Weekend Economists Celebrate Peace Like a River September 5-7, 2014

[Demeter]

Yes, today we combine contemplation and celebration of the life and art of Joan Rivers, who left us for that distant shore


Joan Alexandra Rosenberg (née Molinsky; June 8, 1933 – September 4, 2014),
known by her stage name Joan Rivers

With the first (and if there's any faithfulness in that region, the last and only needed) declaration of Peace between the citizens of Ukraine and their minorities/civil war/closest neighbor and largest trading partner, source of winter fuel...(good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. Brightly shown the moon that night, though the frost lay cruel, when a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel....)



{We highjack this thread to Xmas because it is unbearable outside--over 90F, heat index of 99F, 60% chance of thunderstorms (bet we don't get them)...this is the hottest day of the summer, and the pool closed Monday, of course}...

ahem....oh, yes, Peace in Ukraine, for the nonce at least.

Ukraine ceasefire 'agreed for east of country' at Minsk peace talks

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/05/ukraine-ceasefire-east-minsk-peace-talks


News reports say ceasefire due to come into effect at 1600 GMT (5.5 hours ago as I write), although fighting reported on ground near port city of Mariupol...A ceasefire for east Ukraine has been agreed during talks in Minsk between Ukrainian government representatives and separatist leaders, according to news reports from the Belarusian capital. The agreement came shortly after loud booms of artillery were audible in the city of Mariupol, which Kiev's forces are defending against a possible rebel onslaught.

The former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma began talks at a hotel in Minsk on Friday with leaders from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk "republics", in the presence of officials from Russia and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Interfax reported that the ceasefire was due to come into effect at 6pm local time (1600 GMT). The official Twitter account of the Donetsk rebels said: "Representatives of the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, and Ukraine have signed a ceasefire protocol."

Poroshenko had reportedly told the BBC on Friday he was "absolutely not confident" that any ceasefire would hold, but said he and Ukrainian forces were doing everything possible to achieve peace....MORE

Ah, yes, Poroshenko, the Chocolate King...what a leader! in case anyone had a doubt of my meaning...

We will wait in anticipation of word from our correspondent on the ground in Kiev (sorry, Matt, I just can't memorize the new spelling that fast....)

[Demeter]

1. YouTube Remembers The Life Of Joan Rivers With A Curated Playlist

On September 4th, comedy legend Joan Rivers passed away one week after she suffered cardiac arrest during a surgical procedure. When news of her passing reached the media, YouTube wasted no time pulling together a playlist of her greatest hits. That playlist is available on the YouTube Spotlight channel, and it serves as a fond remembrance of America’s most acerbic comedienne.

The playlist includes several of Rivers’ late night performances. It begins in 1966, with a pre-plastic surgery Rivers dishing out a comedy routine about dating during a performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. It then features a pair of Tonight Show interviews, 28 years apart: The first one shows her chatting with Johnny Carson in 1986, and the second one pairs her with Seth Meyers in 2014.

There are a few other gems in the playlist, including a contentious CNN interview and a “feud” with Miss Piggy, but Rivers’ crowning achievement on YouTube was her web series, In Bed With Joan. Each episode featured Rivers and a celebrity guest as they lay down for a chat on a comfy-looking bed. Across 18 months, In Bed With Joan spanned 72 episodes and scored more than 4.6 million views.

In later episodes, Rivers often invited YouTube stars to join her in her bed. The episode featured in YouTube’s playlist features Jenna Marbles as its guest star.

http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/09/04/joan-rivers-youtube-playlist-in-bed-with-joan/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpi6ZahtOH4h-ufgUmzwgb44s7bVGyDc

[Demeter]

2. So far, no banks have failed, but it's not even 6 PM EDT yet

[Demeter]

3. Peace Like a River - Mormon Tabernacle Choir

[Demeter]

4. Down to the River to Pray - Mormon Tabernacle Choir

[Demeter]

5. Paul Robeson - Ol' Man River (Showboat - 1936) J.Kern O. Hammerstein II

List of major rivers in Ukraine: wikipedia

Note: The following rivers are listed from west to east. Rivers listed in bold are either major rivers, or near or about 1,000 km. long.

San River (433 km; 16,861 km2; Vistula tributary)
Uzh River (127 km; 2750 km2; Laborec tributary)
Western Buh (772 km; 39,420 km2)
Poltva River
Danube (2,888 km; 817,000 km2)
Prut River (953 km; 27,500 km2)
Cheremosh River (167 km; 2,560 km2)
Latoritsia (188 km; 3,130 km2; Bodrog tributary)
Dniester (1,362 km; 72,100 km2)
Stryi (231 km; 3,055 km2)
Zbruch (247 km; 3,300 km2)
Tysmenytsia
Seret
Bystrytsia (183 km; 2,375 km2)
Southern Bug (806 km; 63,700 km2)
Inhul (300 km)
Vovk
Molochna (197 km; 3,450 km2)
Dnipro (2,290 km; 516,300 km2)
Inhulets (549 km; 14,870 km2)
Bazavluk
Bilozerka
Konka (146 km; 2 580 km2)
Samara (320 km; 22,600 km2)
Byk
Vorskla (464 km; 14,700 km2)
Psel (717 km; 22,800 km2)
Sula (365 km; 19,600 km2)
Romen (111 km; 1,645 km2)
Supiy
Tiasmyn (164 km; 4,570 km2)
Ros' (346 km; 12,575 km2)
Trubizh (113 km; 4,700 km2)
Stuhna (68 km)
Desna (1,130 km; 88,900 km2)
Oster (199 km; 2,950 km2)
Seim (748 km; 27,500 km2)
Sudost (208 km; 5,850 km2)
Irpin (162 km
Teteriv (365 km; 15,100 km2)
Prypiat (710 km)
Horyn River (659 km; 22,700 km2)
Sluch (451 km; 13,800 km2)
Uzh (256 km; 8,080 km2)
Styr (494 km; 13,100 km2)
Mius (258 km; 1190 km2)
Kalmius (209 km; 5,070 km2)
Kalchik River
Alma (83 km)
Salhir (204 km; 3,750 km2)
Chorna
Uchan-su
Seversky Donets (1,053 km; 98,900 km2; Don tributary)
Udy River
Lopan River
Kharkiv River

[Demeter]

6. I'm a Koch Sister!

You've heard of the Koch Brothers -- those right-wing billionaires that pour millions into campaigns across the country.

There's another pair of Kochs that I want to introduce to you to: Karen and Joyce -- the Koch Sisters.

Meet Joyce and Karen Koch – two ordinary everyday Americans who share the last name. They are not related to David and Charles Koch... or to each other.

But they are sisters where it counts – in spirit, in union solidarity, and in their shared values.

http://www.kochsisters.org/


a project of AFL-CIO

[Demeter]

7. Standard & Poor's may face SEC charges over ratings

BUT DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/23/us-mcgrawhill-sandp-sec-charges-idUSKBN0FS2GT20140723

The parent of Standard & Poor's, which is defending against a $5 billion lawsuit by the federal government over its credit ratings, said on Wednesday it may soon also face U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges over another set of ratings...In a regulatory filing, McGraw-Hill Financial Inc said it received a "Wells notice" on July 22 indicating the SEC is weighing filing civil charges for alleged securities law violations over S&P's ratings of six commercial mortgage-backed securities transactions issued in 2011. A Wells notice indicates the agency believes civil charges may be warranted, and gives a recipient a last chance to mount a defense. S&P said it has been cooperating with the agency, and will continue to do so.

Catherine Mathis, an S&P spokeswoman, said it has been reported the SEC was examining its decision in 2011 to "pull" ratings of a CMBS transaction. She added that the $5 billion lawsuit, brought last year by the U.S. Department of Justice, does not include CMBS securities. S&P suffered a huge blow to its commercial mortgage-backed securities business in 2011, after a major error on a $1.5 billion deal caused its market share to shrink. In July of that year, the rater discovered a mistake in its methodology, forcing it to withdraw ratings from a significant CMBS bond offer by Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Citigroup Inc.

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

S&P was accused in the Justice Department lawsuit of helping fuel the financial crisis, and causing losses for federally insured banks and credit unions, by inflating ratings to boost fees from issuers, and being slow to downgrade souring mortgage debt.

The rating agency also faces related lawsuits by many U.S. states. Its main U.S. rivals, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, do not face similar lawsuits.

If the SEC decides to charge S&P, it will mark the first time the agency has ever sued a major credit-rating firm.

MORE

[Demeter]

8. Emeli Sandé - River

[Demeter]

9. IMF cuts global growth outlook, warns of stagnation risk in rich nations

NO KIDDING! REALLY? WHO'D HAVE THOUGHT IT? (WHAT A BUNCH OF MAROONS, AS BUGS BUNNY WOULD SAY)

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/imf-economy-idINKBN0FT2JN20140724

The International Monetary Fund on Thursday chopped its 2014 forecast for global economic growth to take into account weakness early in the year in the United States and China, the world's two biggest economies. The IMF warned that only some of the factors leading to the reduction were temporary, and richer nations in particular faced the risk of economic stagnation unless they took steps to foster sustainable growth.

In an update to its World Economic Outlook report, the IMF said the global economy should expand 3.4 percent this year, 0.3 percentage points below what it predicted in April. Growth should still speed up to 4 percent next year, it said, unchanged from what it predicted earlier this year. But the Fund said a robust global recovery from the deep financial troubles of 2007-09 was still not assured, and geopolitical risks from the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine could dent growth further.

