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STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 6 March 2012
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 6 March 2012[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 5 March 2012
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 5 March 2012
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Dow Jones 12,962.81 -14.76 (-0.11%)
S&P 500 1,364.33 -5.30 (-0.39%)
Nasdaq 2,950.48 -25.71 (-0.86%)
[font color=red]10 Year 2.01% +0.02 (1.01%)
30 Year 3.15% +0.03 (0.96%) [font color=black]
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = [/font][font color=red]12[/font]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
73 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0306/breaking13.html
?ts=1331035339
Greek finance minister Evangelos Venizelos expects bondholders to accept a one-time offer to write off about EUR100 billion of Greek debt
A disorderly default in Greece would probably leave Italy and Spain needing outside help to stop risks spreading, and cause more than €1 trillion damage to the euro zone, the Institute of International Finance said.
"There are some very important and damaging ramifications that would result from a disorderly default on Greek government debt," the IIF said in a document obtained by Reuters news agency.
"It is difficult to add all these contingent liabilities up with any degree of precision, although it is hard to see how they would not exceed €1 trillion."
The document, obtained from a market source, was dated February 18th and marked "IIF Staff Note: Confidential".
?ts=1331035339
Greek finance minister Evangelos Venizelos expects bondholders to accept a one-time offer to write off about EUR100 billion of Greek debt
A disorderly default in Greece would probably leave Italy and Spain needing outside help to stop risks spreading, and cause more than €1 trillion damage to the euro zone, the Institute of International Finance said.
"There are some very important and damaging ramifications that would result from a disorderly default on Greek government debt," the IIF said in a document obtained by Reuters news agency.
"It is difficult to add all these contingent liabilities up with any degree of precision, although it is hard to see how they would not exceed €1 trillion."
The document, obtained from a market source, was dated February 18th and marked "IIF Staff Note: Confidential".
I don't copyright. I stand on the shoulders of giants, just like everyone else....and thanks for the compliment! 
http://www.economist.com/node/21548963
For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere...
THE past four years have seen the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and the biggest food-price increases since the 1970s. That must surely have swollen the ranks of the poor....Wrong. The best estimates for global poverty come from the World Bank’s Development Research Group, which has just updated from 2005 its figures for those living in absolute poverty (not be confused with the relative measure commonly used in rich countries). The new estimates show that in 2008, the first year of the finance-and-food crisis, both the number and share of the population living on less than $1.25 a day (at 2005 prices, the most commonly accepted poverty line) was falling in every part of the world. This was the first instance of declines across the board since the bank started collecting the figures in 1981 (see chart).
The estimates for 2010 are partial but, says the bank, they show global poverty that year was half its 1990 level. The world reached the UN’s “millennium development goal” of halving world poverty between 1990 and 2015 five years early. This implies that the long-term rate of poverty reduction—slightly over one percentage point a year—continued unabated in 2008-10, despite the dual crisis. A lot of the credit goes to China. Half the long-term rate of decline is attributable to that country alone, which has taken 660m people out of poverty since 1981. China also accounts for most of the extraordinary progress in East Asia, which in the early 1980s had the highest incidence of poverty in the world, with 77% of the population below $1.25 a day. In 2008 the share was just 14%. If you exclude China, the numbers are less impressive. Of the roughly 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day in 2008, 1.1 billion of them were outside China. That number barely budged between 1981 and 2008, an outcome that Martin Ravallion, the director of the bank’s Development Research Group, calls “sobering”. THANK YOU AMERICA, FOR SENDING ALL YOUR WORK TO CHINA! THAT'S ONE WAY OF REDUCING GLOBAL INEQUALITY! If China accounts for the largest share of the long-term improvement, Africa has seen the largest recent turnaround. Its poverty headcount rose at every three-year interval between 1981 and 2005, the only continent where this happened. The number almost doubled from 205m in 1981 to 395m in 2005. But in 2008 it fell by 12m, or five percentage points, to 47%—the first time less than half of Africans have been below the poverty line. The number of poor people had also been rising (from much lower levels) in Latin America and in eastern Europe and Central Asia. These regions have reversed the trend since 2000.
All this is good news. It reflects the long-run success of China, the impact of social programmes in Latin America and recent economic growth in Africa. It is also a result of the counter-cyclical fiscal expansions that many developing countries, notably China, embarked on in response to the 2007-08 crisis. Many economists (including some at the World Bank itself) were sceptical about these programmes, fearing they would prove inflationary, inefficient and ill-timed. In fact, the programmes helped make poor and middle-income countries more resilient.
