Weekend Economists Speak Freely December 6-8, 2013

[Demeter]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Fundamental Freedom, the first article of our Bill of Rights, is the Freedom of Speech.At the time (approx. 1788 to adoption in 1791) Freedom of Speech was a novel idea. The basic intent was that NOBODY in authority: Executive, Legislative, Judicial, or even Religious, could tell you to shut up or you would be fined, imprisoned, tortured, or killed, and/or your family persecuted likewise.

Lately, this Freedom has all but disappeared. It has been nullified by Corporate takeover of the press, endured wholesale ignorance of the Constitution by all branches of government, and cancelled by religious fanaticism which has been emboldened by their examples to put another 2 cents in. Yes, we can bitch on the Internet, in protected areas. Yes, we can try to peaceably assemble, to petition the govt. If you like being a martyr, ala Occupy, Manning, Snowden, etc., that is.

Growing up in the cocoon that our nation wrapped around their post-war Boomer children, I received the false impression that all the "bad stuff" was over, that the bad guys were defeated in WWII, and the US, with the Marshall Plan to rebuild the vanquished former enemies, was a shining example of the New Humans: more virtuous, productive, fair, kind, honest, peace-loving, etc., etc...small d democrats, even if they were Republicans.

But there were cracks in the facade by the 60's: The Free Speech movement, Civil Rights, Women's Liberation, Peace Protests against Vietnam War, which told us that there was some work for the Boomers, too, in refining and reforming and as Lincoln said:

FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS BROUGHT FORTH ON THIS CONTINENT A NEW NATION CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL •

NOW WE ARE ENGAGED IN A GREAT CIVIL WAR TESTING WHETHER THAT NATION OR ANY NATION SO CONCEIVED AND SO DEDICATED CAN LONG ENDURE • WE ARE MET ON A GREAT BATTLEFIELD OF THAT WAR • WE HAVE COME TO DEDICATE A PORTION OF THAT FIELD AS A FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR THOSE WHO HERE GAVE THEIR LIVES THAT THAT NATION MIGHT LIVE • IT IS ALTOGETHER FITTING AND PROPER THAT WE SHOULD DO THIS • BUT IN A LARGER SENSE WE CAN NOT DEDICATE~WE CAN NOT CONSECRATE~WE CAN NOT HALLOW~THIS GROUND • THE BRAVE MEN LIVING AND DEAD WHO STRUGGLED HERE HAVE CONSECRATED IT FAR ABOVE OUR POOR POWER TO ADD OR DETRACT • THE WORLD WILL LITTLE NOTE NOR LONG REMEMBER WHAT WE SAY HERE BUT IT CAN NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY DID HERE • IT IS FOR US THE LIVING RATHER TO BE DEDICATED HERE TO THE UNFINISHED WORK WHICH THEY WHO FOUGHT HERE HAVE THUS FAR SO NOBLY ADVANCED • IT IS RATHER FOR US TO BE HERE DEDICATED TO THE GREAT TASK REMAINING BEFORE US~THAT FROM THESE HONORED DEAD WE TAKE INCREASED DEVOTION TO THAT CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY GAVE THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION~THAT WE HERE HIGHLY RESOLVE THAT THESE DEAD SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN~THAT THIS NATION UNDER GOD SHALL HAVE A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM~AND THAT GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH • as engraved on the Lincoln Memorial

And did that scare the Elite! They slammed down on all the levers they could reach, trying to choke off the People's will to govern themselves.

I thought "1984" was a fable of the defeat of Communism by its inherent contradictions, not the game plan for the fast-coming decade, the rest of our lives and our children's lives. It was delayed a decade because Nixon jumped the gun and Woodward and Bernstein found out...but 1984 came true anyway. Reagan, the Bushes, the Slick Willie, the efforts to lead were both pathetic and laughable and unfortunately, successful in stopping all progress in basic human rights.

There were counterweights to the backlash against the 60's...most of them technology-based. Medicine became more of a science, so that people could actually be cured of more than just broken bones, and immunized against most common infectious diseases. Public health measures and services flourished, for a time. And then, they were cut.

Solar and other renewable energy, conservation, environmental remediation: technology was going to make us leaders of the natural world...just as V-E and V-J Days made us leaders of peace...Well, Reagan shut those down pretty fast. So the Internet sprang up, and flourished. It didn't ding Reagan, who was coated in Teflon anyway, but it sure messed with Shrub! All of a sudden, the Big Lie technique was not working, and the Corporatization of the Mass Media was leaking like a sieve...so the NSA and the militarization of the local Police were the counter-moves (the National Guard had all been sent to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and half a dozen other missions...plus they had lost their authority at Kent State).

I never thought I'd grow up to be a martyr, I sure as hell don't want my children or anyone's children to be martyrs. But FREEDOM ISN'T FREE.

"Freedom Is Not Free" was first coined by retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, Walter Hitchcock, of New Mexico Military Institute. The idiom expresses gratitude for the service of members of the military, implicitly stating that the freedoms enjoyed by many citizens in many democracies are only possible through the voluntary risks taken and sacrifices made by those in military. The saying is often used to convey respect specifically to those who gave their lives in defense of freedom.

"Freedom Is Not Free" is engraved into one wall at the Korean War Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_isn%27t_free

Nowadays, we can't even expect the armies we pay for and/or serve in to respect our freedoms....I call as witness:

1. The ongoing battle with the NSA

2. The ongoing battle with white collar, corporate fraud

3. The battle against whistle-blowers

We have many excellent witnesses to call to the stand:

NELSON MANDELA

MARIO SAVIO

EDWARD SNOWDEN

Shall we begin?

I DIDN'T WANT TO GROW UP TO BE A MARTYR. I DON'T WANT ANYONE'S CHILDREN TO GROW UP TO BE MARTYRS. MARTYRS ARE THE FIRST CLUE THAT POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC OPPRESSION ARE THRIVING.

[Demeter]

1. WEE is late (again) due to a school event. I apologize!

Thanks for keeping the faith!

[Demeter]

2. No Bank Failures Since October 30th

QE 4-EVER!

We did lose Mayfair Federal Credit Union, Philadelphia on 11/1/2013, however.

[Demeter]

3. Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/edward-snowden-un-investigation-surveillance?CMP=ema_565

...In an article for the Guardian, the UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson QC said Snowden had disclosed "issues at the very apex of public interest concerns". He said the media had a duty and right to publish stories about the activities of GCHQ and its American counterpart the National Security Agency.

"The astonishing suggestion that this sort of responsible journalism can somehow be equated with aiding and abetting terrorism needs to be scotched decisively," said Emmerson, who has been the UN's leading voice on counter-terrorism and human rights since 2011.

"It is the role of a free press to hold governments to account, and yet there have even been outrageous suggestions from some Conservative MPs that the Guardian should face a criminal investigation. It has been disheartening to see some tabloids giving prominence to this nonsense."

SO THERE! IF THE UK CAN GET IT, MAYBE THEY SHOULD TRY TO EXPLAIN IT TO THE POTUS...

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

22. Six months after NSA story broke, Snowden looks even more patriotic

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/06/nsa-edward-snowden



Six months ago this week, the Guardian and Washington Post published the first stories based on leaks from Edward Snowden. Since then, in what has become a steady drumbeat of revelations about the about the US National Security Agency other nations' spy agencies, we've learned how utterly hostile our governments have become to our most fundamental rights in the post 9/11 world – but we've also seen the first genuine push-back by some of the people who have the power to make a near-term difference...BIG EDIT...We shouldn't take seriously President Obama's promise to a TV interviewer that he is planning to "rein in" the surveillance. The president's record of broken promises when it comes to civil liberties is long and disheartening. What is valuable, however, is that he is now on the defensive.

These past six months have been notable not just for what we've learned, but how we've learned it: via a press that does its job. The spectacle in Parliament this week, when MPs grilled Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and invited UK authorities to lay out a criminal case they may be preparing to bring against the Guardian and its journalists, was a reminder of journalism's most essential role: telling truth to – and about – the people and institutions that wield and often abuse power.

Yet it is Edward Snowden who probably deserves the most appreciation right now. With each new revelation, it becomes clearer that he has done a public service of the highest order. We can hope that people in power will eventually recognize that, and make a deal that will give him asylum in a western democracy or, better yet, a way back home as a genuine patriot who committed an act of justified civil disobedience.

Who has demonstrated more honor? Is it Snowden or the people, also deeply patriotic, who run our national security apparatus? I don't doubt that the spies truly believe they've also done what is necessary. But they've lied to Congress and the American people, trampled on our civil liberties and, in general, violated their sworn oaths to defend the Constitution. Who's the greater patriot?