"Robust demand momentum has not yet emerged despite continued very low interest rates and easing of brakes to the recovery, including from fiscal consolidation or tight financial conditions," the IMF said, adding that all major advanced economies would do well to keep policy rates low for now.

Central banks in the United States, Japan, the euro zone and Britain have all sharply lowered rates to boost economic growth and pledged to keep them there for longer to let the recovery take hold. The low rates have spurred markets higher, and valuations could be a bit "optimistic," the IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard said.

While unemployment fell more quickly than economists had expected in the United States and Britain, wage growth and consumer confidence still linger below pre-crisis levels in many richer countries. At the same time, emerging markets are still dealing with tighter financial conditions and reduced future growth prospects. Speaking at a news conference in Mexico City, Blanchard urged countries to do more to boost growth via structural reforms and investing in infrastructure.

The IMF said bright spots in the global economy included growth pick-ups in Japan, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. But they were overshadowed by weak growth in the United States in the first half of the year, as well as a slowdown in domestic demand in China, where the government sought to tamp down lending and the housing market cooled. Russia also dragged down the overall forecasts, as its economy is expected to grow just 0.2 percent this year due to sanctions and other impacts of the Ukraine crisis....In fact, out of the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - only India avoided an IMF ratings downgrade, as business sentiment recovers after the country's election.

WANT TO BET A LITTLE MONEY ON RUSSIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH, SUCKERS? SINCE RUSSIA ISN'T KILLING ITS ECONOMY NOR ITS WORKERS, I EXPECT THEY WILL LEAD THE PACK WHEN THE YEAR IS UP.

[Demeter]

10. JOAN RIVERS, A LIFE REMEMBERED

Joan Rivers was an American actress, comedian, writer, producer, and television host, best known for her stand-up comedy, for co-hosting the E! celebrity fashion show Fashion Police, and for starring in the reality series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? alongside her daughter Melissa Rivers.

Rivers first came to prominence in 1965 as a guest on The Tonight Show, a pioneering late-night program with interviews and comedy, hosted by Johnny Carson, whom she acknowledged as her mentor. The show established her particular comic style, poking fun at celebrities, but also at herself, often joking about her extensive plastic surgery. When she launched a rival program, The Late Show, Carson never spoke to her again. She went on to host a successful daytime slot, The Joan Rivers Show, which won her a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host. Her satirical style of humor, however, by focusing on the personal lives of celebrities and public figures, was sometimes criticized. She also authored 12 best-selling memoir and humor books, and provided comic material for stage and television. As an actress, Rivers was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1994 for her performance in the title role in Sally Marr...and her escorts.

Rivers died on September 4, 2014, following serious complications—including cardiac arrest—during a procedure on her vocal cords at a clinic on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Early life and education

Rivers was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York in 1933. She was the younger daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants Beatrice (née Grushman; January 6, 1906 – October 1975) and Meyer C. Molinsky (December 7, 1900 – January 1985). Her elder sister, Mrs. Barbara Waxler, died on June 3, 2013, aged 82. Rivers was raised in Brooklyn, where she attended the Adelphi Academy, and her family later moved to Larchmont, New York. She attended Connecticut College between 1950 and 1952, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and anthropology. Before entering show business, Rivers worked at various jobs such as a tour guide at Rockefeller Center, a writer/proofreader at an advertising agency and a fashion consultant at Bond Clothing Stores. During this period, agent Tony Rivers advised her to change her name, so she chose Joan Rivers as her stage name.

Career

During the late 1950s, Rivers appeared in a short-run play, Driftwood, playing a lesbian with a crush on a character played by a then-unknown Barbra Streisand. The play ran for six weeks. Rivers performed in numerous comedy clubs in the Greenwich Village area of New York City in the early 1960s, including The Bitter End and The Gaslight Cafe, before making her first appearances as a guest on the TV program The Tonight Show originating from New York, hosted at the time by Jack Paar.

By 1965, Rivers had a stint on Candid Camera as a gag writer and participant; she was "the bait" to lure people into ridiculous situations for the show. She also made her first appearance on The Tonight Show with new host Johnny Carson, on February 17, 1965. During the same decade, Rivers made other appearances on The Tonight Show as well as The Ed Sullivan Show, while hosting the first of several talk shows. She wrote material for the puppet Topo Gigio. She had a brief role in The Swimmer (1968), starring Burt Lancaster. A year later, she had a short-lived syndicated daytime talk show, That Show with Joan Rivers; Johnny Carson was her first guest. In the middle of the 1960s, she released at least two comedy albums, The Next to Last Joan Rivers Album and Rivers Presents Mr. Phyllis & Other Funny Stories.

1970s

By the 1970s, Rivers was appearing on various television comedy and variety shows, including The Carol Burnett Show and a semi-regular stint on Hollywood Squares. From 1972 to 1976, she narrated The Adventures of Letterman, an animated segment for The Electric Company. In 1973, Rivers wrote the TV movie The Girl Most Likely to..., a black comedy starring Stockard Channing. In 1978, Rivers wrote and directed the film Rabbit Test, starring her friend Billy Crystal. During the same decade, she was the opening act for singers Helen Reddy, Robert Goulet, Mac Davis and Sergio Franchi on the Las Vegas Strip.

1980s–1990s

Rivers spoke of her primary Tonight Show life as having been "Johnny Carson's daughter," a reference to his longtime mentoring of her and, during the 1980s, establishing her as his regular guest host by August 1983. She also hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, on April 9, 1983. In the same period, she released a best-selling comedy album on Geffen Records, What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? The album reached No. 22 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.

During the 1980s, she continued doing stand-up shows along with appearing on various television shows. In February 1983, she became the first female comedian to ever perform at Carnegie Hall. Later that year, she did stand-up on the United Kingdom's TV show An Audience With Joan Rivers.

In 1984, Rivers published a best-selling humor book, The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abramowitz, a mock memoir of her brassy, loose comedy character. A television special based on the character, a mock tribute called Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abramowitz, was not successful with the public.

The decade was controversial for Rivers. She sued female impersonator Frank Marino for $5,000,000 in 1986, after discovering he was using her real stand-up material in the impersonation of her that he included in his popular Las Vegas act. The two comics reconciled and even appeared together on television in later years.

Also in 1986 came the move that cost Rivers her longtime friendship with Carson, who had first hired her as a Tonight Show writer. The soon-to-launch Fox Television Network announced that it was giving her a late night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, making Rivers the first woman to have her own talk show on a major network.

The new network planned to broadcast the show 11 p.m. to 12 a.m. Eastern Time, making her a Carson competitor. Carson learned of the show from Fox and not from Rivers. In the documentary, Johnny Carson: King of Late Night, Rivers said she only called Carson to discuss the matter after learning he may have already heard about it and that he immediately hung up on her. In the same interview, she said that she later came to believe that maybe she should have asked for his blessing before taking the job. Rivers was banned from appearing on the Tonight Show, a decision respected by Carson's first two successors Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. After the release of his 2013 biography on Johnny Carson, Carson's manager Harry Bushkin revealed that he never received a call from Rivers' husband Edgar concerning the move to Fox, contrary to what Edgar had told Rivers. Rivers did not appear on the Tonight Show again until February 17, 2014, when she made a brief appearance on new host Jimmy Fallon's first episode. On March 27, 2014, Rivers returned for an interview.

Shortly after Carson's death in 2005, Rivers said that he had never spoken to her again. In 2008, during an interview with Dr. Pamela Connolly on television's Shrink Rap, Rivers claimed she did call Carson, but he hung up on her at once and repeated the gesture when she called again.

The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers turned out to be flecked by tragedy. When Rivers challenged Fox executives, who wanted to fire her husband Edgar Rosenberg as the show's producer, the network fired them both. On May 15, 1987, three months later, Rosenberg committed suicide in Philadelphia; Rivers blamed the tragedy on his "humiliation" by Fox. Fox attempted to continue the show with a new name (The Late Show) and rotating guest hosts.

Rivers subsequently appeared on various TV shows, including The David Letterman Show and Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special. By 1989, she tried another daytime TV talk show, The Joan Rivers Show, which ran for five years and won her a Daytime Emmy in 1990 for Outstanding Talk Show Host. In 1994, Rivers and daughter Melissa first hosted the E! Entertainment Television pre-awards show for the Golden Globe Awards. Beginning in 1995, they hosted the annual E! Entertainment Television pre-awards show for the Academy Awards. Beginning in 1997, Rivers hosted her own radio show on WOR in New York City. Rivers also appeared as one of the center square occupants on the 1986–89 version of The Hollywood Squares, hosted by John Davidson.

In 1994, influenced by the "dirty comedy" of Lenny Bruce, Rivers co-wrote and starred in a play about Bruce's mother Sally Marr, who was also a stand-up comic and influenced her son's development as a comic. After 27 previews, "Sally Marr ... and Her Escorts," a play "suggested by the life of Sally Marr" ran on Broadway for 50 performances in May and June 1994. Rivers was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actress in a Play and a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for playing Sally Marr.

2000s–2010s

By 2003, Rivers had left her E! red-carpet show for a three-year contract (valued at $6–8 million) to cover award shows' red carpet events for the TV Guide Channel.