The poverty data chime with other evidence. Estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organisation that the number of hungry people soared from 875m in 2005 to 1 billion in 2009 turned out to be wrong, and were quietly dropped. Derek Headey of the International Food Policy Research Institute has shown that despite the world food-price spike, people’s assessment of their own food situation in most poor and middle-income countries was better in 2008 than it had been in 2006. Most of the progress has been concentrated among the poorest of the poor—those who make less than $1.25 a day. The bank’s figures show only a small drop in the number of those who make less than $2 a day, from 2.59 billion in 1981 to 2.44 billion in 2008 (though the fall from a peak of 2.92 billion in 1999 has been more impressive). According to Mr Ravallion, poverty-reduction policies seem to help most at the very bottom. In 1981, 645m people lived on between $1.25 and $2 a day. By 2008 that number had almost doubled to 1.16 billion. Even if many of these middling poor move up, their places are often taken by those who have just escaped from absolute poverty; population growth does the rest. The poorest of the poor seem to have escaped the worst of the post-2007 downturn. But the growth in the middling poor shows there is much to be done.
SOMEBODY PASS THE SALT...NOT ONLY DO I NOT TRUST THE SOURCE OF THE DATA (WORLD BANK) I DON'T TRUST THE REPORTER ( ECONOMIST) EITHER....I WILL WAIT FOR INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION.
For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere...
THE past four years have seen the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and the biggest food-price increases since the 1970s. That must surely have swollen the ranks of the poor....Wrong. The best estimates for global poverty come from the World Bank’s Development Research Group, which has just updated from 2005 its figures for those living in absolute poverty (not be confused with the relative measure commonly used in rich countries). The new estimates show that in 2008, the first year of the finance-and-food crisis, both the number and share of the population living on less than $1.25 a day (at 2005 prices, the most commonly accepted poverty line) was falling in every part of the world. This was the first instance of declines across the board since the bank started collecting the figures in 1981 (see chart).
The estimates for 2010 are partial but, says the bank, they show global poverty that year was half its 1990 level. The world reached the UN’s “millennium development goal” of halving world poverty between 1990 and 2015 five years early. This implies that the long-term rate of poverty reduction—slightly over one percentage point a year—continued unabated in 2008-10, despite the dual crisis. A lot of the credit goes to China. Half the long-term rate of decline is attributable to that country alone, which has taken 660m people out of poverty since 1981. China also accounts for most of the extraordinary progress in East Asia, which in the early 1980s had the highest incidence of poverty in the world, with 77% of the population below $1.25 a day. In 2008 the share was just 14%. If you exclude China, the numbers are less impressive. Of the roughly 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day in 2008, 1.1 billion of them were outside China. That number barely budged between 1981 and 2008, an outcome that Martin Ravallion, the director of the bank’s Development Research Group, calls “sobering”. THANK YOU AMERICA, FOR SENDING ALL YOUR WORK TO CHINA! THAT'S ONE WAY OF REDUCING GLOBAL INEQUALITY! If China accounts for the largest share of the long-term improvement, Africa has seen the largest recent turnaround. Its poverty headcount rose at every three-year interval between 1981 and 2005, the only continent where this happened. The number almost doubled from 205m in 1981 to 395m in 2005. But in 2008 it fell by 12m, or five percentage points, to 47%—the first time less than half of Africans have been below the poverty line. The number of poor people had also been rising (from much lower levels) in Latin America and in eastern Europe and Central Asia. These regions have reversed the trend since 2000.
All this is good news. It reflects the long-run success of China, the impact of social programmes in Latin America and recent economic growth in Africa. It is also a result of the counter-cyclical fiscal expansions that many developing countries, notably China, embarked on in response to the 2007-08 crisis. Many economists (including some at the World Bank itself) were sceptical about these programmes, fearing they would prove inflationary, inefficient and ill-timed. In fact, the programmes helped make poor and middle-income countries more resilient.
The poverty data chime with other evidence. Estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organisation that the number of hungry people soared from 875m in 2005 to 1 billion in 2009 turned out to be wrong, and were quietly dropped. Derek Headey of the International Food Policy Research Institute has shown that despite the world food-price spike, people’s assessment of their own food situation in most poor and middle-income countries was better in 2008 than it had been in 2006. Most of the progress has been concentrated among the poorest of the poor—those who make less than $1.25 a day. The bank’s figures show only a small drop in the number of those who make less than $2 a day, from 2.59 billion in 1981 to 2.44 billion in 2008 (though the fall from a peak of 2.92 billion in 1999 has been more impressive). According to Mr Ravallion, poverty-reduction policies seem to help most at the very bottom. In 1981, 645m people lived on between $1.25 and $2 a day. By 2008 that number had almost doubled to 1.16 billion. Even if many of these middling poor move up, their places are often taken by those who have just escaped from absolute poverty; population growth does the rest. The poorest of the poor seem to have escaped the worst of the post-2007 downturn. But the growth in the middling poor shows there is much to be done.
SOMEBODY PASS THE SALT...NOT ONLY DO I NOT TRUST THE SOURCE OF THE DATA (WORLD BANK) I DON'T TRUST THE REPORTER ( ECONOMIST) EITHER....I WILL WAIT FOR INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION.
http://news.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_cost_of_americas_police_state/
A line of police stand staged at an Occupy Oakland encampment in Oakland, Calif., early Monday, Nov. 14, 2011 (Credit: AP/Paul Sakuma)
At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, Calif. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere.