[Demeter]

4. The Banksters Are Now Setting Up the Crash of 2016

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20378-the-banksters-are-now-setting-up-the-crash-of-2016

...

This is something I talk about in my new book, "The Crash of 2016."

The basic premise of my book is that conservative lawmakers overreacted to the progressive changes in America that took place in the 1960s and 70s. That overreaction, which included massive deregulation and tax cuts, opened the door for predators – particularly predatory banksters – to step in and wreak havoc on our economy...The predators are again up to their old tricks. Nothing has changed.

Elizabeth Warren was right when she said that the system is rigged.

And if we don't unrig the system quickly, we're going to see another disaster very, very soon.

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

[Ghost Dog]

36. Or sooner.

The Stock Market Bubble: Back to the Future on Wall Street
Mike Whitney, December 5, 2013 - 9:50am
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-whitney/53005/the-stock-market-bubble-back-to-the-future-on-wall-street

... Last week, serial bubblemaker, Alan Greenspan, made an appearance on Bloomberg TV where he scoffed at the idea of a stock bubble saying, “It’s a little on the upside, (But) “This does not have the characteristics, as far as I’m concerned, of a stock market bubble.”

There you have it from Maestro himself. No bubble here. Move along now.

Others, however, are not as confident as Greenspan. They think stock prices have less to do with fundamentals than they do with the Fed’s uber-accommodative policy which has kept short-term rates set below the rate of inflation for 5 years straight, providing a subsidy for risk taking. They also point to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s $85 billion per month asset purchase program, called QE, which has expanded the Fed’s balance sheet by $3 trillion lifting stock and bond prices across the board. Stock prices are based on Central Bank intervention. Fundamentals have nothing to do with it, nothing at all.

As for the bubble; judge for yourself:

Margin debt on the New York Stock Exchange is currently at its highest level ever. It’s even higher than before the crash in 2007. When investors borrow a lot of dough to buy stocks, you’re in a bubble, right? Because that’s what a bubble is, tons of credit pushing up prices. And when something bad happens, like the Lehman Brothers default, then all the over-extended borrowers have to dump their stocks pronto, which causes firesales, panics and financial meltdowns. Been there, done that.

So why is there so much margin debt now, you ask?

Because of zero rates. Because of QE. Because speculators think the Fed will keep prices high by pumping more liquidity into the system. It’s called the Bernanke Put, the belief that the Fed will prevent stocks from falling too fast, too far. Margin debt is a reasonable reaction to the Fed’s policy, which is why the Fed is ultimately responsible for the risky behavior.

Now check this out from the New York Times:

“Since the dark days of 2008, the Nasdaq has risen more than 150 percent, twice as much as the old-school Dow industrials. Money has been pouring into social media stocks. As of Friday, Twitter had risen nearly 60 percent since it went public only a few weeks earlier.

Once again, new “metrics” are being applied to justify stratospheric valuations. Twitter is losing money. A price-to-earnings ratio? There is no E in the P/E. But its stock is trading at 20-odd times the company’s annual sales. Good enough….

Eight months ago, Snapchat was valued at $70 million. Today, it is valued at $4 billion, even though it has zero revenue. Six months ago, Pinterest was valued at $2.5 billion. Today, it is valued at $3.8 billion — and no revenue there, either. And last week news broke that Dropbox was said to be seeking a new round of funding that would value the company at $8 billion, up from $4 billion a year ago.” (“Disruptions: If It Looks Like a Bubble and Floats Like a Bubble”, New York Times)

Did you catch that? A company with zero revenue is worth $3 billion more today than it was 8 months ago. So we’re back to the bad old days of the dot.com bust. This is the result of low rates and QE. It has nothing to do with fundamentals. We’re not talking earnings here. We’re talking manipulation, intervention, and central planning.

Then there’s this from the Wall Street Journal:

“Investment funds aimed at individual investors are barreling into collateralized loan obligations, a complex and volatile type of security that was shaken by the financial crisis.

Lured by annual returns of as high as 20%, some mutual-fund managers are buying CLOs through investment funds that purchase stakes in loans to companies with low credit ratings…. …

The biggest buyers of these securities usually are hedge funds, insurers and banks. But mutual funds and business-development companies, which pitch themselves to individual, or retail, investors, have collected more than $60 billion in money from clients this year, according to Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc. and fund-data provider Lipper.

CLO returns are higher than on corporate bonds and other loans, but CLO prices could plunge if the risk rises that companies will run into trouble repaying their loans. That happened in 2011, and some fund managers say retail investors are mostly unaware that the firms they invest in are buying CLOs…” (“Volatile Loan Securities Are Luring Fund Managers Again”, Wall Street Journal)

So the big boys are climbing further out the risk curve to scratch out a higher rate of return on their investments; investments which–by the way– will eventually cost ”retail investors” (you and me) a bundle. And the reason these financial institutions are engaging in such risky behavior is because rates have been stuck at zero for 5 years, forcing them to look for higher yield wherever they can find it. It’s all part of the Fed’s Pavlovian conditioning. First you turn the interest rate dial to zero, then you juice stock’s prices with QE. And then you wait for the suckers (Mom and Pop) to reenter the market so you can cut them down like corn stalks in a combine. Works every time, just take a look:

“One development that has experts concerned is the return of individual investors, who are known for getting into the stock market near peaks…One way to measure their activity is to look at net inflows into stock mutual funds (excluding exchange-traded funds). When investors put more into stock funds than they take out, it’s called a net inflow. When they withdraw more than they invest, it’s a net outflow.

This year, net inflows totaled $176 billion through Nov. 20, according to Lipper…Most of that money is coming from bank accounts and money market funds…”

So the sheeple are about to get sheared again, right? Just like Bernanke and his Wall Street buddies planned from the get go. But, guess what? Just as Mom and Pop are getting back into stocks again, the big boys are getting out...

/More... http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-whitney/53005/the-stock-market-bubble-back-to-the-future-on-wall-street

[Demeter]

5. SCOTUS Prefers Free Speech for Corporations, Not People

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20466-scotus-prefers-free-speech-for-corporations-not-people

The free speech rights of American citizens are under attack all across America, but if you’re a corporation, you can have all the say you want.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in U.S. v. Apel. The case centers around John Dennis Apel, an antiwar protester who was arrested on a California military base, even though he was in a spot that had been designated for public protests.

Apel went to the Supreme Court arguing that his First Amendment rights had been violated, after he was arrested for protesting in a designated protest area.

However, a majority of the justices argued that Apel’s case was not about a violation of his First Amendment rights.

Justice Scalia went as far as to say that, “You can raise it [the First Amendment], but we don’t have to listen to it.”

MORE, IF YOU CAN STAND IT, AT LINK

[Demeter]

6. We the People, Not We the Corporations PETITION!

https://movetoamend.org/

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

YOU CAN SIGN THIS PETITION AT LINK

[Demeter]

7. What the Media Isn't Telling You About Detroit's Bankruptcy

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20436-what-the-media-isnt-telling-you-about-detroits-bankruptcy

By now you've probably heard the news: Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is now free to rob Detroit workers of their hard-earned pensions. On Tuesday morning, Judge Steven Rhodes ruled that because federal law trumps state law, Michigan's constitutional protections for public employee pensions don't apply in federal court. It's pretty much official now: Detroit is going bankrupt...At one point in time, Detroit was ground-zero for the American dream. The Motor City really was the Motor City. It was the fifth biggest metropolitan area in the country and its economy was booming as a result of the success of the big three automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. The car industry's unionized workforce took home good middle-class salaries, in turn bolstering the city's tax revenues.

But over the past 30-plus years Detroit has been hit hard by the three-headed monster of the new American fire economy: free trade, union-busting, and bankster-run Ponzi schemes...Detroit was hit especially hard as foreign car companies like Toyota took advantage of lax trade policies to sell their products to American consumers. This decimated Detroit's industrial core. The Motor City's manufacturing workforce stood at 200,000 in 1950. Today, it's 20,000. But any possibility that those foreign companies would help provide new jobs to Detroit's now unemployed autoworkers was stopped dead in its tracks by right-to-work-for-less states in the South using their anti-worker laws to attract foreign manufacturers like Volkswagen and Toyota.

And with its jobs gone and poverty rampant, Detroit, like so many other deindustrializing cities across America, then became the target for banksters looking to make a quick buck with rip-off mortgage schemes. As a result, the financial crisis hit the Motor City especially hard...But to make matters worse, after evicting thousands of Detroiters from their homes, the big banks didn't bother going through with the normal foreclosure process. Instead, they left the houses abandoned in an attempt to avoid paying taxes on them. Their scheme worked: Detroit's army of abandoned houses costs the city millions every year in unpaid taxes.