Rivers appeared in three episodes of the TV show Nip/Tuck during its second, third and seventh season, playing herself. Rivers appeared regularly on television's The Shopping Channel (in Canada) and QVC (in both the United States and the UK), promoting her own line of jewelry under brand name "The Joan Rivers Collection". She was also a guest speaker at the opening of the American Operating Room Nurses' 2000 San Francisco Conference. Both Joan and Melissa Rivers were frequent guests on Howard Stern's radio show, and Joan Rivers often appeared as a guest on UK panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats.

On August 16, 2007, Rivers began a two-week workshop of her new play, with the working title "The Joan Rivers Theatre Project", at The Magic Theatre in San Francisco. On December 3, 2007, Rivers performed in the Royal Variety Show 2007 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre, England, with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip present.

In January 2008, Rivers became one of 20 hijackers to take control of the Big Brother house in the UK for one day in spin-off TV show Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack. On June 24, 2008, Rivers appeared on NBC-TV’s show Celebrity Family Feud and competed with her daughter against Ice-T and Coco.

Rivers and daughter Melissa were contestants in 2009 on the second Celebrity Apprentice. Throughout the season, each celebrity raised money for a charity of his or her choice; Rivers selected God's Love We Deliver. After a falling out with poker player Annie Duke, following Melissa's on-air firing (elimination) by Donald Trump, Rivers left the green room telling Clint Black and Jesse James that she would not be in the next morning. Rivers later returned to the show and on May 3, 2009, she became a finalist in the series. The other finalist was Duke. On the season finale, which aired live on May 10, Rivers was announced the winner and hired to be the 2009 Celebrity Apprentice.

Rivers was featured on the show Z Rock as herself; she was also a special "pink-carpet" presenter for the 2009 broadcast of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. She was also roasted in a Comedy Central special, taped on July 26, 2009, and aired on August 9, 2009. From August 2009, Rivers began starring in the new reality TV series How'd You Get So Rich? on TV Land. A documentary film about Rivers, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre on May 6, 2010.

In 2011, Rivers appeared in a commercial for Go Daddy, which debuted during the broadcast of Super Bowl XLV. She made two appearances on Live at the Apollo, once as a comedian and once as a guest host.

Joan and her daughter premiered the new show Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? on WE tv. The series follows Joan moving to California to be closer to her family. She moves in with daughter Melissa while searching for a home of her own. WE tv then ordered a new season consisting of 10 episodes, which premiered in January 2012.

In 2011, Rivers was featured as herself in Season 2 of Louis C.K.'s self-titled show Louie, where she performed on-stage.

Beginning September 10, 2010, Rivers co-hosted the E! show Fashion Police, along with Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne, and George Kotsiopoulos commenting on the dos and don'ts of celebrity fashion. The show started as a half-hour program but expanded to one hour on March 9, 2012.

On August 7, 2012, Rivers showed up in Burbank, California to protest that the warehouse club Costco would not sell her New York Times best-selling book, I Hate Everyone ... Starting with Me. She handcuffed herself to a person's shopping cart and shouted through a megaphone. The police were called to the scene and she left without incident; no arrests were made.

On March 5, 2013, she launched a new online talk show on YouTube, called In Bed with Joan, in which each week she had a different celebrity guest who "came out of the closet", and they talked about various topics. The show took place in Rivers' bedroom, in Melissa's home in Malibu, California.

On August 26, 2014, Rivers hosted a taping of Fashion Police with Kelly Osbourne, Giuliana Rancic, and George Kotsiopoulos about the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards and the 2014 MTV Movie Awards which would be her last television appearance before her death.

The day before her throat surgery, Joan released her most recent podcast of In Bed with Joan, with LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian.

[Crewleader]

11. by Darrin Bell

[xchrom]

12. Alibaba To Raise $21 Billion In Historic IPO

http://www.businessinsider.com/alibaba-21-billion-ipo-raise-2014-9

Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba is set to raise up to $21 billion in its IPO, with shares expected to be priced at between $60 and $66, according to a filing with the SEC.

The company's updated filing shows that the offering will comprise up to 320 million shares, with the company itself offering 123 million shares and investors such as founder Jack Ma, executive chairman Joe Tsai, and Yahoo offering 197 million shares.

At the midpoint of this range, the company would be valued at about $160 billion. Alibaba's offering is likely to be the largest debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

At the high end of its $60-to-$66 offer range, Alibaba would raise about $21.1 billion, surpassing the $19.7 billion raised by Visa in its 2008 public offering.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/alibaba-21-billion-ipo-raise-2014-9#ixzz3CWuiKLXa

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/alibaba-21-billion-ipo-raise-2014-9#ixzz3CWuciJkG

[xchrom]

13. There's Been A Big Drop In Waits At Airport Security Checkpoints

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-fewer-air-travelers-have-long-waits-at-us-security-checkpoints-2014-9

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of travelers in the United States who waited 20 minutes or more at an airport security checkpoint this summer dropped by 64 percent since last year, federal government figures show.
The Transportation Security Administration attributed the drop to the growth of its TSA Pre program, which allows passengers considered low-risk travelers to go through an expedite screening process.

The program, begun in December, is in place at 118 U.S. Airports.

TSA figures released this week showed the percentage of travelers who experienced checkpoint wait times of 20 minutes or longer was 1.3 percent in June, July and August of 2013, compared to 0.4 percent during the same months this year.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-fewer-air-travelers-have-long-waits-at-us-security-checkpoints-2014-9#ixzz3CWvFr3bW

[xchrom]

14. How America's Suburbs Got So Miserable

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-americas-suburbs-got-so-miserable-2014-9

When I was a small child, something called “the suburbs” kept snatching away my friends, like a monster hiding under the bed, but worse. Over time, I’ve come to appreciate why my friends moved. The urban neighborhoods of my Brooklyn youth were a little rough around the edges, and they didn’t offer growing families much in the way of elbow room. I couldn’t fall asleep without the sweet sound of sirens blaring, but not everyone felt the same way. The suburbs have long been a welcome refuge for families looking for a safe, affordable place to live.
But for many Americans, the suburbs have become a trap. This week, Radley Balko of the Washington Post vividly described the many ways bite-sized suburban municipalities in St. Louis County prey on poor people. Towns too small or too starved of sales tax revenue to sustain their own local governments stay afloat by having local law enforcement go trawling for trumped-up traffic violations, the fines for which can be cripplingly expensive, and which only grow more onerous as low-income residents fail to pay them. Those who can afford lawyers know how to massage a big fine into a smaller one. Those who can’t dread their run-ins with local police, who often come across less like civic guardians and more like cash-thirsty pirates. The resentment and distrust that follows is, according to Balko, crucial for understanding the recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.

Could it be that the problems plaguing St. Louis County reflect a larger failure of fragmented local government? Would these problems go away if, say, St. Louis simply absorbed all of these petty fiefdoms? I doubt it. The deeper problem is that the low-density suburbs of single-family homes that are common in this part of Missouri, and indeed across the country, are fundamentally inhospitable to those who find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder.

You might be wondering why poor families are moving to the suburbs in large numbers—the number of suburban poor grew more than twice as quickly as the number of urban poor between 2000 and 2011—if they are such hard places for poor people to get ahead. Part of it is that as middle- and high-income households moved to the suburbs, the low-wage workers who look after their children had little choice but to follow. Then there is the fact that as America’s most productive cities experience a revival, gentrification is displacing low-income families to outlying neighborhoods and towns.



Read more: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/09/poverty_in_the_suburbs_places_that_thrived_in_the_era_of_two_parent_families.2.html#ixzz3CWvmZtcp

[xchrom]

15. 9 Career Quotes From Joan Rivers On How To Be Successful

http://www.businessinsider.com/joan-rivers-quotes-2014-9?op=1

Love what you do.

“I’m very blessed to be a workaholic. Anyone that’s successful has to love their work and not say, ‘Oh, it’s 5 o’clock. Thank God.’ You’ve got to go, ‘5 o’clock already? Well, maybe another hour or two.’”

(NBC, “Today” 1986)



Don't be afraid to speak up.

“I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.”

(via ABC)


Never settle for rejection.

"My whole career has been one rejection after another and then going back and back and pushing against everything and everybody. Getting ahead by small, ugly steps.”

(People, 1978)


Always be in command.

“You go on stage, and you've got to be in command. You have to put down drunks and control the conversation, and that's very masculine. When I think back to the places I've played, I'm amazed I didn't turn out to be Dora Dyke.”

(New York Times Wednesday, January 14, 1970)

[xchrom]

16. BOEING: China Will Need $870 Billion Worth Of Planes Through 2034

http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-china-will-need-870-billion-worth-of-planes-2014-9

Boeing announced this week that it expects China's airlines will require an additional 6,020 aircraft by 2033 with a total value of $870 billion. These latest figures represent an 8% increase over the airplane maker's 2013 projections, reports Reuters.
Fueled by massive investment in airport infrastructure and the burgeoning middle class' demand for leisure travel, the Chinese aviation industry has developed significantly over the past decade.

"China's aviation market is going through dynamic changes," said Randy Tinseth, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president of Marketing. "New business models like low-cost carriers and airplane leasing companies, a new generation of fuel-efficient airplanes and evolving consumer needs are driving demand for more direct flights to more destinations."

