STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, April 20, 2011

[Pale Blue Dot]

Source: du

STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, April 20, 2011

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON April 19, 2011

Dow 12,266.75 +65.16 (+0.53%)
Nasdaq 2,744.97 +9.59 (+0.35%)
S&P 500 1,312.62 +7.48 (+0.57%)
10-Yr Bond... 3.40 +0.03 (+0.95%)
30-Year Bond 4.46 +0.03 (+0.61%)

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Market Conditions During Trading Hours

Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold

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Bush Administration Officials Convicted = 2
Names: David Safavian, James Fondren
Dishonorable Mention: former House majority leader, Tom DeLay

Bush Administration Officials Charged = 1
Name(s): Richard Lopez Razo

Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = 11

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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.

Read more: du

[Pale Blue Dot]

1. Today's Reports

Apr 20 07:00 MBA Mortgage Purchase Index 04/15 NA NA -6.7%
Apr 20 10:00 Existing Home Sales Mar 5.15M 5.00M 4.88M
Apr 20 10:30 Crude Inventories 04/16 NA NA 1.627M

Read more: http://www.briefing.com/Investor/Public/Calendars/EconomicCalendar.htm#ixzz1K3lmWSqG

[Pale Blue Dot]

2. Oil rises above $109 on signs of strong US demand

SINGAPORE – Oil prices rose above $109 a barrel Wednesday in Asia after a report showed U.S. gasoline supplies fell for a second week, suggesting higher fuel costs haven't yet curbed demand.

Benchmark crude for June delivery was up $1.28 at $109.56 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 59 cents to settle at $108.28 on Tuesday.

In London, Brent crude for June delivery was up $1.40 to $122.73 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

The American Petroleum Institute said late Tuesday that gasoline inventories fell 1.8 million barrels last week, following a plunge of 7 million barrels the previous week. The API also said crude supplies rose 667,000 barrels while analysts surveyed by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos., had forecast an increase of 1.6 million barrels.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/oil_prices

[xchrom]

5. Blame High Oil Prices on Speculators and Bernanke

http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/apr2011/pi20110419_786652.htm

Watching traffic around Dallas and Fort Worth, you'd never know the U.S. was experiencing any kind of gasoline crisis. Many drivers on the freeways apparently think Texas has already approved the proposed 85 mph speed limit.

Most don't realize that driving a vehicle that's rated at 30 mpg on the road at 85 miles an hour will cut its fuel efficiency by around 35 percent. That makes the gas they are currently paying $3.79 for cost $5.11 in reality. It's reasonable to assume, too, that if we really cared about the cost of gas, we would do everything we could to mitigate that cost. We don't. We complain about prices but seem unwilling to do anything about them.

Americans think they know whom to blame for high gas prices. The usual culprits are people who drive too fast, inefficient engines, OPEC, and even China. Sure, those are all factors, but that's like blaming the housing bubble on the lumber industry or a surfeit of carpenters. It's no great mystery who is responsible for higher gas prices. As I and others have written in the past, the biggest culprits are the speculators gaming the futures markets to line their own pockets. We know all that. What might come as a shock is that they are being enabled by the Federal Reserve.

This explains why the market for oil and gasoline is currently costing consumers and industry far more than necessary. Until recently it was impossible to tell whether the speculators were accurate in telling the media that high worldwide demand for oil has caused prices to skyrocket once again, pushing gasoline prices $1 a gallon above where they were at this time last year.

[Po_d Mainiac]

75. And the #1 US consumer of oil is?

Drumroll please...........Yup, our military :grr:

[Pale Blue Dot]

3. U.S. Stock-Index Futures Advance as Intel, Yahoo Sales Exceed Estimates

U.S. stock-index futures advanced, indicating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may rise for a second day, after Intel Corp. (INTC)’s sales forecast and Yahoo! Inc.’s revenue beat analysts’ estimates.

Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker, jumped 6.3 percent in pre-market New York trading, while Yahoo, the most-visited U.S. Web portal, climbed 4.1 percent in Germany. International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) declined 1.5 percent after contract signings declined.

S&P 500 futures expiring in June increased 1.2 percent to 1,324.2 at 10:46 a.m. in London. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures climbed 0.9 percent to 12,336 and Nasdaq-100 Index futures advanced 1.2 percent to 2,337.75. The S&P 500 rallied 0.6 percent yesterday, the biggest gain this month, as housing starts rose and earnings beat estimates at companies from Johnson & Johnson to Steel Dynamics Inc.

“The earnings reports are reassuring the market,” said Louis de Fels, a Paris-based money manager at Raymond James Asset Management International, which oversees $30 billion worldwide. “We can sense that the earnings dynamic is pretty good.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-20/u-s-stock-index-futures-advance-as-intel-yahoo-sales-exceed-estimates.html

[xchrom]

4. Recommend

[Roland99]

8. k&r to the Greatest

[xchrom]

6. Stocks Climb on Intel Outlook as Yen Weakens, Commodities Gain

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-20/stocks-climb-on-intel-outlook-as-yen-weakens-commodities-gain.html

April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks rose the most in a month and U.S. index futures gained as Intel Corp. forecast higher sales and company results in Europe and Asia beat estimates. Commodities advanced, while the yen and Treasuries fell.

The MSCI World Index jumped 1.2 percent at 6:45 a.m. in New York, the biggest increase on a closing basis since March 21, and emerging-market shares rallied the most in five months. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures climbed 1.4 percent. The yen depreciated against all 16 of its most-traded peers, while the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note rose two basis points, and the Irish bond retreated. Raw sugar and oil led commodities higher while gold traded above $1,500 an ounce for a second day.

Intel said yesterday revenue may top analysts’ estimates in the second quarter. L’Oreal SA, the world’s largest cosmetics- maker, reported sales climbed 9.3 percent, and South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd. posted a 27 percent jump in profit. Earnings-per-share exceeded predictions for 81 percent of the 42 companies in the S&P 500 that reported results since April 11, helping revive investor confidence after S&P cut its rating outlook for U.S. debt on April 18. Apple Inc. and AT&T Inc. are among more than 30 companies due to report results today.

“You’re seeing signs the U.S. and Europe are still on track for recovery,” said Hiroichi Nishi, an equities manager in Tokyo at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. “That’s helped to ease nerves.”

[Demeter]

7. BofA to spin off $5 billion private equity unit

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110419/bs_nm/us_bankofamerica_privateequity

Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) plans to spin off its last large private equity fund, with more than $5 billion in assets, and has no plans to make new private equity investments, a company spokesman said on Tuesday.

Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank by assets, will spin off BAML Capital Partners into its own unnamed firm.

The firm would then manage the bank's private equity assets for a fee -- winding those positions down over time -- and could begin accepting outside investors.

The assets will remain on BofA's balance sheet until they are wound down...The spin-off is the latest in a series of moves by the bank to comply with the Volcker Rule, a part of the financial regulatory overhaul law passed in 2010 that limits proprietary trading, or investments by banks using their own capital. It also fits with Chief Executive Brian Moynihan's efforts to sell off extraneous business units.

[xchrom]

9. BOE Voted 6-3 to Hold Rate as Majority Noted ‘Downside’

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-20/boe-voted-6-3-to-hold-rate-as-majority-noted-downside-.html

(Updates with inflation expectations in seventh paragraph.)

April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of England policy makers voted 6-3 to keep interest rates on hold this month as the majority said that data on the economy during the previous month had “probably been to the downside.”

Andrew Sentance maintained his call for an increase in the benchmark interest rate to 1 percent from a record low of 0.5 percent, while Martin Weale and Spencer Dale wanted a move to 0.75 percent. The remaining six Monetary Policy Committee members, including Governor Mervyn King, voted for no change. Adam Posen maintained his call for more bond purchases.

“The news over the month about demand and activity had probably been to the downside,” according to the view of the majority of the committee at their April 7 meeting, published in London today. “An increase in bank rate in current circumstances could adversely affect consumer confidence, leading to an exaggerated impact on spending.”

The pound pared its gain against the dollar after the report. The minutes indicate other members of the panel may be reluctant to change their view and join the three officials seeking a rate increase even as the central bank warns that a slowdown in inflation in March was probably temporary. It sees a “significant risk” that price growth, which eased to 4 percent in March, will accelerate to above 5 percent in the near term.

[xchrom]

10. European Stocks Rise as Peugeot, L’Oreal Sales Exceed Estimates

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-20/european-stocks-rise-as-peugeot-l-oreal-sales-exceed-estimates.html

April 20 (Bloomberg) -- European stocks rose, as the Stoxx Europe 600 Index had its first back-to-back gains in two weeks, after results from Intel Corp. to PSA Peugeot Citroen and L’Oreal SA spurred investor optimism in the economic recovery. U.S. index futures and Asian shares advanced.

ASML Holding NV, Europe’s biggest chip-equipment maker, gained 7.6 percent as Intel posted first-quarter profit that beat forecasts and said it will generate $12.8 billion of revenue in the current period. Peugeot Citroen and L’Oreal climbed at least 3 percent as sales beat the average analyst estimate at Europe’s second-biggest carmaker and the world’s largest cosmetics maker.

The Stoxx 600 rallied 1.5 percent to 278.62 at 11:54 a.m. in London. Futures contracts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in June climbed 1.3 percent to 1,325.8. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index advanced 1.9 percent.

“We continue to believe that the general trend of the stock market will be higher,” said Kully Samra, who manages U.K.-based clients for Charles Schwab Corp., which has $1.5 trillion in assets. “European stocks appear to be attractively valued.”

[xchrom]

81. Euro Zone Holds Little Appeal for Czech Banker

http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2011/04/20/euro-zone-still-has-little-appeal-for-czech-central-banker/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=emergingeurope

The euro zone will survive its current crisis in one way or another, but it remains an unattractive alternative when compared with the Czech Republic’s current autonomous monetary policy and sovereign currency, according to the vice governor of the Czech central bank.

Mojmir Hampl, at a conference in Vienna, said he always thought media notions that a country would be “safe within the euro zone” were dubious, and since the crisis began he said ongoing sovereign bailouts and a mish-mash of political solutions don’t build confidence in the currency union.

Maintaining fiscal discipline is not a euro-zone issue but rather a matter of sound economic judgment, and a country doesn’t need to rush to join the currency bloc to have sound finances.

The Czech Republic, a European Union member since 2004, is obliged to seek the euro adoption under its EU accession treaty. However, no timeline is set.

[Demeter]

11. Leader of Big Mortgage Lender Guilty of $2.9 Billion Fraud

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/business/20fraud.html

The founder of what was once one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders was convicted of fraud on Tuesday for masterminding a scheme that cheated investors and the government out of billions of dollars. It is one of the few successful prosecutions to come out of the financial crisis...After more than a day of deliberations, a federal jury in Virginia found Lee B. Farkas, the former chairman of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, guilty on 14 counts of securities, bank and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. Mr. Farkas, 58, faces decades in prison for his role in the $2.9 billion plot, which prosecutors say was one of the largest and longest bank fraud schemes in American history and led to the 2009 collapse of Colonial Bank...Six other Taylor, Bean & Whitaker executives — including its former chief executive and former treasurer — have already pleaded guilty. Some agreed to testify against Mr. Farkas at his trial...

The scheme began in 2002, prosecutors say, when Taylor, Bean & Whitaker executives moved to hide the firm’s losses, secretly overdrawing its Colonial Bank accounts, at times by more than $100 million. To cover up the actions, prosecutors said that the lender sold Colonial about $1.5 billion in “worthless” and “fake” mortgages, some of which had already been bought by other institutional investors. The government, in turn, guaranteed those fraudulent home loans....In a related plot, Mr. Farkas and other executives created a separate mortgage lending operation, called Ocala Funding. The subsidiary sold commercial paper to big financial firms, including Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas. When Taylor, Bean & Whitaker collapsed, the banks were unable to get all of their money back.

During the course of the fraud, prosecutors said, Mr. Farkas pocketed some $20 million, which he used to buy a private jet, several homes and a collection of vintage cars. “His shockingly brazen scheme poured fuel on the fire of the financial crisis,” Mr. Breuer said.

With the credit crisis in full swing, Mr. Farkas and other Taylor, Bean & Whitaker executives persuaded Colonial to apply for $570 million in federal bailout funds through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP...The Treasury Department approved the rescue funds, on the condition that Colonial was able to raise $300 million in private money. The Taylor, Bean & Whitaker executives falsely led the bank into thinking it had investors lined up. Ultimately, the government did not give any money to Colonial. Shortly thereafter, in August 2009, Colonial filed for bankruptcy, the same time that Taylor, Bean & Whitaker failed...

[xchrom]

12. Asian Stocks Rise as U.S. Housing, Earnings Boost Confidence

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-20/asian-stocks-rise-as-u-s-housing-earnings-boost-confidence.html

April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Asian stocks rose, with the regional index set for its biggest advance in nearly a month, as U.S. housing starts gained and earnings beat estimates at companies including Johnson & Johnson, signaling the world’s biggest economy is recovering.