MORE

HE DOESN'T GET INTO THE INTEREST RATE SWAPS...ANOTHER BANKSTER RIPOFF.

[Demeter]

8. The Real Web of America's Economic Life

THE END OF THE ANTI-TRUST ENFORCEMENT BY ST. RONNIE OF REAGAN DETAILED...

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20025-the-real-web-of-americas-economic-life

[Demeter]

9. The Naiveté of Nihilism: How Occupy challenged the way we think, speak and act upon resistance.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15918/the_naivete_of_nihilism/

"Now that I’ve already done my best to fix the world and it didn’t work, I am at peace with the fact that it is no longer my job and won’t be again for a few more generations to come. I have settled for acts of solitary resistance and disinvolvement, at every possible turn. It’s my religion now,” writes Matthew Richards, age 21.

...A Failure? Is he kidding? Occupy was far from a failure; rather it was a great success. No, it didn’t topple Wall Street—that was never going to happen as a result of a takeover (rightly) of what should be public space. What it did was wake up a somnambulant nation; illuminate the reality of a fundamental change in capitalism that for some reason had eluded all for many years. 1%? 99%? These terms no longer need explanation. What Occupy did was change our fundamental vocabulary and reveal the paradigm of the current state of capitalism. Occupy changed our language. It changed our thinking. And, perhaps most important, while it could not sustain its tactic, as an agitprop event it spawned other movements with a broader base and trajectory.

While living in public space on donated food and porta-potties didn’t seem a sustainable path for many people, Occupy should in fact be given and take credit for the other movements it helped spawned—the ‘living wage’ movement, the fight for $15, and perhaps even the resistance to war that led Obama to negotiate with Syria rather than bomb it into oblivion. The fact is that while Occupy engaged a few thousand people, many more thousands are acting upon what they learned from and through Occupy to challenge the system in the ways that feel appropriate and sustainable to them.

No this youth cohort did not make the revolution. Nor did my youth cohort—the’60s generation—create the world we envisioned. If there is a difference between us, it is this: we had a sense of history, of where our struggles fit in to a whole series of battles—some won, some lost. And for the most part, we have lived our lives, not settling for “solitary resistance and disinvolvement” but jumping in wherever we can to fan the flames and in the process creating great bonds of friendship and sometimes change. Frankly it’s a more interesting life.

I love Occupy. I love the changes in thinking and analyzing it has wrought. To young Matthew I would say, claim and savor your victories as well as your disappointments. If not, you’ll find yourself simply the victim of and complicit with the matrix that you purport to despise.


ABOUT THIS AUTHOR

Marilyn Katz is the founder and president of Chicago-based MK Communications. An anti-war and civil rights organizer during the Vietnam War, she served with Lee Weiner (one of the Chicago 7) as co-head of security during the August 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention. Follow Marilyn at @mkatzChicago or at her Tumblr, Half the Sky.

[Demeter]

10. Pathetic Centrists by Paul Krugman

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/pathetic-centrists/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto&_r=0

So progressive Democrats have seized on an op-ed by the group Third Way — an op-ed attacking Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio for their terrible, horrible economic populism — as a way to start reclaiming the party from the “centrists”. And it’s working: the centrists are very much on the run. Why? Part of the answer is that the Democratic party has become more progressive. But I would argue that the centrists are also suffering from their own intellectual bankruptcy. I mean, going after Warren and de Blasio for not being willing to cut Social Security and their “staunch refusal to address the coming Medicare crisis” ??? Even aside from the question of exactly what the mayor of New York has to do with Medicare, this sounds as if they have been living in a cave for years, maybe reading an occasional screed from the Pete Peterson complex.

On Social Security, they’re still in the camp insisting that because the system might possibly have to pay lower benefits in the future, we must move now to cut future benefits. Oh, kay.

But anyway, they declare that Medicare is the bigger issue. So what’s this about “staunch refusal” to address Medicare? The Affordable Care Act contains lots of measures to limit Medicare costs and health care more generally — it’s Republicans, not progressive Democrats, who have been screaming against cost-saving measures (death panels!). And health cost growth has slowed dramatically, feeding into much better Medicare projections. Here’s how the CBO projections have changed since Obama took office:



So what does Third Way think it would mean to “address the Medicare crisis”? They don’t say. But my strong guess is that they mean raising the Medicare age; living in their cave, they probably haven’t gotten the memo (literally) from CBO concluding that raising that age would hardly save any money. It’s just so tired and tiring. If being a “centrist” means fact-free denunciations of progressives for not being willing to cut entitlements, who needs these guys?

[Demeter]

11. Fast-Food Industry Rejects Workers’ Demand to Be Considered Human by Andy Borowitz

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/12/fast-food-industry-rejects-workers-demand-to-be-considered-human.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=borowitz&mbid=nl_Borowitz%20%288%29



In a defiant statement, a spokesman for the fast-food industry today lashed out at fast-food workers’ “outrageous and unacceptable demand to be considered human beings.”

Arguing that “granting fast food workers anything beyond a grim, scraping existence would put a serious dent in our profits,” the Fast Food Restaurant Council spokesman Tracy Klugian said. “Considering our workers human would be ruinous to the fast food industry as we know it.”

But Mr. Klugian was quick to point out that the controversy was about more than money: “It’s about dignity and respect—two things this industry has zero tolerance for.”

As fast food workers mounted protests across the country, the industry spokesman urged them to abandon their “reckless quest for human status” at once.

“They have to ask themselves, why did they want to work in the fast food industry to begin with?” he said. “Anyone who walks into one of our restaurants should realize that it’s no place for humans.”

[Demeter]

12. ALEC Faces Funding Crisis & possible Lobbying Violations Stewart Acuff

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/04/1260032/-ALEC-Faces-Funding-Crisis-possible-Lobbying-Violations?detail=email

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) may be guilty of abusing its tax status, which has created even bigger problems...According to reporting in Britain’s Guardian newspaper ALEC has lost 400 state legislative members and may have lost one third of its biggest funders, because it has promoted Florida’s “stand your ground law” as model legislation. That was the law, which George Zimmerman famously used in his defense for shooting an unarmed African-American teenager named Trayvon Martin.

According to The Guardian:

“An influential US lobbying network of Republican politicians and big businesses is seeking to avert a looming funding crisis by appealing to major donors that have abandoned it over the past two years following criticism of its policy on gun laws.”

As reported in The Guardian, “ALEC has formed a sister organization called ‘the Jeffersonian Project’ amid concerns about POSSIBLE GOVERNMENT INQUIRIES INTO WHETHER ITS ACTIVITIES CONSTITUTE LOBBYING – WHICH WOULD THREATEN ITS TAX EXEMPT STATUS.”

ALEC’s attorney in a letter to its board “makes clear that MAJOR POTENTIAL DONORS ARE HOLDING BACK BECAUSE OF CONCERNS ABOUT ALEC’s TAX STATUS.”

The Guardian reports that as many as 60 corporations have quit donating to ALEC including giant global corporations like Coca-Cola, WALMART, General Electric, and McDonald’s.

Clearly, ALEC is more concerned about potential lobbying and tax issues than many of its progressive critics have thought or have understood.

[Demeter]

15. ALEC's trouble continues as Visa leaves by Laura Clawson

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/04/1260186/-ALEC-s-trouble-continues-as-Visa-leaves?detail=email

Financial services company Visa has dropped its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), providing further evidence of ALEC's dwindling membership in the wake of a major expose by The Guardian. Visa (whose slogan is "everywhere you want to be&quot made the announcement to Boston Common Asset Management, which had been engaging with Visa over the past year on lobbying disclosure. [...]

Visa's departure won't help close up those budgetary gaps. In addition to supporting ALEC through its membership dues and participation in the Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Task Force, Visa was a "Chairman" level sponsor of 2011 ALEC Annual Conference, which cost $50,000 the previous year. It also sponsored a Plenary Session at the 2011 meeting featuring FreedomWorks founder Dick Armey.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/12/12332/alec-not-where-visa-wants-be

I GUESS YOU COULD SAY: ALEC SHOT ITSELF IN THE FOOT WITH ITS "STAND YOUR GROUND" LEGISLATION...BUT IT'S MORE LIKE A GUT SHOT.

[Demeter]

13. 3.8% by RA Salvatore

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/04/1260194/-3-8?detail=email


Want to know the dirty little secret about why the wealthy hate Obamacare?

3.8%

We hear the right-wing screaming all the time about Obamacare, of course, and how it's a travesty that will destroy freedom, take our guns and womenfolk, and will destroy Christmas! We have op-eds from people like Edie Stansby telling us of one horror after another. Even our well-to-do friends on Facebook bemoan their premium increases...while the middle class right wingers keep saying that they'll be paying the tab for the poor and the "takers," etc. It's all tied together, of course; those middle class folks are being fed that by the puppet masters. Make no mistake about it, the wealthy hate Obamacare. And it's got nothing to do with premiums. it's got to do with a single number: 3.8%....

You see, up until Obamacare, the truly wealthy in our society, that passive income crowd that dodged the top tax bracket by getting their compensation in capital gains and such, was EXEMPTED from the Medicare portion of FICA. This tax (2.9%) went up .9% for incomes over 250k under PPACA. .9%'s not that bad, of course, but for those living on passive income, the hit is much larger. Until now, this law, they were exempt from that tax. Now they're not.

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


3.8% of $20,000,000 is $760,000 dollars in taxes. That has to sting that generational wealth plan Romney was hatching. Imagine the hit the Kochs and the hedge fund guys are taking. The 25 top hedge fund guys in 2009 averaged $1Billion each...3.8% of a billion? Get your calculators out: mine says that means about $38,000,000 in new taxes for these guys.

So if they spend a few million trying to kill it, who could blame them, right?

3.8%.

They hate Obamacare. They hate Obama. It's pretty simple, when you think about it.



I WILL NEED SOME SECOND SOURCE TO VERIFY THIS...IT SEEMS WAY TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.

[Fuddnik]

30. 3.8% was also the magic number in H.R. 676.

Single-payer was supposed to be funded by an additional 3.8% tax on the medicare portion of FICA. That's 3.8% on the employee and employer portions.

Figure it out. 7.6% of gross income would be a lot less expensive for people in our income bracket, than paying an insurance company for shitty coverage (if you could get it). And that would be with no co-pays, no deductibles, or prescription drug costs.

But, when you get up to hedge fund earnings, or just some lowly millionaires, you're talking some serious change.

[Demeter]

14. Republicans want to make real war on Christmas by rejecting renewal of jobless benefit extensions

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/04/1260081/-Republicans-want-to-make-real-war-on-Christmas-by-rejecting-renewal-of-jobless-benefit-extensions?detail=email

Republicans controlling the House oppose a drive by Democrats to renew jobless benefits averaging less than $300 a week nationwide for the long-term unemployed, a senior GOP lawmaker said Tuesday.

“I don’t see much appetite on our side for continuing this extension of benefits,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. “I just don’t.”

Benefits for 1.3 million long-term unemployed people expire just three days after Christmas. Lawmakers say another 1.9 million people would miss out on the benefits in the first six months of next year...

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/gop-opposes-democratic-drive-renew-jobless-aid

[Demeter]

16. Poll: Congress should focus on jobs and also jobs by Laura Clawson

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/03/1259796/-Poll-Congress-should-focus-on-jobs-and-also-jobs#?detail=email

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressional-connection/coverage/poll-americans-want-washington-focused-on-jobs-not-health-20131202

NO LINK TO POLL, AND VERY USELESS ARTICLES, IMO

[Demeter]

17. POLL: How important is income inequality?

http://www.theguardian.com/money/poll/2013/dec/04/how-important-income-inequality-poll?CMP=ema_565

Is income inequality a major issue?

89% Yes, it's critical

4% Meh, there are so many other issues

6% No, not at all

[Demeter]

18. US economy grew 3.6% in third quarter at fastest rate since 2012

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/05/us-economy-gdp-fastest-rate?CMP=ema_565



The US economy grew at a faster pace in the third quarter than initially thought, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the economy, grew at a 3.6% seasonally adjusted annual rate from July through September, up from an earlier 2.8% estimate. The reading was significantly better than the 3.1% economists had predicted and represents the strongest growth rate since the first quarter of 2012.

However the upward revision was driven largely by businesses stockpiling inventory. The inventory gain accounted for almost half of the new growth figure. Inventory gains are notoriously volatile and economists are already predicting that they may sap growth in the fourth quarter as businesses cut back...

PLEASE REMEMBER WHO IS RUNNING COMMERCE, TOO!

[Demeter]

19. As engineers, we must consider the ethical implications of our work

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/05/engineering-moral-effects-technology-impact?CMP=ema_565

One aspect of Edward Snowden's revelations in the Guardian about the NSA's surveillance activities has received less attention than it should. The algorithms that extract highly specific information from an otherwise impenetrable amount of data have been conceived and built by flesh and blood, engineers with highly sophisticated technical knowledge. Did they know the use to which their algorithms would be put? If not, should they have been mindful of the potential for misuse? Either way, should they be held partly responsible or were they just "doing their job"?

One could ask similar questions about engineers who build technologies of violence. Although in the west, we use the euphemism "defence" – and weapons often do serve this purpose – arms are just as likely to be used for furthering less-than-honourable goals, whether invading other countries, bombing rebellious populations or staging coups against democratically-elected governments. Engineers who see themselves as builders of the shelter and infrastructure for human needs also use their expertise in order to destroy and kill more efficiently...


Technology as a means of social progress is arguably the common good that engineers pursue. Modern engineering emerged in the 19th century, an age when technology was seen in almost unequivocally positive light. Engineers were to "direct the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man", in the exultant words of the UK Institution of Engineers, written in 1828. The two World Wars, the gas chambers, the atomic bombs and agent Orange – the awfully destructive scope of technology – were yet to come.

Today, our profession seems to have preserved the sense that technology is almost by necessity a force for good. We are focused on the technical and managerial sides of technology – how to design algorithms; how to build machines – but not so much on the context of its deployment or its unintended consequences. We are not very interested in the politics and social dynamics...Our ethics have become mostly technical: how to design properly, how to not cut corners, how to serve our clients well. We work hard to prevent failure of the systems we build, but only in relation to what these systems are meant to do, rather than the way they might actually be utilised, or whether they should have been built at all. We are not amoral, far from it; it's just that we have steered ourselves into a place where our morality has a smaller scope.

MORE

[Demeter]

20. I've worked at McDonald's for 5 years and have 4 kids. Any questions for me?

I CANNOT READ THIS WITHOUT WEEPING...ESPECIALLY THE LAST LINE

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/05/mcdonalds-fast-food-worker-strike-wage?CMP=ema_565

[Demeter]

21. Goldman Sachs threatens to leave London if Britain leaves EU

SOUNDS LIKE A WIN-WIN FOR LONDON, TO ME!

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/04/goldman-sachs-warns-london-exit-britain-eu?CMP=ema_565

Goldman Sachs has said it would move much of its European business out of London if Britain leaves the European Union.

The warning from the world's most powerful investment bank comes as political pressure for Britain to leave the EU mounts.

David Cameron has committed to holding a referendum on Britain's membership if the Conservatives win the next election and some Tory MPs have been agitating for an early vote on the matter.

Michael Sherwood, co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs International, said: "In all likelihood we would transfer a substantial part of our European business from London to a eurozone location – the most obvious contenders being Paris and Frankfurt."

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

[xchrom]

23. DEAL TO BOOST GLOBAL TRADE REACHED AT WTO SUMMIT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_WTO_TRADE_TALKS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-12-07-00-51-23

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- A deal to boost global trade has been approved by the World Trade Organization's 159 member economies for the first time in nearly two decades, keeping alive the possibility that a broader agreement to create a level playing field for rich and poor countries can be reached in the future.

WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo shed tears during the summit's closing ceremony Saturday as he thanked host nation Indonesia, WTO member countries and his wife.

"We have put the world back into the World Trade Organization," he said. "For the first time in our history, the WTO has truly delivered."

Trade ministers had come to the four-day WTO meeting on the resort island of Bali with little hope that an agreement would be reached after years of inertia in trade negotiations.

[xchrom]

24. JUDGE APPROVES $153M SETTLEMENT WITH FANNIE, KPMG

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FANNIE_MAE_SETTLEMENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-12-06-17-01-53

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge has approved a $153 million settlement of a securities fraud lawsuit against Fannie Mae and KPMG brought by shareholders of the mortgage giant.

The approval Thursday by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon came after nearly a decade of litigation. The shareholders, led by two Ohio public-employee pension funds, accused Fannie and its former accountant KPMG of causing them losses by intentionally manipulating earnings.

Fannie had an accounting scandal in 2004 that forced it to restate earnings by $6.3 billion. In 2006, federal regulators found risky practices and accounting manipulation at the company, which was fined $400 million.

A Fannie official said the settlement is "positive" for taxpayers and the company. Fannie and sibling Freddie Mac were rescued by the government in 2008. KPMG said it was pleased.

[xchrom]

25. Mexico Housing Hits U.S. Investors as Plan Collapses

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-06/mexico-housing-hits-u-s-investors-as-plan-collapses.html


Hundreds of town houses in the Parque San Mateo complex outside Mexico City lie unfinished and abandoned.