Boeing expects Chinese demand to make up 16% of all airplane orders worldwide and 45% of all orders coming from Asia. Of the 6,020 new airplanes, Boeing expects as many as 4,300 of them to be single-aisle variants like its hot-selling 737NG and 737MAX.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-china-will-need-870-billion-worth-of-planes-2014-9#ixzz3CWyWzq8G

[xchrom]

17. U.S. Stocks Extend Record in Week as Jobs Data Boost Fed Bets

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/u-s-stocks-extend-record-in-week-as-jobs-data-boost-fed-bets.html

U.S. stocks rose a fifth week, giving the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) its longest rally this year, as investors speculated weaker jobs growth will prevent the Federal Reserve from raising rates sooner than anticipated.

European shares rallied for a fourth week after the region’s central bank boosted stimulus. Emerging-market equities advanced, led by Russia’s Micex Index, after Ukraine and rebels agreed to a cease-fire. Producers of consumer products led U.S. stocks higher, while energy shares sank as oil tumbled for the sixth time in seven weeks. Apple Inc. (AAPL) dropped the most since February after a competitor introduced new smartphones.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent to a record 2,007.71, reversing losses on the final day after three straight declines. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU) added 38.91 points, or 0.2 percent, to 17,137.36, ending the week less than one point from an all-time high. U.S. markets were closed on Sept. 1 for the Labor Day holiday.

“We’re still at a time when bad news is good news for the market as far as equities are concerned,” Lou Shaduk, managing director of equity trading at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore, said in an interview. “It still keeps the Fed in the game -- they’re not going to pull QE sooner than anticipated.”

[xchrom]

18. U.S. Company Bonds See Revival With $62 Billion in Sales

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/u-s-company-bonds-see-revival-with-62-billion-in-sales.html


Companies in the U.S. tapped the bond market by the most in at least six months with sales this week exceeding debt sold in all of August.

Ford Motor Co. (F) the second-largest automaker in the nation, and telecommunications firm Frontier Communications Corp., were among about 50 borrowers raising $62 billion this week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the most since the week ending March 7 and exceeds the $51.9 billion sold last month, the data show.

Bond sales are soaring borrowers as rush to lock in yields that have climbed from all-time lows reached last year. The appetite for debt sold by junk-rated companies has caught the attention of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher, who warned that the market for the riskiest corporate debt may be overheating.

“Primary markets started September off with a bang,” Barclays Plc strategists led by Jeffrey Meli and Bradley Rogoff wrote in a report today. Issuance “surpassed even the lofty expectations built over the last few weeks.”

[xchrom]

19. Mexican Peso Rises Most Since June After Central Bank Statement

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/mexican-peso-rises-most-since-june-after-central-bank-statement.html

Mexico’s peso climbed the most since June as the central bank cited signs of economic recovery, adding to speculation that the currency will become more attractive as policy makers raise borrowing costs next year.

The peso rose 0.9 percent to 13.0327 per U.S. dollar at the close of trading, the biggest gain among 31 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg after Chile’s peso. Mexico’s peso was up 0.4 percent this week.

While the central bank said in its statement today that growth picked up in the three months through June and will improve in the second half of the year, it won’t be fast enough to prevent inflation from slowing toward target. Policy makers held the benchmark lending rate at a record low 3 percent.

“Some people in the market were betting on a strongly dovish tone,” Juan Carlos Alderete, a strategist at Grupo Financiero Banorte SAB in Mexico City, said in a telephone interview. “When the expectation didn’t materialize, the peso reacted immediately.”

[xchrom]

20. Keystone Pipeline Nebraska Path Argued at Top State Court

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/keystone-pipeline-nebraska-path-argued-at-top-state-court.html

TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline’s route through Nebraska can be legally chosen by Governor Dave Heineman and the company, a lawyer for the state told its top court, asking for reversal of a lower-court ruling that the power belongs to the state Public Service Commission.

The three landowners who sued weren’t harmed by the decision and lack the necessary legal right to pursue the case, state Deputy Attorney General Katherine Spohn told the Nebraska Supreme Court today in Lincoln, the capital.

“There are individuals that are better suited to bring this challenge,” she said.

The $5.4 billion 1,179-mile (1,897 kilometer) pipeline would carry oil from Hardisty, Alberta, to a junction in Steele City, Nebraska.

[xchrom]

21. Iraq Pursues New Tack in Bid to Seize Tanker Off Texas

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/iraq-pursues-new-tack-in-bid-to-seize-tanker-off-texas-1-.html

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has asked a U.S. judge for permission to change its legal arguments in a bid to seize $100 million in Kurdish crude waiting in a tanker off Texas since late July.

Stymied by the judge’s ruling last month that he didn’t have jurisdiction under admiralty law, the nation has come back with claims under maritime and Texas statutes.

U.S. District Judge Gray Miller in Houston threw out an arrest warrant that gave federal agents authority to take the 1 million-barrel cargo and store it, at Iraq’s expense, if the tanker entered U.S. waters. Miller said he had no authority to intervene in a foreign ownership dispute under U.S. laws governing property stolen on the high seas. Iraq cited those laws as the basis for to recover crude exported from wells in the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan without permission.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has now revised its complaint, citing different statutes to obtain a new arrest warrant aimed at preventing the Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, from selling the cargo in the U.S. Iraq now cites the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and state law governing stolen property.

“Such request is not made to re-hash previously pleaded arguments or factual allegations but for the purpose of addressing newly discovered information revealed since the” initial filing of the complaint, Iraq’s lawyers said in papers filed Sept. 4 in Houston federal court. Harold Watson, the KRG’s lawyer in Houston, declined to comment on the filing.

[xchrom]

22. Napa Quake, Flooding Cost $4 Billion in U.S. in August

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/napa-quake-flooding-cost-4-billion-in-u-s-in-august.html

An earthquake that struck the California wine country north of San Francisco and flooding in the U.S. last month caused more than $4 billion in economic losses, according insurance broker Aon Plc. (AON)

A 6.0-magnitude temblor shook the city of Napa on Aug. 24, damaging more than 1,100 buildings, injuring at least 258 people and causing about $2 billion in economic damages, the London-based broker said today in a report. Insured losses are expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, because of the below-average extent of coverage, Aon said.

“Residential earthquake insurance penetration rates have gradually lowered in California during the past two decades from 33 percent in 1996 to roughly 10 percent today,” Steve Bowen, associate director and meteorologist for Aon Benfield Impact Forecasting, said in a statement. The Napa quake “serves as a reminder of the unpredictability and costly impacts.”

Napa County is home to one of California’s best-known wine-growing regions and is dotted with boutique hotels and inns that cater to tourists. Damage from the quake could cause those businesses to lose revenue.

The U.S. also suffered more than $2 billion of economic losses from severe flooding in Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, Aon said. Two-months worth of rain fell in the Detroit area in just 24 hours in August, damaging homes. Baltimore and Long Island, New York, also experienced flooding during the month, the firm said.

[xchrom]

23. FRENCH PRESIDENT IN TROUBLE, IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_FRANCE_PRESIDENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-06-04-05-11

PARIS (AP) -- Things can't get much worse for French President Francois Hollande: The economy is lagging; his new government is already under fire; and his private life has just been exposed in a ravaging book by the former first lady.

Adding to his concerns is the possibility that his chief rival - conservative Nicolas Sarkozy - will launch a political comeback this weekend.

The developments have helped push Hollande's popularity to new record lows. Three polls released in recent days show that he has lower approval ratings than every other French president in modern times.

This week, ex-partner Valerie Trierweiler described Hollande as a mean liar in a book released seven months after they broke up, amid reports that he was having an affair with French actress Julie Gayet.

[xchrom]

24. US UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FALLS FOR YOUNGER WORKERS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ECONOMY_DEMOGRAPHICS_GLANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-05-17-15-15

Though U.S. job growth slowed last month, the unemployment rate fell, especially for younger demographic groups.
Jobless rates also fell for recent war veterans and for high school graduates and dropouts.
Rates held steady or rose for nearly every other group.
The overall unemployment rate slipped to 6.1 percent in August from 6.2 percent in July, the Labor Department said Friday. This occurred even though employers added just 142,000 jobs, significantly below the 212,000 average over the previous 12 months.
So what caused the unemployment rate to drop wasn't robust hiring. It was that more people either stopped working, abandoned their job search or never started it. In calculating the unemployment rate, the government counts as unemployed only people who are actively seeking jobs, so those departures caused the rate to fall.
Unemployment rate by group:
(Numbers in percentages) August 2014 July 2014 August 2013
White 5.3 5.3 6.4
Black 11.4 11.4 12.9
Asian 4.5 4.5 5.1
Adult men 5.7 5.7 7
Adult women 5.7 5.7 6.2
Teenagers 19.6 20.2 22.6
20-24 years old 10.6 11.3 12.8
25-54 years old 5.3 5.2 6.3
55 and over 4.6 4.5 5.1
Veterans of Iraq/Afghanistan 8.1 9.2 10
No high school diploma 9.1 9.6 11.3
High school graduate 6.2 6.1 7.5
Some college 5.4 5.3 6.1
College graduate 3.2 3.1 3.5
Duration of Unemployment:
Average length (weeks) 31.7 32.4 37
Jobless 6 months of more (pct.) 31.2 32.9 38
Not seasonally adjusted
Source: Labor Department

[xchrom]

25. GREEK PREMIER EYES GROWTH FOR 1ST TIME IN 8 YEARS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GREECE_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-06-06-04-35

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greece's economy is expected to expand in the third quarter for the first time in eight years, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said Saturday.