Advantest, Japan’s largest maker of chip-testing equipment, gained 3.4 percent after Intel Corp. forecast quarterly sales that may top estimates. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, gained 1.2 percent in Sydney after metals and oil prices rose. Samsung Electronics Co. gained 4.7 percent in Seoul after it agreed to sell its computer hard-disk drive business. LG Chem Ltd., South Korea’s biggest chemicals maker, jumped 5.6 percent after posting a 27 percent gain in first- quarter profit.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index advanced 1.8 percent to 136.69 at 6:26 p.m. in Tokyo, its biggest gain since March 22. About five shares gained for each that fell on the 1,023-member gauge. The measure fell 0.5 percent last week, reversing three weeks of gains.

“Demand in the U.S., while it may not have the strength it once did, is slowly heading toward a recovery,” said Kiyoshi Ishigane, a senior strategist in Tokyo at Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management Co., which oversees $84 billion. “Yesterday we saw that housing in the U.S. was good, which means that the U.S. economy is improving, and that’s being appreciated by the market today.”

[xchrom]

13. Japan, Australia Stock Futures Rise as U.S. Housing Starts Gain

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-19/japan-australia-stock-futures-rise-as-u-s-housing-starts-gain.html

April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese and Australian stock futures advanced after U.S. housing starts increased and earnings beat estimates at companies including Johnson & Johnson, signaling the world’s biggest economy is recovering.

American depositary receipts of Canon Inc., the world’s biggest camera maker, rose 0.7 percent from the closing share price yesterday in Tokyo. Those of Advantest, Japan’s largest maker of chip-testing equipment, gained 0.9 percent after Intel Corp. forecast quarterly sales that may top estimates. ADRs of Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s No. 2 oil producer, climbed 0.5 percent in Sydney as crude prices gained.

[xchrom]

15. Yes Bank Q4 net profit surges 45% on year; beats estimates

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/resultscompany-press-conference/yes-bank-q4-net-profit-surges-45year-beats-estimates_537321.html

Private sector lender Yes Bank’s fourth quarter (January-March) net profit rose 45.2% year-on-year to Rs 203.4 crore, beating analysts’ estimates on the back of a strong growth in deposits and loans.

The quarterly profit was highest ever since its inception, it said.

Yes Bank’s net interest income for the three-month period was up 42.7% from a year ago to Rs 348.5 crore.

According to a CNBC-TV18 poll, analysts had expected the bank’s net profit at Rs 200.6 crore and net interest income of Rs 347.7 crore

[xchrom]

17. Global cues, short covering drive Sensex 349 points higher

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/local-markets/global-cues-short-covering-drive-sensex-349-points-higher_537314.html

Indian equity benchmarks showed remarkable performance on Wednesday, with the Sensex adding 349 points supported majorly by strong global cues, tracking strong quarterly numbers from technology companies. Short covering was another reason that led the rally as index had fallen about 600 points in previous sessions.

The 50-share NSE Nifty surged 110.90 points or 1.93%, to close at 5,851.65 - helped by 48 shares out of 50 on the index. Experts feel that today's rally was quite surprising.

The movement or the pace of the movement, Anil Manghnani of Modern Shares & Stock Brokers says, is a little surprising. "Maybe we are still within that well defined range of 5650 on the downside and about 5950 on the upside - what it might oscillate in since we had a great rally into earning season is that a lot of the good news or a lot of the expectations from the results are already priced in. Now the market would tend to react to extremely better than expected results like a HCL Tech or as surprise on the downside like Infosys," he said.

Spurt in global markets bolstered the momentum in Indian equities - technology sector was the leading star especially after the better-than-expected January-March quarter numbers from IBM and Intel. That rejoiced the mood in Indian technology companies' shares too.

[xchrom]

23. BSE Sensex provisionally closes 1.9 pct higher

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/idINIndia-56461420110420

(Reuters) - The BSE Sensex provisionally closed 1.9 percent higher on Wednesday, boosted by a normal monsoon forecast and strong world equities.

[xchrom]

19. India should allow wheat, rice exports - Pawar

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/idINIndia-56459520110420

(Reuters) - India should allow exports of wheat and rice as the country has huge grain stocks and global prices are favourable, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said on Wednesday.

Pawar's remarks came a day after India forecast normal monsoon rains which could boost farm output and encourage exports, though concerns over persistently high domestic food prices may weigh on any government decision to sell overseas.

And with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress party facing a slew of state elections, the government is unlikely to take chances with grain stocks

[xchrom]

20. Court rejects bail for Reliance ADAG, Unitech, DB Realty execs

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/idINIndia-56458120110420

Reuters) - A CBI court on Wednesday rejected bail applications of five business executives involved in one of India's biggest corruption scandals, pushing forward a case that has undermined the government and business sentiment in Asia's third largest economy.

Executives from Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani (ADA) Group, Unitech and DB Realty may go to jail over the sale of telecoms licences at below-market prices.

Former telecoms minister Andimuthu Raja and the executives have been charged with manipulating the grant of telecoms licences and radio airwaves in 2007-08 that a CAG report said could have caused a revenue loss of $39 billion to the government.

The case is the latest chapter in corruption scandals that have embarrassed the Congress party-led government, which faces a test of strength in major state elections this year that could redraw India's political landscape.

[xchrom]

47. Sheikh fails to move IMF with funds plea

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MD21Df01.html

KARACHI, Pakistan - Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh returned home empty handed from Washington this week, unable to convince the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to release the next tranche of an US$11.3 billion loan package initially agreed in 2008.

The IMF has expressed concern over Pakistan's rising inflation, a widening fiscal deficit and energy subsidies. Islamabad had earlier indicated that it might seek another loan arrangement of about $3.2 billion to meet its financial obligations and to repay earlier debts. The country has only two months to implement at least some of the reforms the IMF recommended to qualify for the sixth installment and to secure a new loan package.

The failure of the Pakistani delegation is a setback for the cash-strapped government, which is likely to ratchet up a 256 billion rupee (US$3 billion) deficit this year, weighed down by rising oil prices.

"This was not a good trip for the Pakistani delegation," Dawn reported a diplomatic source as saying. "There are no indications that the delegation was able to convince the IMF to release the next tranche. And until the sixth tranche is released, it is highly unlikely that the IMF will hold any negotiations on a future arrangement."

[xchrom]

48. China's new labor revolution

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/MD20Cb01.html

China has the largest labor force in the world. In recent years, new strains have emerged in China's labor supply that raise concerns about the country's economic growth mode.

The shortage of migrant workers that gripped the Pearl River Delta region and the coastal areas of Fujian province in 2003 gradually seeped its way into the Yangtze River Delta region and other coastal provinces. In 2009, this trend extended to several cities in central China.

The wage of migrant workers, which had been stable for more than a decade, also began to see a gradual increase. From 2005 to 2010, the average wage per month for migrant workers ncreased 14.1% from 875 yuan (about US$130) to 1,690 yuan ($252).

These noticeable changes in the Chinese labor supply and market have caught the attention of authorities in Beijing. Indeed, in the Report of the Work of the Government at the Fourth Session of the Eleventh National People's Congress (NPC) on March 5, Premier Wen Jiabao emphasized the need to accelerate the transformation of the pattern of economic development and economic structure. Some analysts argue that these changes are short-term phenomena brought about by the business cycle. Yet, fundamental shifts in the long-term supply of labor resources have had a profound impact on China's economic development.

[xchrom]

53. Taipei taxes luxury

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/MD19Cb02.html

Taiwan's lawmakers, seeking to curb speculative real estate transactions, have approved a "luxury tax" bill. Although the measure will go down well with low- and medium-income earners in an election year, the measure will cause some collateral damage.

The statute, approved on Friday, imposes 15% tax on properties resold within one year of purchase and a 10% tax if sold within two years. Cars, yachts, aircraft, including light planes and helicopters that exceed US$103,300, will be subject to 10% tax, as will hawksbill turtle products, turtle shells, coral, ivory, furs and related products, furniture and non-refundable memberships that exceed $17,200.

A young couple with an average annual household income at present have to work 22.4 years to save up for a humble space in a Taipei apartment block. House prices have surged due to a flow of capital into the Taiwan markets in general and investments by returning Taiwanese businesspeople active in China in particular. Both phenomena are related to ultra-loose US monetary policy, a rising Taiwan dollar, low interest rates and the reduction three years ago of the highest rates of estate duty to 10% from 50%.

The Kuomintang (KMT) government has been urged to intervene, and have now acted the 2011 legislative and 2012 presidential elections draw nearer. The Ministry of Finance estimates the tax changes will add $500 million to national coffers.

[Demeter]

14. Gold price hits record at $1,500 an ounce

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13139996

In Hong Kong trade, gold hit a record $1,500.70 an ounce, which traders said was mainly due to Standard & Poor's downgrade of its outlook on US debt.

Silver also touched a 31-year high of $44.34 an ounce.

"In a word, sensational. Everything's feeding into this, sovereign debt, weak dollar, inflation," said one analyst.

But analysts were divided about whether the price could go higher and are waiting to see if trading in Europe and the US continues the momentum seen in Asia....

[xchrom]

24. GLOBAL MARKETS - Company earnings lift stocks; gold at record

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/idINIndia-56456720110420

(Reuters) - Upbeat earnings from companies including chip maker Intel lifted stocks and boosted appetite for riskier assets on Wednesday, driving commodities higher and the Australian dollar to a 29-year high versus the dollar.

The positive showing so far in the quarterly earnings season has helped offset concerns of government debt problems on both sides of the Atlantic after Standard & Poor's on Monday cut the outlook on the United States to negative.

However, some investors remain wary of government debt problems, inflation and turmoil in the Middle East, and sent gold to an all-time high above $1,500.

"While S&P grabbed some headlines earlier in the week, on a future event that may or may not happen, it seems things on the ground are coming up pretty good," said Philip Isherwood, European equities strategist at Evolution Securities.

[Pale Blue Dot]

26. I was told by a gold dealer yesterday that there's an unusual lack of selling.

He said that a decade ago when the price of gold spiked the market was flooded with people selling.

Now, he says, everyone is simply hoarding.

[Po_d Mainiac]

34. There is no rush to sell

Most that are holding Ag/Au, and have been doing so long term. Most are/have been doing so more as a hedge against further QE printing than 'investing.' Major difference.

Another huge consideration is that Europeans and Asians are also buying. This is not the same market that the Hunts tried to corner 30 years ago. When the Hunts hatched their scheme, mainland China was still wearing black pajamas, primarily agricultural based, had a single phone in many villages, and had far fewer motorized vehicles. Demand for PM's in China is far greater than supply.

[AnneD]

50. BINGO......

It is a new world (order). People are just trying to preserve wealth at this point.

[Po_d Mainiac]

70. It will take another asset class looking attractive, to motivate selling

IMHO cash/confetti is not that motivation. Real estate (esp wooded parcels) could be that motivation if prices realign with reality.

This would not be a move towards wealth preservation as much as survival in a low wage economy. Even a mediocre Maine woodlot can provide enough lumber to construct a dwelling and supply adequate BTU's to keep the cold at bay. Not a lot of time to play with ishit if that's the path taken. But, a hellovalot easier on the BP.

[AnneD]

88. point taken...

We are looking for property that we can pay cash for...for the very same reason.

I am not so far removed from my farm roots that I cannot grow my own.

[tclambert]

109. Silver is up by a factor of 2.4 since August of last year. Something is going on there.

I still don't know if the Chinese want to corner the market or what. Gold has gone up a goodly amount, and has continued to do so long term. Silver has gone crazy, though. In eight months silver went from $18.50 to $45, a 243% increase.

[Pale Blue Dot]

29. Spot Gold Passes $1,500, Silver Approaches $45, As Dollar Plummets

A series of earnings misses was yawned upon by the market. But a couple of earnings beats and the market goes insane. Or, more specifically, the dollar plummets. While anyone can plug whatever narrative they wish to what is happening in the market, here is Reuters' take: "The euro rose to a 15-month high versus the dollar in thin trade on Wednesday, buoyed by an improvement in risk appetite and expectations of further euro zone interest rate increases. A decent response to a Spanish bond auction also helped boost the euro which rose to $1.4548 on EBS, up 1.3 percent on the day and at its highest since January 2010. Traders said stop-losses were triggered through last week's high of $1.4521 and on the break of $1.4530." Whatever it is, the DXY just took out a multiyear low below 74.50 - the lowest since December 2010, the EURUSD is trading above 1.45 and after gold futures touched upon $1,500 yesterday, now it was spot's turn which cut through $1,500 like a hot knife through butter and never looked back. If the DXY drops below 74.25, watch out below (or above if you are gold). Looks like Jim Rogers' "confetti" scenario is playing out: after crossing $44 yesterday, silver is preparing to take out $45.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/spot-gold-passes-1500-dollar-plummets

[Festivito]

16. Debt: 04/18/2011 14,309,159,097,877.65 (UP 3,822,516,885.54) (Mon, UP a little.)

(Over the old debt limit of 14.294-trillion dollars by 15-billion dollars. Good day.)
Late getting home here in the early morning.
(Debt under Obama seems to jump up big then drop slowly maybe up a little and down a little for days--repeat.)
= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 9,679,522,848,142.48 + 4,629,636,249,735.17
UP 320,133,441.47 + UP 3,502,383,444.07

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 312-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.21 THAT'S 1B$, and $3,206.99 makes 1T$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.62, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 12 seconds we net gain another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 311,818,592 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 10/04/2010 04:37 -> 310,403,677
Currently, each of these Americans owe $45,889.37.
A family of three owes $137,668.11. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 19 reports in the last 30 to 31 days.
The average for the last 19 reports is 4,436,667,208.33.
The average for the last 30 days would be 2,809,889,231.94.
The average for the last 31 days would be 2,719,247,643.82.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 174 reports in 253 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.33B$ per report, 5.07B$/day so far.
There were 249 reports in 365 days of FY2009 averaging 7.57B$ per report, 5.16B$/day.
There were 251 reports in 365 days of FY2010 averaging 6.58B$ per report, 4.53B$/day.
There were 135 reports in 200 days of FY2011 averaging 5.54B$ per report, 3.74B$/day.
Above line should be okay

PROJECTION:
There are 643 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 15.2 and 17.6T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
04/18/2011 14,309,159,097,877.65 BHO (UP 3,682,282,048,964.57 so far since Obama took office.)