There should have been no surprise. Those flash grenades exploding in Oakland and the sound cannons on New York’s streets simply opened small windows onto a national policing landscape long in the process of militarization — a bleak domestic no man’s land marked by tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, tasers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases growing quietly on unobtrusive server farms everywhere.
The ubiquitous fantasy of “homeland security,” pushed hard by the federal government in the wake of 9/11, has been widely embraced by the public. It has also excited intense weapons- and techno-envy among police departments and municipalities vying for the latest in armor and spy equipment.
In such a world, deadly gadgetry is just a grant request away, so why shouldn’t the 14,000 at-risk souls in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, have a closed-circuit-digital-camera-and-monitor system (cost: $180,000, courtesy of the Homeland Security Department) identical to the one up and running in New York’s Times Square?
*** IMO an example of to invest badly in your country.
A line of police stand staged at an Occupy Oakland encampment in Oakland, Calif., early Monday, Nov. 14, 2011 (Credit: AP/Paul Sakuma)
At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, Calif. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere.
There should have been no surprise. Those flash grenades exploding in Oakland and the sound cannons on New York’s streets simply opened small windows onto a national policing landscape long in the process of militarization — a bleak domestic no man’s land marked by tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, tasers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases growing quietly on unobtrusive server farms everywhere.
The ubiquitous fantasy of “homeland security,” pushed hard by the federal government in the wake of 9/11, has been widely embraced by the public. It has also excited intense weapons- and techno-envy among police departments and municipalities vying for the latest in armor and spy equipment.
In such a world, deadly gadgetry is just a grant request away, so why shouldn’t the 14,000 at-risk souls in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, have a closed-circuit-digital-camera-and-monitor system (cost: $180,000, courtesy of the Homeland Security Department) identical to the one up and running in New York’s Times Square?
*** IMO an example of to invest badly in your country.
http://www.ifre.com/analysis-funding-costs-drop-as-tide-turns-for-eu-financials/21004058.article
Investor demand for new bond issues from European banks reached levels not seen for months last week, as the second injection of long-term liquidity from the European Central Bank helped dispel any remaining fears of a wall of supply from the sector.
The shift in sentiment has been such that funding costs have decreased, even for peripheral institutions which up until a few weeks ago would have struggled to raise anything in the wholesale markets at all...
PARTY'S ON!
Investor demand for new bond issues from European banks reached levels not seen for months last week, as the second injection of long-term liquidity from the European Central Bank helped dispel any remaining fears of a wall of supply from the sector.
The shift in sentiment has been such that funding costs have decreased, even for peripheral institutions which up until a few weeks ago would have struggled to raise anything in the wholesale markets at all...
PARTY'S ON!
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,819430,00.html
DPA
The region of South Tyrol in northern Italy would like autonomy.
The governor loves to hunt -- geese, rabbits, fox, whatever happens to cross his path. Luis Durnwalder, the top hunter in South Tyrol, grants hunting licenses as if he were the lord of the manor, and when farmers in Vinschgau complain that the deer are ruining their fields, he issues a direct order to his hunters: Shoot seven deer, right away!
The Italian government could have guessed that it would only make enemies in Bolzano when it filed a complaint against the state hunting law in South Tyrol before the Italian Constitutional Court. Rome doesn't like the fact South Tyrol doesn't adhere to the hunting season mandated for all Italian provinces.
None of Rome's business, says Durnwalder. He points out that Sicily and South Tyrol are so different in terms of flora and fauna that it isn't possible "to apply the same law from the Brenner Pass to Sicily."
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti disagrees. He wants to prove that Europe can rely on Italy. To that end, his cabinet of technocrats has assembled a package of reforms that also makes additional demands on the five Italian regions with semi-autonomous status -- even down to legal details regulating the damage done by wildlife.
DPA
The region of South Tyrol in northern Italy would like autonomy.
The governor loves to hunt -- geese, rabbits, fox, whatever happens to cross his path. Luis Durnwalder, the top hunter in South Tyrol, grants hunting licenses as if he were the lord of the manor, and when farmers in Vinschgau complain that the deer are ruining their fields, he issues a direct order to his hunters: Shoot seven deer, right away!
The Italian government could have guessed that it would only make enemies in Bolzano when it filed a complaint against the state hunting law in South Tyrol before the Italian Constitutional Court. Rome doesn't like the fact South Tyrol doesn't adhere to the hunting season mandated for all Italian provinces.
None of Rome's business, says Durnwalder. He points out that Sicily and South Tyrol are so different in terms of flora and fauna that it isn't possible "to apply the same law from the Brenner Pass to Sicily."
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti disagrees. He wants to prove that Europe can rely on Italy. To that end, his cabinet of technocrats has assembled a package of reforms that also makes additional demands on the five Italian regions with semi-autonomous status -- even down to legal details regulating the damage done by wildlife.