In a speech in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, Samaras hailed what he said was an "unprecedented success" in getting the heavily indebted country out of its deepest ever financial crisis.

"In a couple of years, we have made more reforms than in previous decades," he said, referring to his tenure as prime minister.

Before agreeing to support a coalition government with the socialists in November 2011, conservative leader Samaras had opposed many of the austerity measures he later embraced wholeheartedly.

[xchrom]

26. S&P 500 HITS RECORD ON DIVIDEND STOCKS, UKRAINE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-05-17-19-21

NEW YORK (AP) -- A surge in dividend-rich utility stocks helped push the Standard & Poor's 500 index to a record Friday.

Investors bought up the stocks after the government reported that U.S. employers added fewer jobs than forecast for August. That boosted demand for bonds and pushed down their yields. In turn, stocks with big dividends became more attractive to investors seeking income-paying securities.

The stock market also got a lift from a cease-fire agreement between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists, aimed at bringing an end to nearly five months of fighting. Stocks had slumped at the beginning of August amid worries that the conflict in Ukraine would spiral out of control and inflame tensions between Russia and the West.

"That development is a positive," said Jerry Braakman, chief investment officer of First American Trust. "Further sanctions on Russia, and excluding them from the Western economies, sets global trade back."

The S&P 500 index rose 10.06 points to 2,007.71, surpassing its previous record close of 2,003.37, set Aug. 29. The index has now logged 33 all-time highs this year.

[xchrom]

27. GERMAN TRAIN DRIVERS GO ON STRIKE FOR BETTER PAY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GERMANY_TRAIN_DRIVER_STRIKE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-06-06-41-12

BERLIN (AP) -- A strike by train drivers across Germany has brought hundreds of long-distance and commuter trains across the country to a standstill.

The GdL union for train drivers called for a three-hour national strike on Saturday morning to put pressure on German railway company Deutsche Bahn in their ongoing wage negotiations.

The union said that up to 90 percent of trains across the country were brought to a standstill.

It demands a 5 percent salary increase for the drivers and two hours less work per week.

[antigop]

28. Musical interlude: "Muddy Water", "River in the Rain"" from "Big River"

From the 1985 Tony awards:

[Demeter]

29. Well, that was.....

Friday night, about 7:27 PM, the power went out in our condo community. People all around us were lit up, but we were dark and primeval. I had purchased some all-day candles at the dollar store and managed to light them so we could get to the bathroom safely, and since there was not much one could do by the light of a single candle, we went to bed rather early.

In the morning, still no power, but there was hot water in the tank for showers (why anyone would go tankless is beyond me) so I went out and did my Saturday morning paper chores, then the Kid and I went out to the free movie (Night at the Museum; as long as Ben Stiller isn't trying to be funny, he's somewhat tolerable) and some other errands.

When we got back at noon, power was restored. Thank goodness! The freezer and refrigerator and computer are all fine...I only unplugged the computer.

We have people who dead bolt their front doors and leave by garage door opener....these people could not get into their houses last night. There's security, and then there's paranoia.

So, a hot day ended in an impressive lightning show, windstorm, and hail in farm country. It is mercifully cooler now: 69F and still 72% humidity.

[Demeter]

36. Detroit weather update: 350K without power; storm 10th most impactful in 111-year history

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/09/detroit_weather_update_dte_ene.html

Friday night's storms in Metro Detroit and other parts of Southeast Michigan has left 350,000 DTE Energy customers without power and is considered the 10th most impacful storm of its kind in the company's 111-year history.

DTE shared the news 11 a.m. Saturday on its Facebook and Twitter pages and mentioned it has enlisted the help of 600 linemen from utilities in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New York and Tennessee to assist the restoration effort...MORE

Residents clean up after storms kill power to 462K customers; no tornados confirmed

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140906/METRO08/309060026/1409/METRO

...drenching rains and wind gusts nearly 75 mph blasted the Metro Detroit area Friday night. The storm left at least one dead, in Warren from a power line, and 462,000 homes and businesses without power...Although the National Weather Service insists there weren’t any tornadoes, wind gusts of 60 mph or more were reported during the evening’s storm. The strongest gust reported was 74 mph, said meteorologist Deb Elliott of the National Weather Service’s White Lake Township office.

“We didn’t have the right atmosphere for the tornadic event,” she said. “We had straight line winds and they were pretty strong.”

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

DTE Energy said the outages represent the 10th largest storm in the company’s 111-year history and that power to come customers may not be restored until Wednesday at the earliest.

A Warren man in his 40s was killed when he came across a downed powerline in the backyard of his home in the 13000 block of Julius Avenue, the Warren Police Department said...


Five people were also injured Friday night when a large tent was picked up by the wind at the St. Linus parish festival in Dearborn Heights...


The storms stretched all across Southeast Michigan, damaging homes and wreaking havoc from Ingham to Oakland, from Wayne to Sanilac.

Elliott said the weather should be stable with temperatures in the 70s until next Tuesday when an intense storm system moving over the Great Plains makes its way into Michigan.

“It could make for a very crazy week,” she said.

As of early Saturday morning, 350,000 DTE customers remain without power, he said. Wayne County had the most, with 180,000 customers in the dark. Other area counties with outages are Oakland, 70,000; Macomb, 30,000; Washtenaw, 30,000; Livingston, 15,000; St. Clair, 3,000; Ingham, 3,000; Lapeer, 2,000 and Sanilac, 2,000.

Consumers Energy reported Friday night 77,000 customers without power. Those numbers include the following outages: Genesee, 8,901; Ingham, 6,252; Livingston, 2,305; Washtenaw, 1,019 and Oakland, 544.

Consumers expects to have most customers back on line by Sunday.

More than 2,000 downed power lines were left scattered across Southeast Michigan following wind gusts of more than 75 miles per hour. Customers are warned to stay at least 20 feet away from all power lines or anything they’re in contact with, treating all downed lines as live.

“The vast majority of customers will have their power restored by late Monday night,” said Simons. “Some small clusters of customers and individual service problems probably will not be restored until Tuesday or Wednesday.”

He said DTE has enlisted the help of more than 600 linemen from utilities in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New York and Tennessee to help with restoration efforts. They still anticipate

[Fuddnik]

38. The River

[DemReadingDU]

54. wow, that was a huge storm

Storms knock out power to 400,000 homes across Michigan; DTE reports 31,000 without power in Washtenaw County, 188,000 in Wayne County
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/09/dte_31000_without_power_in_was.html

[Demeter]

30. Ibeyi - River

[Demeter]

31. Brad Paisley - River Bank

[Demeter]

32. Dear River - Kina Grannis (Official Lyric Video)

[Demeter]

33. RIVER ~ JONI MITCHELL ~ (Lyrics)

[Demeter]

34. Goodnight, Joanie

[Demeter]

35. Jobs Stall and So Does the Economy NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/opinion/jobs-stall-and-so-does-the-economy.html

The employment report for August suggests that any remaining hope for an economic upsurge in the second half of 2014 is largely unrealistic. The new data, which shows job creation down sharply last month, is consistent with more of the same sluggish growth that has long been the norm. Plentiful jobs at good pay — the critical underpinning of a strong economy — are still not in the cards. On average, the economy added 207,000 jobs a month from June through August, exactly even with average monthly job growth over the past 12 months. That’s a holding pattern, not acceleration. Similarly, the jobs report for August showed flat wages, stagnant hours and elevated long-term unemployment, as has been the case in previous reports.

The latest data also underscore how incremental improvements in labor conditions have failed to undo the damage from the recession and the prolonged slow recovery. For example, the share of adults in the labor force is no longer declining, as it did in 2013, but it remains at levels last seen in 1978. The recent unemployment rate, 6.1 percent, is down from the recession-era high of 10 percent in 2009, but it is still higher than at similar points in recoveries from other downturns going back to 1982. Worse, the unemployment rate today would be 9.6 percent if it included the estimated 5.9 million jobless people who would be working or looking for work if the job market were stronger.

The generally bleak monthly data are broadly in line with other data on income and wealth released this week by the Federal Reserve. From 2010 to 2013, the Fed found that average incomes dropped by 8 percent for the bottom 20 percent of families and rose by 10 percent for the most affluent 10 percent. For everyone in between, incomes fell or stagnated. Wealth was also skewed. Overall it barely grew from 2010 to 2013. But it fell by 21 percent for the bottom 20 percent of families, to a mere $65,000 of net worth, and rose by 2 percent, to $3.3 million, for the top 10 percent.

It is increasingly obvious that inequality of income and wealth are weighing on economic growth — especially on job creation and pay raises — by concentrating income and assets in the hands of a few who already have more than they can spend. The situation is not self-correcting. In fact, in the absence of government policies to foster balance, it is self-reinforcing. The Fed should continue to try to stimulate the economy with loose monetary policy. But only Congress can put in place the broad new policies on taxes, labor standards and immigration that will give all Americans a shot at a rising standard of living.

[Demeter]

37. Argentina says 'many creditors' want to swap into local law debt

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/05/us-argentina-debt-idUSKBN0H019R20140905?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews\

Many investors are interested in swapping global Argentine bonds for paper governed by local law, the government said on Friday, a day after the Senate approved the proposed debt exchange as a way to circumvent U.S. court rulings.

Argentina defaulted in July after the New York court that governs some of its original bond contracts blocked a coupon payment. The proposed swap into local law bonds is Argentina's way of trying to get around the U.S. court orders. If the swap fails and Argentina stays in default, it would be another blow to Latin America's No. 3 economy as it contends with high inflation and recession.