FISCAL YEAR DEBT CHANGE, Sep 30 prior year to Sep 30 named year:
(One "* " for each 40B$ reached)
FY1994 +0,281,261,026,873.94 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1995 +0,281,232,990,696.07 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1996 +0,250,828,038,426.34 ------------* * * * * * WJC
FY1997 +0,188,335,072,261.61 ------------* * * * WJC
FY1998 +0,113,046,997,500.28 ------------* * WJC
FY1999 +0,130,077,892,735.81 ------------* * * WJC
FY2000 +0,017,907,308,253.43 ------------WJC
FY2001 +0,133,285,202,313.20 ------------* * * C&B
01-WJC +0,053,598,528,417.78 ------------* WJC 31% of FY, 40% of FY-Debt
01-GWB +0,079,686,673,895.42 ------------* GWB 69% of FY, 60% of FY-Debt
FY2002 +0,420,772,553,397.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2003 +0,554,995,097,146.46 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2004 +0,595,821,633,586.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2005 +0,553,656,965,393.18 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2006 +0,574,264,237,491.73 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2007 +0,500,679,473,047.25 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2008 +1,017,071,524,649.92 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2009 +1,885,104,106,599.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B&O
09GWB +0,602,152,152,000.60 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB 31% of FY, 32% of FY-Debt
09-BHO +1,282,951,954,598.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO 69% of FY, 68% of FY-Debt
FY2010 +1,651,794,027,380.00 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
FY2011 +0,747,536,066,985.90 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
Endof11 +1,364,253,322,249.27 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO

LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
03/24/2011 -015,763,143,549.40 -
03/25/2011 -000,034,574,737.25 ----
03/28/2011 +000,227,402,237.21 ------------******** Mon
03/29/2011 +000,181,007,415.32 ------------********
03/30/2011 +000,670,089,469.30 ------------********
04/04/2011 +000,336,873,927.41 ------------******** Mon
04/05/2011 -000,031,815,631.67 ----
04/06/2011 -000,011,756,275.73 ----
04/07/2011 +002,235,163,853.48 ------------*********
04/08/2011 +000,001,314,747.36 ------------******
04/11/2011 +000,390,366,211.15 ------------******** Mon
04/13/2011 +000,216,450,469.86 ------------********
04/14/2011 +004,827,508,513.07 ------------*********
04/15/2011 +021,566,615,397.70 ------------**********
04/18/2011 +000,320,133,441.47 ------------******** Mon

15,131,635,489.28 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
DUer primer on National debt

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4819328&mesg_id=4819428

[Festivito]

102. Debt: 04/19/2011 14,320,468,555,091.68 (UP 11,309,457,214.03) (Tue, UP a little.)

(Over the old debt limit of 14.294-trillion dollars by 26-billion dollars. Good day.)
Let's go!
(Debt under Obama seems to jump up big then drop slowly maybe up a little and down a little for days--repeat.)
= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 9,680,021,693,766.99 + 4,640,446,861,324.69
UP 498,845,624.51 + UP 10,810,611,589.52

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 312-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.21 THAT'S 1B$, and $3,206.92 makes 1T$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.62, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 12 seconds we net gain another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 311,825,792 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 10/04/2010 04:37 -> 310,403,677
Currently, each of these Americans owe $45,924.58.
A family of three owes $137,773.74. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 20 reports in the last 30 to 32 days.
The average for the last 20 reports is 4,780,306,708.61.
The average for the last 30 days would be 3,186,871,139.08.
The average for the last 32 days would be 2,987,691,692.88.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 174 reports in 253 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.33B$ per report, 5.07B$/day so far.
There were 249 reports in 365 days of FY2009 averaging 7.57B$ per report, 5.16B$/day.
There were 251 reports in 365 days of FY2010 averaging 6.58B$ per report, 4.53B$/day.
There were 136 reports in 201 days of FY2011 averaging 5.58B$ per report, 3.78B$/day.
Above line should be okay

PROJECTION:
There are 642 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 15.2 and 17.6T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
04/19/2011 14,320,468,555,091.68 BHO (UP 3,693,591,506,178.60 so far since Obama took office.)

FISCAL YEAR DEBT CHANGE, Sep 30 prior year to Sep 30 named year:
(One "* " for each 40B$ reached)
FY1994 +0,281,261,026,873.94 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1995 +0,281,232,990,696.07 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1996 +0,250,828,038,426.34 ------------* * * * * * WJC
FY1997 +0,188,335,072,261.61 ------------* * * * WJC
FY1998 +0,113,046,997,500.28 ------------* * WJC
FY1999 +0,130,077,892,735.81 ------------* * * WJC
FY2000 +0,017,907,308,253.43 ------------WJC
FY2001 +0,133,285,202,313.20 ------------* * * C&B
01-WJC +0,053,598,528,417.78 ------------* WJC 31% of FY, 40% of FY-Debt
01-GWB +0,079,686,673,895.42 ------------* GWB 69% of FY, 60% of FY-Debt
FY2002 +0,420,772,553,397.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2003 +0,554,995,097,146.46 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2004 +0,595,821,633,586.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2005 +0,553,656,965,393.18 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2006 +0,574,264,237,491.73 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2007 +0,500,679,473,047.25 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2008 +1,017,071,524,649.92 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2009 +1,885,104,106,599.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B&O
09GWB +0,602,152,152,000.60 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB 31% of FY, 32% of FY-Debt
09-BHO +1,282,951,954,598.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO 69% of FY, 68% of FY-Debt
FY2010 +1,651,794,027,380.00 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
FY2011 +0,758,845,524,199.90 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
Endof11 +1,378,003,066,333.15 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO

LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
03/25/2011 -000,034,574,737.25 ----
03/28/2011 +000,227,402,237.21 ------------******** Mon
03/29/2011 +000,181,007,415.32 ------------********
03/30/2011 +000,670,089,469.30 ------------********
04/04/2011 +000,336,873,927.41 ------------******** Mon
04/05/2011 -000,031,815,631.67 ----
04/06/2011 -000,011,756,275.73 ----
04/07/2011 +002,235,163,853.48 ------------*********
04/08/2011 +000,001,314,747.36 ------------******
04/11/2011 +000,390,366,211.15 ------------******** Mon
04/13/2011 +000,216,450,469.86 ------------********
04/14/2011 +004,827,508,513.07 ------------*********
04/15/2011 +021,566,615,397.70 ------------**********
04/18/2011 +000,320,133,441.47 ------------******** Mon
04/19/2011 +000,498,845,624.51 ------------********

31,393,624,663.19 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
DUer primer on National debt

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4820788&mesg_id=4820823

[Demeter]

18. The weird popularity of real-life Quidditch

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/04/19/extreme_world_of_quidditch_harry_potter_fans_collide/index.html

...Six years ago, the game was just a cool idea hatched by a group of students at Vermont's Middlebury College; today, there are more than 700 teams on high school and college campuses worldwide. Adapted from the high-flying sport popularized in the Harry Potter books and movies, the earthbound version boasts a governing body (the International Quidditch Association); a smart, funny magazine (the Monthly Seer); a World Cup competition, which, last year, drew 20,000 spectators; and an ever-expanding base of players and fans from San Diego to Seoul.

After the brooms, the first thing one notices about the sport is just how fast and physical it can be. Here at the Western Cup, a player got hit so hard it knocked out his contact lenses. Another collided brow to brow with an opponent, resulting in a broken nose and a nasty gash that required four stitches. At the 2010 World Cup in New York City, six players went to the hospital for injuries ranging from a dislocated ankle and a concussion to cracked ribs and a broken collarbone -- and that year's Cup had nothing on 2009, injury-wise. "I think there are some players that would like to see less physical contact," says Alex Benepe, the IQA's commissioner and CEO. "I have definitely not heard players clamoring for more physical contact, I'll put it that way."...

STUFF LIKE THIS IS WHY I NEVER MADE A GOOD TREKKIE, EITHER...

[xchrom]

21. ...

:wow: the world is a funny, strange but wonderful place.

[Demeter]

40. Harry Potter and the Network of Neutrality

http://truthout.org/harry-potter-and-network-neutrality/1303023600

Who knew Harry Potter’s magic powers were for real? Okay, excuse my Muggle-like ignorance, but I didn’t believe it until I attended a session at the recent National Conference on Media Reform in Boston, organized by the non-profit organization Free Press. This particular panel was headlined "Pop Culture Warriors: How Online Fan Communities Are Organizing to Save the World."

The Harry Potter Alliance is a group of devotees worldwide who have hocus-pocused their shared love of the Potter books and movies into genuine social activism. As their website declares, they use the power of the Internet to "work with partner NGOs in alerting the world to the dangers of global warming, poverty, and genocide. Work with our partners for equal rights regardless of race, gender, and sexuality. Encourage our members to hone the magic of their creativity in endeavoring to make the world a better place."

The Alliance mobilized its fanbase to win a $250,000 grant from Chase Community Giving, beating out more than 10,000 other charities in a Facebook competition. They’ve donated more than 55,000 books to school libraries around the world, including the Mississippi Delta and Rwanda, and are helping to build a school library in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Five planeloads of supplies were sent to Haiti after last year’s earthquake. They’ve registered first-time voters and even petitioned Time Warner to make Harry Potter chocolates Fair Trade: that is, chocolate not made -- or cocoa beans harvested -- under inhumane conditions, such as starvation wages or child slavery....

[Demeter]

22. 10 Doomsday trends America can’t survive BY Paul B. Farrell

http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=F4B90BDE-69C6-11E0-8CAB-00212804637C

Doomsday Capitalism? Capitalism is killing America? Yes, that’s the message in my tenth book. “Doomsday Capitalism, 10 Self-Destructive Trends.” But you’ll never see it in print. No one, even book publishers want to read this truth: Capitalism is destroying America.

Why? Super-Rich Capitalists get rich off these macro trends. They want happy talk. Back in 2007 Vanguard founder Jack Bogle called my warnings “prescient.” But that didn’t stop the meltdown. Next time financial historians warn of a bigger meltdown; a total collapse has been the destiny of every nation for eight centuries. This time, capitalism is the saboteur.

Yale scholar Immanuel Wallerstein warns that capitalism’s at the end of a 500-year cycle: The “political struggle is over what kind of system will replace capitalism, not whether it should survive.” We cannot stop this cycle.

Yes, Super-Rich Capitalists will fight to the death. But destiny is trapped in our DNA, historians warn, and will not change. America is run by these short-term thinkers. They never learn the lessons of history. They do not want you to know that their capitalism is self-destructive, that capitalism’s cycle is in a suicidal end game, that their “mutant capitalism,” as Bogle calls it, is destroying the very soul of America’s democracy...

[DemReadingDU]

37. Another good article by Farrell

from the 2nd page of the article

"Bottom line: Underneath America’s endless political drama lie deep wounds that are widening the gap between the Super Rich and the other 99% of America, wider today than before the 1929 Crash. And now as then, we know the Super Rich don’t really care about the needs of the rest of America — witness their agenda in states like Wisconsin and Michigan, and the GOP’s new “Path to Prosperity” budget, a rush to restore failed Reaganomics policies."

[bread_and_roses]

25. How revealing: Reich pleads with "business" to stop GOP from destroying economy

On Commondreams:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/19-13

Extortion Politics: Why Won’t American Business Stop the GOP From Threatening to Blow Up the Economy?
by Robert Reich

As the government approaches its borrowing limit of $14.3 trillion, Republicans are seeking political advantage over what conditions should be attached to raising that limit.

This is a scandal — or should be. Raising the debt limit shouldn't’t be subject to party politics. Economic extortion should be out of bounds...

... No one in their right mind would threaten this... No group of legislators is entitled to threaten to crash the United States economy if its demands aren’t met...

...The biggest surprise is the silence of American business and Wall Street...

And then, the acknowledgment of whence lies the control:

...Why isn’t the Business Roundtable decrying the use of this tactic? Where are the leaders of Wall Street? Where are the corporate statesmen? They should insist this game of chicken be called off or they’ll stop the funding.

"Or they'll stop the funding."

Reich concludes that in this game of "chicken" the Ds have to hold the line on Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Medicare or their base will "revolt" - so our Corporate Overlords should rein in the Rs from bringing the entire economy down. Where does he get such optimism?

My guess? (And I fervently hope I'm wrong) They'll gut Medicaid and FS which serve the disenfranchised poor, while protecting Medicare which serves the powerful Senior voting bloc. And call it "bipartisanship" and "sharing the sacrifice."