Three years into her home-ownership dream, Martha Orozco has had enough. Stuck in a government-sponsored complex called Parque San Mateo that’s two hours away from her $8,000-a-year job as a hospital secretary in Mexico City, Orozco sees only broken promises and blight all around her.

Power outages drag on for hours at a time. Neighboring townhouses lie abandoned by the hundreds, giving criminals a growing foothold in the community. The stench of overflowing sewage permeates the development. And then there’s the commute: Until Orozco started driving to work, it was a van-to-train-to-bus odyssey whose cost consumed 20 percent of her pay.

Orozco, a 52-year-old widow, is looking to leave her $18,500 house and move with her daughter and granddaughter closer to Mexico City. If she does, she’ll join an army of disenchanted homeowners who moved in the past 10 years to the sprawling new towns that have sprung up in most of Mexico’s 31 states. The buyers all signed up for a government-backed program that helped finance construction of millions of homes. The complexes ring the country’s major cities from Veracruz to Mexico City to Tijuana.

The program has been a disaster. Hundreds of thousands of homes are now derelict after buyers such as Orozco concluded they were located too far from city centers and moved out. Developers, their profits assured by government guarantees, built houses faster than municipalities could connect them to water systems and power grids.

[xchrom]

26. Budget Negotiators Seek Limited Deal as Opposition Mounts

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-06/budget-negotiators-seek-limited-deal-as-opposition-mounts.html

U.S. negotiators will work through the weekend trying to craft a limited deal to ease automatic spending cuts as opposition emerged from targeted groups, including airlines and federal employees.

Democrats are resisting a proposal to increase the amount federal employees contribute to their pensions, while Republicans are challenging the concept of trading spending cuts for promises of future savings. Democrats are also demanding an extension of benefits for long-term unemployment insurance, either as part budget deal or as a separate measure.

In case a budget deal isn’t reached, House lawmakers yesterday began discussing the outline of a short-term bill to fund the government, according to a Republican leadership aide. The bill would probably be for three months, after current authority expires Jan. 15.

Representative Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray, the lead negotiators, aren’t finding it any easier to reach a deal by limiting their menu of options, said Representative Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

[xchrom]

27. JPMorgan Asks Judge to Keep Draft U.S. Fraud Suit Secret

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-06/jpmorgan-asks-judge-to-keep-draft-u-s-mortgage-lawsuit-secret.html

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) had a hearing behind closed doors with a Pennsylvania judge in its bid to keep secret a draft of a government lawsuit related to its $13 billion settlement with the U.S. as well as the identity of an employee who cooperated in a federal probe.

The company is fighting an Oct. 17 order by Judge Stanton Wettick in Pittsburgh that it release the document and the employee’s name to lawyers for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, who say the material may provide a more detailed account of the U.S. Justice Department probe of JPMorgan that could be used in their lawsuit against the New York-based bank.

“FHLB has not set forth any facts supporting why it needs the draft DOJ complaint or what admissible evidence it might glean from the allegations of a complaint,” Deborah Little, a lawyer for JPMorgan, said in a court filing. “FHLB has not demonstrated any nexus between the DOJ’s investigation and the subject matter of this case.”

Prior to the start of a hearing today, Wettick closed the courtroom to the public. Lawyers on both sides declined to comment after the hearing.

[xchrom]

28. Fed December Taper Odds Double in Survey as Jobs Beat Estimate

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-06/fed-december-taper-odds-seen-higher-as-job-gains-beat-estimates.html

The share of economists predicting the Federal Reserve will reduce bond buying in December doubled after a government report showed back-to-back monthly payroll gains of 200,000 or more for the first time in almost a year.

The Federal Open Market Committee will probably begin reducing $85 billion in monthly bond purchases at a Dec. 17-18 meeting, according to 34 percent of economists surveyed yesterday by Bloomberg, an increase from 17 percent in a Nov. 8 survey. In November, 53 percent predicted a tapering in March, compared with 40 percent in yesterday’s poll of 35 economists.

The jobless rate fell to a five-year low of 7 percent last month as payrolls swelled by 203,000 after a revised 200,000 increase in October, the Labor Department said yesterday. The November gain exceeded the 185,000 median forecast of 89 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

“Clearly the economy is performing far better than the FOMC expected, and there’s no reason not to get started with tapering,” said James Smith, chief economist at Parsec Financial Management Inc. in Asheville, North Carolina, and a former economist at the Fed. He predicts the Fed will reduce monthly purchases to $65 billion in December.

[xchrom]

29. Why Rand Paul’s plan won’t save Detroit

http://grist.org/cities/why-rand-pauls-plan-wont-save-detroit/

Rand Paul, the beacon of small-government conservatism, has an idea to save Detroit. Paul’s solution to Detroit’s poverty, shrinking population, crime, blight, and bankruptcy is the same as Paul’s solution to virtually everything else: cut taxes. Michigan news website MLive reports:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) plans to introduce a bill in Congress to create “Economic Freedom Zones” that would reduce taxes and ease government regulation in distressed areas, he announced in a speech in Detroit on Friday.

Paul said the measure would “leave over $1.3 billion in Detroit” over 10 years by slashing personal and business income tax to 5 percent, eliminating capital gains taxes and offering other incentives for people and businesses to move to designated zones that are in economic distress.

Unlike some of Paul’s ideas, it’s not completely wacky. Getting people to move to Detroit and start businesses must be one component of any plan to restore it to health. But there is a voodoo-economics quality to Paul’s proposal, similar to supply-side theories: If you tax something less, you will get more of it. With supply side, also known as trickle-down economics or Reaganomics, the idea is that if the federal government taxes income or investment less, the economy will grow more. The data and historical experience do not actually support that, unless you’re cutting taxes from an extremely high rate, like 90 percent, to a more optimal one. There is no evidence that a tax rate of, say, 25 percent versus 15 percent determines macroeconomic outcomes.

The urban corollary to Reaganomics was Enterprise Zones, touted by former Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), a dedicated supply-sider who served as secretary of housing and urban development under the first President Bush. Paul is essentially proposing an Enterprise Zone for Detroit.

[Demeter]

31. Rand Paul is worse than any Commie that ever lived

he can take his Reaganomics/enterprise zone and stuff it were the sun don't shine.

The reason for forcing the city into bankruptcy was that local enterprise WAS taking shape, that would turn the city around and wrest it away from the banksters and 1%ers. It had to be stopped, so they did.

[Fuddnik]

32. Just state the obvious.

Rand Paul is a clueless asshole.

[xchrom]

33. !

[Demeter]

34. Blowing my own horn here

My "sob story" post hit the top of the chart!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024142171

[DemReadingDU]

44. Awesome, 207 recs!

[xchrom]

45. i missed that 1 -- just gave it a rec. nt

[Demeter]

35. Nelson Mandela changed the course of history – for South Africa and the US

AND YET THEY JAILED HIM FOR 25 YEARS...GO FIGURE!

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/05/nelson-mandela-changed-history-south-africa-us?CMP=ema_565

President Nelson Mandela was truly a transformative force in the history of South Africa and the world...the imprint he left on our world is everlasting.

If ever the teaching that "Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end faith will not disappoint" rang true, it did in the life of Mandela. Despite imprisonment in Robben Island for 25 years and 8 months, Mandela never lost faith in winning freedom for the South African people. Suffering breeds character.

Mandela was a transformational figure; to say he was a "historical figure" would not give him his full due. Some people move through history as being the "first this or that" – just another figure in a lineage of persons. To be a transformer is to plan, to have the vision to chart the course, the skills to execute. To be transformational is to have the courage of one's convictions, to sacrifice, to risk life and limb, to lay it all on the line. "Historical figures" will reference Nelson Mandela... Let us not forget that Britain, the US, all of the western powers, labelled Mandela a terrorist and steadfastly propped up the apartheid regime – they were on the wrong side of history...


WELL, THEY LIKE IT OVER THERE ON THE WRONG SIDE...

[Demeter]

37. Obama Gets Real By PAUL KRUGMAN

OH, REALLY? I REMAIN UNCONVINCED. I THINK THE NOTION THAT "CHICKENS WILL COME HOME TO ROOST" IS A NOVEL ONE IN THIS WHITE HOUSE...AND THEY WERE VERY MUCH SURPRISED AND UPSET BY THAT FEATHERY ARRIVAL.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/opinion/krugman-obama-gets-real.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1&

Much of the media commentary on President Obama’s big inequality speech was cynical. You know the drill: it’s yet another “reboot” that will go nowhere; none of it will have any effect on policy, and so on. But before we talk about the speech’s possible political impact or lack thereof, shouldn’t we look at the substance? Was what the president said true? Was it new? If the answer to these questions is yes — and it is — then what he said deserves a serious hearing.