"There is obviously willingness among many creditors, or bondholders, to participate in the sovereign debt payment law, in order to get the money that is owed to them," cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich told reporters.

Argentina's debt saga started with its 2002 default on about $100 billion in bonds. Most holders got less than 30 cents on the dollar in two subsequent restructurings, while a small group of hedge funds went to court for full repayment. The debt swap bill, passed by the Senate on Thursday and expected to become law later this month, would allow holders of $29 billion in bonds under foreign law to swap them for paper governed by Argentine law.

This would defy the court ruling that says Argentina is prohibited from paying holders of its restructured bonds without also paying the hedge funds $1.3 billion plus interest. A mediator appointed by the U.S. court said "unresolved" issues still separated the two sides and were preventing a settlement. Daniel Pollack, a New York lawyer accused by the Argentine government of being "prejudicial" toward the Republic, said he would continue seeking to mediate a solution.

Argentina steadfastly refuses to pay the holdouts in full, saying that to do so would open the country to a raft of new lawsuits. In need of financing to develop its vast Patagonian shale oil and gas fields, Argentina will be unable to issue fresh international debt until the lawsuits are settled. Capitanich's optimistic take on the debt swap differed from that of investors familiar with talks held in New York this week between Finance Secretary Pablo Lopez and fund managers.

"They probably wanted to know whether we would participate in a swap with local law (bonds), but they didn't ask the question directly. I pre-empted it by saying we wouldn't," one fund manager who met with Lopez told Thomson Reuters' IFR.

Implementation of the sovereign payment law faces a number of hurdles, as any third party assisting the country in carrying out the exchange risks being held in contempt of court. The proposal would offer creditors a choice of bonds under Argentine or French law. France waded in on Argentina's side during its legal battle.

ANOTHER NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF US ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM

[Crewleader]

39. Robert Reich on Facebook

The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the most comprehensive source of data on the finances of American families, was released Thursday. Its findings are sobering. The so-called recovery has bypassed 90 percent of American families, who have gained nothing in terms of income or wealth; and the bottom 20 percent are worse off than when the recovery started. Only the rich have done better. Between 2010 and 2013, the most affluent 10 percent of families saw their incomes rise 10 percent, and their wealth increase 2 percent to an average of $3.3 million. (Those in the top 1 percent and top one-tenth of one percent did far better than this.)

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich

[DemReadingDU]

48. more

Before you say “duh,” you should note that this is the first “recovery” on record that has shown this pattern. Although inequality has been widening for thirty years, the business cycle usually hid it when the economy was expanding, as in the late 1990s. The range of remedies many of us have been pushing for – a higher minimum wage, for example – are necessary but hardly sufficient. The entire economy must be reorganized in more fundamental ways. (I'll be suggesting some larger reforms in coming posts.)

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich

[Crewleader]

55. thank you DRDU...I added the link so they could see for themselves

but more is best.

[xchrom]

40. Asian Markets Are Staying Strong Even In The Face Of Fed Rate Rises

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-this-times-different-as-asian-markets-warm-up-for-fed-rate-rises-2014-9

Faced once again with the prospect of rate rises in the United States, investors in Asia are no longer selling and running as in the past, choosing instead to stay in markets like India and South Korea, that are relatively sheltered from global forces.
The two bouts of market turmoil in May 2013 and January this year demonstrated the perils of selling out of markets prematurely and indiscriminately.

This time, investors have already begun preparations for a rise in U.S. rates by mid-2015 at the earliest, albeit with a degree of caution about the different moving parts to the policy story.

For one, central banks in Europe and Japan could soon be injecting stimulus, which would compensate the world for the cash the Federal Reserve is withdrawing.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-this-times-different-as-asian-markets-warm-up-for-fed-rate-rises-2014-9#ixzz3Cd52SNOB

[Demeter]

58. "sheltered from global forces" means

not being fucked over by banksters and their governmental enablers....and I mean YOU, Obama! And the entire Golden Sacks Alumni Association destroying Europe even as we speak.

[xchrom]

41. The British Government Will Give Scotland More Economic Autonomy If Voters Reject Independence

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-uk-to-give-scotland-more-powers-if-shuns-independence-osborne-2014-9

Britain's government will set out plans in the coming days to give Scotland more autonomy on tax, spending and welfare if it rejects independence in a referendum on Sept. 18, British finance minister George Osborne said on Sunday.
Osborne was speaking to BBC television after supporters of Scottish independence took their first opinion poll lead since the referendum campaign began.

"You will see in the next few days a plan of action to give more powers to Scotland, more tax powers, more spending powers, more .... powers over the welfare state and ... that will be put into effect the moment there is a 'no' vote in the referendum," he said.

Osborne said the plan was being agreed by all three major political parties in the British parliament.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-uk-to-give-scotland-more-powers-if-shuns-independence-osborne-2014-9#ixzz3Cd5Rn2Ew

[Demeter]

59. British Government is shitting bricks because Scotland's Oil keeps it greased

If they wanted to keep a United Kingdom, they should have treated the provinces better....

[xchrom]

42. 'THE POLITICS DID SHIFT': Obama On Why He Reversed Plans For Immigration Action

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-politics-did-shift-obama-on-why-he-reversed-plans-for-immigration-action-2014-9

President Barack Obama said he would have implemented planned executive actions to reform immigration policy, but the early summer crisis of unaccompanied minors on the border changed the "politics" of the situation.
In an interview set to air on Sunday's "Meet the Press," Obama tells NBC host Chuck Todd his rational for delaying action until after the 2014 midterm elections: The thousands of young undocumented children who showed up at the U.S.-Mexican border had made the political winds too strong.

"I'm being honest now about the politics of it. This problem with unaccompanied children that we saw a couple weeks ago, where you had, from Central America, a surge of kids who were showing up at the border, got a lot of attention," Obama said, according to an NBC transcript. "Now, the fact of the matter is ... the number of people apprehended crossing our borders has plummeted over the course of the decade. It's far lower than it was 10 years ago."

The White House revealed Saturday morning that it would back off its earlier pledge for executive action by the end of summer. Fierce criticism from immigration reform advocates soon followed, with some accusing the president of being "scared out of his boots" by conservative Republicans.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-politics-did-shift-obama-on-why-he-reversed-plans-for-immigration-action-2014-9#ixzz3Cd60a3Db

[Demeter]

60. there's a word for that

and a color:



And one resembles road kill...

[xchrom]

43. Market Bears Are Going Extinct

http://www.businessinsider.com/bears-are-going-extinct-2014-9

Bears are going extinct.

A Barron's survey (Via @cavandy) of market strategists finds that nobody thinks markets will go down.

Here's the key paragraph:

None of the group, whom we survey each September and December, is bearish these days, although some strategists have toned down their optimism because of the market's gains. Still, the most bullish see the benchmark barreling toward 2500 in the next 18 to 24 months. That would be an increase of nearly 25% from last week's close.

The Barron's survey echoes another data point from earlier this week. A survey of newsletter market pundits from Investors Intelligence found that bears are "evaporating."

This chart shows that among pundits, the percentage of bears is at a 27-year low.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bears-are-going-extinct-2014-9#ixzz3Cd6os9jD

[DemReadingDU]

51. Obviously Not a Bubble

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-04/obviously-not-bubble

[xchrom]

52. that must be an 'unexpected' chart. nt

[xchrom]

44. Obama Angers Latino Allies by Delaying Immigration Change

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-06/obama-delays-action-on-immigration-until-after-midterm-elections.html


Citing the “extreme politicization” of the issue, President Barack Obama retreated from his pledge to swiftly revise U.S. immigration policies, prompting a backlash from allies seeking to ease deportations at the Mexican border.

Obama defended his decision in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” set to air tomorrow, and said it wasn’t made to protect Democrats’ control of the Senate. He said a surge of unaccompanied Central American children crossing into the U.S. this summer affected his political calculations.

“The truth of the matter is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem,” Obama said in an excerpt of the interview broadcast today.

Obama said that although many Americans believe there is a crisis on the border, the number of children arriving has slowed, and he needs more time to explain the actions he intends to take later this year.

[xchrom]

45. Western Leaders in Denial on Ukraine Sanctions

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-05/western-leaders-in-denial-on-ukraine-sanctions

The Financial Times has obtained a draft document detailing the new sanctions: a ban on European debt financing for Russian state defense and energy companies, no dual-use technology exports, a prohibition on European energy-services companies participating in Russian projects, and a vague discussion of boycotting the 2018 soccer World Cup, to be held in Russia, and kicking Russian soccer clubs out of European competition.

It's safe to assume Russian President Vladimir Putin will want to retaliate. His previous response has already hit Europe where it hurts: Food prices are declining because Russia no longer imports European fruit, dairy products, meat and fish. According to Brussels-based agricultural lobby group Copa-Cogeca, milk prices in some parts of Europe are down by as much as 30 percent. Some fruit, such as apples and pears, is now so cheap that farmers are thinking of not harvesting. Copa-Cogeca says EU measures proposed so far, such as purchasing interventions and storage aid, are inadequate and direct subsidies are needed to keep farms afloat.

The farmers' plight is only part of the problem. Food accounts for 14 percent of the basket of goods used to calculate euro-area inflation, according to the policy site EurActiv, and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi said in May that cheaper oil and food had accounted for 80 percent of the inflation decline Europe has seen since 2011. Those Russia sanctions may mean rate cuts and Draghi's efforts to drive down the euro's exchange rate will fail to reverse the deceleration in euro inflation.