I have a full day and probably won't be back - Happy Hunting, all, and a K&R.

[xchrom]

27. UAE's Dana Gas eyes London listing to boost stock value

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/uae-s-dana-gas-eyes-london-listing-boost-stock-value-395033.html

Dana Gas plans to list its shares in London to gain a wider investor base and boost its stock value, a senior company official said on Wednesday.

Dana, the Gulf's only listed natural gas company has seen its stock decline 14.8 percent in the last six months due to weak investor sentiment in the UAE.

"It is part of the company's plan. We are evaluating it," Nasir Akram, investor relations manager said, without giving a timeline.

[xchrom]

28. Glencore sale gives investors perfect chance to pass

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/glencore-sale-gives-investors-perfect-chance-pass-395092.html


It is the blockbuster share sale of the year. When it lists in London next month, the Swiss commodities company Glencore International AG may well be valued at more than $60bn. It will be too big to ignore.

But like any initial public offering, it raises a crucial question: If the owners of the business are selling, is this the right time to be buying?

The answer is no. Glencore is essentially a trading company. It has a lot more in common with an investment bank, a hedge-fund manager or a private-equity firm than it does with a mining conglomerate. And the one thing traders are supposed to be good at is timing the market, so they are more likely to know the right moment to sell shares to unsuspecting buyers.

Glencore will be a fantastic business one day. Don’t believe any of the warnings about the commodities boom being over. It still has a long way to run. But the time to buy the shares will be after all the hype has subsided -- not when it is at its peak.

[Demeter]

30. Top "US" Corporations Outsourced More Than 2.4 Million American Jobs Over the Last Decade

http://www.truthout.org/top-us-corporations-outsourced-more-24-million-american-jobs-over-last-decade/1303196400

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Corporate America certainly isn’t doing its part to help bring America out of its economic malaise. The paper surveyed employment data by some of the nation’s largest corporations — General Electric, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Chevron, Cisco, Intel, Stanley Works, Merck, United Technologies, and Oracle — and found that they cut their workforces by 2.9 million people over the last decade while hiring 2.4 million people overseas.

The paper notes that this is actually a sharp reversal from trends in the late 1990s, when these major companies were creating more jobs in the United States than overseas. Yet by 2001, things took a turn for the worse, and these corporations have been adding more jobs abroad than at home...




...the economic recession has had little impact on Corporate America’s patriotism. In fact, in 2009, representatives of many of the nation’s most powerful corporations attended the “2009 Strategic Outsourcing Conference” to talk about how to send American jobs overseas. Conference organizers polled the more than 70 senior executives who attended the conference about the behavior of their companies in response to the recession. The majority said their companies increased outsourcing in response to the downturn, with only 9 percent saying they terminated some outsourcing agreements...Another question asked of the executives found that the top reason for companies to outsource was to “reduce operating costs” (46 percent of respondents). Only 12 percent of respondents said their reason for outsourcing was “access to world class capabilities.” This means companies are outsourcing to save themselves money, not make better products.

Unfortunately, for some of these companies, sending American jobs overseas isn’t enough. They also want to bring the profits back into the United States with as little tax liability as possible. Cisco Systems, which had 26 percent of its workforce abroad at the start of the decade but 46 percent of its workforce abroad by the end, is currently involved in a lobbying campaign titled “Win America” calling for a tax repatriation holiday that would let big corporations “bring money they have stashed overseas back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate.” A similar tax break in 2004 actually increased the amount of money companies store overseas.

[Demeter]

31. The Stubborn Myth of Expansionary Contraction by: Paul Krugman

http://www.truthout.org/stubborn-myth-expansionary-contraction/1303196400

Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, has been writing lately in his economics blog, Rortybomb, about American conservatives’ continuing insistence that slashing government spending is actually expansionary, as embodied in a recent report from Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee.

As he says, it’s a remarkable thing: the empirical case for expansionary austerity has collapsed on examination, but the doctrine lives on regardless.

One thing Mike fails to note is that another recent paper on deficit reduction from the American Enterprise Institute, which is cited by that J.E.C. study in a way that might make you think that it supports the case for expansionary austerity, actually never provides any evidence to that effect; it focuses only on deficit reduction as an end in itself. In fact, it comes close to conceding defeat on the issue: “While the tendency for spending cuts to be more effective at driving down debt levels is widely accepted, there is a great deal more controversy concerning the impact of successful consolidation on GDP growth. Although empirical studies have found many consolidations coupled with expansion, the degree to which consolidation drives rather than merely accompanies expansion is disputed.”

Not that this will make any difference to the Republicans’ position, of course.

It’s notable that the J.E.C. report also blithely cites Canada and Sweden in the 1990s as demonstrations of its case, even though both have in fact been extensively debunked.

DETAILS AT LINK

[kickysnana]

32. I am leaving for a couple days...

to go see the on my good doctor in another state who is keeping me alive. Death panels came for Lyme patients about 1994.*

I have been ever so grateful for the information and camaraderie
I have found here. We all hate "Emperors new clothes" here and get shunned a lot because of that. But so much eventually makes it to the surface I am betting it is because we just won't shut up or look the other way.

Watch out for the bears and see you on the flip flop.
===============================================================
(What a successful disinformation campaign looks like at the federal level regarding heath care.)

*Computer scientist researched her own condition, Lyme disease
By Pohla Smith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania

April 11, 2011
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11101/1138165-114.stm

When doctors proved unable to cure her Lyme disease,
computer scientist Jennifer Mankoff did what many people do
when they're chronically ill: She went online to see what
medical organizations had to say about it.

There the Carnegie Mellon University associate professor in
the Human-Computer Interaction Institute found conflicting
information and other users as befuddled by that as she was.

Full story:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11101/1138165-114.stm

Letters to the Editor:
http://biz.post-gazette.com/contact/comments_form.aspx?ID=40

[Demeter]

35. Best Wishes for Healing

[xchrom]

43. Please be Well. Nt

[hamerfan]

45. Best thought and wishes,

kickysnana. Be good to yourself.

[Roland99]

46. Come back soon and fully recovered!

We'll keep the coffee warm....

[AnneD]

55. We always have plenty....

:donut: here for you. Best wishes and a safe journey. :grouphug:

[Demeter]

33. Unequal Protection: Jefferson Versus the Corporate Aristocracy

http://www.truthout.org/unequal-protection-jefferson-versus-corporate-aristocracy/1303196400

Although the first shots were fired in 1775 and the Declaration was signed in 1776, the war against a transnational corporation and the nation that used it to extract wealth from its colonies had just begun. These colonists, facing the biggest empire and military force in the world, fought for five more years—the war didn’t end until General Charles Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781. Even then some resistance remained; the last loyalists and the British left New York starting in April 1782, and the treaty that formally ended the war was signed in Paris in September 1783.

The first form of government, the Articles of Confederation, was written in 1777 and endorsed by the states in 1781. It was subsequently replaced by our current Constitution, as has been documented in many books. In this chapter we take a look at the visions that motivated what Alexis de Tocqueville would later call America’s experiment with democracy in a republic. One of its most conspicuous features was the lack of vast wealth or any sort of corporation that resembled the East India Company—until the early 1800s...Very few people are aware that Thomas Jefferson considered freedom from monopolies to be one of the fundamental human rights. But it was very much a part of his thinking during the time when the Bill of Rights was born...In fact, most of the Founders never imagined a huge commercial empire sweeping over their land, reminiscent of George R. T. Hewes’s “ships of an enormous burthen” with “immense quantities” of goods. Rather, most of them saw an America made up of people like themselves: farmers.

AND THAT'S THE BIG GLARING HOLE IN OUR CONSTITUTION...

The first large privately owned corporation to rise up in the new United States during the presidential terms of Jefferson (1801 to 1809) and Madison (1809 to 1817) was the Second Bank of the United States. By 1830 the bank was one of the largest and most powerful private corporations and, to extend its own power, was even sponsoring its directors and agents as candidates for political office.

In President Andrew Jackson’s annual message to Congress on December 3, 1833, he explicitly demanded that the bank cease its political activities or receive a corporate death sentence—revocation of its corporate charter...

[Po_d Mainiac]

36. Wunner if this played into UT's decision to hold hard?

While the University of Texas made headlines over the weekend for disclosing it had taken delivery of $1 billion in gold (albeit in a Comex warehouse in New York), another Texas fund is making waves today however for all the wrong reasons. As Bloomberg announces, "The Teacher Retirement System of Texas needs an annual return of 21 percent in the year ending Aug. 31 to maintain an 80 percent funded ratio, the level actuaries consider adequate to cover liabilities, said its deputy director."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/texas-teachers-109-billion-pension-fund-needs-whopping-21-return-current-year-preserve-adequ

[Demeter]

38. BP's (FIRST) Secret Deepwater Blowout

http://www.truthout.org/node/1239

Only 17 months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.

You've heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it's because BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.

The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP's Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea....

[Demeter]

39. "Spillionaires": Profiteering in the Wake of the BP Oil Spill

http://truthout.org/spillionaires-profiteering-wake-bp-oil-spill/1302678000

...Some people profiteered from the spill by charging BP outrageous rates for cleanup. Others profited from BP claims money, handed out in arbitrary ways. So many people cashed in that they earned nicknames -- "spillionaires" or "BP rich." Meanwhile, others hurt by the spill ended up getting comparatively little.

In the end, BP's attempt to make things right -- spending more than $16 billion so far, mostly on claims of damage and cleanup -- created new divisions and even new wrongs. Because the federal government ceded control over spill cleanup spending to BP, it's impossible to know for certain what that money accomplished, or what exactly was done...

[Demeter]

41. REPORT: In 12 Years, Income For Richest 400 Americans Quadruples, Tax Rate Nearly Halved By Judd Leg

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/18/tax-disparity-chart/

New data released by the IRS reveals that, over a period of 12 years, tax rates for the richest 400 Americans were effectively cut in half. In 1995, the richest 400 Americans paid, on average, 29.93% of their income in federal taxes. In 2007, the last year for which the IRS has released data, the richest 400 Americans paid just 16.63%.

In 1995, just 12 of the 400 richest Americans paid an effective tax rat of between zero and 15%. By 2007, that number skyrocketed to over 150. The massive reduction is due to both Bush-era tax reductions for the wealthy and the aggressive exploitation of tax dodges and shelters. (For details, check out this report from BusinessWeek.)

As their tax rates plummeted, the total income of the richest 400 Americans skyrocketed. In 1995, the combined income of the richest 400 was just over $6 billion. By 2007, the combined income of the richest 400 was almost $23 billion.

If the richest 400 Americans simply paid the same effective rate in 2007 as they did in 1995, the government would have collected over $3 billion in additional revenue. Some millionaires agree that the reduction has been unfair and have formed a group, Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, to demand higher taxes.

GRAPHIC PORN AT LINK

[Demeter]

42. You know, I've had about as much Bad News as I can stand, Already

My stamina isn't what it used to be---or the badness is so much worse---

See you all later...after tonight's (second) board meeting....

[Roland99]

44. Index futures - Grab the oxygen masks again...heading up up up in the air

S&P 500 1,327.10 +18.50 1.41%
DOW 12,370 +144.00 1.18%
NASDAQ 2,341 +29.75 1.29%

[xchrom]

49. Bipartisan support builds for slicing corporate tax rate

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-corporate-tax-20110420,0,4761108.story

Reporting from Washington—

U.S. corporations have enjoyed a two-year bull run on Wall Street. They are sitting on a record amount of cash and are back to paying bonuses that are the envy of executives around the world.

And the icing on the cake for many of them might be just around the corner: a tax cut that has bipartisan support in Congress.

As part of their budget plan passed last week, House Republicans want to cut the corporate tax rate to 25% from 35%. The Obama administration and many Democrats also are looking to slice the current rate, but not as much.

Supporters of the corporate tax cuts say they're needed to make U.S. companies more competitive with their foreign counterparts, and the administration and House Republicans say they want to offset rate cuts by eliminating unspecified loopholes and tax breaks.

[xchrom]

56. Congress looks for corporate-tax fairness

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2014818039_biztaxes20.html

WASHINGTON — U.S. corporations have enjoyed a two-year bull run on Wall Street. They are sitting on a record amount of cash and again are paying bonuses that are the envy of executives around the world.

And the icing on the cake for many might be just around the corner: a tax cut that has bipartisan support in Congress.

As part of their budget plan passed last week, House Republicans want to cut the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent. The Obama administration and many Democrats also are looking to slice the current rate, but not as much.

Supporters of corporate tax cuts said they're needed to make U.S. companies more competitive with their foreign counterparts, and the administration and House Republicans said they want to offset rate cuts by eliminating unspecified loopholes and breaks.

[xchrom]

51. Fewer California homeowners received default notices in first quarter

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-foreclosures-20110420,0,5328099.story

California's foreclosure crisis eased significantly during the first three months of the year, with lenders pushing the lowest number of homeowners into the formal repossession process since just before the start of the credit crunch.

Banks filed 68,239 notices of default on California residents during the first quarter, San Diego research firm DataQuick Information Systems Inc. said Tuesday. Such notices mark the start of foreclosure, and borrowers receiving such notices during the first quarter were on average six months behind on their payments.

That first-quarter tally represents a 2.2% decline from the previous quarter and a 15.8% drop from the same time in 2010, DataQuick said.