And once you realize that, you also realize that the speech may matter a lot more than the cynics imagine.

First, about those truths: Mr. Obama laid out a disturbing — and, unfortunately, all too accurate — vision of an America losing touch with its own ideals, an erstwhile land of opportunity becoming a class-ridden society. Not only do we have an ever-growing gap between a wealthy minority and the rest of the nation; we also, he declared, have declining mobility, as it becomes harder and harder for the poor and even the middle class to move up the economic ladder. And he linked rising inequality with falling mobility, asserting that Horatio Alger stories are becoming rare precisely because the rich and the rest are now so far apart.

This isn’t entirely new terrain for Mr. Obama. What struck me about this speech, however, was what he had to say about the sources of rising inequality. Much of our political and pundit class remains devoted to the notion that rising inequality, to the extent that it’s an issue at all, is all about workers lacking the right skills and education. But the president now seems to accept progressive arguments that education is at best one of a number of concerns, that America’s growing class inequality largely reflects political choices, like the failure to raise the minimum wage along with inflation and productivity.

And because the president was willing to assign much of the blame for rising inequality to bad policy, he was also more forthcoming than in the past about ways to change the nation’s trajectory, including a rise in the minimum wage, restoring labor’s bargaining power, and strengthening, not weakening, the safety net. And there was this: “When it comes to our budget, we should not be stuck in a stale debate from two years ago or three years ago. A relentlessly growing deficit of opportunity is a bigger threat to our future than our rapidly shrinking fiscal deficit.” Finally! Our political class has spent years obsessed with a fake problem — worrying about debt and deficits that never posed any threat to the nation’s future — while showing no interest in unemployment and stagnating wages. Mr. Obama, I’m sorry to say, bought into that diversion. Now, however, he’s moving on. Still, does any of this matter? The conventional pundit wisdom of the moment is that Mr. Obama’s presidency has run aground, even that he has become irrelevant. But this is silly. In fact, it’s silly in at least three ways...So don’t believe the cynics. This was an important speech by a president who can still make a very big difference.

NOPE. STILL NOT CONVINCED. OBAMA CAN SAY ANYTHING HE WANTS....UNLIKE THE 99% UNDER NSA SURVEILLANCE...WITHOUT ANY CONSEQUENCES TO HIS LIFE.

[Demeter]

38. Only an inveterate optimist would say the worst must be over for the eurozone--Joseph Stiglitz

OR A SNAKE OIL SALESMAN

http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/dec/06/eurozone-gdp-unemployment-austerity



It has been three years since the outbreak of the euro crisis, and only an inveterate optimist would say that the worst is definitely over...Some, noting that the eurozone's double-dip recession has ended, conclude that the austerity medicine has worked. But try telling that to those in countries that are still in depression, with per capita GDP still below pre-2008 levels, unemployment rates above 20% and youth unemployment at more than 50%. At the current pace of "recovery" no return to normality can be expected until well into the next decade.

A recent study by Federal Reserve economists concluded that America's protracted high unemployment will have serious adverse effects on GDP growth for years to come. If that is true in the United States, where unemployment is 40% lower than in Europe, the prospects for European growth appear bleak indeed. What is needed, above all, is fundamental reform in the structure of the eurozone. By now, there is a fairly clear understanding of what is required:

• A real banking union, with common supervision, common deposit insurance, and common resolution; without this, money will continue to flow from the weakest countries to the strongest.

• Some form of debt mutualisation, such as Eurobonds: with Europe's debt/GDP ratio lower than that of the US, the eurozone could borrow at negative real interest rates, as the US does. The lower interest rates would free money to stimulate the economy, breaking the crisis-hit countries' vicious circle whereby austerity increases the debt burden, making debt less sustainable, by shrinking GDP.

• Industrial policies to enable the laggard countries to catch up; this implies revising current strictures, which bar such policies as unacceptable interventions in free markets.

• A central bank that focuses not only on inflation, but also on growth, employment, and financial stability

• Replacing anti-growth austerity policies with pro-growth policies focusing on investments in people, technology, and infrastructure.

Much of the euro's design reflects the neo-liberal economic doctrines that prevailed when the single currency was conceived. It was thought that keeping inflation low was necessary and almost sufficient for growth and stability; that making central banks independent was the only way to ensure confidence in the monetary system; that low debt and deficits would ensure economic convergence among member countries; and that a single market, with money and people flowing freely, would ensure efficiency and stability.Each of these doctrines has proved to be wrong...BIG EDIT...The euro was supposed to bring growth, prosperity, and a sense of unity to Europe. Instead, it has brought stagnation, instability, and divisiveness.

It does not have to be this way. The euro can be saved, but it will take more than fine speeches asserting a commitment to Europe. If Germany and others are not willing to do what it takes – if there is not enough solidarity to make the politics work – then the euro may have to be abandoned for the sake of salvaging the European project.

[Demeter]

39. How to Tell When the N.S.A. Is Lying by Amy Davidson

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/12/how-to-tell-when-the-nsa-is-lying.html

IF the National Security Agency says that it is not “intentionally” doing something—say, collecting records of the locations of Americans’ cell phones—then it is almost certainly taking that very action.

IF it says it is doing so “incidentally,” it’s probably doing so on a large scale. If it adds that said effort does not “target” Americans or isn’t “directed” at them, that means it doesn’t believe those Americans—or Congress, or the courts—should mind, because the N.S.A. analyst who entered a search term or tapped into a mobile-network cable had first closed his eyes and thought about terrorists.

AND IF the director of the agency, General Keith Alexander, says in testimony before the Senate that “the N.S.A. does not collect locational information under section 215 of the Patriot Act,” it does collect it, just maybe under a different section, or with no real authority at all.

IF General Alexander then says, after Senator Ted Cruz asks him to clear up the “suggestion” in an earlier hearing that there might be something Americans weren’t being told about location-data collection, that the N.S.A. had simply “in 2010 and 2011 received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purposes and was never used for intelligence analysis purposes”—that it might be a “future requirement,” but “not right now”—it means, as the Washington Post reported Tuesday, that it right now receives five billion location records a day, a great many of them involving Americans, and stores them in a repository called Fascia (not the most reassuring code name the N.S.A. has ever come up with) and applies its “most powerful analytic tools — known collectively as CO-TRAVELER” to, the Post says, “allow it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.”

SAVE YOURSELF SOME TIME...PRESUME THE LIE

[Demeter]

40. ObamaCare Clusterfuck: 10% of ObamaCare Federal enrollments could contain coverage-preventing errors

http://www.correntewire.com/obamacare_clusterfuck_10_of_obamacare_federal_enrollments_could_contain_coverage_preventing_errors

according to CNBC:

An estimated 10 percent of all enrollments now being made on the federal Obamacare marketplace contain data errors that could delay people from actually getting health coverage, officials disclosed Friday.

And that error rate for enrollments submitted via HealthCare.gov and then sent to insurers before December was an estimated 25 percent, officials revealed.

The rate fell in the past week, officials said, because of repair efforts to HealthCare.gov's, particular the discovery and fix of one particular software problem that was causing an estimated 80 percent of data errors, officials said.*

But both past and present error rates are much higher than 1 percent, the rate which insurers considered to be unacceptable when doing business outside the Obamacare exchanges. And they are raising serious questions about whether significant numbers of people will actually be without insurance Jan. 1 despite believing they have enrolled.

So, you roll up to the hospital in your ambulance thinking you're covered, and what then? Don't worry, we'll straighten out the paperwork later? Why don't I think this will work?

The thing that boggles my mind (and I'm not easily boggled at this point) is that they launched this monstrosity without end-to-end testing, thereby treating all the initial enrollees as unwitting test subjects. Fine, I suppose, if you're launching an iPhone app for goateed hipsters, but not when you're messing around with people's health. And remember, a staggering 25% of the early adopters -- almost by definition those who need insurance the most, so the very sickest and the most in need -- are most at risk for seeking care thinking they're covered, and finding they're not. It's exactly the most vulnerable that the ObamaCare launch is, with laser-like precision, harming. Just like HAMP.

I'm beginning to think it makes sense to advocate for sending ObamaCare into a death spiral because these people simply do not give a shit. They're not to be trusted with our health, or anyone's health.

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

NOTE * So that was the easy one. Remember also, these are 834 errors; they were the #1 priority for Zeintz and his genius tech team, and they still haven't met their goal, despite -- and I know this will surprise you -- the victory declaration on November 1 for site problems.