It might be worth recalling that the initial goal formulated by the U.S. State Department was for sanctions to "send a strong message to the Russian government that there are consequences for their actions that violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine." The message has been returned to sender, unopened.

[xchrom]

46. What Should Bankers Do With Piles of Cash?

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-05/what-should-bankers-do-with-piles-of-cash

So you're a European bank with some loans on your balance sheet that you made to companies not too long ago. The loans are of good quality, paying interest at the rates that prevailed in recent years. The European Central Bank would like you to bundle those loans into a shiny new asset-backed bond, which it will purchase from you (provided it isn't a sausage stuffed with derivatives, in ECB President Mario Draghi's evocative term). In return, you will have a pocket full of fresh cash.

What exactly you will do with that cash, though, is problematic at best. The ECB wants you to find new borrowers eager for money to invest in their businesses, so they will start hiring from Europe's army of unemployed young adults. It’s probable, though, that your new loans will either be riskier than the ones you offloaded to the ECB, or at much lower interest rates, or (more likely) both, with corporate borrowing costs at record lows:



There's a related problem with these targeted longer-term refinancing operations, or TLTROs, that the central bank is introducing this month. At the start of August, Draghi floated the hope that commercial banks might borrow as much as 850 billion euros ($1.1 trillion) from the program; analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch reckon the drawdown could add a net 450 billion euros of monetary stimulus.

But where can you hoard that cash while you're searching for opportunities to put it to work in the real economy? Putting it into short-dated European government bonds, the usual investment of choice for a risk-averse bank treasurer, puts you in a world of pain all across Europe. Real two-year yields in Germany, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Austria are all negative. Even Ireland, which was paying a staggering 23 percent for two-year money as recently as mid-2011, charges you for the privilege of lending to it as of today:

[xchrom]

47. Scots Independence Poll Puts ‘Yes’ Campaign Ahead at 51%

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-06/scottish-independence-poll-puts-separatists-ahead-at-51-.html


Scotland’s nationalists overtook opponents of independence in an opinion poll for the first time this year, sparking a government promise of further devolution less than two weeks before the country votes on whether to break up the 307-year-old U.K.

A YouGov Plc survey for the Sunday Times showed Yes voters increased to 51 percent, while the No side dropped to 49 percent when undecided respondents were excluded. The shift to an outright lead for supporters of independence may further roil financial markets after the pound weakened last week when the pro-U.K side’s support narrowed to six percentage points.

The Sept. 18 ballot on Scottish independence is dominating the U.K. after door-to-door campaigning on both sides intensified last week and as traders and investors no longer rule out a dramatic victory for nationalist leader Alex Salmond.

“For a positive message to catch up so much in a month is totally unprecedented,” said Matt Qvortrup, a senior researcher at Cranfield University in England and author of “Referendums and Ethnic Conflict.” “This is pretty revolutionary stuff in referendum terms. We’re ringside to history.”

[xchrom]

49. Retirement Royalty: Where Workers Still Get a Pension

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/retirement-royalty-where-workers-still-get-a-pension.html


Traditional pensions are an endangered species. They're not extinct.

For decades now, companies have been killing off their defined-benefit pensions. Instead of the promise of a monthly check from an employer in their old age -- however long that lasts -- workers get access to a voluntary 401(k) contribution plan. Those plans sometimes come with matching contributions from employers, but all the risks of saving enough for a long retirement fall entirely on workers.

As recently as 1998, 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies offered defined-benefit pensions to new hires, according to consulting firm Towers Watson. How many do now, would you say -- 3 percent? Eight percent?

Try 22 percent.

Most of these companies fall into one of two camps, with plenty of overlap. Certain companies and industries still want to give experienced, skilled workers an incentive to stick around. Almost three-fifths of utilities, for example, offer some form of defined-benefit pension to new employees. Utilities are also likelier than companies in other sectors to have unions pushing for strong pensions.

[xchrom]

50. FOR EUROPE'S VAST UNEMPLOYED, HOPES REMAIN DIM

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ECB_STRUGGLING_EUROPEANS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-06-09-18-45

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For the struggling Spanish shopkeeper or the Portuguese restaurant owner, the European Central Bank's latest economic stimulus plans won't likely provide much relief anytime soon.

If ever.

Confronting a stalled economy and painful unemployment across Europe, the ECB is doing what it can. It surprised economists and investors Thursday by cutting its benchmark interest rate to a record-low 0.05 percent. And it announced plans to pump money into the financial system by buying bonds backed by assets such as auto and credit-card loans.

But Europe faces a crushing array of problems - from burdensome regulations to growth-killing budget policies - that analysts say remain beyond the ECB's powers to fix.

"Monetary policy cannot carry the entire burden of reviving growth in the absence of essential broad-ranging structural reforms," said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

[xchrom]

53. LAVENDER FARMERS REBEL AGAINST EU CHEMICAL RULES

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_FRANCE_LAVENDER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-07-05-34-56

PARIS (AP) -- The sweet smell of lavender is tinged with bitterness this year in the south of France, as farmers who harvest the flower protest European regulations linking the plant to chemical toxins.

Billboards proclaiming "Lavender is not a chemical" dot fields that yield what in Provence is known as blue gold - lavender oil, worth over 100 euros a kilogram ($60 a pound). The plant is cultivated by around 1,500 producers, representing 30,000 full-time jobs that include catering to the millions of tourists in the south of France who come for the panoramic views of purple fields.

For many, Provence is synonymous with lavender, both fine lavender - used for perfumes, cosmetics and aromatherapy - and hybrid lavender, called lavandin. Lavandin is cheapest and used to scent soaps, detergents and air fresheners.

And they fear European Union rules adopted last year and due to come in force by 2018 will threaten that. According to regulators, lavender oil's potential to produce allergies places it firmly within regulations on chemical toxins. That means lavender products will have to bear labels involving bold black and red warning labels with messages such as "CAN BE FATAL IF SWALLOWED OR INHALED."

[Crewleader]

56. Here's another...

[xchrom]

57. SEC Faces Renewed Pressure to Consider a Corporate Disclosure Rule

http://www.thenation.com/blog/181504/sec-faces-renewed-pressure-consider-corporate-disclosure-rule

The campaign to lift the veil on secret corporate campaign donations hit a milestone on Thursday. More than 1 million comments have been submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission calling for a requirement that corporations disclose political spending to their shareholders—ten times more than for any other rule-making petition to the SEC, according to the Corporate Reform Coalition.

“Investors want to know how their money is being spent,” Tim Smith, director of shareholder engagement at the firm Walden Asset Management, said at a press conference outside the SEC in Washington. A sign over his right shoulder read, “Your money is being invested in secret. Why is the SEC doing nothing?”

Campaign finance reformers have long been pushing for the rule, which the SEC was slated to consider in 2013. But Mary Jo White, who took over as head of the agency that year, removed the proposal from the SEC’s agenda. The agency claims to be swamped with other regulations related to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and other legislation. But shelving the corporate disclosure rule was a win for business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Republicans, who’d strongly opposed it.

“At a minimum, the SEC should closely consider a rule like this—rather than turning its back on investors’ interests because of Republican objections,” said Robert Jackson, a Columbia University law professor who was one of the initial petitioners for the rule in 2011. “The SEC is an independent agency. They are charged with protecting investors, not politicians.”

[Demeter]

61. They needed to ask?

Not exactly a controversial topic, nor unexpected.

[MattSh]

62. Waiting for me?

Awwww!

You mean Kiev vs Kyiv? See, the spell checker tells me Kyiv is not correct. The difference between the two seems to be a small matter of how it gets stressed. But it does say something about the mentality of people here.

The Chinese didn't care that for many decades, Beijing was known as Peking. Not all that similar.

The Russians don't get bent out of shape when westerners call Moskva Moscow.

(And the spell checker actually tells me that Peking and Moskva are correct. Take that Kyiv)!

But the Rada (Ukraine Parliament) actually passed a law stating how certain place names were supposed to be spelled in English. (This was passed 20 years ago, not recently). Spell checker tells me Rada is not correct too. No respect!

Anyway, was out of town for a day and a half. Since I spend a lot less time out of town once September starts, I let my mobile internet plan expire the end of August. Yep, you can get it on a month by month basis here.

[MattSh]

63. By This River - Brian Eno

[Demeter]

64. What Are the Long-Term Unemployed Doing With Their Time?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/09/what-long-term-permanently-unemployed-doing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29



Friday’s rotten jobs report got me thinking. Hurricane Katrina, of course, destroyed what little reputation the Bush administration had for competence or empathy, along with much of New Orleans. But even now, after the latest recovery summer under the Obama administration, the number of permanently disemployed{1} — I say unemployed in the headline to appease the Google gods — is about the same as the population of Los Angeles, 3.88 million.

Washington Monthly:

In February, BLS reported that nearly 3.7 million Americans were long-term unemployed in January 2014, including nearly 2.5 million Americans who’ve been out of work for a year or more. Long-term unemployed workers account for about 2.4 percent of the total workforce. … One major issue is that many of long-term unemployed workers may end up never rejoining the workforce. … Four years out, men who had been long-term unemployed end up with average hourly wages that are about 7 percent lower than when they had a job.