The drop was an indication that the worst of the foreclosure mess is probably over and a much-feared second wave of bank-owned properties is unlikely, analysts said. Instead, foreclosures will probably remain a considerable part of the California market for years as the mortgage industry and government officials continue to sort through the aftermath of the bust.

[xchrom]

52. 2011 motorcycle sales increase after two years of declines

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/04/2011-motorcycle-sales.html

Motorcycle manufacturers have finally ended their two-year sales slump. Purchases of on-highway motorcycles increased 7% in the first quarter of 2011 versus the same quarter a year earlier, according to a report released Wednesday by the Motorcycle Industry Council, a trade group in Irvine that represents power sports manufacturers.

[xchrom]

54. Fear and loathing in the House of Saud

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD21Ak01.html

Early last week, US President Barack Obama sent a letter to Saudi King Abdullah, delivered in person in Riyadh by US National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon. This happened less than a week after Pentagon head Robert Gates spent a full 90 minutes face to face with the king.

These two moves represented the final seal of approval of a deal struck between Washington and Riyadh even before the voting of UN Security Council resolution 1973 (see Exposed: the Saudi-US Libya deal, Apr 1, Asia Times Online). Essentially, the Obama administration will not say a word about how the House of Saud conducts its ruthless repression of pro-democracy protests in Bahrain and across the Persian Gulf. No ''humanitarian'' operations. No R2P (''responsibility to protect''). No no-fly or no-drive zones.

Progressives of the world take note: the US-Saudi counter-revolution against the Great 2011 Arab Revolt is now official.

[Demeter]

57. Obama fights back against S&P move

The Obama administration has fought back against Standard & Poor’s decision to lower the US credit rating outlook, arguing that there is no danger of a downgrade and that a deficit reduction deal in Congress is within reach

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/EB8122/WLNI0Y/4VXHZ/WLRTJ0/WLROBU/W1/t?a1=2011&a2=4&a3=20

[xchrom]

62. i don't even know what to say about all of tha s&p down grade and the

admins reaction.

the s&p move seems some how to be tied up with goldman's and -- seriously -- obama's insiders should have seen it coming.

[xchrom]

58. Hot market for rentals inspires twin towers

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014818298_lenora20.html

Seattle developer Pine Street Group plans to break ground within days on a high-rise apartment complex in the Denny Triangle that would be the biggest new downtown construction project in 3 ½ years.

The two-tower, 24-story Sixth & Lenora Apartments is the latest — and largest — entrant in what has become a race among developers to meet growing demand for in-city rental housing that they expect won't abate soon.

At 654 units, the project would be the city's second-largest market-rate apartment complex, said Mike Scott of research firm Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors.

Matt Griffin, Pine Street's managing partner, said the apartments will target young people who work for such nearby employers as Amazon.com and the Gates Foundation — "people who want to walk to work. We truly believe this is a place people could live without owning a car."

[Demeter]

93. Because we all long to be confined to 2-3 heavily-urbanized city blocks...

JHC! We are people, not guinea pigs!

I grew up in Detroit--the west side, practically Dearborn. The Housing stock was older than I, post WW2. The buses came by every 10-15 minutes, the sidewalks were safe to walk day or evening ( I wouldn't recommend letting kids out after 8 Pm anywhere), it was working class. There were small yards, parks and playgrounds, EVEN a local grocery, pharmacy, etc.

AND YET--One needed private transportation to get the family around, to bring the groceries home, to transport the babies and the elderly and the sick, TO GET TO WORK....

THE IDEA THAT ONE CAN LIVE WITHOUT A CAR IS A VERY LIMITED, NON-PRODUCTIVE FORM OF LIFE. THIS ISN'T EUROPE! THINGS ARE TOO FAR APART.

[xchrom]

103. growing up in peoria -- my family's home was on a direct bus route

and there were two small groceries within walking distance.

you needed the car for a trip to krogers -- which was few blocks further on.

dad car pooled to caterpillar.

i admire the nostalgic notion of all that seattle wants to do -- but if you went to peoria today you couldn't do that.

everything went to the suburbs -- there is no dowtown -- except for bars and restaurants vying for space along the illinois river.

[Demeter]

59. Nato can fulfil Libya mission, says Biden

Joe Biden, US vice-president, has declared Nato can fulfil its mission in Libya without US help, arguing that Washington has far more important strategic concerns elsewhere, particularly Egypt

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/EB8122/WLNI0Y/4VXHZ/WLRTJ0/C5CID9/W1/t?a1=2011&a2=4&a3=20

LEAVING SARKOZY TO TWIST SLOWLY ON A ROPE OF HIS OWN FASHIONING....

[Demeter]

86. West must set limits on Libya engagement

----------

The western allies are in a fine Libyan pickle. The real mission of the British and French military “advisers” being dispatched to the rebel camp is to explore what the west might do to get out of it. The declared objectives of their national leaderships are much larger than the means available to achieve them. It was because defence chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic foresaw this that they were reluctant to intervene in the first place.

David Cameron, British prime minister, was much influenced in his decision to lead a charge against Muammer Gaddafi by memories of alleged western pusillanimity
in Bosnia in the 1990s. Thousands of civilians were massacred while the European powers flinched from action without US participation, which Bill Clinton was slow to sanction.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/9ULF66/D4A8QC/FDFZE/HD7I8J/BM0E2H/ID/t?a1=2011&a2=4&a3=20

[xchrom]

60. Paccar's 1Q profit, sales climb on demand for trucks

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014813038_paccar20.html

Bellevue-based Paccar reported Tuesday that its first-quarter profit almost tripled from last year as economic recovery — particularly in North America and Europe — boosted the need to transport goods.

The truck maker had a profit of $193.3 million, or 53 cents a share, in the quarter ended March 31, about a 180 percent jump from $68.3 million, or 19 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Sales and revenue from financial services increased 47 percent to $3.28 billion from $2.23 billion last year.

The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a profit of 49 cents a share on $3.01 billion in revenue.

[Demeter]

61. Cameron dismisses idea of Brown at IMF

The prime minister says his predecessor is not the ‘most appropriate person’ to lead the body because he would not admit that the UK had a ’debt problem’

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/EB8122/WLNI0Y/4VXHZ/WLRTJ0/UUS8BO/W1/t?a1=2011&a2=4&a3=20

WHAT ARE THE ODDS GORDON BROWN ENDS UP RUNNING THE IMF, EVERYONE?

[xchrom]

63. we live in times with out irony. nt

[Demeter]

64. Banks cleared in Parmalat market-rigging case

A Milan court clears Citigroup, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley of market-rigging in a trial concerning the 2003 collapse of the Italian food group

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/KC2844/EWZTLU/DXJ2Y/8A8AXZ/IYMQQW/MQ/t?a1=2011&a2=4&a3=19

THAT MUST HAVE BEEN EXPENSIVE...

[xchrom]

65. 18 of the Best Organic and Fair Trade Chocolates

http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/latest/fair-trade-chocolate-organic-chocolate#fbIndex1

Chocolate -- how we love thee! Unfortunately, conventional chocolate production isn't good for the Earth, fueling wars in Africa, engulfing rain forests, spreading toxic pesticides and paying out meager wages (especially to child workers).

But luckily for us chocoholics there is a sweet story as well, with organic and fair trade chocolate becoming much more widely available, and supporting sustainable agriculture and worker health and rights.

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/latest/fair-trade-chocolate-organic-chocolate#ixzz1K4JxKxUd

[xchrom]

66. Is the U.S. Ready to Retool Regulation of Suspect Chemicals?

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/safe-chemicals-act-2011

Everyday, the average American adult uses nine personal care products containing roughly 125 different ingredients, according to health and environmental watchdogs. Normally, this wouldn't raise so many concerns, but they say we live in a country that lacks a proper system to regulate chemicals and so unhealthy substances may be found in the products we use.

In an attempt to address this issue, Sens. Frank Lautenberg, Barbara Boxer, Amy Klobuchar and Charles Schumer — all Democrats — last week introduced the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011, an updated and revised version of Sen. Lautenberg's failed 2010 bill.

The Safe Chemicals Act is designed to replace the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which has resulted in the banning of just nine toxic ingredients since it was passed in 1976.

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/safe-chemicals-act-2011#ixzz1K4KbtAjS

[Demeter]

67. Egypt: Mubaraks had wealth beyond their means

http://www.13wham.com/news/world/story/Egypt-Mubaraks-had-wealth-beyond-their-means/PZUFYxBhRkC2agGSZR2D1w.cspx?rss=105

Egypt's financial oversight body says the former president of Egypt and his family have amassed wealth beyond their means in the form of properties and bank accounts.

The state news agency said Monday the agency found that the 82-year old former president and his two sons and wife own several properties around Egypt, including luxury apartments, and palaces, as well as empty land plots and valuable farm land.

The report said the family also has numerous bank accounts in foreign and local currencies. The elder son, Alaa, is apparently the richest, followed by Gamal, who was groomed by his father to be president. Mubarak, the father, has the least wealth, according to the office.

Mubarak's sons are in detention pending investigation, while the elder Mubarak has been hospitalized.

[xchrom]

73. did any of them express surprise? nt

[Demeter]

68. Obama Settles on 2012 Campaign Slogan "I'm Not as Bad as Palin" By Mike Whitney

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27915.htm

Barack Obama's prospects for reelection are much worse than his handlers think. There's a big opening for the GOP to retake the White House in 2012 and implement the final phase of their nightmarish vision for America. Let's not kid ourselves, we could be facing a very dark period ahead. A Republican president would increase the repression at home while expanding wars abroad. He would claim that his authority could not be challenged due to the ongoing the threat of terrorism. He would strong-arm the congress to rubber-stamp his economic agenda that would push the country back into deep recession. He would use his power to eliminate his enemies and silence his critics. It would be G.W. Bush all over again, only worse.

All of this could have been avoided if Obama had just followed through on a few of his campaign promises. But now it's too late. He may think that he can win-back his former supporters by throwing them a bone in the last year of his term, but it will (not) work. The damage is done. No amount of posturing or grandiloquence will close Guantanamo, stop the killing of women and children in Afghanistan, bring the troops home from Iraq, provide due process for terror suspects, or end the spying on American citizens. I'm not saying Obama is a bad man, but he is thoroughly unprincipled. And because that matters to many of his supporters, his chances for reelection are pretty slim....


The fact that Obama is "not as bad" as Sarah Palin is not a good enough reason to vote for him. He needs to prove that he can keep his word and work for change. He hasn't done that. He's never even tried.

[Demeter]

71. Waiting for the Spark By Ralph Nader

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27926.htm

What could start a popular resurgence in this country against the abuses of concentrated, avaricious corporatism? Imagine the arrogance of passing on to already cheated working people and the jobless enormous corporate losses? This is achieved through government bailouts and tax escapes.

History teaches us that the spark usually is smaller than expected and of a nature that is wholly unpredictable or even unimaginable. But if the dry tinder is all around, as many deprivations and polls reveal, the spark, no matter how small, can turn into a raging inferno...


The spark can come from a recurrent sequence of abuses that strike a special chord of deeply felt injustice. Or it could be a unique episode or bullying that tolls the feeling “enough already” throughout the land. Such sparks cannot be manufactured; the power to arouse and break people’s routines is spontaneous.

When that moment comes, millions of Americans whose self-respect and keen sense of wrong will remind them precisely why our Constitution begins with “We the People” and not “We the Corporations”. They will realize the necessity for a Jeffersonian revolution.

[Demeter]

74. Max Keiser: "Let's Hang Some Bankers"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktmWeynsd-Y&feature=player_embedded

[Po_d Mainiac]

78. And as EW points out...some bankers ain't hung that well

[Fuddnik]

76. We need that Chauncey Gardiner guy!

Last night, I was watching one of my old favorites, from Netflix, "Being There".

In the closing scenes, all of the bigwig pall bearers at the funeral are talking about how to dump the President, who's giving the eulogy.

"Let's make that Chauncey Gardiner our nominee. He's our only chance to hold the presidency".

I wonder what powerful men are whispering to each other nowadays?

[Demeter]

79. I don't know what we need

But I know what we could do without.

We had "Chauncey Gardiner" in the form of Ronald Reagan. And then again in W.

[xchrom]

69. Obama's bane: High gas prices

http://www.salon.com/news/us_economy/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/04/19/are_gas_prices_hurting_obama


Obama's bane: High gas prices
AP/Carolyn Kaster
President Obama

President Obama's approval rating is sinking again and the primary reason why appears to be perceptions of the U.S. economy. 44 percent of Americans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, think the country is headed in the wrong direction. That's the highest percentage since March 2009, when the Great Recession was near its absolute nadir.

[xchrom]

72. How to think about Tea Party economics

http://www.salon.com/news/economics/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/04/18/how_to_think_about_tea_party_economics

The rise of the Tea Party and the huge Republican victory in last year's midterm elections affected more than just the political calculus in the United States. In the realm of economics, ideas that once were relegated to the minority, or consigned to the crackpot cellar, are suddenly getting full exposure in the bright of the day.