UPDATE And lest we think 10% is an acceptable error rate, it isn't. 10 errors in 99 words. Now imagine megabytes of this stuff:

Quick zephyrs blow, vexing FUCKED Jim. Sphinx of FUCKED quartz, judge my vow. The five FUCKED wizards jump quickly. Pack my box with five FUCKED liquor jugs. The quick FUCKED fox jumps over the lazy dog. Jinxed wizards pluck ivy from the FUCKED quilt. FUCKED Fredrick bought many very exquisite opal jewels. We promptly judged antique FUCKED buckles for the next prize. A mad boxer shot a quick, gloved jab to the jaw of his FUCKED opponent. Jaded zombies acted quaintly but kept driving their oxen forward. The job requires extra pluck and zeal from every FUCKED wage earner.

And the errors in 834s are probably a lot more subtle....

Comments

Submitted by quixote on Fri, 12/06/2013 - 10:01pm

Plus, those error estimates (25% earlier, 10% now) are coming from the Administration. How much do you want to bet they're using creative accounting?

I'm seeing something like, "Oh, minor typos aren't really mistakes. MN is almost the same as MA. What's the big deal?"



And it ain't only insurance enrollments: it's Medicaid too.
Submitted by weldon on Fri, 12/06/2013 - 11:17pm

Medicaid administrators out in the states say that the files they get for new Medicaid signups through the exchange have the same problems as the files going to insurers, which means that some unknown number of people who think they now have Medicaid, actually don't.

Some users who fill out applications on the federal site may believe that they're already being enrolled in Medicaid or that state officials will contact them, even though the agencies aren't receiving the information they need, said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. The data transfer problem is occurring in the 36 states where the federal site is deployed, regardless of whether they chose to expand Medicaid.

"Essentially, if you're a consumer on healthcare.gov, it will tell you you're eligible for Medicaid and the state agency will take care of it, but there's no real way for the state Medicaid agency to know anything about it," said Salo, who leads the nonpartisan membership group for state Medicaid chiefs.


Re: Yikes!!!
Submitted by weldon on Sat, 12/07/2013 - 1:40am

I keep thinking there's no way this is as screwed up as it seems, and then more stuff pops up. Most of the administration's supporters seem to think everything is close to being back on track, but I don't see any way at all that everyone who needs to be insured on January 1 will actually be insured. January is going to be a very shrill month.

On a different subject, I wonder how it is HHS can tell us that 30,000 people enrolled on Sunday and Monday but not how many people enrolled in November.


Keep Playin' Those Mindgames Forever
blues's picture
Submitted by blues on Sat, 12/07/2013 - 3:31am

What I love about all the depravity is the sheer depth of it. Yeah I worry about all the dead fish that are about to wash up on the shore. But they came up from a depth that surpasses the most sublime mental boggling. This goes way deeper than just a botched website. It's now obvious that G. W. Bush wasn't a dummy after all. He was a very smart wacko. Obama is simply competing to be a bit wackier. Just consider this stunning little fact:

Consider President Obama's long form Birth Certificate — which came straight from the White House website. Was it an image file, like what any normal person would post? Oh no! It was a PDF file, wasn't it? Yup. And I watched about 100 YouTubes of PDF experts remove layer after layer, proving it was merely an all-pasted-together kludge. The handwriting was inconsistent and obviously forged. It even contained words that were not appropriate at the time of his supposed birth. So um, the White House just can't afford to manufacture a fake image of a birth certificate. Yeah that must be the answer.

Here's a far more credible theory: Obama was born in a test tube in Fort Dietrich, Maryland. He's a mind-controlled bot who's been smoking PCP during his entire life. He's been compulsively playing mindgames since the day he crawled out of the tube. But maybe you have a better theory that involves reptilian space aliens.

Time to consult David Icke.

[DemReadingDU]

41. Consumer confidence soars! Just more propaganda...

12/6/13
Consumer confidence had its biggest spike on record today. However, on a relative basis unfortunately it's lower than it was in 2007, which is lower than it was in 2000. Don't tell anyone, it's another secret...
http://www.ponziworld.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-age-of-bullshit-will-end.html

[Demeter]

42. BITCOIN MADNESS

In the Murky World of Bitcoin, Fraud Is Quicker Than the Law By NATHANIEL POPPER

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/in-the-murky-world-of-bitcoin-fraud-is-quicker-than-the-law/

The call went out on Twitter: “For insane profits come and join the pump.”

It was an invitation to a penny stock-style pump-and-dump scheme — only this one involved Bitcoin, the soaring, slightly scary virtual currency that has beckoned and bewildered people around the world.

While such bid ’em up, sell ’em off scams are shut down in the financial markets all the time, this one and other frauds involving digital money have gone unchecked. The reason, in no small part: Government authorities do not agree on which laws apply to Bitcoin — or even on what Bitcoin is...The person behind the recent scheme, a trader known on Twitter as Fontas, said in a secure Internet chat that he operated with little fear of a crackdown.

“For now, the lack of regulations allows everything to happen,” Fontas said in the chat, where he verified his control of the Twitter account, which has thousands of followers, but did not give his identity. He added that Bitcoin and its users would benefit when someone steps in to police this financial wild west, and would stop his schemes when they do.

Chinese authorities drew attention to the issue on Thursday when they announced that they were barring Chinese banks from making Bitcoin transactions. The same day, the Bank of France issued its own warning about the potential risks. The news sent the price of Bitcoin tumbling, but it quickly bounced back to near its all-time high of around $1,200...

Bitcoin Boom Spreads to IPhones With Mobile-Payment Apps

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-05/bitcoin-boom-spreads-to-iphones-with-mobile-payment-apps-tech.html

Matt Tuzzolo, who used to split restaurant bills by sending money via PayPal, now wields his iPhone to pay his fellow diners -- in Bitcoins. “It’s more convenient than PayPal,” said Tuzzolo, a software developer in Portland, Oregon, who uses the Gliph mobile application to transfer digital money on the go. “It’s as easy as sending a text.”

Gliph Inc., which has more than 25,000 users, has raised more than $350,000 from venture capitalists including Tim Draper, who has backed such companies as Skype and Tesla Motors Inc. It’s one of hundreds of Bitcoin-related programs available from Google Inc. (GOOG) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) app stores.

The mini-boom in Bitcoin software for smartphones is making it easier for consumers to use the virtual currency in place of cash for quick transactions, such as paying for food or splitting a bill. The widening appeal of the digital money is also fueling a rally that has lifted Bitcoins to record levels, surpassing $1,000 apiece last week.

“Bitcoin’s success hinges on how well it’s adopted and configured for mobile,” said Richard Crone, chief executive officer of payment-researcher Crone Consulting LLC. “They are very dependent on mobile actually scaling.” MORE

Bitcoin's Value in Real Time

http://realtimebtc.com/

IT FLUCTUATES MADLY, BTW...

[Demeter]

43. GOING TO STOP TO CATCH MY BREATH

BE BACK TONIGHT!

[xchrom]

46. WTO Deal Buys Trade Talks Time to Craft Elusive Broader Accord

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-07/wto-deal-buys-trade-talks-time-to-craft-elusive-broad-agreement.html

The Obama administration lauded an agreement on trade rules struck by the World Trade Organization, while analysts said the deal may do more to salvage broader WTO talks than solve food shortages and help global commerce.

The draft deal unveiled yesterday in Bali, Indonesia, was the first multilateral agreement negotiated by the WTO’s 159 member nations. It emerged after the U.S. and India compromised on food subsidies and a Latin American bloc led by Cuba dropped its opposition to an agreement.

A successful deal may add $1 trillion to the world economy, according to supporters among business groups.

Humanitarian advocates, though, said it produces few gains for the poor, while farm groups in the U.S. -- the world’s biggest agricultural exporter -- had little reaction. Still, the accord may help extend talks on the Doha Round of trade negotiations, which have dragged on for 12 years and stalled over agriculture, industrial tariffs and services.

[Demeter]

54. I think stalling is an excellent idea.

When planes stall, they crash. When conspiracies stall, they collapse.

[xchrom]

47. JPMorgan China Hiring Probe Spreads to Five More Banks, NYT Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-08/jpmorgan-china-hiring-probe-spreads-to-five-more-banks-nyt-says.html

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) are among five Wall Street firms in addition to JPMorgan (JPM) Chase & Co. whose hiring practices in China are being probed by U.S. regulators, the New York Times reported.

Citigroup Inc. (C), Morgan Stanley and Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) also are facing Securities and Exchange Commission investigations, which are at an early stage, the newspaper said yesterday, citing interviews with people briefed on the matter. JPMorgan recently gave authorities spreadsheets and e-mails detailing the firm’s Sons and Daughters hiring program, according to the Times.

U.S. authorities are examining whether JPMorgan violated anti-bribery laws by hiring the children and other relatives of well-connected politicians and clients in China in exchange for having business steered to the firm, a person with knowledge of the investigation said in August. Bloomberg News reported that month that a probe of JPMorgan had uncovered an internal spreadsheet that linked appointments to specific deals.

A senior JPMorgan executive in Hong Kong wrote that the hiring program has an almost direct correlation with winning deals to advise Chinese companies, the Times reported, citing one of the e-mails it said were obtained by U.S. authorities. The executive wrote that the father of a job candidate was chairman of China Everbright Group, the state-controlled financial firm, according to the newspaper.

[xchrom]

48. AS WINE FAKERS GET SHARPER, INDUSTRY FIGHTS BACK

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_FRANCE_COUNTERFEIT_WINE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-12-08-02-38-48

SAINT-EMILION, France (AP) -- An FBI agent recently showed Arnaud de Laforcade a file with several labels supposedly from 1947 bottles of Chateau Cheval Blanc, one of France's finest wines. To the Saint-Emilion vineyard's CFO, they were clearly fakes - too new looking, not on the right kind of paper.

But customers may be more easily duped.

Regardless of his skill, the counterfeiter had ambition: 1947 is widely considered an exceptionally good year, and Cheval Blanc's production that year has been called the greatest Bordeaux ever. The current average price paid for a bottle at auction is about $11,500, according to truebottle.com, which tracks auctions and helps consumers spot fakes.

Counterfeiting has likely dogged wine as long as it has been produced. In the 18th century, King Louis XV ordered the makers of Cotes du Rhone to brand their barrels with "CDR" before export to prevent fraud.

[xchrom]

49. 5 TRENDS BENEATH THE SURFACE IN NOV. JOBS REPORT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JOB_MARKET_WINNERS_AND_LOSERS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-12-07-13-28-55

HOLIDAY SHOPPING

Hiring typically gets a boost from the holiday season. But online shopping has changed the mix. Take a look at transportation and warehouse jobs: Those sectors added 30,500 jobs in November, the Labor Department said. That's 50 percent more than the November 2012 increase. These are FedEx and UPS gigs- the seasonal workers who ship you the deluxe limited DVD edition of "Downton Abbey."

***SNIP

- DEATH OF FACTORIES GREATLY EXAGGERATED

There's been a lot of handwringing about the plight of manufacturing. Factory orders have tumbled in recent months, government reports show. But industry surveys show that assembly lines are still cranking away.

***SNIP

- GRAYER WORKERS

The unemployment rate is just 4.9 percent for Americans older than 65, compared with 7 percent for adults as a whole. Dating to November 2012, the number of senior citizens who either have a job or are looking for one has grown by nearly half a million to 7 million.

***SNIP

- STAGNANT PAY AT THE BOTTOM

Restaurants and hotels created nearly 16 percent of the jobs added over the past 12 months. Those industries are known for paying low wages to their fry cooks and cleaning staff. Fast food chains like McDonald's have been at the epicenter of a battle over low wages, with employees around the country last week staging walkouts.

[xchrom]

50. IRAN'S PRESIDENT: NUCLEAR DEAL HAS HELPED ECONOMY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_IRAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-12-08-07-21-22

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that last month's nuclear deal with world powers has already boosted the country's economy, as he continues a push to convince skeptics of the benefits brought by the pact's partial sanctions relief.

Rouhani told an open session of parliament that, after the "success" of the talks, investors were gravitating to businesses and the stock exchange.

"Economic activities have been shifted to the stock exchange from gold, hard currency and real estate," said Rouhani in his televised speech. He gave no specific figures.

Iran's economy has been hit hard by sanctions imposed over its nuclear program. Rouhani has recently stressed the deal's offer of sanctions relief in return for a halt to parts of Iran's uranium enrichment program to challenge criticism from hard-liners who say Iran is giving up too much for too little.

[xchrom]

51. Don't loot Detroit's art museum to pay the city's creditors

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/08/detroit-institute-of-arts-866-million-sale


Diego Rivera's famous fresco of Detroit Industry is part of the Detroit Institute of the Arts collection. Photograph: DIA Photograph: theguardian.com


On Tuesday a federal judge ruled that Detroit was eligible to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy – the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. That same day, we got a price tag for how much the collection of the threatened Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), one of the country's oldest and best museums, is likely worth. DIA has been under threat for months since Kevyn Orr, the emergency manager appointed by Michigan governor Rick Snyder, insisted that everything in Detroit is "on the table". For months, salivating creditors have circled the museum while the institution has tried to keep them at bay. Now, for better and for worse, we have a price tag.

In a five-page letter to Orr (pdf), the auction house Christie's appraised the works of the DIA collection that the city bought at $452m to $886m. It's significantly lower than the $2bn figure batted around this summer. More than that, it disguises the fact that a few masterpieces now on public view, among them Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Wedding Dance and Matisse's The Window, account for as much as 75% of that estimate; selling forgotten pictures in the basement is not going to have an impact.

The pitifully simplistic justification for looting the DIA goes like this: Detroit owes money. Detroit owns pricey paintings. (The museum is unusual in that it's owned by the city, rather than by a nonprofit foundation, though that could change.) Therefore, Detroit should sell up to pay its creditors.

[xchrom]

52. This Map Shows The Big Split In The California Economy

http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-shows-the-big-split-in-the-california-economy-2013-12

***SNIP

In its latest weekly review of the economy, Wells Fargo takes a special look at the California economy and the bifurcated nature of the recovery. Rich areas where demand for real estate is high and tech is a big thing are hot. While interior regions associated with manufacturing and agriculture have seen mediocre comebacks.

They write:

The uneven nature of the economic recovery is evident across California, with the coastal areas largely enjoying stronger job gains, reduced unemployment and more robust gains in home prices. The interior parts of the state have not been as lucky, with meager job gains, stubbornly high unemployment rates and less of a rebound in home prices. Although overall conditions in the state are improving, a number of splits are evident; newer industries such as mobile devices, social media, search and cloud computing have taken off, while old mainstays such as agriculture, manufacturing and construction have struggled to regain traction.

Although geography and the distinctly different industry mix are responsible for much of the split economic performance in California, the Fed’s unconventional monetary policy has also played a major role. Low interest rates and the Fed’s continuous monthly securities purchases have helped fuel the stock market rally, which has disproportionately benefitted California’s wealthier areas and funneled billions of dollars into the state’s technology sector. The tidal wave of liquidity has made its way into the housing market, as big institutional investors have bought up distressed properties and repositioned them as rentals, sending home prices soaring in many areas across the state.

As you can see on the map, the Bay Area and parts of the coast are doing quite nicely, with sub-8% unemployment rates. Just a bit inland you have many counties with over 10% unemployment, and some with greater than 14% unemployment.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-shows-the-big-split-in-the-california-economy-2013-12#ixzz2mtK3CXli

[xchrom]

53. Here's The Entire Debate About The US Economy In One Huge Slide

http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-us-economic-debate-2014-2013-12

These are always nice.

From Morgan Stanley, the entire debate about what the US economy will do in 2014 in one huge slide.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-us-economic-debate-2014-2013-12#ixzz2mtQ4CoXh


***i don't know why anyone listens to morgan stanley -- but there it is.

[Demeter]

55. Creepy, Indeed!

[Demeter]

56. Snowden and Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets by Janet Reitman

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/snowden-and-greenwald-the-men-who-leaked-the-secrets-20131204#ixzz2mWHTOsB7

...And so it was that on December 1st, 2012, Greenwald received a note from a person asking for his public encryption, or PGP, key so he could send him an e-mail securely. Greenwald didn't have one, which he now acknowledges was fairly inexcusable given that he wrote almost daily about national-security issues, and had likely been on the government's radar for some time over his vocal support of Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks. "I didn't really know what PGP was," he admits. "I had no idea how to install it or how to use it." It seemed time-consuming and complicated, and Greenwald, who was working on a book about how the media control political discourse, while also writing his column for The Guardian, had more pressing things to do.

"It felt Anonymous-ish to me," Greenwald says. "It was this cryptic 'I and others have things you would be interested in. . . .' He never sent me neon lights – it was much more ambiguous than that."

So he ignored the note. Soon after, the source sent Greenwald a step-by-step tutorial on encryption. Then he sent him a video Greenwald describes as "Encryption for Journalists," which "walked me through the process like I was a complete idiot."

And yet, Greenwald still didn't bother learning security protocols. "The more he sent me, the more difficult it seemed," he says. "I mean, now I had to watch a fucking video . . . ?" Greenwald still had no idea who the source was, nor what he wanted to say. "It was this Catch-22: Unless he tells me something motivating, I'm not going to drop what I'm doing, and from his side, unless I drop what I'm doing and get PGP, he can't tell me anything."...


I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE MOVIE! HELL, I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE CONCLUSION!