WaPo’s Wonkblog writes:

Long-term unemployment is a terrifying trap that, even in the best of times, is difficult to escape. And it’s a trap that you can get stuck in for no reason other than bad luck.

1. As former CEA Chair Alan Krueger found, the long-term unemployed aren’t much different from the short-term unemployed. They’re a little older and more of them are African-Americans, but they’re just about as educated and work in the same industries as everyone else who’s trying to find a job.

2. The long-term unemployed have a hard time getting companies to even look at their job applications, let alone hire them. Rand Ghayad, a labor economist at Northeastern University, has tested this: he sent out thousands of fictitious resumés that were basically identical except for how long they said they’d been unemployed and what field they’d been in before. The results? Employers preferred people without any relevant experience but who’d been unemployed less than six months to people with experience who’d been unemployed longer than that. In other words, how long you’d been out of work trumped all else.

3.There’s never been this much long-term unemployment before, at least not since they started keeping records in 1948.

It’s as if the entire city of Los Angeles suddenly vanished mysteriously, silently blown off the face of the earth, except nobody who seems to have wondered what happened to the people. That’s why long-term and permanent disemployment is Obama’s Katrina. It shows Obama has exactly the same flaws Bush did: Lack of competence{3}, and lack of empathy.

And it’s bad out there.{2} How bad is it? As I wrote in 2011 (“Normalizing Disemployment Considered Harmful”):

It’s important for all humans with access to policy making — and that includes some, at least, of our “friends,” the career “progressives” — to understand that DISemployment really does cause people to die. Using DISemployment as a policy tool kills workers just as effectively as the radiation in the plant at Fukushima, although less directly, and not on the nightly news. And like radiation*, DISemployment is no less lethal for being invisible.



It’s all about Maslow’s pyramid of needs. (And isn’t it always?) For those in the top 1%, there may indeed be “shared sacrifice,” but the “sacrifice” comes from the apex of Maslow pyramid: Loss of opportunity for “self-actualization” in the form of bonuses (“Just a way of keeping score”), the sale of a second or third home, a postponed yacht (but no more!), or scaled-back cosmetic surgery…

But for the rest of us, DISemployment undermines the pyramid foundations; check the chart again. Employment is right there as the basis of safety and security. And just like lethal radiation striking the body, DISemployment invisibly corrodes and destroys everything around it. DISemployment kills people. DISemployment kills people when they can’t afford health care. DISemployment kills people when they lose their property (whether homes, cars, or tools of the trade). DISemployment kills people when they end up on the street (where food, water, sleep, homeostasis, even excretion are at risk). DISemployment kills people when its economic effects (and the stigma) erode friendships, family, intimacy, all of which are major stressors, and hence lethal.

So it’s clearly immoral — taking, say, the teachings of major religions as a proxy for morality — to crash the economy, whether motivated by greed and even if “doing God’s work,” as the FIRE sector did with the housing bubble. But it’s also immoral, brutal and inhumane, to regulate the economy by “taking away the punchbowl” and disemploying hundreds of thousands or even millions of working people. But what I want to know is this: What happened to them? What are the disemployed doing with their time? How do they survive? So far as I can tell, we just don’t know. (It’s as if we need anthropologists, but we have economists.) Here is the table of contents from a study of long-term unemployment by the Urban Institute:

1. Labor Force Concepts
2. Basic Trends in LongTerm Unemployment
3. Demographic Characteristics of the Long-Term Unemployed
4. Previous Industry and Occupation of the Long-Term Unemployed
5. Geography of the Long-Term Unemployed
6. Recent Changes in the Characteristics of the Long-Term Unemployed

What are the disemployed doing with their time? No answers here. (The only candidate for such information is the Chapter 6, “Recent Changes; I read it; nada.) Here’s another study, from Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, “Long-Term Unemployment in the United States”:

There are many possible explanations for why people have continued to look for work despite being unemployed for extended periods of time, including the extension of unemployment insurance benefits, reductions in household wealth associated with declining home values and equity markets and a reluctance to accept a lower-paying job — especially among highly skilled workers. The extension of unemployment insurance benefits during the past four years likely played a role in keeping some unemployed work ers, including the very-long-term unemployed, searching for work. Many workers simply cannot afford to give up searching for employment. Even for households where a spouse or other family member is employed, wages have remained largely stagnant while typical household expenses — food, clothing, health care and education continue to rise.

What are the disemployed doing with their time? No answers here, although we do have some theories about what might motivate them to spend some fraction of their time looking for work (or not)...Here’s another study, from the National Employment Law Foundation, again in 2013: “Scarring Effects: Demographics of the Long-Term Unemployed and the Danger of Ignoring the Jobs Deficit”. I read it all. What are the disemployed doing with their time? No answers.

Three studies is enough excitement for a Saturday night, and I bet if I read thirty, I’d find the same kinds of information: Demographics, occupation, education, age, gender, etc. But no indication of what the disemployed are doing with their time. Why, it’s almost as if the time of wage workers is of interest or has value only insofar as they are human resources and not people!

* * *

If I had to guess — and in fact, I do have to guess — what the disemployed are doing with their time, I would guess that some large fraction of the disemployed have entered System D, a style of employment familiar in other third world countries:

System D is a slang phrase pirated from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The French have a word that they often use to describe particularly effective and motivated people. They call them débrouillards. To say a man is a débrouillard is to tell people how resourceful and ingenious he is. The former French colonies have sculpted this word to their own social and economic reality. They say that inventive, self-starting, entrepreneurial merchants who are doing business on their own, without registering or being regulated by the bureaucracy and, for the most part, without paying taxes, are part of “l’economie de la débrouillardise.” Or, sweetened for street use, “Systeme D.” This essentially translates as the ingenuity economy, the economy of improvisation and self-reliance, the do-it-yourself, or DIY, economy. …

What happens in all the unregistered markets and roadside kiosks of the world is not simply haphazard. It is a product of intelligence, resilience, self-organization, and group solidarity, and it follows a number of well-worn though unwritten rules. It is, in that sense, a system.

It used to be that System D was small — a handful of market women selling a handful of shriveled carrots to earn a handful of pennies. It was the economy of desperation. But as trade has expanded and globalized, System D has scaled up too. Today, System D is the economy of aspiration. It is where the jobs are. In 2009, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a think tank sponsored by the governments of 30 of the most powerful capitalist countries and dedicated to promoting free-market institutions, concluded that half the workers of the world — close to 1.8 billion people — were working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often, avoiding income taxes.

Kids selling lemonade from the sidewalk in front of their houses are part of System D. So are many of the vendors at stoop sales, flea markets, and swap meets. So are the workers who look for employment in the parking lots of Home Depot and Lowe’s throughout the United States.

Noteworthy in all the studies above is the failure to recognize that the disemployed have agency; that they might take action of some kind to better their condition, but outside the formal sector that has failed them so badly. I know people doing just that, and I bet you do, too. (Of course, if you have confirming, or disconfirming evidence for this hypothesis, I’d love to hear about it in comments.)

If my thesis is right, there are at least two consequences:

1) ObamaCare is going to **** débrouillards over hard, because of its income predicting and reporting requirements. How in the name of sweet suffering Jeebus is a guy trying to cobble together an income out of yard sales, eBay, and home repair (say) supposed to predict his income? It’s demented.

2) System D fits quite neatly into the systems offered by the so-called sharing economy; for example, those who haven’t lost their homes, yet are located in the right areas, would be very happy to pick up a few bucks renting their rooms. Services like TaskRabbit are an even closer match. I like this idea, since it would mean the “sharing economy” squillionaires are in fact parasites, skimming, scaling, normalizing, and taking a cut in rent to provide services for social relations already invented in System D.

NOTES

{1] I prefer to say “disemployed” rather than “unployed” because disemployment, like disempowered or disrespected, implies agency on the part of those doing the dissing. Disemployment not some sort of natural event that just happens; it’s a social construct, in fact the preferred policy option of elites, as evidenced by the fact that other policy options that return us to full employment, like a Jobs Guarantee, aren’t even on the table. You may not like those options, but options they are.

{2] I know there are distinctions that are important to statisticians between the long-term disemployed, who are still in the work force, and “discouraged workers,” who are not. The Urban Institute writes:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies individuals as unemployed if they are without a job but have been actively looking for one in the preceding four weeks. If individuals have been searching for a job for 27 weeks or longer, then they are considered long – term unemployed. As a comparison group, we refer to unemployed workers who have been searching for a job for fewer than five weeks as “newly unemployed.” Together, all unemployed and employed workers age 16 and older make up the labor force. Outside the labor force, there are also many workers who have lost their jobs and have given up searching. Although these discouraged workers are not officially considered part of the labor force, many would like to return to work if given the opportunity. Discouraged workers are defined as those not currently in the labor force because they do not believe jobs are available, but who have actively searched for a job in the past year.

From the wage worker’s perspective, these are distinctions without differences. “No job and no money” equals “no job and no money” at 25 and 28 weeks. And if I got a job part-time job at Walmart restocking shelves after, say, having a good job at the mill, I could mighty “discouraged,” which is why the “discouraged workers” language always grates on me. So for the purposes of this post I’m going to put the two populations in one class.

{3] “Competence” in the sense of running the executive branch to promote the general welfare, or to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and other such public purpose expectations. Both Bush and Obama are highly competent and very effective in other areas; just not in the duties that they were (in Bush’s case, ostensibly) elected to perform.