Ron Paul, devoted fan of the gold standard and sworn enemy of the Federal Reserve, is now the chairman of the House subcommittee on monetary policy. One presidential candidate, Tim Pawlenty, warns against the injection of "fiat money" into the economy, while another, Michele Bachmann, has introduced legislation intended to prevent any foreign currency from becoming "legal tender" in the United States. Legislators in a dozen or more states have introduced bills aiming to legalize payments of debts in gold or silver, and there's even talk about purposefully refusing to raise the debt ceiling, a heretical and potentially disastrous notion that no previous generation of politicians has ever seriously considered.

[Demeter]

80. Too Bad Those Blood-Sucking Ideas Don't Vanish in the Sunlight

like other vampires.

[xchrom]

82. ...

:spray:

[Demeter]

85. Sorry, The Kid's on a Vampire Kick

She got the "Angel" series for her birthday...

[Demeter]

77. +156? Do My Eyes Deceive Me?

Did the Last Trump sound?

[Demeter]

83. Fund Sues Big Banks, Alleging Libor Harm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704740204576273343190536256.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

A Vienna hedge fund alleges that it was harmed in the derivatives market when some of the world's biggest banks manipulated a key benchmark interest rate, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York federal court...

Twelve banks worldwide sued for manipulating Libor

A European asset manager has sued one dozen U.S., European and Japanese banks, accusing them of conspiring to manipulate Libor, a benchmark used to set interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars of securities....

Twelve banks face US Libor proceedings

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8461720/Twelve-banks-face-US-Libor-proceedings.html

...The 12 banks accused of manipulating the rate are Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan, Lloyds Banking Group, Norinchukin Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and West LB...Barclays, along with Citigroup, Bank of America and West LB were also reported to have received subpoenas as part of the investigation. West LB later denied this, although none of the other banks have since commented on the regulatory investigation.


SOUNDS LIKE IT'S GOING TO BE THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY---MAYBE THE BANKS WILL SETTLE OUT OF COURT...SEEMS TO HAVE WORKED IN ITALY....

[xchrom]

87. Some real nasty business could see the light of day here. Nt

[Demeter]

94. Just Business As Usual--Nothing to See Here

there won't be even ten lashes with a wet noodle, by my estimate...

[Demeter]

84. How Socialists Built America By John Nichols

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27907.htm



This article is adapted from The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition… Socialism, published in March by Verso.

April 16, 2011 "The Nation" -- If there’s one constant in the elite national discourse of the moment, it is the claim that America was founded as a capitalist country and that socialism is a dangerous foreign import that, despite our unwarranted faith in free trade, must be barred at the border. This most conventional “wisdom”—increasingly accepted at least until the recent grassroots mobilizations in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Maine—has held that everything public is inferior to everything private, that corporations are always good and unions always bad, that progressive taxation is inherently evil and that the best economic model is the one that allows the wealthy to gobble up as much of the Republic as they choose before anything trickles down to the great mass of Americans. Rush Limbaugh informs us regularly that proposals to tax people as rich as he is for the purpose of providing healthcare for kids and jobs for the unemployed are “antithetical” to the nation’s original intent and that Barack Obama’s reforms are “destroying this country as it was founded.”

...Obama really is avoiding consideration of socialist, or even mildly social democratic, responses to the problems that confront him. He took the single-payer option off the table at the start of the healthcare debate, rejecting the approach that in other countries has provided quality care to all citizens at lower cost. His supposedly “socialist” response to the collapse of the auto industry was to give tens of billions in bailout funding to GM and Chrysler, which used the money to lay off thousands of workers and then relocate several dozen plants abroad—an approach about as far as a country can get from the social democratic model of using public investment and industrial policy to promote job creation and community renewal. And when BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well exploded, threatening the entire Gulf Coast, instead of putting the Army Corps of Engineers and other government agencies in charge of the crisis, Obama left it to the corporation that had lied about the extent of the spill, had made decisions based on its bottom line rather than environmental and human needs, and had failed at even the most basic tasks. So we should take the president at his word when he says he’s acting on free-market principles. The problem, of course, is that Obama’s rigidity in this regard is leading him to dismiss ideas that are often sounder than private-sector fixes. Borrowing ideas and approaches from socialists would not make Obama any more of a socialist than Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower. All these presidential predecessors sampled ideas from Marxist tracts or borrowed from Socialist Party platforms so frequently that the New York Times noted in a 1954 profile the faith of an aging Norman Thomas that he “had made a great contribution in pioneering ideas that have now won the support of both major parties”—ideas like “Social Security, public housing, public power developments, legal protection for collective bargaining and other attributes of the welfare state.” The fact is that many of the men who occupied the Oval Office before Obama knew that implementation of sound socialist or social democratic ideas did not put them at odds with the American experiment or the Constitution.

The point here is not to defend socialism. What we should be defending is history—American history, with its rich and vibrant hues, some of them red. The past should be consulted not merely for anecdotes or factoids but for perspective on the present. Such a perspective empowers Americans who seek a robust debate, one that samples from a broad ideological spectrum—an appropriate endeavor in a country where Tom Paine imagined citizens who, “by casting their eye over a large field, take in likewise a large intellectual circuit, and thus approaching nearer to an acquaintance with the universe, their atmosphere of thought is extended, and their liberality fills a wider space.”...Truman did not cower at the mention of the word “socialism,” which in those days was distinguished in the minds of most Americans from Soviet Stalinism, with which the president—a mean cold warrior—was wrangling. Nor did Truman, who counted among his essential allies trade unionists like David Dubinsky, Jacob Potofsky and Walter Reuther, all of whom had been connected with socialist causes and in many cases the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas, rave about the evils of social democracy. Rather, he joked that “Out of the great progress of this country, out of our great advances in achieving a better life for all, out of our rise to world leadership, the Republican leaders have learned nothing. Confronted by the great record of this country, and the tremendous promise of its future, all they do is croak, ‘socialism.’”


* * *

Again and again at critical junctures in our national journey, socialist thinkers and organizers, as well as candidates and officials, have prodded government in a progressive direction. It may be true, as historian Patrick Allitt suggests, that “millions of Americans, including many of these critics {of the Obama administration}, are ardent supporters of socialism, even if they don’t realize it and even if they don’t actually use the word” to describe public services that are “organized along socialist lines,” like schools and highways. In fact, contemporary socialists and Tea Partiers might actually find common (if uncomfortable) ground with Allitt’s assertion that “socialism as an organizational principle is alive and well here just as it is throughout the industrialized world”—even as they would disagree on whether that’s a good thing. Programs “organized along socialist lines” do not make a country socialist. But America has always been and should continue to be informed by socialist ideals and a socialist critique of public policy....Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy were not socialists. But the nation benefited from their borrowing of socialist and social democratic ideas. Barack Obama is certainly not a socialist. But he, and the nation he leads, would be well served by a similar borrowing from the people who once imagined Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the War on Poverty.

[Hotler]

89. Kicking. Good morning everyone n/t

[Roland99]

90. 11am - DJIA +193. Oil over $110/bbl

Dow 12,460 +193 +1.58%
Nasdaq 2,801 +56 +2.05%
S&P 500 1,331 +19 +1.43%
GlobalDow 2,190 +44 +2.03%
Gold 1,504 +9 +0.59%
Oil 110.27 +1.99 +1.84%

[Pale Blue Dot]

91. S&P Now Down For The Year Again Indexed For Plunge In Dollar

As silver is about to break $45 any second, we thought we'd take a minute to show the change in the S&P in real terms, i.e. adjusted for the plunge in the dollar. When one compares the YTD change in the S&P compared to the YTD change in DXY, one gets... the following. To all those who hold stocks: congratulations - you have only lost 0.18% in purchasing power year to date. To everyone else: we can only hope Goldman's next downgrade of crude is more effective. That, or take a bicycle to work.



http://www.zerohedge.com/article/sp-now-down-year-again-indexed-plunge-dollar

[Po_d Mainiac]

92. +1........Considering that the markets are priced

on 'forward' looking earnings and not current PE's, the net loss could (and likely will be) worse.

[Demeter]

95. NRG will no longer invest in STP expansion

NRG Energy stopped all spending on the South Texas Project nuclear expansion and will write off its investment in the face of deeply diminished prospects for the project since Japan's worst-ever nuclear accident.

“The project is not dead,” CEO David Crane said Tuesday, “but it's not moving forward at this point, and to be frank, under the current circumstances, the reality of it moving forward in the foreseeable future is not high.”

The company plans to record a first-quarter pre-tax charge of about $481 million from Nuclear Innovation North America, its joint venture with Toshiba, NRG said. Toshiba funded $150 million of that. NINA will continue to seek an operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Crane said, as well as a federal loan guarantee from the Energy Department.

He called that decision “smart asset management,” saying he could see a time when the project near Bay City, with a license and loan guarantee in hand, will be attractive to new investors. Toshiba, which holds a 12 percent stake in NINA, will take over the costs of pursuing the NRC license. But Crane acknowledged any roadblocks in that process could cause Toshiba to drop its funding.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/energy/article/NRG-will-no-longer-invest-in-STP-expansion-1343841.php#ixzz1K5X6iXF0

[Demeter]

96. Timothy Geithner moves to allay market concerns about S&P report on U.S. credit rating

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/04/geithner-deficit-credit-rating-standard-and-poors-report-debt-limit.html

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner took to the business airwaves to try to ease market concerns about the U.S. fiscal situation in the wake of Monday's warning from Standard & Poor's that the nation's AAA credit rating was in danger.

Geithner, one of the Obama administration's point people on the issue, told CNBC and Bloomberg TV on Tuesday that he was optimistic that the White House and congressional Republicans would bridge their sharp differences and agree on a way to reduce the huge budget deficit.

"What I would say to people around the world and to Americans, to businessmen, to investors around the world, that the president recognizes and the leadership in the Congress recognize that we have to start to bring these deficits down," Geithner told CNBC. "Now, we can do that. That's within our capacity to do."

Standard & Poor's said there was a one in three chance that it would lower the nation's AAA rating because the government might not be able to address its mounting budget deficits. Asked about the S&P report, which rattled the markets Monday, Geithner said he disagreed with the credit rating agency's negative assessment...

[Demeter]

97. Geithner To S&P: Look At Our Borrowing Costs

http://blogs.forbes.com/steveschaefer/2011/04/19/geithner-to-sp-look-at-our-borrowing-costs/

...in an interview with Bloomberg Television Tuesday, when he said that despite the S&P move he has “absolutely not” had to reassure any foreign buyers of Treasury securities of the credit worthiness of the U.S. government. As Geithner told Bloomberg’s Peter Cook (video below):

Look at the price at which we borrow. There is a lot of confidence. and that confidence is justified that America is getting stronger….We have to make sure we take on these challenges and start to address them. We have to earn that confidence every day.

Much has been made dating back to the bank bailouts and federal stimulus package about what will happen if big lenders like China stop buying Treasuries. Judging by the rates on the 10-year note – actually below where it was when S&P revised its outlook at less than 3.36% — that is not yet happening.

Geithner was not fully sanguine about the state of the federal finances though, acknowledging S&P’s notion that tough compromises need to be made on Capitol Hill to wrangle control of government coffers and meet multi-year targets on saving and deficit reduction.

While the progression from a negative outlook to a rating cut is hardly immediate, it is interesting to ponder what a loss of the U.S. government’s AAA rating would mean for other borrowers. In September, RBS’ Rich Tang, head of the firm’s fixed-income sales in the Americas, suggested to me that it would be inconsistent to downgrade the U.S. without then extending that cut to municipalities or corporate bonds that are taxed or regulated by the federal government. (See “Rating Agencies Walk Credibility Tightrope.”)

[Demeter]

98. The Rich Aren’t Getting Richer (WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? BS ALERT!)

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/264296

Are the rich really getting richer? That’s a pretty standard line from the Left, a lament usually cited in the course of calling for higher tax rates. Robert Reich is particularly fond of this mode of attack: A recent post of his was headlined, “For 70 years, the wealthy have grown wealthier.” Professor Reich probably doesn’t write his own headlines, but it’s a common enough sentiment for him, and his prose is rich with phrases such as “the super-rich got even wealthier this year.”...He isn’t alone in employing this mode. Take this from an April 7 Salon article: “And surely the rich don’t need that 25 percent top rate in the way poor folks need programs like TANF and seniors need Medicare — about 90 percent of all American income gains since the 1970s have gone to the top 10 percent of earners.”

This is not true.

The numbers generally cited in support of this argument do not actually tell us much about what has happened to the incomes of wealthy households over time. That’s because the people who are in the top bracket today are not the people who were in the top bracket last year. There’s a good deal of socioeconomic mobility in the United States — more than you’d think. Our dear, dear friends at the IRS keep track of actual households (boy, do they ever!), and sometimes the Treasury publishes data about what has happened to them. For instance, among those who in 1996 were in the very highest income group isolated for study — the top 0.01 percent — 75 percent were in a lower income group by 2005. The median real income of super-rich households went down, not up. The rich got poorer. Among actual households, income grew proportionally more for those who started off in the low-income groups than those that began in high-income groups.

That wasn’t even an unusually good decade in terms of mobility. During the horrible, horrible Reagan years, as National Review noted back in 1991, the average income growth for actual households in the lowest income bracket was 77 percent over the course of a decade; income growth for actual households in the top group was only 5 percent during those same years. Of those who were in the poorest fifth in 1979, 85.8 percent had moved to a higher bracket by 1988, and 14.7 percent of them moved to the top bracket — which is to say, the poor of 1979 were more likely to be the rich of 1988 than to be the poor of 1988. The poor got richer, and some of them got a lot richer. Reagan’s record has not been matched — Ronald Reagan was the champion of the poor, as it turns out — but economic mobility has been pretty stable for the past 20 years: About 50 percent of U.S. households move from one income group to a different one every decade, and actual households initially in the low-income groups see proportionally more income growth than do actual households initially in the high-income groups.

