviate poverty than it used to...The TANF block grant that the federal government gives to states to share the cost of welfare programs was scheduled for reauthorization in 2010, but rather than reauthorizing it then Congress instead extended it multiple times. The most recent extension was part of a continuing resolution passed in March that funded the government through the end of September 2013, so it expired Monday night along with all other government funding.

That means that as of Tuesday, states stopped receiving the funds from the block grant. This shouldn’t impact beneficiaries, however — at least in theory. Benefits are typically paid on the first of the month. According to the advocacy organization CLASP, states have funds that they can use to cover the cash assistance and other programs until the block grant is reauthorized. “In practice, there’s nothing that should stop the benefits from going out,” Elizabeth Lower-Basch, policy coordinator at CLASP, told ThinkProgress. Most actually float the money, paying out benefits and then requesting the money from the federal government afterward.

But there is no federal requirement that they use state funds to keep paying benefits and rather than cover the costs until they can be reimbursed by the government, some states could potentially simply “push the button and say stop,” she said. “It is possible that in some states the benefits will not go out.” CLASP is trying to touch base now with all states to find out what they decided to do. “We haven’t gotten an answer from all states,” she said. “We’re hearing some yeses. We haven’t heard any definite nos yet.”

States should also be able to weather the gap for a good amount of time. “In every state, for at least a month or so you could run with just the state funds,” Lower-Basch said, and most have even more room. But “after a month states would start to get nervous.” Most that are using their own funds likely don’t feel too at risk right now on the assumption that the lapse will only last a few weeks, but that mindset may change if things drag on past the month mark. And the picture looks really dire if this extends indefinitely. “A state could not do everything it does with the block grant all year without it,” she said.

[Demeter]

17. Student Loan Defaults Surge To Highest Level In Nearly 2 Decades

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/30/student-loans-default_n_4019806.html

[Demeter]

6. Wall Street ends up, but Dow, S&P fall for week as shutdown drags on

http://news.yahoo.com/futures-edge-higher-shutdown-still-focus-125036258--sector.html

U.S. stocks rebounded on Friday, but major stock indexes ended the week lower as a federal government shutdown continued for a fourth day, with no sign of an end to a budget stalemate in Washington. The Nasdaq composite index ended the week higher as Friday's advance accelerated in the afternoon, but gains by the Dow and the S&P 500 were not enough to cancel the week's losses.

Political wrangling continued as House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor reiterated Republicans' call for negotiations by Democrats, but they did not indicate any change in their positions. The government shutdown has made investors nervous as it drags on, but the impact from it has been relatively limited. A more serious concern, investors say, is if the shutdown continues and the budget battle becomes tied up with the federal debt limit, which a divided Congress must raise by October 17 to avoid an unprecedented U.S. debt default.

"I think the market will be in a much nastier mood next week if we still don't have a deal," said Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at U.S. Trust Private Wealth Management.

Reflecting a rise in investor anxiety, some options investors were starting to pay more for protection against market turmoil. The CBOE Volatility Index VIX <.vix>, a 30-day forecast of stock market volatility measured using a strip of near-term S&P 500 options, rose to 16.73 on Friday from 13.12 on September 20, a sign of increased worry, although this level is still considered low. Heavy buying activity on Thursday was seen in October and November VIX out-of-the money call options - contracts that are far from the current level - with heavy open interest additions in November contracts.

"This suggests traders are feeling the need to be protected through mid-November and implies that the market expects negotiations in Washington over the government shutdown and debt ceiling will be long and drawn out," said Matt Franz, investment adviser representative at Stutland Volatility Group...

[Demeter]

7. Fed's Kocherlakota: do 'whatever it takes' to spur U.S. hiring

http://news.yahoo.com/feds-kocherlakota-whatever-takes-spur-u-hiring-174928940--business.html

- The Federal Reserve should do "whatever it takes" to drive down U.S. unemployment, even if this means courting concerns of another asset price bubble, or if inflation pops temporarily above two percent, a senior U.S. central banker said on Friday.

"The labor market remains disturbingly weak. The good news is that, with low inflation, the FOMC has considerable monetary policy capacity at its disposal with which to address this problem," said Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, referring to the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. His comments closely followed a speech he gave last week.

"Doing whatever it takes will mean keeping a historically unusual amount of monetary stimulus in place — and possibly providing more stimulus," he said in prepared remarks.

Kocherlakota added that this would be the case "even as" rising asset prices courted concerns of another bubble, or the medium term outlook for inflation rose above 2 percent, the Fed's stated medium-term goal.

"It may not be easy to stick to this path. But I anticipate that the benefits of doing so, in terms of employment gains, will be significant," he said.

The Fed stunned markets last month by opting to continue to keep buying bonds at an $85 billion monthly pace, despite widespread expectations it would start to scale back, signaling the end to an unprecedented phase of ultra-easy monetary policy. Its caution has since appeared to have been vindicated by economic unease caused by political gridlock in Washington. A stand-off between President Barack Obama's Democrats and Republican Tea Party conservatives triggered a government shutdown and is courting a damaging debt default, if lawmakers fail to raise the U.S. debt ceiling by October 17. Officials, including from the Fed, warn this could potentially tip the United States back into a severe recession. Kocherlakota did not refer to the battles in Washington in his prepared remarks. But he did stress the need to act decisively to speed up the pace of U.S. hiring.

"In 2013, the FOMC's goal should be to return employment to its maximal level as rapidly as it can, while still keeping inflation close to, although possibly temporarily above, the target of 2 percent," he said.

[Demeter]

8. Detroit bankruptcy could change municipal market, Chicago Fed says

WHAT NEEDS THE MOST ATTENTION, HOWEVER, IS THE REGULATION...

http://news.yahoo.com/detroit-bankruptcy-could-change-municipal-market-chicago-fed-202714357--finance.html

- Detroit's historic bankruptcy filing could upend long-established market views on the high standing of general obligation bonds, the form of debt sold most frequently in the U.S. municipal bond market, Chicago Federal Reserve Bank researchers said Friday.

The city's move in July to seek protection from creditors so far has had only a modest effect on the overall muni market, apart from driving up borrowing costs for issuers in Michigan. But how the bankruptcy court rules on the treatment of different debt classes could profoundly alter market perceptions of their risk, particularly for issuers with mushrooming pension obligations like Detroit's, two of the bank's economists wrote in a monthly research note, the "Chicago Fed Letter."

A key issue in the city's pending Chapter 9 bankruptcy is whether Detroit's state-appointed emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, may treat certain general obligation bonds as unsecured debt on a par with its pension obligations, and repay them at just pennies on the dollar. General obligation, or GO, bonds have long been viewed as the muni market's gold standard, and none of the handful of municipal bankruptcies since 1970 has resulted in a writedown of GO debt. Since 2003, GO bonds accounted for nearly 60 percent of new debt deals in the $3.7 trillion muni bond market, where cities, states, hospitals, school districts and others raise cash for capital projects and other needs.

Orr's proposed cuts to retirement benefits, which are being challenged in the bankruptcy case by labor unions, retirees and pension funds, conflict with strong protections in the Michigan Constitution against impairing those benefits.

The judge in the Detroit case has not yet determined if Detroit is eligible to formally enter bankruptcy protection, as hearings in that phase begin later this month.

A successful challenge by unions and retirees, on the basis of the U.S. Constitution's Tenth Amendment regarding states' rights, could impact the pricing of bonds issued by cities with large unfunded pension liabilities, according to the Fed report. "If the court agrees with pension creditors that state protections hold supreme, this could change market expectations with respect to the relative standing of municipal debt issued by cities located in states with such protections," the Fed report said, pointing to Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.

Overall, large U.S. cities in a recent Pew study have funded only 57.5 percent of the $511.2 billion of retirement benefits they promised.

Orr has lumped about $411 million of unlimited tax GO bonds into the unsecured debt pile even though Detroit voters approved a special property tax levy to pay off the debt. That pile also includes limited tax GO debt, secured only by Detroit's general fund revenue, and pension debt - neither of which was approved by voters.

"This issue will be ultimately settled by the court, and it might have wide-reaching consequences for the pricing of voter-approved GO debt," the report said.

Detroit defaulted on its "unsecured" GO bonds this week by skipping debt service payments due on Tuesday.

[Demeter]

9. Global economy in ‘epic scale’ change, says IMF’s Lagarde

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/10477840-2c34-11e3-acf4-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=uk

The global economy is experiencing “transitions on an epic scale”, the International Monetary Fund managing director said on Thursday, warning that turbulence in emerging markets could knock 0.5 to 1 percentage point off their growth. Christine Lagarde’s remarks show the damage done to emerging markets by a recent round of “taper talk”, over the possibility of the US Federal Reserve slowing the pace of its asset purchases and their vulnerability to future changes in the pattern of global capital flows.

“The immediate priority is to ride out the turbulence as smoothly as possible,” said Ms Lagarde. “Currencies should be allowed to depreciate. Liquidity provision can help deal with dysfunctional market behaviour. Looser monetary policy can also help.”

But she warned that countries with inflationary pressures – such as Brazil, India, Indonesia and Russia – have less scope to use monetary policy and that high debt and deficits mean many developing countries have little space for fiscal stimulus either.

“Overall, the global outlook remains subdued,” said Ms Lagarde, in her traditional speech ahead of the annual World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington next week. “In many of the advanced economies, however, we are finally seeing signs of hope. Growth is looking up, financial stability is returning, and fiscal accounts are looking healthier.”

The impact of a slowdown on US Federal Reserve asset purchases had been expected to dominate this year’s annual meetings but the Fed’s decision to hold off on tapering has removed that focus. Instead, the world’s economic policy makers will have a ringside seat as they assemble in a US capital where much of the federal government is shutdown and a potential default is just days away if Congress cannot resolve its differences. Ms Lagarde said that raising the debt ceiling is “mission critical” for the world economy.

“Because the normalisation of monetary policy affects so many markets and people across the globe, the US has a special responsibility: to implement it in an orderly way, linking it to the pace of recovery and employment; to communicate clearly; and to conduct a dialogue with others,” said Ms Lagarde.

SO WHAT IS CHRISTINE TRYING TO SAY?

1. THE SYSTEM IS BREAKING DOWN, DUE TO CONGRESSIONAL IDIOCY, FED FOOLISHNESS, AND ALL THE JERKING AROUND THAT CURRENCY TRADERS AND CENTRAL BANKS AND WALL STREET BANKSTERS HAVE BEEN DOING. INFLATION IS BUILDING IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD, AND THE WEST IS TRYING TO EXPORT THEIR INFLATION TO OTHER PLACES, TOO. HOT MONEY IS SHOOTING ALL OVER, LOOKING FOR A SAFE HAVEN, BUT THERE ISN'T ANY. THE US HAD BETTER GET ITS ACT TOGETHER TOUT DE SUITE!

2. IF WE ALL KEEP CALM, WE CAN GO BACK TO BUSINESS AS NORMAL VERY SOON.

3. THE EURO HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

[Demeter]

10. THE KASSANDRA REPORTS ON OBAMACARE

10 things Obamacare won’t tell you

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-things-health-exchanges-wont-tell-you-2013-09-27?pagenumber=1

Constitution Gives House of Reps the “Weapon” to Destroy ObamaCare

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/constitution-gives-house-of-reps-the-weapon-to-destroy-obamacare/76210/



As the “Government Shutdown” puppet show continues its run in Washington, D.C., there is power in the Constitution to close down the entire production.

Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution requires that “all bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other bills.”

The solution to the ObamaCare funding fiasco is right there in black and white.

If any money is to be spent on anything, the bill must come out of the House of Representatives. If no bill is approved by that body and sent to the Senate, no money may be spent!

Even though he rewrote the ObamaCare legislation in his ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts (and six of his colleagues) held that the individual mandate of ObamaCare was not a constitutional expression of the Commerce Clause, thereby throwing the whole matter back to the House of Representatives and to the states.

As Bubba Atkinson of the Independent Review Journal explains:

Chief Justice Roberts actually ruled the mandate, relative to the commerce clause, was unconstitutional. That is how the Democrats got Obamacare going in the first place. This is critical. His ruling means Congress can’t compel American citizens to purchase anything, ever. The notion is now officially and forever, unconstitutional. As it should be.

Next, he stated that, because Congress doesn’t have the ability to mandate, it must, to fund Obamacare, rely on its power to tax. Therefore, the mechanism that funds Obamacare is a tax. He struck down as unconstitutional, the Obamacare idea that the federal government can bully states into complying by yanking their existing Medicaid funding. Liberals, through Obamacare, basically said to the states — ‘comply with Obamacare or we will stop existing funding.’ Roberts ruled that is a no-no.”

MORE

healthcare.gov opens at midnight on the day of the government shutdown and lambert finds a bug

http://www.correntewire.com/healthcaregov_opens_at_midnight_on_the_day_of_the_government_shutdown_and_lambert_finds_a_bug


Someone reports on his keystroke by keystroke attempt to use the government's software...it's downright creepy.
Written by and for the NSA, I expect.

[Demeter]

14. Republican Party Cannot Stand By And Let Obamacare Destroy This Country By John Boehner

IT'S THE ONION, OF COURSE! A DOUBLE FEATURE: BOEHNER VS BOEHNER!

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-republican-party-cannot-stand-by-and-let-obama%2c34074/

[Demeter]

35. Obama, ObamaCare, and Health Care as a Right By Lambert Strether

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/obama-obamacare-and-health-care-as-a-right.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

...Obama has clearly stated that health care is a right, so I’m going to take him at his word...

ObamaCare delivers health care rights unequally by state. The citizens of Libby, MT — their Senator, Max Baucus, was the driver for ObamaCare — are, uniquely, eligible for Medicare. They need health care, certainly, because their town was contaminated with asbestos. I’m glad they’re on Medicare; I don’t want them to suffer. But we all need health care equally; it’s a right!

ObamaCare delivers health care rights unequally by city and county. A citizen of Aroostock County, ME pays $1,000 more than a citizen of Portland, ME for the same coverage. How can those two citizens be said to have equal access to health care? In Covered California (one of ObamaCare’s state exchanges) rates vary across 19 unequal pricing regions. If health care is a right, as Obama agrees, how does that make any sense? Do I have less or more right to free speech because I live in Penobscot County and not Piscataquis or Cumberland?

ObamaCare delivers health care rights unequally by income. If your income is less than 138% of the Federal Poverty Level, you’re forced (no choice) into Medicaid, which is known for its ability to say no to care. Between 138% and 400% you’re segregated into the Exchanges, with high co-pays, high deductibles, and thin networks. Over 400%, you can buy as much care as you want And people “on the bubble” at 138% and 400% plus or minus one dollar have the privilege or pain of gaming their income to get into or out of Medicaid, or into or out of the Exchanges. In fact, ObamaCare is a gigantic Rube Goldberg device for sorting people into buckets, by income, and the more money you have, the better care you get. How can such a system claim to treat health care as a right, a perspective that Obama endorses? Do poor people have less right to avoid “cruel and unusual punishment” than rich people? No? Do poor people have less right to be “secure in their papers and effects” than rich people?*** If no and no, why doesn’t the right to health care work the same way?

ObamaCare delivers health care rights unequally by employment. Politics and drafting errors led to the debacle of Congressional staffers no longer receiving subsidies from their employers (Congress) for their health insurance. That was bad, and Obama intervened personally to “finagle a workaround” to help them. Which is great; I don’t want the staffers to suffer. So, if health care is a right, how come Obama doesn’t intervene personally to “finagle a workaround” for the unions whose Taft-Hartley plans got trashed? (And please don’t tell me about the rule of law; this is the Obama administration, after all.) And again, if health care is a right — a proposition Obama explicitly endorses — how come people who get their health care through employer-based insurance get better networks, lower co-pays, lower deductibles, and better coverage generally? It’s as if Amendment III — “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner” — only applied to people whose houses are upscale, while people who rent or live in trailers have soldiers sleeping on couches and the floors!

ObamaCare delivers health care rights unequally by age. Children under 26 get to go on their parents’ plan. Well and good; I don’t want them to suffer. But why the age cut-off? The logic is exactly the same as the 138% and 400% income cut-offs; how is it that people’s right to health care changes at some arbitrary limit? Why not 25? Why not, for Harry Potter fans, 29 and 3/4? From a public policy perspective, there may be some reason. From the rights-based perspective that Obama endorses, there’s no reason at all. And the same thing goes for Medicare; 65 is just as arbitrary a cut-off point as 26. Why doesn’t Medicare begin at 64? Or 62? Or… 0? Finally, there’s the lovely MERP clawback: If you’re over 55 and forced into Medicaid, Medicaid is a collateral loan, and a death tax on your estate. So if health care is a right, as Obama has said it is, how come the lucky duckies between 55 and 65 may be forced to trade their homes for it?

ObamaCare delivers health care rights unequally by personal habits. Finally, the smoking penalty:

Government figures show smokers’ premiums could run as much as 50 percent higher than regular individual rates. The difference could amount to an effective smoking penalty of $1,500 or more each year.

I understand the “nudge theory” rationale for this. But if health care is a right, as Obama says it is, then ObamaCare is not where the nudge should take place; rights are for all people equally, and are not alienated because of personal characteristics or habits. Suppose we waived the right to not to be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against” one’s self for introverts, reasoning that they wouldn’t talk anyhow? And doesn’t the smoking penalty really turn a right into a privilege — something that authority grants only on the grounds of good behavior? And where does it end? If Mike “Mayor-for-Life” Bloomberg ever, heaven forfend, becomes President, would he be able to raise premiums for soda drinkers? Under the logic of ObamaCare, he would. Under Obama’s concept of health care as a right, he could not.

Finally, ObamaCare delivers life itself unequally, as Joe Firestone (and I) have shown. ObamaCare, even when fully implemented, will cover at best half the uninsured; the resulting excess deaths, at a rate of 1,000 for every million than in the general population, could be as many as 40,000 by 2017. In any other context, numbers like those would be regarded as a humanitarian tragedy, lesser evilism or no. Granted, the right to health care is not an absolute right, just like the right to pursuit of happiness, or indeed liberty, but 40,000 denied that right seems like a needlessly high number, and for no reason (other than, perhaps, profit). If health care were truly delivered as a right, those excess deaths would be closing in on zero.

Do Obama, Democrats, progressives, and the political class truly accept — as Obama says he accepts — that health care “is” a right? If they do, can ObamaCare be saved? My answer is no, and the conversation that needs to begin October 2 is how to replace it as soon as possible.*****

.........................................................................................


NOTES:

NOTE *** Granted, I idealize.

NOTE **** Heartbreakingly, we already have a working single payer system in the United States; even the TPers are for it! If Obama didn’t want to back HR 676, he could have backed Teddy Kennedy’s idea to gradually lower Medicare’s eligibility age ’til all were covered. But no. Here I should say that I’ve taken the point that Medicare is not a perfect program, and that the rentiers have inserted their tiny chitinous sucking mandibles into that program as well, adding fees and complexity. So, no, Medicare for All would not be ponies and rainbows. But at least, since health care is a right, equal access to all would be achieved, and with single proven system architecture. Moreover, the insurance companies would no longer be at the heart of the program. So making Medicare better gets easier.

***** Yes, I know ObamaCare will help some. That’s why the Republican effort to defund it is both vicious and terminally stupid. However, I want all to be helped, not just some, and equally, because — as Obama says — health care is a right.

[bread_and_roses]

57. Yes to all that

I am going to print it out, make copies, and hand it to all those who try to tell me that my criticisms of ACA are unwarranted. Of course, nothing will ever shut up their fall-back refrain "it's the best he/we could do." That may be so, but only because he/we are cowards.

[Demeter]

60. It was a total lack of imagination and integrity, IMO

and sheer laziness, incompetence, a complete failure of character.

If he had a boss in a corporation, he'd be booted long ago.

[Demeter]

42. "Pollyanna" Krugman is getting on my nerves--Demeter

Reform Turns Real By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/opinion/krugman-reform-turns-real.html?_r=0


....It’s long been clear that the great fear of the Republican Party was not that health reform would fail, but that it would succeed. And developments since Tuesday, when the exchanges on which individuals will buy health insurance opened for business, strongly suggest that their worst fears will indeed be realized: This thing is going to work.

Wait a minute, some readers are saying. Haven’t many stories so far been of computer glitches, of people confronting screens telling them that servers are busy and that they should try again later? Indeed, they have. But everyone knowledgeable about the process always expected some teething problems, and the nature of this week’s problems has actually been hugely encouraging for supporters of the program. First, let me say a word about the underlying irrelevance of start-up troubles for new government programs...Its future will depend on how it works over the next few years, not the next few weeks. To illustrate the point, consider Medicare Part D, the drug benefit, which went into effect in 2006. It had what was widely considered a disastrous start, with seniors unclear on their benefits, pharmacies often refusing to honor valid claims, computer problems, and more. In the end, however, the program delivered lasting benefits, and woe unto any politician proposing that it be rolled back. So the glitches of October won’t matter in the long run. But why are they actually encouraging? Because they appear, for the most part, to be the result of the sheer volume of traffic, which has been much heavier than expected. And this means that one big worry of Obamacare supporters — that not enough people knew about the program, so that many eligible Americans would fail to sign up — is receding fast.

Of course, it’s important that people who want to sign up can actually do so. But the computer problems can and will be fixed. So, by March 31, when enrollment for 2014 closes, we can be reasonably sure that millions of Americans who were previously uninsured will have coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare will have become a reality, something people depend on, rather than some fuzzy notion Republicans could demonize. And it will be very hard to take that coverage away.

What we still don’t know, and is crucial for the program’s longer-term success, is who will sign up. Will there be enough young, healthy enrollees to provide a favorable risk pool and keep premiums relatively low? Bear in mind that conservative groups have been spending heavily — and making some seriously creepy ads — in an effort to dissuade young people from signing up for insurance. Nonetheless, insurance companies are betting that young people will, in fact, sign up, as shown by the unexpectedly low premiums they’re offering for next year. And the insurers are probably right. To see why anti-Obamacare messaging is probably doomed to fail, think about whom we’re talking about here. That is, who are the healthy uninsured individuals the program needs to reach? Well, they’re by and large not affluent, because affluent young people tend to get jobs with health coverage. And they’re disproportionately nonwhite.

In other words, to get a description of the typical person Obamacare needs to enroll, just take the description of a typical Tea Party member or Fox News viewer — older, affluent, white — and put a “not” in front of each characteristic. These are people the right-wing message machine is not set up to talk to, but who can be reached through many of the same channels, from ads on Spanish-language media to celebrity tweets, that turned out Obama voters last year. I have to admit, I find the image of hard-line conservatives defeated by an army of tweeting celebrities highly attractive; but it’s also realistic. Enrollment is probably going to be just fine.

So Obamacare is off to a good start, with even the bad news being really good news for the program’s future. We’re not quite there yet, but more and more, it looks as if health reform is here to stay.



GIVE ME A BREAK, DR. KRUGMAN....THE GLASS ISN'T HALF-FULL. IT'S CRACKED AND CANNOT HOLD WATER LONG ENOUGH TO SATISFY THE NATION'S THIRST.

[Demeter]

11. Dark Web Rising: McAfee Founder To Launch New “NSA Killer” Privacy Device

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/dark-web-rising-mcafee-founder-to-launch-new-nsa-killer-privacy-device/75835/


Their tentacles are everywhere.

If it’s plugged into the internet there is a near 100% chance that the National Security Agency is monitoring it.

So how does the average American get off the control grid?

According to well known anti-virus software founder John McAfee the answer is simple.

Decentralization.

Rather than connecting to the telecom sponsored (and government integrated) internet, we bypass it completely and connect directly to each other’s devices in a peer-to-peer environment using what is essentially a distributed network architecture.

He’s been working on the new device, dubbed D-Central, for several years but has recently sped up its development in light of revelations that the NSA is tapping the digital interactions and personal correspondence of virtually every American citizen.

The new “NSA Killer” will, according to McAfee, make it difficult if not impossible for the NSA to tap into personal communications like they do today because the device would operate in what is known as a “dark web” and allow an individual to completely obscure their identity.

McAfee says with D-Central there will be no way for the government to tell, “who you are or where you are.”

The gadget, which McAfee wants to sell for less than $100, would communicate with smartphones, tablets and notebooks to create a decentralized network that couldn’t be accessed by government agencies. Specifically, it would create a small private network that would act as a “dark web” where users could communicate and share files privately.

The device would have a wireless range of about three blocks and those in range would be able to communicate with each other. McAfee has reportedly been working on the gadget for a few years but has accelerated development in recent months given the NSA leaks.

At present, he said the design is in place and they are looking for partners to help with hardware. A public prototype is expected to be ready within six months with the current device said to take a round shape with no display. This of course is assuming the project isn’t shot down by regulators before it’s ever released.

Source: Tech Spot via The Daily Crux

If true, the promise of a $100 NSA-Killer device that crushes the trillion dollar surveillance state is quite appealing and one that Americans will likely respond to with open arms should it become available on the free market. We say “should,” because there’s already talk that the D-Central privacy device may be banned in the United States because it could potentially be used for nefarious purposes.

Of course with that logic we should also ban telephones, computers, credit cards, and pretty much everything else, because criminal elements will always adopt emerging technologies for their enterprises.

The obvious, but unspoken, reason for such a ban would, of course, be that the government would lose the ability to monitor, and thus control, the American public.

According to the Future Tense Central web site McAfee’s new device will be available March 22, 2014.

Decentralize. It’s the only way to go.

Please Spread The Word And Share This Post



Author:
Mac Slavo
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Read by 1,688 people
Date: October 3rd, 2013
Website: www.SHTFplan.com


Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.

[Demeter]

12. Glen Greenwald Interview

[Demeter]

25. Time to tame the NSA behemoth trampling our rights

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/13/nsa-behemoth-trampling-rights

The spate of new NSA disclosures substantially raises the stakes of this debate. We now know that the intelligence establishment systematically undermines oversight by lying to both Congress and the courts. We know that the NSA infiltrates internet standard-setting processes to security protocols that make surveillance harder. We know that the NSA uses persuasion, subterfuge, and legal coercion to distort software and hardware product design by commercial companies.

We have learned that in pursuit of its bureaucratic mission to obtain signals intelligence in a pervasively networked world, the NSA has mounted a systematic campaign against the foundations of American power: constitutional checks and balances, technological leadership, and market entrepreneurship. The NSA scandal is no longer about privacy, or a particular violation of constitutional or legislative obligations. The American body politic is suffering a severe case of auto-immune disease: our defense system is attacking other critical systems of our body.

First, the lying. The National Intelligence University, based in Washington, DC, offers a certificate program called the denial and deception advanced studies program. That's not a farcical sci-fi dystopia; it's a real program about countering denial and deception by other countries. The repeated misrepresentations suggest that the intelligence establishment has come to see its civilian bosses as adversaries to be managed through denial and deception. We learned months ago that the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied under oath to Congress. Now, we know that General Keith Alexander filed a "declaration" (which is like testifying in writing), asserting an interpretation of violations that the court said "strains credulity". The newly-disclosed 2009 opinion includes a whole section entitled "Misrepresentations to the Court", which begins with the sentence:

The government has compounded its noncompliance with the court's orders by repeatedly submitting inaccurate descriptions of the alert list process to the FISC.

General Alexander's claim that the NSA's vast numbers of violations were the consequences of error and incompetence receive derisive attention. But this claim itself was in a court submission intended to exculpate the agency from what would otherwise have been an intentional violation of the court's order. There is absolutely no reason to believe the claims of incompetence and honest error; there is more reason to assume that these are intended to cover up a worse truth: intentional violations.

Second, the subversion. Last week, we learned that the NSA's strategy to enhance its surveillance capabilities was to weaken internet security in general. The NSA infiltrated the social-professional standard-setting organizations on which the whole internet relies, from National Institute of Standards and Technology to the Internet Engineering Task Force itself, the very institutional foundation of the internet, to weaken the security standards. Moreover, the NSA combined persuasion and legal coercion to compromise the commercial systems and standards that offer the most basic security systems on which the entire internet runs. The NSA undermined the security of the SSL standard critical to online banking and shopping, VPN products central to secure corporate, research, and healthcare provider networks, and basic email utilities.

Serious people with grave expressions will argue that if we do not ruthlessly expand our intelligence capabilities, we will suffer terrorism and defeat. Whatever minor tweaks may be necessary, the argument goes, the core of the operation is absolutely necessary and people will die if we falter. But the question remains: how much of what we have is really necessary and effective, and how much is bureaucratic bloat resulting in the all-to-familiar dynamics of organizational self-aggrandizement and expansionism? The "serious people" are appealing to our faith that national security is critical, in order to demand that we accept the particular organization of the Intelligence Church. Demand for blind faith adherence is unacceptable.

What did we actually know about what we got in exchange for undermining internet security, technology markets, internet social capital, and the American constitutional order? The intelligence establishment grew by billions of dollars; thousands of employees; and power within the executive. And we the people? Not so much. Court documents released this week show that after its first three years of operation, the best the intelligence establishment could show the judge overseeing the program was that it had led to opening "three new preliminary investigations". This showing, noted Judge Walton in his opinion, "does not seem very significant". If this was the best the intelligence community could put on the table when it faced the risk of judicial sanction, we can assume that all the hand-waving without hard, observable, testable facts is magician's patter, aimed to protect the fruits of a decade's worth of bureaucratic expansionism. Claims that secrecy prevents the priesthood from presenting such testable proof appeal to a doctrine of occult infallibility that we cannot afford to accept.

In August, 205 members of the House voted in favor of the Amash-Conyers Amendment that would have rewritten Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the section used to justify bulk collection of domestic phone call metadata. At the time, this was a critically important move that was highly targeted at a narrow and specific abuse. But the breadth and depth of organizational deception and subversion force us to recognize that we need reconstruction that goes much deeper than any specific legislative fix. We need a fundamental organizational reform. The so-called "outside independent experts" committee which the president has appointed, with insiders' insiders like Michael Morell and Richard Clarke, will not come close to doing the trick. Nor is it likely to allay anyone's fears who is not already an Intelligence Church adherent. Given the persistent lying and strategic errors of judgment that this week's revelations disclosed, the NSA needs to be put into receivership. Insiders, beginning at the very top, need to be removed and excluded from the restructuring process. Their expertise led to this mess, and would be a hindrance, not a help, in cleaning it up. We need a forceful, truly independent outsider, with strong, direct congressional support, who would recruit former insider-dissenters like Thomas Drake or William Binney to reveal where the bodies are buried.

[Demeter]

13. Apple Now Holds 10% of All Corporate Cash: Moody’s IF YOU DON'T COUNT BANKSTERS!

http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2013/10/01/apple-now-holds-10-of-all-corporate-cash-moodys/?mod=trending_now_3



Apple Inc.’s $147 billion cash hoard now counts for nearly 10% of all corporate cash held by nonfinancial companies, according to an analysis by Moody’s.

U.S. nonfinancial companies held $1.48 trillion in cash as of June 30, according to Moody’s review of the more than 1,000 companies it rates. Cash stockpiles have grown by about 2% from $1.45 trillion at the end of last year, and up 81% from $820 billion at the end of 2006.

Corporate cash is still concentrated in just a few hands, with the top 50 holders accounting for 62% of the total. The companies with the five largest cash holdings – Apple, Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. , Cisco Systems Inc. and Pfizer Inc. – held more than one quarter of the cash.

Despite dividends and buybacks Apple, has about 9.5% more cash than it did at the end of last year. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn pressed the company’schief executive Tim Cook for another $150 billion buyback at a dinner last night. Apple has nearly double the cash hoard of its next closest rival, since Microsoft has the second-largest cash stockpile at $77 billion...

[Demeter]

15. I'm taking my cold to bed. See you Saturday!

[Demeter]

18. It Increasingly Looks Like Obama Will Have To Raise The Debt Ceiling All By Himself/Joe Weisenthal

http://www.businessinsider.com/it-increasingly-looks-like-obama-will-have-to-raise-the-debt-ceiling-all-by-himself-2013-9

With no movement on either side and the debt ceiling fast approaching, there's increasing talk that the solution will be for Obama to issue an executive order and require the Treasury to continue paying U.S. debt holders even if the debt ceiling isn't raised.

Here's Greg Valliere at Potomac Research:

HOW DOES THIS END? What worries many clients we talk with is the absence of a clear end-game. We think three key elements will have to be part of the final outcome: First, a nasty signal from the stock market. Second, a daring move from Barack Obama to raise the debt ceiling by executive order if default appears to be imminent. Third, a capitulation by Boehner, ending the shut-down and debt crisis in an arrangement between a third of the House GOP and virtually all of the Democrats.

Valliere isn't the only one seeing this outcome.

Here's David Kotok at Cumberland Advisors:

We expect this craziness to last into October and run up against the debt limit fight. In the final gasping throes of squabbling, we expect President Obama to use the President Clinton designed executive order strategy so that the US doesn’t default. There will then ensue a protracted court fight leading to a Supreme Court decision. The impasse may go that far. This is our American way. “Man Plans and God Laughs” says the Yiddish Proverb.

Indeed, back in 2011, Bill Clinton said he'd raise the debt ceiling by invoking the 14th Amendment rather than negotiate with the House GOP.

This time around, again, Clinton is advising Obama to call the GOP's bluff.



I SEE TWO BIG PROBLEMS WITH THIS PLAN:

1) OBAMA ISN'T BILL CLINTON

2) BILL CLINTON ISN'T BILL CLINTON ANYMORE, EITHER

THAT MEANS IT WILL BE A TOUGH SELL AND HARD TO SWALLOW, FOR TOO MUCH OF THE PUBLIC.

[Demeter]

19. Our Outlaw President? Obama Should Ignore the Debt Ceiling By HENRY J. AARON

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/opinion/obama-should-ignore-the-debt-ceiling.html

....House Republicans also said last week that they would not agree to lift the debt ceiling unless implementation of the health law was delayed by one year. So the government is also headed toward a mid-October default on its debts — and a full-blown constitutional crisis. Failure to raise the debt will force the president to break a law — the only question is which one. The Constitution requires the president to spend what Congress has instructed him to spend, to raise only those taxes Congress has authorized him to impose and to borrow no more than Congress authorizes. If President Obama spends what the law orders him to spend and collects the taxes Congress has authorized him to collect, then he must borrow more than Congress has authorized him to borrow. If the debt ceiling is not raised, he will have to violate one of these constitutional imperatives. Which should he choose?

In 2011, when Congress last flirted with not raising the debt ceiling, lawyers disagreed. Some argued that the president must honor the debt ceiling, thereby violating budget laws. Others held that he must honor budget legislation. No one argued that he should unilaterally raise taxes. Professors Neil H. Buchanan and Michael C. Dorf, who parsed the arguments in the Columbia Law Review in 2012, concluded that all options were bad, but that disregarding the debt ceiling was least bad from a legal standpoint. I agree. Lawyers tend to play down policy considerations as a basis for interpreting law. In this case, the consequences are so overwhelmingly on one side that they cannot be ignored by the president and should not be ignored by the courts. If the debt ceiling is not increased, the president should disregard it, and honor spending and tax legislation.

A decision to cut spending enough to avoid borrowing would instantaneously slash outlays by approximately $600 billion a year. Cutting payments to veterans, Social Security benefits and interest on the national debt by half would just about do the job. But such cuts would not only illegally betray promises to veterans, the elderly and disabled and bondholders; they would destroy the credit standing of the United States and boost borrowing costs on the nation’s $12 trillion publicly held debt. There is no clear legal basis for deciding what programs to cut. Defense contractors, or Medicare payments to doctors? Education grants, or the F.B.I.? Endless litigation would follow. No matter how the cuts might be distributed, they would, if sustained for more than a very brief period, kill the economic recovery and cause unemployment to return quickly to double digits. Nor is it reasonable to expect the president to collect more in taxes than is authorized by law. For him to do so would infringe on Congress’s most fundamental powers and the principles on which the nation was founded.

The only defensible option for the president if the debt ceiling is not raised is to disregard the debt ceiling. The action would be unconstitutional because it would be illegal. Financial markets might react negatively, but not nearly so negatively as if the United States failed to redeem bonds or to pay interest on its debt. The president would be attacked. He might even be impeached by the House. But maybe not: the House would then be saying that the president should have illegally failed to pay F.B.I. agents, or school districts, or Medicare doctors. In any case, he would not be convicted by the Senate. And he would have saved the nation from much agony. Disregarding the debt ceiling would have one additional, thoroughly benign effect. It would end the capacity of Congressional minorities to precipitate crises in order to accomplish goals for which they lacked the votes. Today, a minority is holding hostage all federal programs in an attempt to eviscerate a law that Congress passed, the president signed and the Supreme Court upheld — the Affordable Care Act. In the future, an imaginative and irresponsible minority could use the threat not to raise the debt ceiling for any purpose — to shape tax policy, or foreign policy, or civil rights policy.

The debt ceiling is the fiscal equivalent of the human appendix — a law with no discoverable purpose. It is one law too many. Once Congress has set tax rates and spending levels, it has effectively said what it wants the debt to be. If Congress leaves the debt ceiling at a level inconsistent with duly enacted spending and tax laws, the president has no choice but to ignore it.

Henry J. Aaron is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

[Demeter]

20. Trillion Dollar Coin--or, More Sensibly, 10000 Hundred Million-Dollar Coins--Is the Only Way

The Trillion Dollar Coin--or, More Sensibly, 10000 Hundred Million-Dollar Coins--Is the Only Way for Obama to Fulfill His Oath of Office

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/09/the-trillion-dollar-coin-or-more-sensibly-1000-billion-dollar-coins-is-the-only-way-for-obama-to-fulfill-his-oath-of-offi.html

Oath of Office

"I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The Constitution tells us that to faithfully execute the office the President shall:

from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;

he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper;

he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers;

he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.

The appropriations are lawfully commanded by Congress--to fail to spend them is, since the budget reforms of the 1970s, to break the law--the repayment of the debt is mandated by the Constitution's Article XIV, as is the limitation of the government's authority to take property via taxation or otherwise to the amount lawfully commanded by Congress.

There are two ways in the absence of a debt-ceiling increase for the President not to break the law:

1. Find some other debt of the U.S. government--like, as Bob Rubin did, the debt of the U.S. government to the Federal Employees' Thrift Savings Plan--where the Trustee will not complain if the government does not pay its debts for a while, and then have the government not pay its debts for a while.
   
   
   
2. Mint the damned coins already.
   
   
   (2) look strongly preferable to me--the exercise of the government's not paying its debts to people who can't gain standing to sue and then saying that unpaid debts by the government are not part of the debt subject to limit has always seemed ugly.
   

[kickysnana]

21. Everyone is out of step but me?

I was sickened and revolted when I heard that the US Congress gave a standing ovation to Capital Security Police for murdering an ill, confused, unarmed mother in front of her 1 year old daughter. I saw the chase and she was trying to flee not hurt anyone.

Why was there no attempt to make a judgement call on this person instead of the police being judge, jury and executioners? It is a miracle the child was not murdered as well.

Yes, she should have stopped. But why does everyone (Congress, media, etc) think killing her was a great thing?

Perhaps if we had functioning mental health system instead of jail or slam, bam, thank you mam treatments this would not have happened and whose fault it it that we do not have a functioning mental health system so long after Ronnie Reagan, was used to start the decline of life in America for the majority of Americans?

The good news I read today was the Discover Magazine articles about OCD treatments and other positive things that seem to be previously known to DOD, the GOP and other souless, ghouls who think they are be used in the worst possible way.

[DemReadingDU]

22. This is a bad omen

I fear for others in similar situations as this country devolves more into a police state.

[Demeter]

23. If we had a functioning mental health system, and a functioning government

I had not heard of a standing ovation....the fear of the People (committing violence) by the Government is a sign of mental illness, IMO, as well.

The Government workers should fear losing their posts from irate voters, not their lives.

[bread_and_roses]

58. It sickened me too (n/t)

[Demeter]

26. Fed Too Familiar With Lost Workers Seeks New Guideposts

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-29/fed-too-familiar-with-lost-labor-seeking-new-message-for-policy.html

It’s becoming increasingly clear why Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke should have avoided linking the central bank’s policy decisions to specific unemployment rates. Bernanke said in June he expected the Fed would complete its bond buying when the jobless level was around 7 percent, and policy makers have pledged since December they won’t consider raising interest rates as long as it exceeds 6.5 percent. With a decline in August to 7.3 percent for the wrong reason -- Americans giving up on finding work -- Fed officials are being forced to shift their guideposts. The flawed measure has contributed to the market’s confusion over the direction of monetary policy, and Fed officials now are struggling with how to minimize it as a policy benchmark without damaging their credibility, according to Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America Corp. in New York. The Federal Open Market Committee’s Sept. 18 decision not to taper its $85 billion in monthly bond buying surprised investors across the globe.

“Picking the unemployment rate as the key growth-side indicator was a huge mistake for the Fed,” said Harris, one of the few economists to correctly predict the Fed wouldn’t taper in September. “It was supposed to be a marker that the average Joe could look at and say, ‘Ah! OK, now we’ve hit a broad-based recovery.’ Now, they’ve almost immediately abandoned it.”

The day of the decision, Bernanke downplayed the 7 percent threshold he gave in June for the end of the central bank’s quantitative easing, saying unemployment “is not necessarily a great measure” of the job market. He also suggested the 6.5 percent level for interest-rate increases may be too high.

“The committee would also take into account additional measures of labor-market conditions,” Bernanke said Sept. 18. “Thus, the first increases in short-term rates might not occur until the unemployment rate is considerably below 6.5 percent.”

[Demeter]

46. Food Stamp Growth 75X Greater than Job Creation

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/food-stamp-growth-75x-greater-job-creation_660073.html

http://www.weeklystandard.com/sites/all/files/images/Under%20Obama,%20Food%20Stamp%20Growth%2075%20Times%20Greater%20Than%20Job%20Creation_0.jpg

With the latest jobs report, it is now the case that "Under Obama, Food Stamp Growth [Is] 75 Times Greater Than Job Creation," according to statistics compiled by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee. "For Every Person Added to Jobs Rolls Since January 2009, 75 People Added To Food Stamp Rolls."

Since January 2009, as the chart shows, a net of 194,000 new jobs have been created. During that same time, 14.7 million have been added to the food stamp rolls.

"Simply put, the President’s policies have not produced jobs. During his time in office, 14.7 million people were added to the food stamp rolls. Over that same time, only 194,000 jobs were created—thus 76 people went on food stamps for every one that found a job," says Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. "This is a product of low growth. Post-recession economic growth in 2010 was 2.4%, and dropped in 2011 to 1.8%. This year it has dropped again to 1.77%. Few, if any, net jobs will be created with growth of less than 2%."

The Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee put the job growth into perspective...

[Demeter]

27. The JP Morgan apologists of CNBC By Felix Salmon

SOME PRIME EARLY MORNING SNARK TO START THE WEEKEND...DUMP JAMIE!

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/09/29/the-jp-morgan-apologists-of-cnbc/

[Demeter]

29. Why Judges Are Scowling at Banks By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/business/why-judges-are-scowling-at-banks.html?ref=gretchenmorgenson&_r=0



LAST week, for the first time since the financial crisis, the government faced off in court against a major bank over lending practices during the mortgage mania. Lawyers for the Justice Department contend that Countrywide Financial, a unit of Bank of America, misrepresented the quality of mortgages it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage finance giants, starting in 2007. Fannie and Freddie incurred gross losses of $850 million on the defective loans and net losses of $131 million, the government said.

Bank of America disagrees. Its lawyers say that Countrywide did not defraud Fannie or Freddie.

This case is undoubtedly big, but it is only one of many mortgage-related matters inching through the judicial system. And what is notable about some of the lower-profile matters is the tone and tack that federal judges are taking in their rulings. District court judges are not generally known as flamethrowers, but some seem to be losing patience with the banks.

For decades leading up to the foreclosure debacle, plaintiffs’ lawyers say, judges generally took the side of lenders when borrowers came to court complaining of problematic lending or predatory loan servicing. Many judges still do. But some are getting tough, perhaps having seen too many examples of dubious bank behavior.

IT'S ABOUT TIME! MAYBE A BANKSTER FORECLOSED ON A JUDGE'S FAMILY

[xchrom]

28. CASH-STRAPPED IRELAND ASKS VOTERS TO SHUT SENATE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_IRELAND_SENATE_ABOLITION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-05-07-38-44

DUBLIN (AP) -- Irish government plans to abolish the country's Senate in a cost-cutting move are facing a tough test in ballots being counted Saturday.

Early partial results from Friday's nationwide referendum suggest only around half of voters supported the government's proposed constitutional amendment to close the 60-senator chamber. The measure requires majority approval to become law. Official results are expected later Saturday.

Proponents say the upper house wields no essential powers and its closure could save taxpayers 20 million euros ($27 million) annually.

Opponents accuse the government of seeking to strengthen its own powers by removing an upper house that scrutinizes and occasionally delays the passage of bills. They argue that the government should reform and improve the Senate, not kill it.

[westerebus]

48. Let's put the size of the House of the Congress on the next national ballot.

We need to save ourselves from the corrupted dolts that have no interest in serving the Citizens of this Nation. And some money while we are at it.

The House is far to large to be effective.

It is much to costly to run as an institution

It reeks of insider party politics when it should by law be about the People's business.

The House has instead placing the personal wealth of their corporate sponsors and their party's control of functions of governance to the fore front of an assault on the very economic viability of the Citizens of this Nation.

There is no justice to be had by a body of elected officials so outside the main stream of the average Citizen that it is incapable of policing itself.

The just thing, the right thing, the rule of law, the will of the People is not being served!

How better to reform them then to reduce the possibility that going forward their numbers will be fewer and punishments for failing will be swifter than to remove their membership by half?

217 is a workable. More than adequate. A number that would support election funding reform. A number that might be held to closer accountability.

We want after all is a House that represents the Citizens.

We will save on staffing and pensions and salaries and perks and decrease the number of potential lobbyists by half.


It's the 21st century, we have technology to communicate that didn't exist in the 18th century. Let us use what would benefit the majority to form a more prefect union that is with in our reach.

* apologies for grammar etc as usual

[Demeter]

51. On the other hand....a larger House MIGHT break up the 2 Party deadlock

The original purpose of the House was equal representation...one vote at the federal level for every X thousand voters.

The purpose of the Senate was to subvert this representative democracy, which it has always done admirably.


As the nation grew, the value of X became so large as to make adequate representation, and grassroots influence, impossible.

Throw in the corruption of Big Money and election buying, and here we are today. There aren't enough representatives to make buying them all uneconomical and impractical.


I would prefer to ditch the Senate entirely, give the House 3 year terms (and replace one third each year) and reduce the number of people represented to something on the order of 250,000 voters/representative.

According to census.gov, there are currently over 305 million people living in the United States of America. Of that figure, it is estimated that over 227 million people are over 18 and eligible to vote in a United States election (statistics as of July 2007 www.census.gov).
http://voices.yahoo.com/voting-united-states-stats-facts-2347474.html

This would give us just under 1000 representatives, with room for population growth.

If there were a need for coalitions, each state could have its Democratic, Republican, Green etc. caucus select a leader. These leaders could meet in a smaller, Senate-like setting for specific purposes...as long as they don't override the House. These leaders should be subject to instant recall by the House, as well.


WE REALLY NEED A NEW CONSTITUTION...AND A CONVENTION DOMINATED BY CITIZENS, NOT CORPORATIONS OR THE 1%

[westerebus]

56. You don't eliminate dolts by electing more dolts to more slots.

You reduce the number of dolts by reducing the number of slots available.

Putting out more garbage cans only attracts more flies.

Fund elections for the House to a limit of $10 million or matching funds not to exceed $10 million.

Primaries funded by the candidate by voter contributions within the state.

All one needs is to get enough Voter signatures to be on the primary ballot.

State law will apply as to the number required being equal to that of the governorship.

Having won the primary the candidates must apply for funding.

A no confidence vote as a choice on the election ballot will be binding.

Should one half of all votes cast be no confidence, a new tier of candidates must primary.

Same rules apply.

The Senate?

[xchrom]

30. US pushes trade agenda despite shutdown

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_APEC_US_TRADE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-05-08-11-41

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- Talks on a Pacific trade pact are forging ahead with hopes of meeting a year-end deadline still intact, officials said Saturday, despite President Barack Obama's absence due to the government shutdown.

Obama had intended to thrash out issues with leaders of the 11 other trans-Pacific Partnership member countries on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific regional summit in Bali on Monday and Tuesday.

Instead he ended up shelving the trip to focus on resolving the standoff over funding the U.S. government. Still, U.S. and other senior officials sought to downplay the potential loss of momentum in the trade talks known as TPP.

"I do want to make clear none of what is happening in Washington diminishes by one iota our commitment to our partners in Asia, including our efforts to promote trade and investment throughout the region," Secretary of State John Kerry, who is standing in for Obama, said Saturday

[Demeter]

33. Train Wreck Ahead!

Let's derail the TPP, before it derails us.

[xchrom]

34. indeed. nt

[Demeter]

36. Morning X!

Hope all is well or at least, getting better with you.

[xchrom]

38. good morning miss demeter!

things are about as good as can be.

i've had to get used to a new floor in my health this last year or so -- but i'm doing ok.

things sound ok with you these days... i hope that is so.

[Demeter]

39. The occasional bobble occurs

but the logjam seems to have broken up, for the moment.

[xchrom]

31. SHUTDOWN IMPACT: TOURISTS, HOMEBUYERS HIT QUICKLY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BUDGET_BATTLE_SHUTDOWN_IMPACT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-05-04-32-00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A government shutdown is having far-reaching consequences for some, but minimal impact on others.

Mail is being delivered. Social Security and Medicare benefits continue to flow.

But vacationers are being turned away from national parks and Smithsonian museums, and that's having a ripple effect on those businesses and communities that rely on tourism. Borrowers applying for a mortgage can expect delays, particularly many low-to-moderate income borrowers and first-time homebuyers.

A look at how services have been affected, and sometimes not, by Congress failing to reach an agreement averting a partial government shutdown.

[Demeter]

32. KASSANDRA REPORTS: THE RETIREMENT BALLOON DEFLATING

The possibility of retirement, a shaky concept in America at least since the 70's when the first rumblings of the insolvency of Social Security began to hit the press in order to stampede the public, is now becoming a fairy-tale for the princes and princesses of the land, but nobody under the 10% need apply.

Even the most iron-clad contracts the unions could get are being broken.

Here's a compendium of the latest in this quest for a livable (forget comfortable) old age...

Taibbi's Latest Expose: How Teachers, Cops and Firemen Are Getting Their Pensions Fleeced at Lightning Speed

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/taibbi-his-latest-expose-how-wall-street-hedge-funds-are?akid=10978.227380.8d0E-H&rd=1&src=newsletter901960&t=7&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

...Matt Taibbi reports that Wall Street firms are now making millions in profits off of public pension funds nationwide. "Essentially it is a wealth transfer from teachers, cops and firemen to billionaire hedge funders," Taibbi says. "Pension funds are one of the last great, unguarded piles of money in this country and there are going to be all sort of operators that are trying to get their hands on that money."....

VIDEO INTERVIEW AND TRANSCRIPT AT LINK. EXCERPT:

MATT TAIBBI: The primary focus of my piece, there were a couple of things. Number one, how did these funds come to be broke the first place? I think everyone realizes that states are in fiscal crises or having trouble paying out their obligations to workers. One of the reasons is that at least 14 states have not been making their annual required contributions to the pension fund for years and years and years. So essentially, they have been illegally borrowing from these pension funds, sometimes going back decades. Another focus of the piece was the solution that a lot of sort of Wall Street funded think tanks are coming up with now is to get higher returns by putting these funds into alternative investments like hedge funds. In a lot of cases what I’m finding is that the fees that states are paying for these new hedge funds and these new types of alternatives investments are actually roughly equal to the cuts that they are taking from workers. Like in the state of Rhode Island, for instance, they have frozen the cost of living adjustment and the frozen cola roughly equals the fees that they’re paying to hedge funds in that state. So essentially it is a wealth transfer from teachers, cops, and firemen to billionaire hedge-funders.

How 401(k)s Rewarded the Rich and Turned the Rest of Us into Big Losers By Lynn Parramore

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19093-how-401ks-rewarded-the-rich-and-turned-the-rest-of-us-into-big-losers

The Dumbest Retirement Policy in the World

Thirty years ago, as laissez-faire fanaticism took hold of America, misguided policymakers decided that do-it-yourself retirement plans, otherwise known as 401(k)s, would magically secure our financial future in the face of gyrating markets, economic crises, unpredictable life events, stagnant wages and rampant job insecurity. It was an extraordinary shift in thinking about public policy: Instead of having predictable streams of income from traditional pensions, ordinary people with little financial expertise would suddenly transform themselves into financial gurus, putting money aside and managing complicated investments in tax-deferred accounts.

There were red flags along the way for our 401(k)s. They were originally supposed to supplement pensions but clever corporate cost-cutters decided that voluntary individual accounts would replace them. Big difference! Meanwhile, throughout the 1990s, the national savings rate fell. Real wages dropped. As Helaine Olen details in her book Pound Foolish, Americans started borrowing against retirement plans to pay the mortgage or send the kids to college. The media was basically out to lunch and politicians went on claiming the nonsense that individual retirement accounts would encourage savings and turn us all into professional money managers. The stock market would bring us double-digit returns. Whoopie!

Reality check: In 2007, the financial crisis destroyed America’s retirement fantasy. Jobs evaporated or were downsized. The stock market took a nosedive. Millions of Americans who had worked hard, straining to sock away a portion of their salary for 401(k)s, watched helplessly as a black cloud formed over their golden years. In October 2008, the Congressional Budget Office revealed that Americans had lost $2 trillion in just 15 months — money that will likely never be recovered. Not long after, President Obama betrayed the public by turning away from the jobs crisis to create a deficit commission whose leaders had the stunning lack of foresight to advise cutting Social Security at a time when the retirement train wreck was quickly picking up steam.

Today, the balance in our retirement accounts falls wildly short of what we need to keep us from destitution in old age, much less to secure a comfortable existence. According to the Vanguard Group, in 2012, the average account balance in our 401(k)s was $86,212 — and that number is skewed by high earners at the top. The amount experts say we need? About $1 million or more, depending on how much you make now...

Wall Street Predators Wage Secret War on American Retirements By Lynn Parramore

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/wall-street-and-retirement?akid=10987.227380.9g-VnW&rd=1&src=newsletter903015&t=3&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

...Here’s the truth: Wall Street predators have had their hands in the pension cookie jar for decades, and now they’re poised to gobble up the retirements of teachers and firefighters in yet another orgy of greed.

Unknown to much of the public, Wall Street has been soaking state and municipal coffers with derivatives schemes and various frauds for years. As Alexander Arapoglou and Jerri-Lynn Scofield have explained, not only have Wall Street banks screwed public finances with fancy credit default swaps and other "innovative" financial products that blow up in the faces of cities and states, they have also been engaged in widespread frauds that squeeze pension yields. This happened in the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal, in which big banks were found to be manipulating interest rates, which has resulted in lower returns on pension fund investments and has caused shortfalls in pension plans. The lack of actions from authorities means this kind of hustling will surely continue...

6 Ways Big Banks Screwed Grandma in the Price-Fixing Scandal That's Rocking the World

http://www.alternet.org/story/156460/6_ways_big_banks_screwed_grandma_in_the_price-fixing_scandal_that%27s_rocking_the_world?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Grandma's finances will almost certainly never recover from the LIBOR scandal. And, needless to say, she never asked for it...

[xchrom]

37. Uncertainty on figures hampering food security efforts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24385547

More than 600 scientists gathered in the Netherlands for a global food security conference, described as the first of its kind.

Organisers said science could help end uncertainty surrounding efforts to meet the food needs of future generations.

They added that, until now, there were many policy debates on food security but there was no scientific forum for researchers to share knowledge.

The next food security conference will be held in the US in 2015.

[Demeter]

40. Only one continuous loop...

[xchrom]

41. US government shutdown halts EU free trade talks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24407816

Negotiations on a sweeping free trade pact between the US and the EU have been postponed because of a partial government shutdown in America.

US officials had been due in Brussels next week to discuss the deal aimed at boosting bilateral ties.

US President Barack Obama earlier cancelled his trip to Asia because of the shutdown.

The US government closed non-essential operations on Tuesday after Congress failed to agree a new budget.

[xchrom]

43. New York City Opera Files for Bankruptcy

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/new_york_city_opera_files_for_bankruptcy_20131004


New York City Opera, known for 70 years as the “people’s opera” for its affordable tickets, revealed as much as $10 million in assets and debt in a bankruptcy petition it filed Thursday after years of declining income and a failed fundraiser.

The opera targeted a fundraising goal of $7 million to keep its performers on stage and its seats open. The bankruptcy will protect the organization from creditors and provide a forum for negotiating debts and possibly selling assets.

Cultural institutions and individuals who supported the opera suffered in the 2007 crisis. As the economy recovered, their donations went elsewhere, Ted Gavin, a partner at a turnaround/restructuring company based in Delaware, is referenced as saying in a Bloomberg News article.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

Bloomberg News:

The company last week posted an “urgent” notice on its website seeking donations to help raise $20 million, including $7 million it said it needed by Sept. 30 for the current season.

[xchrom]

44. Do You Really Want to Work There?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/03/do-you-really-want-to-work-there/

With another jobless recovery at hand, it is tempting to accept any position offered to you. But there are 12 kinds of companies you don’t want to work for. Here are the warning signs.

1) Beware of companies that call their employees “associates” or “team members.” This is a cheap way of making them feel valued without paying them.

2) Beware of companies with morale campaigns like “We’re The Best” and baseball caps that say “Reach for the Stars.” Employees paid enough don’t need morale campaigns.

3) Be suspicious of offices that are a sea of particle board cubicles with a few ostentatious glass offices. The only time you’ll see the inside of a glass office under Floorplan Feudalism is when they tell you your job was seasonal and they don’t need you anymore.

4) Beware of companies whose employee parking lots are full at 6:30 AM and 6:30 PM. The cars aren’t there because people love the cafeteria food.

5) And, speaking of food, beware of companies that offer free pizza parties and push company games like volleyball. Forced fun is not only an insult–you’re there to work and probably have enough friends–it is a cheap way companies try to look generous.

[jtuck004]

65. Could just shorten that to "Beware of Companies". I know it seems overly broad, but that has been

my experience

Have you ever seen Fiddler on the Roof? Perchik is explaining the story of Jacob from the bible, how Jacob fell in love with Laban's daughter, and Laban promised her to him in return for him agreeing to work for 7 years. When the 7 years was up Laban explained that he couldn't let her wed in front of the older daughter, so he said Jacob needed to work another 7 years for the younger one...

And from that, he says, you should learn that you can never trust an employer.

Maybe that bible is good for something...

[Hotler]

73. I work for one of those companies.

and I hate it. And I'm really close to tell them to shove it.

[AnneD]

74. I have worked in two industries....

that have tried to make themselves over into a business model, with miserable results.

Patients are just that, patients, not customers. Getting well is not a for profit venture.

Children are students, not consumers. They are not widgets to get through the assembly lines.

I am so sick of the corporate pea brained mentality.

I count down the days until I can leave this foolishness.

[Demeter]

45. The Real Crisis Is Not The Government Shutdown By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36420.htm

...Obama has enough power under the various “war on terror” rulings to declare a national emergency and raise the debt ceiling by executive order. An executive branch that has the power to inter citizens indefinitely and to murder them without due process of law, can certainly set aside a ceiling on debt that jeopardizes the government....

The real crisis is that jobs offshoring by US corporations has permanently lowered US tax revenues by shifting what would have been consumer income, US GDP, and tax base to China, India, and other countries where wages and the cost of living are relatively low. On the spending side, twelve years of wars have inflated annual expenditures. The consequence is a wide deficit gap between revenues and expenditures. Under the present circumstances, the deficit is too large to be closed. The Federal Reserve covers the deficit by printing $1,000 billion annually with which to purchase Treasury debt and mortgage-backed financial instruments. The use of the printing press on such a large scale undermines the US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the basis for US power. Raising the debt limit simply allows the real crisis to continue. More money will be printed with which to purchase more new debt issues needed to close the gap between revenues and expenditures. The supply of dollars or dollar denominated assets in foreign hands is vast. (The Social Security system’s large surplus accumulated over a quarter century was borrowed by the Treasury and spent. In its place are non-marketable Treasury IOUs. Consequently, Social Security is one of the largest creditors to the US government.)

If foreigners lose confidence in the dollar, the drop in the dollar’s exchange value would mean high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s loss of control over interest rates. It is possible that a drop in the dollar’s exchange value could initiate hyperinflation in the US.

The real crisis is the absence of intelligence among economists and policymakers who told us for 20 years not to worry about the offshoring of US jobs, because we were going to have a “New Economy” with better jobs. As I report each month, not a single one of these “New Economy” jobs has appeared in the payroll jobs statistics or in the Labor Department’s projections of future jobs. Economists and policymakers simply gave away a good chunk of the US economy in order to enhance corporate profits. One result has been to create in the US the worst distribution of income of all developed countries and of many undeveloped ones.
In the scheme of things, the enhanced profits are a short-run thing, because by halting the growth in consumer income, jobs offshoring has destroyed the US consumer market...

PCR IS OUR PROPHET, CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS

[Demeter]

47. The Fed's 'hidden agenda' behind money-printing

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101062461


...I believe that one of the most important reasons the Fed is determined to keep interest rates low is one that is rarely talked about, and which comprises a dark economic foreboding that should frighten us all.

Let me start with a question: How would you feel if you knew that almost all of the money you pay in personal income tax went to pay just one bill, the interest on the debt? Chances are, you and millions of Americans would find that completely unacceptable and indeed they should.

But that is where we may be heading.

Thanks to the Fed, the interest rate paid on our national debt is at an historic low of 2.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Given the U.S.'s huge accumulated deficit, this low interest rate is important to keep debt servicing costs down. But isn't it fair to ask what the interest cost of our debt would be if interest rates returned to a more normal level? What's a normal level? How about the average interest rate the Treasury paid on U.S. debt over the last 20 years?

That rate is 5.7percent, not extravagantly high at all by historic standards.

So here's where it gets scary: U.S. debt held by the public today is about $12 trillion. The budget deficit projections are going down, true, but the United States is still incurring an annual budget deficit by spending more than we take in in taxes and revenue. The CBO estimates that by 2020 total debt held by the public will be $16.6 trillion as a result of the rising accumulated debt.

Do the math: If we were to pay an average interest rate on our debt of 5.7 percent, rather than the 2.4 percent we pay today, in 2020 our debt service cost will be about $930 billion.

Now compare that to the amount the Internal Revenue Service collects from us in personal income taxes. In 2012, that amount was $1.1 trillion, meaning that if interest rates went back to a more normal level of, say, 5.7 percent, 85 percent of all personal income taxes collected would go to servicing the debt. No wonder the Fed is worried. Some economists will also suggest that interest rates may go much higher than 5.7 percent largely as a result of the massive QE exercise of printing money at an unprecedented rate. We just don't know what the effect of all this will be but many economists warn that it can only result in inflation down the road...Rates in the U.S. peaked in 1980 (remember the 14 percent Treasury bonds?) so if we are at the point of reversing a 33-year downward trend, who wants to predict how this will affect the economy?

One thing is clear: Based on CBO projections, if interest rates just rise to their 20-year average, we will have an untenable, unacceptable interest rate bill whose beneficiaries are China, Japan, and others who own our bonds. And if Americans find out that the lion's share of their income tax payments are going to service the debt, prepare for a new American revolution.

Peter J. Tanous is president of Lepercq Lynx Investment Advisory in Washington D.C. He is the co-author (with Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore) of The End of Prosperity (2008), and co-author (with CNBC.com's Jeff Cox) of Debt, Deficits, and the Demise of the American Economy (2011).

[westerebus]

49. Oh bullshit.

The FED and US taxpayers own the majority of the US debt which the entire planet counts on as collateral to the world's economy.

Treasury can write a check to itself if it had to. Right back to a historical average.

The massive printing has like jobs left the shores of this country.

The last thing anybody wants is for the US to pay off its debt at this stage from the depression- great recession- war on terror because it would underfund the world economy.

With the exception of the loonies who think a household budget is the same as the Nation's.

Once again, look over there, we are not the thieves you are looking for.

Mr. Tanous prosperity ended when Richard Nixon was elected. Most Americans just didn't know it at time. Which is why the voted for Saint Ronnie who was to preform a miracle and bring it back. Only to be saved by Bill lifting all boats. Then to be protected by Junior. And currently...

[Demeter]

50. Well, if they really wanted to do the economy some good...

whether it was their personal economy, a national economy, or the global economy....they would HAVE TO bust the 1%...break them down financially to middle class or less, burn the paper profits, wipe out the sovereign debts, and redistribute resources to the people who need it.


The concept of a debt jubilee (I think) was not to take the destitute out of slavery, but to let the 1% keep their paper wealth and relatively elevated status intact, while preventing the pitchforks and torches crowd from going after them.

There's no sense in a man, any man, having too much wealth and too much power to utilize responsibly. The world is infested with such men (and rather fewer women), and they are vectors of disease, despair, and war.

We in the US have an Administration that revels in the abuse of military and economic power, but we aren't the only nation so afflicted. It is a madness, like rabies, spread by direct contact.

[westerebus]

55. We have all the makings of another sellout with the TPP.

Dodd-Frank is going no where.

Glass-Steagell...

The Volcker rule...

TBTF is now too bigger to fail.

Both party's have a lock on government office at the National level.

Louis the XVI's Court was less corrupt than what we have now.

Debt ceiling?

They play us for fools.

By all means let us elect another grifter.

That's worked out well.

[bread_and_roses]

59. Amen, Sister (n/t)

[Demeter]

52. Before I go out into the cold, cruel (damp) world, a bit more about Clancy

Political views

A longtime holder of conservative and Republican views, Clancy's books bear dedications to American conservative political figures, most notably Ronald Reagan. A week after the September 11, 2001 attacks, on The O'Reilly Factor, Clancy suggested that left-wing politicians in the United States were partly responsible for September 11 due to their "gutting" of the Central Intelligence Agency.

WELL, HE DID WRITE FICTION--BELIEVED IT, TOO, APPARENTLY

In recent years, Clancy associated himself with General Anthony Zinni, a critic of the George W. Bush administration, and has been critical of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as well.

SO, REALITY WAS ABLE TO PENETRATE EVEN THERE

On September 11, 2001, Clancy was interviewed by Judy Woodruff on CNN. During the interview, he asserted "Islam does not permit suicide" (see Islam and suicide). Among other observations during this interview, Clancy cited discussions he had with military experts on the lack of planning to handle a hijacked plane being used in a suicide attack and criticized the news media's treatment of the United States Intelligence Community. Clancy appeared again on PBS's Charlie Rose, to discuss the implications of the day's events with Richard Holbrooke, New York Times journalist Judith Miller, and Senator John Edwards, among others. Clancy was interviewed on these shows because his 1994 book Debt of Honor included a scenario where a disgruntled Japanese airline pilot crashes a fueled Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol dome during an address by the President to a joint session of Congress, killing the President and most of Congress. This plot device bore strong similarities to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

NOW, THAT WOULD BE AIDING AND ABETTING, WOULDN'T IT? UNDER TODAY'S STANDARDS OF GUILT?

Clancy was also a Lifetime Member of the National Rifle Association since 1978.


Personal life

Clancy and his first wife Wanda Thomas King, a nursing student who became an eye surgeon, married in 1969, separated briefly in 1995, and permanently separated in December 1996. Clancy filed for divorce in November 1997, which became final in January 1999.

On June 26, 1999, Clancy married freelance journalist Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, whom he had met in 1997. Llewellyn is the daughter of J. Bruce Llewellyn, and a family friend of Colin Powell, who originally introduced the couple to each other. They remained together until Clancy's death in October 2013.

Clancy's estate, which was once a summer camp, is located in Calvert County, Maryland. It is 80 acres (32 ha) in area, and has a panoramic view over the Chesapeake Bay. The stone mansion, which cost US$2 million, has twenty-four rooms, and features a shooting range in the basement. The property also features an M4 Sherman tank, which dates from World War II, a Christmas gift from his first wife.

Clancy also purchased a 17,000 square feet (1,600 m2) penthouse condominium in the Ritz-Carlton in Baltimore's Inner Harbor for US$16 million. Clancy's condo cost US$350,000 in property taxes to the city of Baltimore each year, the most of any property, and more than some entire neighborhoods.

Death

Clancy died on October 1, 2013, after a brief illness at Johns Hopkins Hospital, near his Baltimore home. Clancy is survived by his wife, Alexandra; their daughter, Alexis; and four children from a previous marriage to Wanda King: Michelle Bandy, Christine Blocksidge, Kathleen Clancy, Ph.D., and Thomas Clancy III. The Chicago Tribune quoted Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stephen Hunter as saying, "When he published The Hunt for Red October he redefined and expanded the genre and as a consequence of that, a lot of people were able to publish such books who had previously been unable to do so."

THAT'S ALL, HE WROTE

[Demeter]

53. TOM CLANCY'S Works, by year of publication

The Hunt for Red October (1984)

Clancy's first published novel. CIA analyst Jack Ryan assists in the defection of a respected Soviet naval captain, along with the most advanced ballistic missile submarine of the Soviet fleet. The movie (1990) stars Alec Baldwin as Ryan and Sean Connery as Captain Ramius. U.S, submarine commander Bart Mancuso is introduced in this novel, and nearly every subsequent book has Mancuso in ever increasing command of U.S. submarine forces. U.S. naval aviator Robby Jackson is also introduced and eventually succeeds Jack Ryan as President of the United States.

Red Storm Rising (1986)

War between NATO and USSR. The basis of the combat game of the same name, this book is not a member of the Ryan story series (although the protagonist of the story has many similarities with Jack Ryan). Cowritten with Larry Bond.

Patriot Games (1987)

Patriot Games chronologically predates the first book that Clancy wrote, The Hunt for Red October. Jack Ryan foils an attack in London on the Prince and Princess of Wales by the "Ulster Liberation Army". The ULA then attacks Ryan's Maryland home while he is hosting the Prince and Princess for dinner. The movie stars Harrison Ford as Ryan and Samuel L. Jackson as Robby Jackson.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988)

The sequel to "The Hunt for Red October." First appearance of John Clark and Sergey Golovko. Ryan leads a CIA operation which forces the head of the KGB to defect. Other elements include anti-satellite lasers and other SDI-type weapons, and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Major Alan Gregory is introduced here. (He appears later, updating SAM software in The Bear and the Dragon). Colonel Bondarenko also is introduced here. (He appears in later books offering advice to Golovko in "Executive Orders" and commanding the Russian Army defenses against China in its sequel "The Bear and the Dragon".)

Clear and Present Danger (1989)

The President authorizes the CIA to use American military forces in a covert war against cocaine producers in Colombia. The operation is betrayed. Ryan meets John Clark as they lead a mission to rescue abandoned soldiers. Domingo "Ding" Chavez (Clark's protege in later novels) is one of the rescued soldiers. The 1994 film stars Harrison Ford as Ryan, Willem Dafoe as Clark, and Raymond Cruz as Chavez.

The Sum of All Fears (1991)

Arab terrorists find a nuclear weapon that had been lost by Israel, and use it to attack the United States. This nearly triggers a war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, due to the incompetence of the new President and his mistress with an anti-Ryan agenda. Ryan intervenes to avert the war. The 2002 film stars Ben Affleck as Ryan and Liev Schreiber as Clark, and changes the identity and motivation of the terrorists to neo-Nazis.

Without Remorse (1993)

Without Remorse takes place during the Vietnam War, when Jack Ryan was a teenager. Ex-SEAL John Clark (then John Kelly) fights a one-man war against drug dealers in Baltimore, attracting the attention of Jack's father Emmett, a Baltimore police detective. He also helps plan and execute a raid on a prisoner-of-war camp in North Vietnam. Clark joins the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Debt of Honor (1994)

A secret cabal of extreme nationalists gains control of Japan (having developed some nuclear weapons), and start a war with the U.S. Ryan, now National Security Advisor, and Clark and Chavez, agents in Japan, help win the war. The Vice President resigns in a scandal, and the President appoints Ryan to replace him. A vengeful, die-hard Japanese airline pilot then crashes a jetliner into the U.S. Capitol during a joint session of Congress attended by most senior U.S. government officials, including the President. Ryan thus becomes the new President through succession.

Executive Orders (1996)

This is the immediate sequel to Debt of Honor. President Ryan survives press hazing, an assassination attempt, and a biological warfare attack on the United States. Clark and Chavez trace the virus to a Middle Eastern madman, and the U.S. military goes to work.

SSN: Strategies for Submarine Warfare (1996)

Follows the missions of USS Cheyenne in a future war with China precipitated by China's invasion of the disputed Spratly Islands. Also not a Ryan universe book, SSN is actually a loosely connected collection of "scenario" chapters in support of the eponymous video game.

Rainbow Six (1998)

Released to coincide with the video game of the same name. John Clark and Ding, who is now Clark's son-in-law, lead an elite multinational anti-terrorist unit that combats a worldwide genocide attempt by eco-terrorists. Ryan is the U.S. President and only mentioned or referred to as either 'The President' or 'Jack'.

The Bear and the Dragon (2000)

War between Russia and China. Ryan recognizes the independence of Taiwan, Chinese police officers kill a Roman Catholic Cardinal, and American armed forces help Russia defeat a Chinese invasion of Siberia.

Red Rabbit (2002)

In the early 1980s, CIA analyst Ryan aids in the defection of a Soviet officer who knows of a plan to assassinate Pope John Paul II.

The Teeth of the Tiger (2003)

Jack Ryan's son, Jack Ryan, Jr., becomes an intelligence analyst, and then a field consultant, for The Campus, an off-the-books intelligence agency with the freedom to discreetly assassinate individuals "who threaten national security", following the end of the Jack Ryan Sr. presidential administration. This book of the Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy introduces Ryan's son and two nephews as heirs to his spook-legacy.

Dead or Alive (2010, with Grant Blackwood)

The story picks up where The Teeth of the Tiger left off with Jack Ryan, Jr. and The Campus trying to catch a terrorist known as "The Emir".

Against All Enemies (2011, with Peter Telep)

A terrorist bombing in Pakistan wipes out Max Moore’s entire CIA team. As the only survivor, the former Navy SEAL plunges deeper into the treacherous tribal lands to find the terrorist cell, but what he discovers there leads him to a much darker conspiracy in an unexpected part of the globe — the United States/Mexico border.

Locked On (Dec 2011, with Mark Greaney)

While Jack Ryan Jr. trains to become a field operative within The Campus, his father campaigns for re-election as President of the United States. A devout enemy of Jack Sr. launches a privately funded vendetta to discredit him, while a corrupt Pakistani general has entered into a deadly pact with a fanatical terrorist to procure nuclear warheads.

Search and Destroy (July 2012, with Peter Telep) (Cancelled)

Threat Vector (Dec 2012, with Mark Greaney)

Jack Ryan has only just moved back into the Oval Office when he is faced with a new international threat. An aborted coup in the People's Republic of China has left President Wei Zhen Lin with no choice but to agree with the expansionist policies of General Su Ke Qiang. They have declared the South China Sea a protectorate and are planning an invasion of Taiwan. The Ryan administration is determined to thwart China’s ambitions, but the stakes are dangerously high as a new breed of powerful Chinese anti-ship missiles endanger the US Navy's plans to protect the island. Meanwhile, Chinese cyber warfare experts have launched a devastating attack on American infrastructure.

Command Authority (December 2013, with Mark Greaney)

There is a new strong man in Russia but his rise to power is based on a dark secret hidden decades in the past. The clue to the mystery lies with a most unexpected source, President Jack Ryan.

Novels not in a series

Red Storm Rising (1986)
SSN (1996)
Against All Enemies (2011)

[Demeter]

54. ONE GETS THE SNEAKING SUSPICION

that when the Gang of W spoke of "creating their own reality", they were cribbing from Clancy.


The power to tell a gripping story is the power to reshape minds and therefore, reality. How many lives have been affected by Clancy's yarns?

We may never know. But I'd rather we had leaders who knew more about science and people, mathematics and even economics, and less about suspense/thrillers/popular fiction.

[Demeter]

61. Another Slump Ahead The True State of the U.S. Economy By Mike Whitney

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36359.htm

A DEPRESSINGLY ACCURATE SUMMARY OF CURRENT STATE OF THE ECONOMY....

[Demeter]

62. Why No One’s Investigating Wall Street By David Sirota

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36355.htm

The government finds money to crack down on food stamp "fraud." If it wanted to go after finance crooks, it could...


AND THE CORRESPONDING POLITICAL CORRUPTION THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE

[Demeter]

63. 'One Million Truckers' Ride to Restore Constitution OCTOBER 11-13 By Ralph Lopez

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36361.htm

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST...AND THIS MAY BE THE ONLY REPORT THAT EVER IS MADE....

DON QUIXOTE IS ALIVE AND WELL IN FLY-OVER LAND....



Having had their Facebook page shut down by Facebook administrators earlier this month, a group spearheaded by the Independent Truckers of America is calling for a three-day 'buy nothing' period from October 11 - 13.

On these days, the truckers will descend upon Washington, DC, in heavy rigs with signs calling for the restoration of a constitutional republic. The truckers are demanding that congressmen obey their oath to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

MORE AT LINK--THE LATEST IN A SERIES OF "MANIFESTOS" THAT WILL CONTINUE TO ARISE WHILE THE 1% SCRAMBLE TO ERASE ALL TRACES...

[Demeter]

64. President Obama Meets With Head of Goldman Sachs to Talk About “Payday Loan of Sorts”

http://benswann.com/president-obama-meets-with-head-of-goldman-sachs-to-talk-about-payday-loan-of-sorts/

by Ben Swann

Sources inside Goldman Sachs have leaked an email indicating that President Obama has had secret meetings with Goldman and Co, “in order to arrange a new debt ceiling, or more accordingly a new line of credit.” The email goes on to say that this would be “almost like a payday loan.”



Obama and Goldman Sachs Secret Meeting

Reuters reported, President Obama was scheduled to meet on Wednesday with top bank chief executives to discuss the government shutdown and the looming deadline to raise the nation’s debt limit.

“The Bank chiefs scheduled to meet with the President included Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Michael Corbat of Citigroup, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America.”

As the email’s writer points out, for the President to hold meetings of this kind however, could violate the Antideficiency Act of 1870. The Act prohibits any government office holder from incurring any monetary obligation for which Congress has not appropriated funds. As NBC News pointed out just Wednesday,

“CNBC has learned that in several executive branch departments, high-level staff members review individual decisions about what government activities to allow for fear of running afoul of the Antideficiency Act. One White House official said he has advised his employees not to check their email or cellphones. Under the act, even volunteering for government service is expressly prohibited.”

Of course the other major issue here. Is the President asking for the heads of the nations largest banks to make short term loans to the U.S. government? Ultimately, what does this mean for the nation?



AND WHY DOESN'T HE CALL IN THE NOTE--THE MONEY THE TAXPAYERS "LENT" THE BANKSTERS IN 2008?

[xchrom]

66. AP IMPACT: FAMILIES HOARD CASH 5 YRS AFTER CRISIS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GREAT_RESET_INVESTING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-06-00-54-30

NEW YORK (AP) -- Five years after U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering a global financial crisis and shattering confidence worldwide, families in major countries around the world are still hunkered down, too spooked and distrustful to take chances with their money.

An Associated Press analysis of households in the 10 biggest economies shows that families continue to spend cautiously and have pulled hundreds of billions of dollars out of stocks, cut borrowing for the first time in decades and poured money into savings and bonds that offer puny interest payments, often too low to keep up with inflation.

"It doesn't take very much to destroy confidence, but it takes an awful lot to build it back," says Ian Bright, senior economist at ING, a global bank based in Amsterdam. "The attitude toward risk is permanently reset."

A flight to safety on such a global scale is unprecedented since the end of World War II.

[xchrom]

67. AS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES IMPROVE, THE BRICS STUMBLE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GREAT_RESET_DEVELOPING_ECONOMIES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-06-00-54-57

NEW YORK (AP) -- The developing countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China recovered quickly from the financial crisis five years ago. Their spending helped keep a global recession from becoming a global depression.

Now they're stumbling.

Indians are buying fewer cars for the first time in a decade. Chinese are struggling as economic growth slows to a two-decade low. Even big-spending Brazilians, who like to buy everything from shoes to dental work on credit, are turning thrifty - and angry. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in June to protest rising prices and shoddy public services.

The timing is unfortunate. The economies of the United States, Europe and Japan have gained some momentum in recent months. It seemed that both developed and developing countries would finally be strengthening together as they did before the crisis. Now, hopes for a healthier worldwide economy have been dashed.

The reasons for the slowdown in the BRICs, as the four biggest developing countries are known, are myriad, from a pullback in bank lending in China to crumbling infrastructure and rampant corruption in India. One constant: The cost of living is rising fast, sapping spending power and the spirits of even those who've done well since the crisis.

[xchrom]

68. law shields churches, leaves pensions unprotected

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNPROTECTED_PENSIONS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-05-10-44-16


Armantina Pelaez, a former crisis counselor at St. Mary’s Hospital, in Paterson, N.J., stands in Paterson's Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, Monday, Sept. 23, 2013. In early 2011, St. Mary’s Hospital CEO told employees that the retirement plan's trust was severely underfunded, acknowledging the hospital had not put aside any money for their pensions in more than a decade. "I was very angry. I felt betrayed, not only by the health care system, but by the Sisters of Charity and I got betrayed by the church," said Pelaez, about St. Mary’s, which quietly converted its federally insured pension plan to an uncovered church plan in 2001. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

PASSAIC, N.J. (AP) -- Working at St. Mary's Hospital was all about making do. When supply shelves emptied, respiratory therapist Lori-Ann Ligon made frantic calls to compatriots at nearby medical centers, arranging meetings on the fly to barter for blood gaskets. For a couple of years, she and other managers were told the endless budget squeeze left no room for raises.

But when St. Mary's outlasted two competitors to become this city's lone hospital, executives heralded a new era: "Not just health care. Human care."

That care, though, only went so far.

"Presently, the retirement plan's trust is severely underfunded," the CEO wrote to employees in early 2011, blaming investment losses and the hospital's decision not to put any money into one of its pension plans for more than a decade. "As a federally recognized church plan," he continued, St. Mary's had the right to do that - and there was no government pension insurance to fall back on.

The news angered many St. Mary's workers, but their situation is not unique. Pension shortfalls at some religiously affiliated hospitals, businesses and social service agencies are raising new alarms and spotlighting a largely overlooked gap in the law protecting Americans' retirement benefits.

[xchrom]

69. Another Slump Ahead The True State of the U.S. Economy

Another Slump Ahead The True State of the U.S. Economy

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/04/the-state-of-the-economy/

“Slumping asset prices show a recession is probably on its way. … Stocks tend to fall more frequently and further than property values, so they are better recession-predictors.” - IMF research paper by economists John C. Bluedorn, Joerg Decressin and Marco E. Terrones.

The fact that stock prices have been drifting lower, doesn’t prove that the economy is headed for recession. Nor does political dysfunction (government shutdown), droopy home sales, plunging confidence, chronic high unemployment, rising levels of extreme poverty, unprecedented public dependence of food stamps, weak personal consumption, stagnant wages, falling middle class incomes, or gaping inequality. They may show a country that is on the wrong track and has its priorities mixed-up, but they don’t show that another recession is immanent. Even so, it’s easy to wonder how bad things have to get before the economy more closely reflects the mood of the country which is relentlessly pessimistic. To say that no one believes in Obama’s recovery would be a gross understatement. Obama supporters feel duped, misled, and despondent. Obama is not the agent of change they’d hoped for. He’s expanded the wars, slashed vital safety net programs, exonerated Wall Street criminals, and continued the vicious attack on civil liberties. He’s done everything in his power to boost the profits of the big corporations and banks, but hasn’t lifted a finger to help ordinary working people. And his efforts have paid off, too. Just look at this from Huffington Post:

“Corporate profits have increased by 18.6 percent over the past year…. In fact, corporate earnings now represent a larger share of GDP than during any other period in history…

Real wages have declined by nearly seven percent in the past seven years, according to data collected by the compensation research company Payscale. In other words, U.S. workers have less buying power now than they did before the financial crisis…

Payscale’s findings are just the latest in a slew of research that indicates the sluggish economic recovery has not been beneficial for most of us. Income inequality in the U.S. is at a new high as skyrocketing income gains for the top one percent are met by stagnating wages for practically everyone else.” (“Corporate Profits Are Soaring, But You’re Not Feeling It“, Huffington Post)

[xchrom]

70. US shutdown is starting to hit business, says Commerce Secretary

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24419564


US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker has warned that business is starting to suffer from the federal shutdown.

Her comments at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) came as leaders gathering for the summit voiced worries about the US situation.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino said that what happens in the US "affects us all".

On Friday, the US defence contractor Lockheed Martin said it would put 3,000 workers on unpaid leave.

[DemReadingDU]

71. Lockheed Martin: 3,000 workers on unpaid leave

Will any of these people protest in Washington?
When the majority of people do nothing, the government will continue the shutdown indefinitely.

[Demeter]

72. That's about as far as I can go

But it's one of the better threads, IMO. See you all next Weekend, and on SMW!

Have a good week, everyone. And pray for light to dawn on Congress.