When somebody says that that top 1 percent saw its income go up by X in the last decade, they are not really talking about what happened to actual households in the top 1 percent. Rather, they are talking about how much money one has to make to qualify for the top 1 percent. All that really means is that the 3 million highest-paid Americans in 2010 made more money than did the 3 million highest-paid Americans in 2000, the 100,000 highest-paid Americans this year made more money than did the 100,000 highest-paid Americans made in 2000, that the 50,000 highest-paid Americans made more money this year than did the 50,000 highest-paid Americans made in 2000, that the 1,000 highest-paid Americans this year made more money than did the 1,000 highest-paid Americans made in 2000, etc., which is not shocking. But, as the Treasury data show: They are not the same people.

[xchrom]

99. ...

:mad: :eyes: i'm not sure which.

[tclambert]

111. I DON'T CARE THAT THEY'RE NOT THE SAME PEOPLE! More wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer

people. That's what I care about. That money needs to circulate amongst MORE people . . . and eventually come to me. It does not make America better to impoverish and enslave the majority of citizens so the top 5 money-makers can become super-duper hyper-rich.

[Demeter]

100. Americans Shun Most Affordable Homes in Generation as Owning Loses Appeal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/americans-shun-most-affordable-homes-in-generation-as-owning-loses-appeal.html

....“I know people who have watched their home values get cut in half, and I know people who are losing their homes,” said Pauli, 31, who works as a property manager for a real estate company. “It’s part of the American dream to want to own your own home, and I used to feel that way, but now I tell myself: Be careful what you wish for.”

The most affordable real estate in a generation is failing to lure buyers as Americans like Pauli sour on the idea of home ownership. At the end of 2010, the fourth year of the housing collapse, the share of people who said a home was a safe investment dropped to 64 percent from 70 percent in the first quarter. The December figure was the lowest in a survey that goes back to 2003, when it was 83 percent.

“The magnitude of the housing crash caused permanent changes in the way some people view home ownership,” said Michael Lea, a finance professor at San Diego State University. “Even as the economy improves, there are some who will never buy a home because their confidence in real estate is gone.” ...


IN OTHER WORDS, THE CALIFORNIA BUBBLE HAS POPPED

[Demeter]

101. Regulatory arbitrage of the day, Citigroup edition

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/04/19/regulatory-arbitrage-of-the-day-citigroup-edition/

Well done to Tracy Alloway for calling it as it is, in a post headlined “Citi’s Basel-dodging, capital-avoiding, accounting switch”. At issue is a pool of $12.7 billion in assets, which is housed at Citi’s “bad bank”, Citi Holdings.

In 2008, Citi decided that these assets were not available for sale, and rather were going to be held to maturity. Presto — the bank no longer had to mark the assets to market, and could hold them on its books at par instead. And the difference between par value and market value went straight to Citi’s precious capital, helping it look stronger.

Now, in the wake of a massive bond rally. Citi has decided to switch the assets back. No longer are they held to maturity; instead, they’re available for sale. At a stroke, Citi has to recognize all the gains and losses in the portfolio immediately — that’s $1.7 billion in losses, and $946 million in gains. But the losses can be applied against profits elsewhere in the bank, to reduce the total tax burden. Which is nice, because we wouldn’t want too much money flowing from Citigroup to the taxpayers which bailed it out.

Of course, banks can’t just oscillate back and forth between classifying assets as being held-to-maturity or marked-to-market at whim, depending on how such a classification makes them look in their quarterly report. That defeats the whole point of classing assets as being held to maturity in the first place. If you say an asset is going to be held to maturity, it should be held to maturity, not held to the point at which it’s no longer held to maturity....
And so Citigroup had to explain to regulators what excellent reason it had for changing the classification. And you’re going to love the reason it came up with....

[Demeter]

104. William Hogeland: Happy Tax Day, Alexander Hamilton!

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/04/william-hogeland-happy-tax-day-alexander-hamilton.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

By William Hogeland, the author of the narrative histories Declaration and The Whiskey Rebellion and a collection of essays, Inventing American History who blogs at http://www.williamhogeland.com. Cross posted from New Deal 2.0

Hamilton is revered for putting America on sound financial footing, but he couldn’t have done it without federal taxation.

The annual drop-dead moment when Americans must file tax returns or face unpleasant consequences has become an opportunity for the Tea Party, protesting what it sees as crippling taxation and overactive federal government, to rally its supporters. Extending this year’s filing deadline from April 15 to today, April 18, the IRS gave Tea Partiers a big weekend, and all over the country, tax-day events hymned unregulated markets, excoriated federal programs like the health-insurance reform bill, and defended anti-labor governors. Anti-Obama leaders from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump urged the faithful to oppose evils summed up for them in the annual requirement to file federal tax returns. For the Tea Party, “Tax Day” represents all that’s gone wrong with America since the founding.

So as we stand on long lines at the post office hoping to avoid the midnight axe, we might spare a moment to consider the father of federal taxes, Alexander Hamilton. Our first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton is celebrated by both establishment liberals and establishment conservatives: The Hamilton Project is an economic effort of the liberal Brookings Institution, and former Obama budget director Peter Orszag hung a Hamilton portrait in his office; on the right, the writer David Brooks and former Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are two of Hamilton’s biggest fans. It’s not surprising. Hamilton is rightly said to have put the new nation on sound financial footing and secured its creditworthiness. He gave us our first comprehensive national finance policy.

That policy depended on exercising certain economic powers that finance nationalists like Hamilton and his mentor the rich financier Robert Morris, as well as planter nationalists like James Madison, had been striving to achieve for the federal government throughout the 1780’s, and which came to fruition at the Constitutional convention in 1787. While Hamilton and Madison would arrive at dire odds over whether the Constitution gives the federal government the right to form a central bank (Hamilton yes, Madison no), all nationalists had long agreed that a national government, unlike a confederation of states, would have a right to tax its citizens directly, throughout the states. And unlike what they saw as state governments’ susceptibility to the American popular-finance movement’s riot and noncompliance, a national government, nationalists hoped, would have both the will and the police resources to enforce and collect taxes.

So whereas Tea Partiers sometimes associate their objections to federal taxes with a desire to “get back to the Constitution,” federal taxation is one of the Constitution’s central purposes. And we can thank the wunderkind Alexander Hamilton for proposing the legislation by which the first U.S. Congress imposed the first federal tax ever on an American product...

[Demeter]

105. A banking crisis is a terrible thing to waste

Last week, the banking world was gripped by the findings of a probe into the financial crisis by a powerful US Senate committee and the interim report of Britain’s government-appointed Independent Commission on Banking, led by Sir John Vickers. The two efforts are important contributions to understanding what caused the turmoil and avoiding a repeat...

...the usual outrage at regulatory over-reach, big government and “banker-bashing” was replaced by a Zen-like acceptance. “We can live with this,” is how a top (BANK) executive summed it up.

Even inside Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank – the two groups lambasted by the Levin investigation – the mood was one of relief. In their view, the 639-page report uncovered no “smoking guns” that could lead to prosecutions, especially when the DoJ shows no appetite for such cases.

...During the crisis, as the inadequacies of the existing system became painfully apparent, policymakers considered radical solutions such as breaking up banks, limiting their size and forcing more transparency in their financial reporting...Two years and a massive lobbying campaign later, most of those plans lie on the cutting room floor of parliamentarians’ and regulators’ offices.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b2b6a40e-69ca-11e0-826b-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1JwpV26A2

[Demeter]

106. Did Wall Street Violate The Racketeering Act? Larry Doyle, Sense on Cents

I want to thank a regular reader for prompting me to tune into 60 Minutes last evening. Watching CBS’s Scott Pelley evidence how Wall Street banks knowingly and fraudulently engaged in forging mortgage documents made me cringe and vomit as I thought of just how low these financial institutions have sunk in terms of corporate integrity.

As state attorneys general prepare to pursue these Wall Street banks for the activity of forging these documents, I would raise the question whether this coordinated forging activity rose to the level of racketeering. Did these Wall Street banks violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act? Let’s navigate....

I have long believed that a significant segment of the mortgage origination, securitization, and now foreclosure process was knowingly and actively engaged in a concerted fraud. The fraud encompassed not only those issuing and securitizing the mortgages but also those taking out the mortgages. While regulators and legal authorities have shown little willingness to pursue the obvious fraudulent activity, the blatant fraud involved in the forging of foreclosure documents is the ultimate insult to the indescribable injury.

I ask the following very simple question. Did this activity violate the RICO Act? In what manner might the the RICO Act have been violated? Try the following on for size:

1. Mail and wire fraud.
2. Extortionate credit transactions.
3. Obstruction of justice.
4. Interference of commerce.
5. Laundering of monetary instruments.
6. Monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activities.
7. Relating to trafficking in goods and services bearing counterfeit marks.
8. Fraud in the sale of securities.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/did-wall-street-violate-the-racketeering-act-2011-4#ixzz1K6NBzTsu

[Demeter]

107. Mass. official: Yank deposits from Bank of America

http://4closurefraud.org/2011/04/04/register-of-deeds-john-obrien-stop-using-bank-of-america-for-countys-deposits-of-25-millon-a-year-because-of-mers/

A Massachusetts official whose office deposits about $25 million a year with Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) has asked the state treasurer to yank that money from the financial institution.

Southern Essex District Register of Deeds John O’Brien said he has written to Massachusetts State Treasurer Steven Grossman and asked him to stop using Bank of America for his county’s deposits. O’Brien wants the deposits shifted to a community bank that is not part of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System.

O’Brien, who is leading a nationwide effort against MERS, accuses the group and its members of failing to record mortgage assignments and pay associated fees. He says the actions have deprived taxpayers of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

[Demeter]

108. Fed Exit Means No Pain for Obama as Foreigners Take Up Slack

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-03/fed-exit-means-no-pain-for-obama-as-foreigners-buy-60-of-notes-at-auction.html

Treasuries are signaling that the $9 trillion market will weather the end of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program in June without suffering a selloff that drives long-term borrowing cost higher.

The class of investors that includes foreign central banks purchased 60 percent of the $66 billion in benchmark 10-year U.S. notes sold this year, up from 42 percent in 2010. Fed data show banks have increased their holdings of Treasuries to the most since December, as a panel of bond dealers and investors that advises the government says lenders may double their stake to $3.2 trillion in 2016.

Rising demand from international investors and financial institutions bodes well for bonds with the Fed’s plan to buy more than $600 billion of Treasuries more than 80 percent complete. U.S. fixed-income assets are retaining their appeal as the credit quality of European sovereign debt deteriorates and banks meet tighter risk standards governing the capital they need cushion against losses.

“Foreign investors are going to continue to come to the U.S.,” said Robert Tipp, the chief investment strategist for fixed income at Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential Investment Management, which oversees more than $200 billion in bonds. “The liquidity aspect is not to be underestimated. If past is prologue, cessation of large scale asset purchases is likely to prove bullish” for longer-maturity Treasuries, he said.

[Demeter]

110. William Black: Why aren’t the honest bankers demanding prosecutions of their dishonest rivals?

OBVIOUS ANSWER: THERE ARE NO HONEST BANKERS?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/04/william-black-why-arent-the-honest-bankers-demanding-prosecutions-of-their-dishonest-rivals.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

...one of the reasons why elite criminals are able to loot “their” banks with impunity – they have a lobby of exceptionally influential shills. Moore, for example, is the Wall Street Journal’s senior economics writer. Somehow, prominent conservatives have become “bleeding hearts” for the most wealthy, powerful, arrogant, and destructive white-collar criminals in the world. Criminology research has demonstrated the importance of “neutralization.” Criminals don’t like to think of themselves as criminals and their actions as criminal. They have to override their societal inhibitions on criminality to commit their crimes. When prominent individuals like Moore call their actions lawful and demonize the regulatory cops on the beat and the prosecutors it becomes more likely that CEOs will successfully neutralize their inhibitions and commit fraud. People like Moore have never studied white-collar crime, have no knowledge of white-collar criminology, do not understand control fraud, and do not understand sophisticated financial fraud mechanisms. They show no awareness of the economics literature on accounting control fraud, particularly George Akerlof & Paul Romer’s famous 1993 article – “Looting: the Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit.” People like Moore not only spur neutralization, they actively campaign to minimize the destructiveness of elite white-collar crime and to deny the regulators and the prosecutors the resources to prosecute the criminals...

...censorship had the ironic effect of demonstrating the accuracy of Sutherland’s observation that class mattered when it came to how we framed and responded to fraud by elite criminals. What aspect of holding fraudulent CEOs criminally responsible for their crimes is “socialist”, “anti-business”, or “neo-Bolshevism”? Baker claims that “class” has long been discredited as an important variable. Baker is not a social scientist and he is flat out wrong about class. There are literally thousands of empirical studies demonstrating the explanatory power of class in a host of settings. Baker is also flat out wrong empirically in claiming that white-collar prosecutions target “productive social and economic conduct.” White-collar prosecutions of elites are overwhelmingly based on fraud. Fraud is one of the most destructive of all social and economic conduct....

The essence of fraud is convincing the victim to trust the perpetrator – and then betraying that trust. The result is that fraud, particularly by elites, is the most destructive acid for eroding trust. Research in economics, political science, psychology, and sociology concurs on the enormous value that trust provides in each of these settings. We have all attended conferences that provided the participants with bottled water. If we knew that one bottle in a hundred were contaminated how many of us would drink our bottle? This dynamic explains why hundreds of markets collapsed during the events leading to the Great Recession – bankers no longer trusted other bankers’ representations as to asset quality. Accounting control fraud can cause systemic risk by eroding trust...

MUCH MORE GOOD STUFF AT LINK

[Demeter]

112. The Truth About the Confederacy

http://www.correntewire.com/truth_about_confederacy

...This very lengthy diary is designed to fully inform you what the Confederacy was really like – a society suffering acutely from class differences; a society ruled by a slave holding oligarchy that was sickeningly arrogant and grasping, as well as racist...

Everyone knows that the Union was saved by the 200,000 African-Americans who gathered under federal battle banners, three quarters of whom were former slaves. Rarely discussed or acknowledged is that 300,000 southern whites also joined the Union army. Nearly a quarter of all Union armed forces, nearly one half million, actually came from the South. In the border states, 200,000 whites joined the Union army; only 90,000 joined the Confederate army. Soldiers from the border states comprised only ten percent of the Confederate army; but if they had contributed 37 percent, rebel ranks would have included 250,000 more soldiers. But, what actually happened, William Freehling writes in South vs. South, is that “Another 100,000 Middle South whites enlisted in Union ranks. Those 300,000 southern white Unionist sharp-shooters replaced every Union casualty in the first two years of the war.”

Many of these men had deserted the Confederate army. But many more deserters had simply wearied of war, and were in hiding near their homes. By 1864, two-thirds of the Confederate Army was absent with or without leave. So, the story of a unified Confederacy bravely fighting off invading Yankees is a damnable myth. The Confederacy was deeply riven by class divisions, with poor whites almost as hostile to slave holders as slaves were. The truth was that large parts of the South ended up warring against the Confederacy. Within one year of the outbreak of the war, there were entire counties and areas of the South that had broken free of control by either state or Confederate officials. As more deserters came home to hide, they banded together in self defense, and more areas slipped out of Confederate control. In many areas, Confederate officials, especially military conscription officers, were shot on sight, or hunted down and ambushed. The Confederacy, in no small degree, defeated itself....

What Our Side Fought For

One thing I really would like you to take away from this diary is a basic sense of how the United States, as a self-governing democratic republic, cannot long tolerate oligarchic and aristocratic ideas in its body politic. This is becoming an increasingly urgent issue for us today, because the American conservative movement today is basically a replica of the slavery-defending, anti-free labor, government-hating, insurrection minded, treason-breathing, violently inclined Confederacy. And, I want you to be able to instantly recognize and rebut the false histories that neo-Confederates have created...Secession was NOT supported by a majority in the South...a secession convention was called, with slave holders comprising 87 percent of the delegates – even though they comprised only a third of qualified voters...

[Demeter]

113. Government by People Who Hate You (PAUL RYAN) BY Dean Baker

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/paul-ryan-in-your-pockets_b_847843.html

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out a budget proposal last week that will leave the vast majority of future retirees without decent health care by ending Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half of their income to purchase a Medicare equivalent insurance package by 2030. They would be paying much more than half of their income in later years.

This sort of broadside against the living standards of the middle class might have been expected to draw an outraged response in a nation that exalts the lifestyle and values of the middle class. Instead the punditry rallied around Mr. Ryan's plan to deal with the problem of run-away entitlement spending, crediting it for being "serious" even if they did not embrace all the details.

If there is any doubt that our political system is controlled by an elite who is completely removed from the bulk of the population, this response to the Ryan plan ended it. There is nothing at all serious about the Ryan plan. It is naked attempt to redistribute yet more money to the country's rich at the expense of everyone else.

The proposal to end Medicare relies on market efficiencies to get health care costs under control, as though we had not tried this before. Has Representative Ryan never heard of Medicare Advantage or Medicare Plus Choice? Doesn't he know that we already have the opportunity to see the effectiveness of private insurers in containing health care costs in the vast non-Medicare insurance market?

[Demeter]

114. Radiation risks from Fukushima 'no longer negligible'

http://www.euractiv.com/en/health/radiation-risks-fukushima-longer-negligible-news-503947

...The document, published on 7 April, advises against consuming rainwater and says vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant or breastfeeding women should avoid consuming vegetables with large leaves, fresh milk and creamy cheese.

The risks related to prolonged contamination among vulnerable groups of the population can no longer be considered "negligible" and it is now necessary to avoid "risky behaviour," CRIIRAD claimed.

However, the institute underlines that there is absolutely no need to lock oneself indoors or take iodine tablets....

[Ghost Dog]

123. Noted, copied and distributing, thanks.

http://www.irsn.fr/FR/popup/Pages/irsn-meteo-france_Film-Global_8avril.aspx

"CRIIRAD notes that "huge amounts of radioactive material have been released by the Fukushima Daiichi plant since Saturday 12 March 2011. On Tuesday 5 April, 24 days after the accident, the releases continue. This means that the contaminated airborne masses in Europe will last just as long, with a delay linked to the movement of radioactive aerosol gases over some 15,000 km."

It also cited a technical report from the operating company (TEPCO) and the Japanese nuclear safety authorities (NISA) which "fear releases over several more days, even weeks".

If more fires are reported or if the operators are forced to release more steam in order to prevent hydrogen explosions, new massive waste releases will occur, the institute warned."

[Demeter]

115. What Actually Happens When the Government Shuts Down (And Other Things You Don’t Know About the Budg

http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/04/06/what-actually-happens-when-the-government-shuts-down-and-other-things-you-dont-know-about-the-budget-fight-40875/

Bryce Covert: Are shutdowns just political theater?

The shutdowns are real. People think that this is all a subterfuge sometimes. And particularly I always thought that the Republican Congress basically thought none of this was real and therefore they could have it both ways. They could politically posture by saying that by god they were going to shut the government down and they were rough and tough and all of that, but in their hearts they kind of knew nothing would happen. So some of them were the most surprised people of all when actual things actually happened and when their constituents suddenly didn’t get services because the government was shut down. It is quite real.

When we were there during the shut down, President Clinton had done a superb job of positioning before the fact, of saying to people, “I’m not going to give in to outrageous requests just because people think that I’m unwilling to go through this. But I will warn you in advance that it has effects and you won’t like them. And this is not the way adults should negotiate.” So by midway through the shutdown, the polling had shifted to being very, very substantially in the favor of Clinton, and I think the same thing would happen here.

[Demeter]

116. Justices uphold foreclosure rule (OHIO)

http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/04/07/copy/justices-uphold-foreclosure-rule.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

The Ohio Supreme Court has dismissed a complaint against three Franklin County judges who are requiring lawyers to verify the authenticity of the documents they file in home foreclosures.

Six lawyers challenged the action in December, asking the Supreme Court to prohibit the judges from ordering them to sign "certifications" on behalf of their clients....In late November, the three Franklin County judges began telling all lawyers who file residential foreclosure cases in their courtrooms that they must "personally certify the authenticity and accuracy of all documents" in support of the filings. If a lawyer doesn't, the judge will not grant a motion for default or summary judgment, but will instead schedule the case for trial.

Setting a foreclosure for trial can delay the case for a year or more. However, in its motion to dismiss the lawyers' complaint, the prosecutor's office argued that a trial date provides a "remedy" for those who object to verifying their clients' documents.

[Demeter]

117. Why Did U.S. Branches of Foreign Banks Borrow at the Discount Window during the Crisis?

BECAUSE IT WAS THERE?

http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2011/04/why-did-us-branches-of-foreign-banks-borrow-at-the-discount-window-during-the-crisis.html


U.S. Branches of Foreign Banks

A U.S. branch of a foreign bank is not a separate legal entity, but a part of the bank. To distinguish the foreign bank from its U.S. branch, we refer to the foreign bank as the “parent bank.” The U.S. branch is supervised by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. banking regulator (either the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency or a state banking department) that issued its banking license. Although a U.S. branch may take uninsured deposits and make loans in the United States, it typically is oriented toward business and corporate clients, not households. At the start of the recent crisis in 2007:Q2, U.S. branches had nearly $500 billion in outstanding loans.

U.S. branches differ from domestic banks in two key ways that affect their need for liquidity. First, most U.S. branches are not allowed to offer deposits insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Thus, they lack access to the stable source of funds represented by households’ checking, savings, and other transaction accounts. Second, the branches have funding and investment activities that are often closely tied to their parent banks, including sending, or “upstreaming,” dollars raised in the United States to their parent banks or receiving “downstreamed” dollar support from them. (For more on flows from U.S. affiliates, see the study by Cetorelli and Goldberg.) In some cases, the parent bank’s investment decisions are implemented by its offices in the United States. In others, funds raised in the United States are channeled back to the parent bank, which then makes investment decisions and implements these decisions, including lending to U.S. customers or investing funds in other U.S. markets or financial instruments. How and where this whole process plays out depends on the business model of each parent bank. Moreover, these upstreaming and downstreaming actions are not unique to foreign banks in U.S. markets. Many U.S. banks with global operations have foreign branches or subsidiaries abroad that make the same types of decisions.


Why U.S. Branches of Foreign Banks Can Access the Discount Window

The Federal Reserve Act requires discount window credit to be made on a nondiscriminatory basis to institutions that are eligible to borrow, including U.S. branches of foreign banks. These branches must meet the same soundness criteria as U.S. commercial banks and thrifts, including being adequately capitalized and having appropriate supervisory ratings. Like U.S. banks, U.S. branches must comply with the guidelines governing discount window lending; to borrow, the branches must maintain and pledge a sufficient amount of eligible collateral to their Reserve Bank. (For more on the discount window, see the post by Santos and Peristiani.)


Borrowing Dollars during the Crisis

During the financial crisis, many institutions addressed their funding challenges by borrowing from the discount window. U.S. branches borrowed from the window for two reasons: the parent banks had recently expanded dollar holdings that required continued funding, and the “wholesale funding” markets—such as the money markets and the markets for currency swaps and brokered funds—that they typically relied on for dollar funding were severely disrupted...

[Demeter]

118. Legislators Never Bowl Alone: Big Money, Mass Media, and the Polarization of Congress

http://ineteconomics.org/sites/inet.civicactions.net/files/BWpaper_Ferguson_040811.pdf

A STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE, AS NIXON STARTS THE SELL-OUT OF CONGRESS

[Demeter]

119. Our Polarized and Money-Driven Congress: Created Over 25 Years By Republicans (and Quickly Imitated

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/04/our-polarized-and-money-driven-congress-created-over-25-years-by-republicans.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Political scientist Tom Ferguson prepared a short but important paper for the INET conference last weekend on how Congress got to be as polarized as it is today. His answer: it was redesigned quite deliberately by conservative Republican followers of Newt Gingrich starting in the mid 1980s and their methods were copied by the Democrats. Their changes resulted in firmer control by leadership (ie, less autonomy of individual Congressmen) and much greater importance of fundraising (which increased the power of corporate interests).

The extent of corruption may surprise even jaundiced readers. Both houses have price lists for committees and sub-committees. Ferguson delineates some of the many mechanisms for influencing political outcomes; they extend well beyond campaign donations and formal lobbying. Even though many are by nature hard to quantify in any hard or fast way, he does categorize them and has developed some estimates (see “The Spectrum of Political Money”, starting on p. 23, and see also his summary on p. 42). Finally, Ferguson goes through conventional explanations of why politics has become so polarized (such as changing cultural attitudes) and shows why they don’t stand up...

[Demeter]

120. JPMorgan Ex-Structured Product CDO Head Llodra May Face SEC Suit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-12/former-jpmorgan-executive-llodra-may-face-sec-suit-over-2007-cdo-marketing.html

U.S. regulators notified a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) executive whose unit packaged mortgage- linked investments that he may be sued for his role in selling the securities as the housing crisis worsened in 2007.

Michael Llodra, who was global head of structured-product collateralized debt obligations when he left JPMorgan, received a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission on Jan. 4 saying investigators planned to pursue civil claims against him related to the sale of a 2007 product, according to Llodra’s broker registration filings. The SEC also gave a Wells notice on Jan. 14 to Edward Steffelin, a former executive at a firm that helped manage JPMorgan’s 2007 “Squared” CDO, his brokerage records show.

The SEC has been probing whether JPMorgan, the second biggest U.S. bank by assets, and Steffelin’s former firm, GSC Group, misled investors about hedge-fund Magnetar Capital LLC’s possible role in selecting underlying assets in the $1.1 billion Squared deal, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe isn’t public.

Magnetar has said it bought the junior-most slice of the Squared CDO as part of its strategy of investing in some mortgage-linked securities while betting against other housing debt, sometimes including bonds from the same deals. CDOs package assets such as mortgage bonds and buyout loans into new securities with varying risks.

[Demeter]

121. Kick for the night owls

[Demeter]

122. ding

:kick: