STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 18 September 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 18 September 2012[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 17 September 2012

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 17 September 2012
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Dow Jones 13,553.10 -40.27 (-0.30%)
S&P 500 1,461.19 -4.58 (-0.31%)
Nasdaq 3,178.67 -5.28 (-0.17%)



[font color=green]10 Year 1.84% -0.01 (-0.54%)
30 Year 3.03% -0.03 (-0.98%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent




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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]

[Demeter]

1. If you are going to use a cartoon like that

in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, you must include Obama's court defeat:

Judge Rules Against Law on Indefinite Detention

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/us/judge-blocks-controversial-indefinite-detention-law.html?_r=1

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the government from enforcing a controversial statute about the indefinite detention without trial of terrorism suspects. Congress enacted the measure last year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.

The ruling came as the House voted to extend for five years a different statute, the FISA Amendments Act, that expanded the government’s power to conduct surveillance without warrants. Together, the developments made clear that the debate over the balance between national security and civil liberties is still unfolding 11 years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

In the detention case, Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a permanent injunction barring the government from relying on the defense authorization law to hold people in indefinite military detention on suspicion that they “substantially supported” Al Qaeda or its allies — at least if they had no connection to the Sept. 11 attacks...The United States has been detaining terrorism suspects indefinitely since 2001, relying on an authorization by Congress to use military force against perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks and those who helped them. Last year, Congress decided to create a federal statute that codified authority for such detentions. The new statute went beyond covering the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks to also cover people who were part of or substantially supported Al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces engaged in hostilities against the United States or its allies. Its enactment was controversial in part because lawmakers did not specify what conduct could lead to someone’s being detained, and because it was silent about whether the statute extended to American citizens and others arrested on United States soil.

It was challenged by Chris Hedges, a journalist who interacts with terrorists as part of his reporting, and by several prominent supporters of WikiLeaks. They argued that its existence chilled their constitutional rights by creating a basis to fear that the government might seek to detain them under it by declaring that their activities made them supporters of an enemy group. In May, Judge Forrest agreed, issuing a preliminary injunction barring the government from relying on the law to detain anyone without trial, and Wednesday she made that injunction permanent in a 112-page opinion. The Obama administration fought the move, saying the law did not cover free-speech activities. It also claimed that the statute created no new detention authority that did not already exist in the original authorization to use military force. While Judge Forrest said she thought that it did expand detention authority, the fact that the government took the narrower view was “decisive” because it meant that “enjoining the statute will therefore not endanger the public.”

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

In an interview, Bruce Afran, an adjunct law professor at Rutgers University who helped represent the plaintiffs, called the ruling a “historic” repudiation of government overreach.

“It’s an absolute guarantee of freedom of political debate even in a time of war,” he said.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. Sorry, this is not Faux News.

We don't have to be fair and balanced.



And anyway, you just did it for me!

(You're safe here.)

[Demeter]

57. WALL OF SHAME: Wasendorf Will Remain in Jail After Plea, U.S. Judge Rules

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/wasendorf-should-remain-in-jail-after-plea-u-s-prosecutors-say.html

Russell Wasendorf Sr., founder of the bankrupt commodities firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc., will remain in custody after his planned guilty plea to stealing more than $100 million from customers, a federal judge said in postponing another judge’s order. U.S. District Judge Linda Reade today postponed Wasendorf’s release following the government’s opposition. Wasendorf, 64, is set to appear in federal court this afternoon in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to enter his plea.

“Defendant shall remain detained pending further order of the court,” Reade said.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jon Scoles last week ruled that Wasendorf could remain free on bail after his plea and live with his friend and pastor, Linda Livingston, who volunteered to supervise him while he awaits sentencing. Wasendorf would also be required to wear an electronic monitoring device.

“There is at least a ‘serious risk’ defendant might choose to flee rather than face the consequences of his offenses,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan wrote in his motion. “Anytime a defendant is facing a substantial likelihood of spending the rest of their life in jail, that risk should be regarded as serious. This is especially so where a person has stolen more than $100 million and nearly all of the money is unaccounted for.”

Wasendorf’s plea agreement calls for a prison sentence of as long as 50 years. While he consented to entry of the plea before Scoles, the accord needs Reade’s approval...

[Tansy_Gold]

58. Good

If ever there was a flight risk. . . . .

[Demeter]

61. It's someone who has already failed at suicide.

[Demeter]

3. There's a lot of this going around

[Demeter]

59. NOT THE ONION- Fed Says Joblessness Would Be 7% With Less Consumer Doubt

HOW DOES THE ONION STAY IN BUSINESS, THESE DAYS? THEY ARE GETTING KILLED BY REALITY!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/fed-says-joblessness-would-be-7-with-less-consumer-doubt.html

The U.S. unemployment rate would be around 7 percent instead of 8 to 9 percent without the current level of doubt among consumers about economic issues including fiscal policy, a Federal Reserve study showed.

“Uncertainty has pushed up the U.S. unemployment rate by between one and two percentage points since the start of the financial crisis in 2008,” Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu, who are research advisers at the San Francisco Fed, wrote in a paper released today. “The private sector responds to rising uncertainty by cutting back spending, leading to a rise in unemployment and reductions in both output and inflation.”

The Federal Open Market Committee on Sept. 13 announced it will hold interest rates near zero until at least mid-2015 and purchase $40 billion a month in mortgage debt until the labor market improves. The unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent for 43 months, Labor Department figures showed Sept. 7.

“We’re looking for ongoing, sustained improvement in the labor market,” Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in a press conference Sept. 13 following the FOMC’s two-day meeting. “There’s not a specific number we have in mind. What we’ve seen in the last six months isn’t it.”

Stocks rose after the Fed’s announcement as the central bank’s stimulus bolstered demand for riskier assets....Consumers’ doubts about the economy may have been a greater drag on the economy in the past few years compared to previous recessions because policy makers had never run out of room to lower the federal funds rate until 2008, Leduc and Liu said. Doubt played “essentially no role” during the 1981-1982 recession and the subsequent recovery, when the Fed’s benchmark interest rate was much higher, the authors’ analysis showed.

“Monetary policy makers typically try to mitigate uncertainty’s adverse effects the same way they respond to a fall in aggregate demand, by lowering nominal short-term interest rates,” the researchers said. “Because nominal rates cannot go significantly lower than their current near-zero level, policy is less able to counteract uncertainty’s negative economic effects.”

Leduc and Liu’s analysis also showed that greater uncertainty leads to higher unemployment for at least three years, while uncertainty’s impact on inflation is less persistent. The three-month Treasury bill rate falls as a result of heightened doubt, the authors wrote.

The paper used data from the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers to track the level of doubt reported by households.

DEFINE UNCERTAINTY, JERKS! THEN MAYBE YOU WILL SEE THE TAUTOLOGY YOU ARE ARGUING IS A LOGICAL FALLACY THAT ANCIENT GREECE UNDERSTOOD.

[Demeter]

4. Primal Outrage: Can Homo Sapiens Use Our Inherent "Inequity Aversion" to Topple the 1 Percent?

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11200-primal-outrage-can-homo-sapiens-use-our-inherent-inequity-aversion-to-topple-the-1-percent




...Anthropologists have made a study of "tactical deception" in primates, which is just as it sounds - the use of deception to manipulate your fellows into giving you what you want. A 2004 study by Richard Byrne and Nadia Corp, psychologists at St. Andrews University in the UK, found that the sneakiest monkey and ape species are those with the biggest brains, because it takes a lot of processing power to invent and carry out deceptions. Here are some behaviors that count as sneaky among primates: to avoid a beating from the dominant silverback, a female gorilla hides in the bushes to mate with her boyfriend; as his mother is about to swat him, a juvenile baboon stands up and hoots, "Lion on the horizon!" fooling everyone, including his mama; a lucky chimp spots a cluster of ripe fruit and covers his face to hide his delight - he'll come back later when no one is around so he won't have to share. To a human primate, these are all familiar types of behaviors, but the human carries them much further. Humans are masters at deceiving themselves as well as others. Here's an example from history: the feudal lord has taken half the peasant's grain, underpaid him for his wife's weaving and raped his daughter to boot. The peasant tells himself that all is well: the lord is protecting him from the bigger, meaner lord next door, and besides, the lord supports the Church and the priest tells the peasant that he will find his reward in heaven. This mixture of justification (the mean guy protects me from the bigger, meaner guys next door) and self-deception (my reward will be found in heaven) enables the primary system of deception (taking your grain and raping your daughter are sanctioned by God). And thus it has been throughout human history.

But there are countervailing primate characteristics that turn the tables on the manipulators when conditions are right. One of these is a strong emotion of empathy for the downtrodden. There are many examples of apes and monkeys who extend a hand to help a fellow or comfort the loser of a fight, whether or not it is a close relative. Primates stand up for themselves as well. Primatologist Frans de Waal has many observations of "inequity aversion" among primates. In one study, capuchin monkeys received either a grape or a piece of cucumber for a simple task. Grapes were preferred, but if both monkeys got the same reward, there was never a problem. However, if the monkeys were rewarded differently, the one who got the cucumber would soon rebel by pelting the researcher with the rejected cucumber slice....

We are left with a new opportunity for truth. The deceptions of 200 years of industrial capitalism are dissolving. There is no such thing as limitless economic growth. Humans will cling to these deceptions anyway, just as they have clung to the idea of heaven and the divine ordination of oppressive regimes, but such fantasies are becoming harder and harder to maintain. Sooner or later, the truth will out and the rebels will ascend. The questions that humans should ask themselves now are: what are the deceptions and self-deceptions that are most crucial to reveal, and what are the physical advantages and technologies that the benevolent and compassionate tricksters among us can use to promote equality?...The Internet is often touted as a leveling technology that promotes liberation and equality, but there are others as well. Our feudal forbears lived in a solar-powered society, but they did not have photovoltaic panels. Any human with a few hundred dollars can purchase a self-sufficient power system that will keep their personal Internet portal up and humming, along with a few lights so they can read books at night, should the powers-that-be pull the plug on the grid. The industrial economy has also supported an amazing expansion of human knowledge in every field, including new ideas in agriculture, energy and health that can be put to use to build more self-sufficient and egalitarian agricultural communities.

We have heard a lot about the tipping points of complex systems like economies, and we fear what can happen when climate tipping points are reached, but human moral outrage also has its tipping point. The Occupy movement is one sign that the tipping point is here.

This is just the beginning of a new age of primal moral outrage at the endless depredations and deceptions of the power elite. Let's hang on to our strong sense of empathy as we embrace moral justice.

[Demeter]

5. Stocks, more than housing, seen as initial QE3 winners

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/16/us-usa-fed-economy-idUSBRE88F05A20120916

The Federal Reserve's new economic stimulus plan involves printing vast sums of money to help people buy homes, but over the next year the program could do more to boost the economy by lifting stock prices. (The Fed said last week it would buy $40 billion every month in mortgage backed securities until the labor market improves substantially. The program, known on Wall Street as "QE3", will likely lower interest rates for mortgages and also help some people refinance their home loans.)

Although the Fed's open-ended buying program represented an unprecedented bid to get the U.S. economy growing more quickly, many economists are skeptical it will have a big impact on housing market which is held back to a large degree by tight lending standards by banks. Mortgage rates are already near record lows, they point out. But it is also quite possible QE3 will help the economy in other, potentially more powerful ways. By giving an open-ended commitment to pour money into the market for mortgage-backed securities, the Fed will likely keep on supporting stocks and other asset classes by keeping returns low on MBS. Investors in search of yield will have more reason to buy equities and to lend money to companies.

Peter Hooper, an economist at Deutsche Bank in New York, thinks the Fed's bond buying program will add at least a half a percentage point to gross domestic product over the next year, largely by boosting stock prices and making people feel more wealthy...Many economists believe people will spend an extra few cents for every dollar of wealth they gain. Because so many people have retirement funds connected to the stock market, a boost in share prices can lead people to spend more money.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday policymakers hope QE3 will help people buy homes, but he acknowledged the aim is also to boost asset prices like stocks and to make families and businesses more confident in the future of the economy.


THIS IS PROFOUNDLY DELUSIONAL--AND OVERLOOKS THE SITUATION OF 40% OF THE NATION

[DemReadingDU]

20. QE is not designed for housing nor jobs

QE is designed for the wealthy to get wealthier

[Demeter]

23. It's Designed to Continue the Looting of the Public's Purse

and there's no opposition in Congress.

[Tansy_Gold]

63. used to be a loyal opposition

now it's just loyal. . . . .to the 1%.

[xchrom]

6. in honor of the stormy weather here -- i give you etta's version of 'stormy weather'

[Demeter]

24. You said it...weather underground says 37F tonight

Unbelieveable.

Good morning, (a wish) X!

[xchrom]

27. Bon Jour

[Fuddnik]

30. Life in Siberia.

I'm headed up to Cleveland Oct. 11th for a week. I hope it's not that cold then.

It's getting down to the mid 70's here at night, and in another month, we can usually turn off the AC and open the windows.

Had a nice thundershower yesterday afternoon. It dropped a couple of inches in about an hour. Just had another about 30 minutes ago, and there must be another approaching. The DirecTV just froze up. That usually means something big is crossing over Tarpon Springs.

[Demeter]

33. Siberia? We had highs in the 80's in MARCH

And last winter, I never needed a winter coat. Truly. Not even at night throwing paper.

Of course, this year the predictions are: much colder and much more snow. We shall see.

It's still horribly dry. What little rain that falls is insufficient to keep stuff alive, let alone replenish the growing zone of the soil. I don't believe it will get that cold (37) tonight....but the jet stream is freaky, lately. And the first frost warning is around this time, traditionally.

You want Siberia, you have to talk to Po.

[Tansy_Gold]

37. Still approaching triple digit highs here

No rain since the last batch of storms, but nights are getting cooler and the a/c runs less and less.

Mattie runs more and more. She doesn't like the hot weather, and the arrival of some cool mornings has had her bouncing and racing almost as of old. Improved her appetite, too.

I'm heading to NJ on the 28th. Please, no hurricanes, okay?

[Roland99]

45. beautiful and sunny 76F on my drive in this morning.

[hamerfan]

62. Loves me some Etta!

Thank you, X!

[xchrom]

7. This Map Shows How Municipal Bankruptcy Has Torn Through The US {MAP AT LINK}

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-american-cities-deal-with-bankruptcy-2012-9

***SNIP

Here's how bankruptcy affected some of these cities:
San Bernardino, Calif.
Signs of problems in the southern California city appeared in 2008 when it declared numerous fiscal emergencies and reduced its workforce by 20 percent over the next four years, according to its bankruptcy report.


***SNIP

Stockton, Calif.
Stockton, the largest American city to declare bankruptcy yet, faces a $26 million deficit. What is more troubling is its debt, which Stockton listed to be between $500 million and $1 billion, Bloomberg reported.


***SNIP

Central Falls, R.I.
Central Falls is perhaps the most successful of the bunch. Just last week it won a court permission to exit its bankruptcy status by repaying bondholders in full, but making cuts to municipal workers' pensions, according to Bloomberg.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-american-cities-deal-with-bankruptcy-2012-9#ixzz26ok5vDYo

[xchrom]

8. Markets Are Getting Crushed

http://www.businessinsider.com/morning-markets-september-18-2012-9

he air continues to be let out of the market. Post-FED and post-ECB euphoria is fading.
Italy is down over 2%.
Spain is off 1.5%.
Germany is down 0.8%.
Borrowing costs for Spain and Italy are higher across the curve, again.
The market is still waiting on Spain to ask for a bailout and move the crisis resolution to the next phase. In the meantime, the market is creating more pressure for that to happen.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morning-markets-september-18-2012-9#ixzz26okpfdOM

[Ghost Dog]

17. Wall Street Turns To Main Street For Cues

9/18/2012 6:30 AM ET (RTTNews) - Economic fears continue to envelop Wall Street, as stimulus optimism wanes and ground realities strike. The U.S. index futures point to a lower open. Geopolitical tensions in China have led to a sell-off in commodities, accelerating the profit taking in the space. Sentiment across the Atlantic is hampered by no further progress seen in resolving the sovereign debt crisis, even as Spain's fiscal situation is surmised to be precarious. Domestically, the markets turn their focus on the results of a homebuilder survey due to be released shortly after the markets open.

As of 6:30 am ET, the Dow futures are moving down 37 points, the S&P 500 futures are slipping 4.50 points and the Nasdaq 100 futures are moving down 7 points.

U.S. stocks turned in a lackluster performance on Monday, as the Fed stimulus-induced rally lost steam.

/... http://www.rttnews.com/1967385/wall-street-turns-to-main-street-for-cues.aspx?type=ts

[xchrom]

19. +1

[Demeter]

9. Greece Reaps Euro Goodwill in Break From Past Crisis Scoldings

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-15/greece-reaps-euro-goodwill-in-break-from-past-crisis-scoldings.html

IT APPEARS THE EURO IS TO STAY...TOO BAD. EUROPE WILL BE CONTORTING IN PAIN FOR DECADES BEFORE THEY GET THE BUGS WORKED OUT

Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras arrived at this week’s debt-crisis talks like his predecessors often did, without all the budget cuts demanded by creditors. Unlike them, he left with prospects for aid intact and public doubts on Greece’s future in the euro silenced.

The country emerged from the Sept. 14-15 meeting of European finance chiefs in Cyprus with a chance to gain extra time to narrow its spending gap. Officials calculated that a confrontation with the Athens government would drive it further off track and shatter newfound market confidence in the management of the crisis that has lasted almost three years.

Creditors led by Germany and the International Monetary Fund may now grant Greece more leeway to narrow its deficit after their austerity-first policy helped mire the country in a fifth year of recession, and two Greek elections produced a shaky governing alliance of pro-euro politicians under constant attack from the anti-bailout opposition.

“Greece has already produced a huge effort but will have to continue to do so,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told reporters during the meeting in Nicosia, the Cypriot capital. “There are various ways to adjust. Time is one. That needs to be considered as an option.”

WHAT'S THAT STORY OF SELLING ONE'S BIRTHRIGHT FOR A MESS OF POTTAGE?

...The softening of the European and IMF approach follows the rise of Greek anti-bailout party Syriza, which overturned four decades of political dominance by New Democracy and Pasok in May and June elections to become the No. 2 party in the parliament.

YES, I THOUGHT THAT WAS THE MOTIVATION....

[Demeter]

11. Making the most of an extension

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_16/09/2012_461568

It looks increasingly likely that Greece’s international creditors will consent to the extension of its fiscal adjustment program, but there is no clear signal yet as to what form that will take. In this context Greece will have to clarify its strategy on the type of extension it seeks with the prime aim of putting the economy back on a path to growth.

A number of EU officials and others have been hesitant in their public statements -- to say the least -- to embrace the much-talked-about unofficial request of the coalition government and the three political parties backing it. They all have pointed to the Greek side’s inability/unwillingness to deliver on commitments undertaken with the memorandum of understanding on economic and fiscal policies (MEFP) signed in May 2010 and the second MoU on specific policy conditionality.

On the other hand, a few Greek politicians, such as chairman of the socialist PASOK party and former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, have been arguing all along that the extension of the fiscal adjustment effort is obvious because of the deeper-than-projected recession while others, like Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, have brought up pro-growth arguments.

Economic arguments aside, a few lines in the new MoU appear to vindicate this point of view: “We would consult with the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund in the event of a significantly deeper-than-anticipated recession, to evaluate whether the fiscal adjustment path should be extended beyond 2014.”...

MORE

[Demeter]

13. EU Recruits ECB to Lead Supervisors in Bank-Crisis Fight

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-11/eu-recruits-ecb-to-lead-national-regulators-in-bank-crisis-fight.html

The European Union unveiled proposals for euro-area bank oversight that require unprecedented cooperation between the European Central Bank and national regulators.

The Frankfurt-based ECB should expand its role as financial-system guardian by becoming the top-level supervisor of every lender in the 17-nation currency bloc, EU officials said in interviews. At the same time, the central bank would depend on national regulators for day-to-day supervision and ensuring that banks comply with European rules, according to the proposals.

“Mere coodination is no longer adequate. We need to move to common supervisory decisions” within the euro area, European Commission President Jose Barroso told the European Parliament today in Strasbourg, France.

EU leaders called for a single bank supervisor in June as a condition of allowing euro-area banks direct access to the zone’s firewall funds. Germany’s top constitutional court today cleared the way for the 500 billion-euro ($644 billion) European Stability Mechanism to become operational later this year....MORE

[xchrom]

10. Hunt launched after Halliburton loses radioactive rod in Texas desert

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/17/hunt-halliburton-radioactive-rod-texas-desert


A radioactive rod similar to the one lost by Halliburton

Halliburton has lost a seven-inch radioactive rod somewhere in the Texas desert. The National Guard has been called in to help to find the device, which employees of the controversial US oilfield services company lost a week ago.

The rod, which contains americium-241/beryllium and is stamped with a radiation warning symbol with the words "Danger Radioactive: Do not handle. Notify civil authorities if found", was lost during a 130-mile journey between oil well sites in Pecos and Odessa last Tuesday.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) warned that the radioactive materials "could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them".

The agency said americium-241/beryllium, known as Am-241, is a "category 3" source of radiation and would normally have to be held for some hours before causing health problems.

[xchrom]

12. Spain should seek aid, Greece needs more time to pay - IIF

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/10443428

By Nick Edwards
BEIJING (Reuters) - Greece should get cheaper rates on its 130 billion euro aid deal and at least two more years from the European Union and International Monetary Fund to repay them, the chief negotiator of the country's private sector creditors said on Tuesday.
But better terms could only come after Athens delivers on commitments it has made to fiscal reform, Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), told a news conference while on a trip to Beijing.
"Once that has been done, and I am confident it will be done, Europe and the IMF should move quickly to extend the adjustment period for at least two years and provide the modest additional financial support for that extension to be effective," Dallara said.
"Only some 15-20 billion euros is needed. This can easily be realised in part by reducing interest rates on the loans which Europe and the IMF made to Greece on more concessional terms," he continued, adding that responses to the Greek debt crisis placed too much emphasis on short-term austerity and not enough on improving the country's longer-term competitiveness.

[xchrom]

14. South Africa mine unrest costs £335m in lost output

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/17/south-africa-mine-lost-output-lonmin


Protests over pay have seen 45 people killed in weeks of unrest. Photograph: Reuters


Unrest at South Africa's platinum and gold mines has cost the industry 4.5bn rand (£335m) in lost output, President Jacob Zuma said, as the company at the centre of the strikes closed a shaft putting 1,200 miners out of work.

Although two mines reopened on Monday there was still no end in sight to the protests over pay which have seen 45 people killed in weeks of unrest. Zuma said that aside from the losses to mining companies, the stoppages had cost the South African treasury 3.1bn rand.

Lonmin, the London-listed company whose Marikana mine near Johannesburg has seen the worst violence, said it was losing production of 2,500 ounces (77kg) each day the strike continues. The world's third biggest platinum producer, Lonmin is in danger of breaking its banking covenants because of the dispute and it said on Monday that it was halting work on a new shaft and would not require 1,200 contract workers.

As tension continued to run high, South African police stopped ANC renegade Julius Malema from addressing striking miners at Marikana. Malema, a rebel expelled from the ANC, has become Zuma's most strident critic and has urged strikers to make mines "ungovernable".

[xchrom]

15. Global economy set to remain sluggish

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2012/sep/14/global-economy-sluggish


Supermarket in Shenyang in northeast China's Liaoning province. With the exception of China, fiscal positions around the world are currently weak. Photograph: AP


The world's high-income countries are in economic trouble, mostly related to growth and employment, and now their distress is spilling over to developing economies. What factors underlie today's problems, and how appropriate are the likely policy responses?

The first key factor is deleveraging and the resulting shortfall in aggregate demand. Since the financial crisis began in 2008, several developed countries, having sustained demand with excessive leverage and consumption, have had to repair both private and public balance sheets, which takes time – and has left them impaired in terms of growth and employment.

The non-tradable side of any advanced economy is large (roughly two-thirds of total activity). For this large sector, there is no substitute for domestic demand. The tradable side could make up some of the deficit, but it is not large enough to compensate fully. In principal, governments could bridge the gap, but high (and rising) debt constrains their capacity to do so (though how constrained is a matter of heated debate).

The bottom line is that deleveraging will ensure that growth will be modest at best in the short and medium term. If Europe deteriorates, or there is gridlock in dealing with America's "fiscal cliff" at the beginning of 2013 (when tax cuts expire and automatic spending cuts kick in), a major downturn will become far more likely.

[Demeter]

16. 8 Ways to Stay Safe at Occupy Wall Street's One-Year Anniversary Protests

http://www.alternet.org/activism/8-ways-stay-safe-occupy-wall-streets-one-year-anniversary-protests?akid=9402.227380.HPchug&rd=1&src=newsletter711283&t=11

GOOD ADVICE FOR ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE IN THESE PARLOUS TIMES...


The NYPD may try to criminalize activists, but here's how you can outsmart them at their own game...2011 and 2012 may go down as the years in American history when political dissent became a criminal activity. The police crackdown began with the mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge and police brutality, followed by the evictions of Occupy encampments and the passage of the NDAA, which allows for the indefinite detainment of American citizens. This year has brought FBI raids, grand jury subpoenas , government-manufactured terror plots, surveillance of activists, and protest-related criminal convictions resulting in prison time . Dissenting voices are carrying loud and clear to the ears of the rich and powerful, and in turn, the powerful are waging an all-out assault against any who choose to resist...here are eight ways you can stay safe from police repression.

1. Check your pockets. Bring a Sharpie for writing your area’s legal hotline somewhere on your body. Carry food and extra cigarettes if you will be doing jail support for those who are arrested. Definitely don't bring a weapon or anything that could be construed as a weapon, drugs, or anything valuable including jewlery. Also, to avoid misunderstandings, don't carry a lot of cash; cash over $200 must be vouchered if you are arrested.

2. Speak up if the police stop you. If you are stopped by a cop, resist the impulse to wait around to see what they are planning. Immediately ask “Am I free to go?” If yes, then leave. If not, ask “Am I being detained?” If the answer is no, then you are free to go. If you are searched, say loudly and clearly, “I do not consent to this search." Silence is consent in the system we live in. If you say nothing, anything they find can be used as evidence at trial.

3. Watch face coverings. There are all kinds of little-known laws that city governments use against protesters. For example, a 150-year-old law against masked gatherings of more than two people has been resurrected to target Occupy Wall Street protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks or bandanas on their faces. There are countless petty laws that are ignored in daily life but used during protests to pull unsuspecting people out of the action. Ask fellow protesters what type of minor laws are being used to target activists, and be quick to adapt your behavior so that a small thing like wearing a bandana doesn’t land you in jail.

4. Keep the cops at arm’s length. The NYPD, along with many other police departments, has "snatch-squads" it dispatches to protests, making arrests by snatching and arresting protesters. You don't have to be doing anything illegal to be snatched. You just have to be within arms-length of a cop. How do you steer clear of the snatch-squads? Stay out of snatching distance! Keep track of where the cops are and who is between you and the blue shirts.

5. Don’t resist arrest. To escalate punishment for protesting, the police often tack on a resisting-arrest charge when activists are charged for other things like disorderly conduct. Resisting arrest is a much more serious charge, a Class-A misdemeanor in New York, that carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $500 fine. The police will charge you for resisting arrest if you are running away, locking arms, flailing or refusing to be handcuffed. To make sure you don’t get wrongly charged with resisting arrest, make sure to state loudly, “I am not resisting” as you are being arrested. If you are watching someone get arrested and they are yelling, “I am not resisting,” try to film the arrest (without getting in anyone's way) so that it can be used as evidence in a subsequent trial, if necessary.

6. No chit-chatting with the cops. Spending the night in jail after an arrest is an isolating and fear-inducing experience. Talking to fellow detainees and entertaining each other with stories and jokes is the best way to keep your spirits up. But making small talk with the cops can put you and your fellow activists in danger. Police are trained to mine seemingly inconsequential information and use it against people, so stay quiet. No matter what they say, you do not have to speak to the cops beyond giving them your basic information on your ID. If they try to talk to you, say, “I am going to remain silent, and I want to talk to my lawyer.”

7. Be aware of infiltrators. Police departments sometimes send infiltrators, informants and agent provocateurs into protests to divide people, create chaos and entrap protesters into doing illegal activities. From William O’Neal’s betrayal of Fred Hampton in the Black Panther Party in 1969, to Brandon Darby’s entrapment of Bradley Crowder and David McKay, the police will stop at nothing to get convictions—even if it means that the government’s own agents are creating the illegal action and simply convincing people to join in. Entrapment has already happened within the Occupy movement at least three times, in Chicago during NATO, in Cleveland and in Houston, Texas . If you’re just showing up to a mass day of action like September 17, be wary of people who are advocating for violence or trying to pull you away from the group to do something separate. If you are involved more seriously in a protest movement, take the time to build trust with the people you protest with. Get to know them and make sure they are not working for the government, especially before engaging in any actions that could get you arrested.

8. Make a 72-hour plan, just in case. ​The New York Police Department is notorious for its sweeping arrests of massive amounts of protesters. From the more than 1,800 arrested over four days at the 2004 Republican National Convention to the 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1, 2011, the NYPD has proven it can handle as many protesters as it can catch--even if it means holding them in MTA buses or in warehouses on the Hudson River. The police often use orange netting to "kettle" in large numbers of people in the street, trapping and arresting them, whether they have unlawfully assembled or are residents merely walking to the corner for a carton of milk....

MORE

[Demeter]

18. Occupy Your Victories: Occupy Wall Street's First Anniversary

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11584-occupy-your-victories-occupy-wall-streets-first-anniversary

....The most startling question anyone asked me last year was, "What is Occupy's 10-year plan?" ...Who takes the long view? Americans have a tendency to think of activism like a slot machine, and if it doesn't come up three jailed bankers or three clear victories fast, you've wasted your quarters. And yet hardly any activists ever define what victory would really look like, so who knows if we'll ever get there? Sometimes we do get three clear victories, but because it took a while or because no one was sure what victory consisted of, hardly anyone realizes a celebration is in order, or sometimes even notices. We get more victories than anyone imagines, but they are usually indirect, incomplete, slow to arrive, and situations where our influence can be assumed but not proven -- and yet each of them is worth counting.

More Than a Handful of Victories

For the first anniversary of Occupy, large demonstrations have been planned in New York and San Francisco and a host of smaller actions around the country, but some of the people who came together under the Occupy banner have been working steadily in quiet ways all along, largely unnoticed. From Occupy Chattanooga to Occupy London, people are meeting weekly, sometimes just to have a forum, sometimes to plan foreclosure defenses, public demonstrations, or engage in other forms of organizing. On August 22nd, for instance, a foreclosure on Kim Mitchell's house in a low-income part of San Francisco was prevented by a coalition made up of Occupy Bernal and Occupy Noe Valley (two San Francisco neighborhoods) along with ACCE, the group that succeeded the Republican-destroyed ACORN....It was a little victory in itself -- and another that such an economically and ethnically diverse group was working together so beautifully. Demonstrations and victories like it are happening regularly across the country, including in Minnesota, thanks to Occupy Homes. Earlier this month, Occupy Wall Street helped Manhattan restaurant workers defeat a lousy boss and a worker lock-out to unionize a restaurant in the Hot and Crusty chain. (While shut out, the employees occupied the sidewalk and ran the Worker Justice Café there.) In Providence, Rhode Island, the Occupy encampment broke up late last January, but only on the condition that the city open a daytime shelter for homeless people. At Princeton University, big banks are no longer invited to recruit on campus, most likely thanks to Occupy Princeton.

There have been thousands of little victories like these and some big ones as well: the impact of the Move Your Money initiative, the growing revolt against student-loan-debt peonage, and more indirectly the passing of a California law protecting homeowners from the abuse of the foreclosure process (undoubtedly due in part to Occupy's highlighting of the brutality and corruption of that process).

But don't get bogged down in the tangible achievements, except as a foundation. The less tangible spirit of Occupy and the new associations it sparked are what matters for whatever comes next, for that 10-year-plan. Occupy was first of all a great meeting ground. People who live too much in the virtual world with its talent for segregation and isolation suddenly met each other face-to-face in public space. There, they found common ground in a passion for economic justice and real democracy and a recognition of the widespread suffering capitalism has created. Bonds were formed across the usual divides of age and race and class, between the housed and the homeless as well as the employed and jobless, and some of those bonds still exist. There was tremendous emotion around it -- the joy of finding you were not alone, the shame that was shed as the prisoners of debt stepped out of the shadows, the ferocity of solidarity when so many of us were attacked by the police, the dizzying hope that everything could be different, and the exhilaration in those moments when it already was. People learned how direct democracy works; they tasted power; they found something in common with strangers; they lived in public. All those things mattered and matter still. They are a great foundation for the future; they are a great way to live in the present.

MORE

[Demeter]

21. One Woman's Opinon (NOT DEMETER'S)

“We’ve moved out of the spectacular phase,” she said. “The main focus of what we do now is day-in, day-out organizing.” For her, that part’s even more important. And so is a sense of perspective: “The goal of Occupy is to smash capitalism,” she reminded me. “That’s the standard we measure ourselves by.”

http://www.thenation.com/article/169761/occupy-after-occupy#

DEMETER'S OPINION--CAPITALISM HAS DESTROYED ITSELF. OCCUPY IS IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING UP THE MESS.

ARTICLE CONTINUES...

The movement’s real accomplishment, however, has been even more significant than just “changing the conversation.” Because news reporters don’t make a habit of paying attention to grassroots activists the way they follow presidential exercise habits or wobbly stock tickers, they’re not attuned to the sea change brought about by Occupy. But people organizing for economic justice—especially
young people—now know one another. They’ve practiced direct democracy in general assemblies and risked their bodies in direct action. They’re talking with each other over networks that they created themselves, as well as traveling together and building their capacity for future action.

“Occupy unleashed this heightened sense of resistance,” says Chris Longenecker, one of Occupy Wall Street’s busiest organizers before taking a break to drive a pedicab in Boston. “We’ve formed really close bonds.” Now those comrades are spread around the country, organizing locally but staying in touch.

Distance and time—as well as involvement in ongoing local struggles—have lessened many people’s attachment to the Occupy label. “I’ve been working with all the same people I worked with in Occupy,” said Kate Savage, who specialized in facilitating assemblies at Occupy Nashville, “only it’s not called ‘Occupy’ for a variety of reasons.” For many issues and on many fronts, onetime Occupiers are finding that the Occupy brand—and all the associations that come with it—can sometimes hurt more than it helps.

Thus, the internally splintering movement shows signs of morphing into a productively subdivided movement of movements....As a popular Occupy Wall Street poster proclaimed last fall, “All of our grievances are connected.” In that spirit, people who were once focused on only one of these issues have started working closely with those involved in others, stitching them together through action into a cohesive platform—even without a governing body or a political party....

MORE

[Demeter]

40. "Of what use is a baby?"

Faraday, when asked about the utility of his dynamo....

ANOTHER VERSION

Benjamin Franklin observes the first balloon ascension in 1783 while he was Ambassador at the Court of France. Someone asks "What possible use are balloons?" Franklin answers "What use is a newborn baby?"

Franklin did observe the first balloon ascension on Nov 21, 1783 staged by the Montgolfier Brothers. Franklin may have said this, though there's no specific documentation. It was a common riposte of that time, and still is today. It's unlikely that it is an original witicism of Franklin. Sometimes it's seen attributed to Thomas Edison, and no doubt he would have used it, too. I've even seen it attributed to Michael Faraday (see previous item). Why is it that lame platitudes are considered more important when attributed to a famous person? You can bet that if Franklin or Edison did use such a quip, they didn't say "As the great Leonardo da Vinci said when asked the use of one of his inventions...".

[Demeter]

25. Quo Vadis Occupy? Mic Check on the State of the Revolution

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11586-quo-vadis-occupy-mic-check-on-the-state-of-the-revolution

What must it have been like to be a banker as Occupy Wall Street achieved national prominence and political centrality a year ago?

Just a couple of weeks earlier, the only street protests around, staged by the Tea Party, were actually on your side, providing a grassroots face for the austerity-industrial complex....And then, suddenly, because a few anarchists started sleeping in a park, people began to notice that you, not history teachers and farm workers, were the ones who bilked them. Seemingly overnight, there were concerned citizens attending teach-ins about credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and bond yield splits.

There were protests every day in the neighborhood where you worked, the signs and chants justly pointing to the gross over-financialization of the American economy, the capture of state functions by the ownership class, and the increasing wealth inequality plaguing 99 percent of the country.

There were pesky reporters asking obnoxious questions: Who controlled the American political economy, how had everyone accumulated such crushing personal debt and why did billionaires need bailouts, but underwater homeowners were, to quote CNBC's Rick Santelli, "losers."

MORE

[Demeter]

26. What must it have been like to be a banker on that day?

...Well, if the subsequent month was any indication, the bankers felt as though the whole heap was slipping out from under them, because the state and media they own instituted a dissidence-crushing regime straight out of the Petraeus counterinsurgency playbook.

They went to work overtime with smear campaigns, brutal evictions and the implementation of a virtual police state, including counterterrorism units, cavalries of horses, motorcades and air support, to accompany any protest, however small. They entrapped luckless and ignorant young people in alleged "terrorist" plots. They cultivated an image of occupiers as violent, deranged, nihilistic rabble. They nearly killed a marine by shooting a teargas canister directly into his face.

The wild success of Occupy Wall Street spoiled many of us, just as surely as its devastation at the hands of American law enforcement addled us. One year on, though, organizers have dusted off, steeled their resolve and begun a series of projects, affiliations and organizing drives that plan to transform the electricity of the occupations into a sustainable social movement to carry us through the next chapter, in what anthropologist David Graeber memorably called "a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire."

"I think that a lot of what happened over the last year was a tremendous experiment in radical democracy," says Jose Martin, a worker-owner of OccuCopy, one of the four worker cooperatives that has come out of Occupy Wall Street. "I hope," he says, "that the proliferation of these examples of actual bottom-up job creators, as well as socialized production, is going to increase and understand itself as part of a larger radical infrastructure for social movements for years to come."

I HOPE YOUR QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED, TANSY GOLD

[Demeter]

41. What happened to Occupy Wall Street's fundraising haul

DETAILS AT LINK

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/occupy-wall-st/what-happened-occupy-wall-streets-fundraising-haul

[Tansy_Gold]

51. Essentially, they blew it

And really, $800,000 is NOT a lot of money. Not for "A Movement." Especially not for a global movement.

Look, I'm not trying to be a doom and gloomer here. I'm being devil's advocate, which means prompting and prodding the other side -- which in this case is OWS and its supporters -- to give a good hard look at what they're defending. I'm trying to pull off the emotional blinders so the flaws can be seen. YOU CAN'T FIX FLAWS YOU REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Probably the greatest success of the anti-boooosh campaign was Farhenheit 9/11. Michael Moore made a shitload of money off it. He raised consciousness and he got media attention.

And then no one built on that foundation, NOT EVEN MICHAEL MOORE. The documentary was not a stepping stone to anything else, except maybe to fund Moore's next documentary. He cashed in on the zeitgeist and then walked away. The film was a personal success for him, and it brought a lot of people a lot of enlightenment, but ultimately it accomplished nothing. Booosh got another four years, the wars dragged on -- and still are -- and there's no seismic shift in the political landscape.

OWS didn't make even as much of a squiggle on the cultural seismograph as F 9/11, or Bowling for Columbine or An Inconvenient Truth. A movement isn't a flash in the pan.

Read Taylor Branch's MLK biography, especially the first part, Parting the Waters, and learn how carefully planned and executed much of the civil rights movement was. Learn how carefully Rosa Parks was selected for the refusal to move to the back of the bus. (A pregnant teen-ager was not considered a good "victim," since her moral code could be called into question. Rosa Parks was unimpeachable.)

If OWS -- or its fragmented spawn -- want to succeed, they need to do more. I don't see them doing it. I really don't.

[bread_and_roses]

52. I do understand Devil's Advocacy, Tansy - but

I honestly think you are asking too much while giving too little credit.

A relatively small group of people sparked a world-wide phenomenon and changed the frame of the discussion. That's pretty remarkable, I think. As a contrast, around a year or so before "Occupy" the AFL-CIO - an organization that does know how to organize and mobilize and has some pretty developed resources to do it - had a campaign called "Make the Banks Pay." We thought it was a winning message. We had events all over the Country. We had community partners. We had a plan and a legislative goal. We had expert wordsmiths crafting talking points. We had web presence. And we did NOT have the full force and fury of the police state unleashed on us as Occupy did. And yet it went nowhere and eventually petered out, as so many of our campaigns do.

I would bet that the combined expertise available in the AFL-CIO dwarfs by many orders of magnitude anything that the Occupy people had. And yet they were more effective than we were by the same orders of magnitude.

I don't see "Occupy" itself as a "movement." I saw it as a protest and a demand. A spark. Sometimes it takes a lot of sparks before the fire gets going.

There has been an utter lack of leadership for at least thirty years - more, probably - I'd say since the Welfare Rights movement got derailed and PATCO at least - we all know this I don't know why I'm reiterating. Anyway, those who should have been "leaders" in the sense of providing a structure for organizing, an analysis for planning, the tools for mobilizing - have been among the apologist Quislings who sold out the poor and working class for a few crumbs from the table. Foremost among these I place my own leadership in the AFL-CIO. But you can include all the "Liberal" apologists who supported Clinton's agenda, etc.

I don't expect "Occupy" to be able to fill that whole huge gaping hole all at once.

[Tansy_Gold]

54. But your answer is very different

bread_and_roses wrote: "I don't see "Occupy" itself as a "movement." I saw it as a protest and a demand. A spark. Sometimes it takes a lot of sparks before the fire gets going."


That's a much more reasonable observation than to say OWS is "We are the 99%." You're not calling OWS a movement, where others specifically are.

I don't think it's a movement either. But if it's not, then what is it? And why are people calling it a movement?




My duty calls, too, a pathetic day job that just barely pays the bills. But hey, it does that.

[Tansy_Gold]

42. First of all, capitalism has not destroyed itself

It's flourishing. Anyone who believes capitalism is dead is delusional.

It may be flourishing with the energy of a cancer cell -- thank you, Edward Abbey -- but it is still flourishing. Mondragón has not replaced NYSE.

I see no political dominance by OWS. I don't even see major media interest in OWS.

The establishment of four worker cooperatives is. . . . sad. Given the state of the US economy, if OWS had their shit together, they could have started dozens, hundreds, thousands. Stopping one foreclosure? Oh, please, I'm sure that has Chase and Wells Fargo quaking in their boots -- not.

The radical infrastructure has been there for ages and ages and ages. I have books on my bookcase on it. OWS is acting like it invented the social movement as a concept, and that's why it's not getting the support from the old hands. OWS is a smart ass kid who thinks he knows it all and can't possibly learn anything from the past or from anyone who has done it all before.

[Demeter]

31. I Will Occupy By William Rivers Pitt

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11573-i-will-occupy

When the history of this age is written - if there are people left to write it, and if there is technology left to hold it - it will speak of a generation on the brink. Financial calamity combined with economic collapse combined with endless warfare and bottomless greed united to create a beast with hot breath and blood-red eyes that stares us dead in the face. It is an age on the edge of doom, and yet we persist in the suicidal madness of deliberate ignorance. If that history is written, the first line will be, "They were fools."

That history will remember Occupy, and a year when a chance was held forth to seize on the idea that this looming collective calamity can be sidestepped. History will remember Occupy as having offered one last, best chance to be more than we are, to see the beast for what it is, and to slay it once and for all.

But Occupy is over, right? That is what they would like you to believe in the board rooms, and in the newsrooms that do their bidding. The camps are gone, there was no message, there were no leaders, and now there is nothing left. Why cling to an idea that went nowhere?

Because an idea never dies, because this idea is not dead, because Occupy lives on all across America and all across the world. Occupy lives in every American city and in every national capitol on the planet. Occupy continues to fight against the greed and violence of the powerful. Occupy continues to fight against those who are murdering our world with pollution and the profit motive. Occupy continues to fight unfair foreclosures and evictions, to stand with Labor and the rights of workers, to push back against the perpetual wars that suck the life out of everything and everyone. Occupy continues to stand in England, in Canada, in Mexico, in Chile, in Greece, in Spain, in Russia, in India, and in so many other places besides; in every place where there are people, there is Occupy.

Occupy continues.

SO DOES THIS AFFIRMATION...SEE LINK

[Demeter]

32. GOP Hill Staffer: By 2010, GOP "Had Collectively Lost Its Mind"

To those who are cynical about the possibility of reform, the Washington Post review

( OF Mike Lofgen's "The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted,&quot

concludes:

"Americans in the 1860s and 1940s overcame far greater difficulties with far fewer resources, after all; surely we can do so again."

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17511-gop-hill-staffer-by-2010-gop-had-collectively-lost-its-mind

[Tansy_Gold]

50. I would tell you what I think

of Will Pitt, but I'd get kicked off DU if I did.

[Demeter]

55. Nevertheless, the man can write up a storm

and despite his personal failings, he really is on our side. Unlike some I could mention.

[Demeter]

22. Does President Obama Want to Cut Social Security by 3 Percent?

THAT'S WHAT HE KEEPS SAYING AND DOING, FOLKS, BIDEN'S SPEECHIFYING NOTWITHSTANDING...

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11578-does-president-obama-want-to-cut-social-security-by-3-percent

That is a pretty simple and important question. Unfortunately, most voters are likely to go to the polls this fall without knowing the answer.

If the backdrop to this question is not immediately clear, then you should be very angry at the reporters who cover the campaign. One of the items that continuously comes up in reference to the budget deficit is President Obama's support for the plan put forward by the co-chairs of his deficit commission, Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson. On numerous occasions, President Obama has indicated his support for this plan.

One of the items in the Bowles-Simpson plan is a reduction in the annual cost-of-living adjustment of roughly 0.3 percentage points. This would be accomplished by using a different index that, by design, would show a lower measured rate of inflation. It is important to recognize that this is an annual cut that would accumulate over time. After a retiree has been receiving benefits for ten years, the cut would be 3.0 percent; after 20 years. it would be 6 percent. If a typical retiree lives long enough to get benefits for 20, years the average benefit cut over their years of retirement would be 3 percent....This is the most immediate cut in Social Security in the Bowles-Simpson plan, but it is not the only one. The plan also would gradually raise the age at which retirees receive full benefits to 69. It also phases in a reduction in benefits for workers whose earnings averaged more than $40,000 a year over their working lifetime.

MORE

[Demeter]

28. Colleges Replaced by Prison? Five Curses of Privatization

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17509-colleges-replaced-by-prison-five-curses-of-privatization

MUST READ, GOOD SUMMARY

[Demeter]

29. The Lie Factory: How politics became a business. by Jill Lepore

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/24/120924fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all

A STORY OF UPTON SINCLAIR, CALIFORNIA, POLITICS AND MORE...

...Campaigns, Inc., the first political-consulting firm in the history of the world, was founded, in 1933, by Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter. Whitaker, thirty-four, had started out as a newspaperman, or, really, a newspaper boy; he was working as a reporter at the age of thirteen. By nineteen, he was city editor for the Sacramento Union and, a couple of years later, a political writer for the San Francisco Examiner. He was friendly and gangly, and had big ears, and smoked, and never stopped talking, and typed with two fingers. He started a newspaper wire service, the Capitol News Bureau, distributing stories to eighty papers. In 1930, he sold that business to the United Press. Three years later, he was, for his political ingenuity, hired by, among others, Sheridan Downey, a prominent Democrat, to help defeat a referendum sponsored by Pacific Gas and Electric. Downey also hired Baxter, a twenty-six-year-old widow who had been a writer for the Portland Oregonian, and suggested that she and Whitaker join forces.

Baxter was small, fine-featured, red-headed, and elegant. “Oh, he was such a dear,” she would say, about someone she liked. Whitaker’s suits never looked like they fit him; Baxter’s looked like they’d fit Audrey Hepburn. Whitaker and Baxter started doing business as Campaigns, Inc. The referendum was defeated. Whitaker separated from his wife. In 1938, he and Baxter married. They lived in Marin County, in a house with a heated swimming pool. They began every day with a two-hour breakfast to plan the day. She sometimes called him Clem; he only ever called her Baxter.

In 1934, when Sinclair won the Democratic nomination, he chose Downey as his running mate. (“Uppie and Downey,” the ticket was called.) Working for Downey had been an aberration for Whitaker and Baxter, people who, it was said, “work the Right side of the street.” Campaigns, Inc., specialized in running political campaigns for businesses, especially monopolies like Standard Oil and Pacific Telephone and Telegraph. Pacific Gas and Electric was so impressed that it put Campaigns, Inc., on retainer.

Political consulting is often thought of as an offshoot of the advertising industry, but closer to the truth is that the advertising industry began as a form of political consulting. As the political scientist Stanley Kelley once explained, when modern advertising began, the big clients were just as interested in advancing a political agenda as a commercial one. Monopolies like Standard Oil and DuPont looked bad: they looked greedy and ruthless and, in the case of DuPont, which made munitions, sinister. They therefore hired advertising firms to sell the public on the idea of the large corporation, and, not incidentally, to advance pro-business legislation. It’s this kind of thing that Sinclair was talking about when he said that American history was a battle between business and democracy, and, “So far,” he wrote, “Big Business has won every skirmish.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/24/120924fa_fact_lepore#ixzz26oz8YZSg

[xchrom]

34. China protests: Fears rise over Japan-China trade ties

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19632047


The demonstrations against Japan have turned violent in some places


There are fears over the economic impact of the dispute between China and Japan if the row over islands in the East China Sea is not resolved soon.

Several major Japanese companies have suspended operations in China after attacks on shops and car dealerships.

Shares in some of those firms fell in Tokyo on Tuesday. The Japanese government has asked Beijing to do more to protect Japanese businesses.

Trade between China and Japan is worth about $345bn (£212bn).

[xchrom]

35. Spain: Banks' bad debts at new record

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19633964

The value of bad debts held by Spain's banks in July rose to 169.3bn euros ($221bn; £136bn), according to latest figures from the central bank.

The Bank of Spain said 9.9% of banks' total loans were in arrears, up from 9.4% a month before.

It was the highest bad loan ratio since the central bank began compiling the data in 1962.

Spain is assessing the conditions of assistance from the European Central Bank, its deputy prime minister said.

[xchrom]

36. Brussels urges Rajoy to make mind up on second bailout for Spain

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/09/17/inenglish/1347894926_675953.html

European Commission Vice President Joaquín Almunia on Monday urged the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to make its mind up soon about asking for a second bailout.

“Uncertainty is a risk,” said the Spaniard, who is also the EU commissioner for competition. “Sometimes it is difficult to take a decision and this is a very complicated situation. Any alternative has its pros and cons, but to maintain uncertainty implies a risk that the debt market or another factor increases tensions again. We have learned in the past two-and-a-half years where these tensions could lead to.”

According to government sources, Rajoy wants to delay asking for a second bailout on top of the rescue package for the country’s banks and may even eschew the option if the economy improves sufficiently to avoid the political stigma involved.

However, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos is in favor of requesting a second intervention as soon as possible to ease market pressures. He would like to see one of the European rescue funds buying Spanish debt in the primary market to trigger purchases in the secondary market by the European Central Bank (ECB).

[xchrom]

38. Portugal’s middle classes face harsh new realities

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/09/17/inenglish/1347881470_982453.html



Eighteen months after the so-called troika of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission took over the reins of the Portuguese economy, imposing swingeing austerity measures in the process, the country's middle classes have endured a steep decline in their living standards.

On Saturday, under the slogan "To the devil with the troika - we want our lives back," an estimated 150,000 people, among them many families with children, took to the streets of the two main cities, Lisbon and Porto, with marches staged in a further 20 towns. They were demanding an end to policies that threaten the modest increases in living standards of the country's fledgling middle classes that are further widening inequality in a country where the average take-home wage is around 800 euros.

The protests, which were not led by political parties or labor unions but were organized through social media networks and word of mouth, called for the resignation of the center-right coalition government of Social Democrat Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho.

Since last year's bailout, the official unemployment rate has risen to 15 percent amid tax hikes and spending cuts that have hit education and health services.

[xchrom]

39. {spain} The last remains of the empire

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/09/17/inenglish/1347895561_857013.html


An army helicopter on the Peñon de Vélez de la Gomera / SPANISH MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

There was a time of splendor, almost a century ago now, when trade was plentiful at Peñón de Alhucemas: when the gates of the island fort swung open and the nearby residents of Rif would come in to sell their chickens, eggs, fruit, vegetables and coal. At another rock fortress, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, there were no fewer than five shops and taverns, including one shoe store.

At every one of these tiny "plazas de soberanía" or sovereign strongholds held by Spain along the northern coast of Morocco, there were postal employees, border patrolmen, schoolteachers and lighthouse-keepers among a population that was over 400 in Alhucemas and Vélez (including the prisoners). Over at Isabel II, one of the Chafarinas islands - the largest of the minuscule Spanish archipelagos in the area - the population was more than 700 at one point, and there was a casino and a small military hospital on site.

Amar Binauda used to sell fish to the soldiers when he was young. He would moor his boat at Isabel II island and offer his wares to the Spanish military. He even had a fisherman's house there. His father before him also did business with the Spanish garrison: he was their butcher. But that was a long time ago, when the island troops still mingled with the residents of the nearest coast: the Moroccan pier of Cabo de Agua.

Binauda is now 74 and he never talks to the Spaniards any more. "Each one is in his place," he says. "With the Sahara thing, everything changed. There is no relationship." He is referring to the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, which Morocco took control of when Spain walked out in 1975.

[Roland99]

43. US Futures leaking downward

[font color="red"]S&P 500 -0.1%
DOW -0.1%
NASDAQ -0.1% [/font]

[Demeter]

44. CFTC searching for cause of rapid oil price plunge

DID SOMEBODY GET CAUGHT WITH HIS SHORTS DOWN? WHY NOW, FOR GOD'S SAKE? (BECAUSE IF THEY CAN CLAIM IT WAS ALL A HFT "MISTAKE", THEY CAN ERASE IT!)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/17/us-markets-oil-cftc-idUSBRE88G1BL20120917

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is in contact with futures exchanges over a brief plunge in oil prices on Monday afternoon, a top regulator at the agency said, adding that it is unclear if high-frequency trading played a role...IntercontinentalExchange Inc (ICE.N), home of the Brent crude oil contract in London, declined to comment. CME Group (CME.O), where U.S. crude primarily trades, said it was unaware of any technical issue that may have contributed to the selling on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).

Brent crude prices plummeted more than $3 in a matter of minutes just before 2 p.m. EDT as trading volumes - which had been muted by the Rosh Hashana holiday - shot up. It was not immediately clear what caused the price plunge, but traders said it could have resulted from a problem with a high-speed computer trading program. Regulators have been closely examining high-frequency trading -- which accounts for roughly half of both U.S. equity volume and the futures market -- after high-profile glitches have roiled markets. The May 2010 "flash crash" temporarily wiped $1 trillion in paper value from the stock market in minutes. Regulators have said the algorithms behind rapid-fire trading were a factor, but that they did not cause it.

More recently, in August, a software glitch at Knight Capital Group (KCG.N) flooded the New York Stock Exchange with unintended orders for dozens of stocks, boosting some shares by more than 100 percent and leaving the company with a crippling $440 million loss. The firm was forced to seek a financing deal to stay afloat. High-frequency trading, which relies on tiny price imbalances to make razor-thin profits, contributes much needed liquidity to markets, according to its proponents. But critics say it puts retail investors at a disadvantage.

"When we see prices and volumes move this fast and this dramatically, the job of CFTC surveillance staff becomes even more important," Bart Chilton, another commissioner at the CFTC, said in an email on Monday.

MORE INSANITY AT LINK

[Demeter]

47. Oil Gains on Speculation Biggest Drop Since July Was Exaggerated

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/oil-trades-near-one-week-low-on-forecast-crude-supplies-gained.html

Oil rose from the lowest close in a week in New York as investors speculated that the biggest drop in two months was exaggerated. Futures advanced as much as 0.6 percent after slipping 2.4 percent yesterday, the most since July 23. Prices tumbled more than $3 in less than a minute as October options were about to expire, extending earlier declines after the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic index, known as the Empire State Index, fell to a three-year low. An Energy Department report tomorrow may show crude stockpiles rose a second week, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts.

“The market has said the aggressive fall was ridiculous,” said Jonathan Barratt, the chief executive officer of Barratt’s Bulletin, a commodity newsletter in Sydney. “We’re all thinking that perhaps it was a fat finger by someone, and down it tumbles. The realistic level should be a little bit higher.”

Oil for October delivery gained as much as 61 cents to $97.23 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $96.93 at 12:28 p.m. Sydney time. The contract slid $2.38 yesterday to $96.62, the lowest close since Sept. 10. Prices are 1.9 percent lower this year. Brent oil for November settlement rose 31 cents to $114.10 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. It dropped 2.5 percent yesterday. The front-month European benchmark grade’s premium to the corresponding West Texas Intermediate contract was at $16.86, down from $16.84 yesterday.

U.S. crude inventories probably climbed 1 million barrels last week, according to the median estimate of seven analysts in the Bloomberg survey before the Energy Department report. Gasoline supplies probably rose by 1.5 million barrels, the first gain in eight weeks, according to the survey. Inventories of distillate fuel, a category that includes diesel and heating oil, probably rose for a sixth week, gaining 1 million barrels, the survey showed. The American Petroleum Institute will release separate stockpile data today. The API collects stockpile information on a voluntary basis from operators of refineries, bulk terminals and pipelines. The government requires that reports be filed with the Energy Department for its weekly survey.

Retail gasoline prices climbed above year-earlier levels for the sixth consecutive week, tracking oil futures that rose above $100 a barrel on Sept. 14 for the first time since May. The national average for regular gasoline climbed 3.1 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $3.878 a gallon from a week earlier, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a report posted on its website yesterday. Prices are up 7.7 percent from $3.601 in 2011 and at a record high for this time of year.

[Demeter]

56. Funny how Abrupt Increases in the price of Crude NEVER Bothered them

and still don't.

[xchrom]

46. New Jersey Housing Suffers as Defaults Exceed Nevada: Mortgages

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-18/new-jersey-housing-suffers-as-defaults-exceed-nevada-mortgages.html


The Victorian home, built in 1887 and owned by the retired couple for 38 years, is part of the growing backlog of properties facing foreclosure in the state, which now has the second-largest supply in the U.S.

Wendell and Margret Brady haven’t paid their mortgage in more than three years, withholding the money amid a foreclosure dispute on the couple’s 11-bedroom house in Morristown, New Jersey.

The Victorian home, built in 1887 and owned by the retired couple for 38 years, is part of the growing backlog of properties facing repossession in the state, which now has the second-highest serious delinquency rate in the U.S. While shrinking nationwide, the pipeline of distressed real estate, or shadow inventory, is also growing in New York, Connecticut, Maine and Pennsylvania because of state laws that slow the foreclosure process. The Bradys heard nothing from their lender from May 2011, until a letter arrived in the mail last week.

“This was like going back to day one,” said Margret Brady, 77, after she and her husband received on Sept. 15 the certified letter saying they must pay $223,730 by the end of the month or face losing the house. “It was like we hadn’t gone through any of the stuff of the last three years.”

New Jersey’s judicial review of all foreclosures, which delays seizures to help borrowers, threatens to hold down prices for years as properties remain subject to repossession and then may be sold at a discount. That’s buffeting a housing market already hurt by unemployment that’s risen to a 35-year high.


The foyer of Wendell and Margret Brady's 11-bedroom Victorian house.

[Tansy_Gold]

53. Morristown is not far from where my daughter lives

Without looking for stills, I think that foyer looks like the set from the movie "Clue."

[Demeter]

48. As much as I would like to continue, Duty Calls

Board meeting night, too. See you tomorrow!

[xchrom]

49. America’s Fourth-Richest Woman Unveiled With Koch Stake

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-16/america-s-fourth-richest-woman-unveiled-with-koch-stake.html


Pierce Marshall and his wife, Elaine, leave his lawyer's office on his way back to the Federal Courts building in this file photo in Santa Ana, Calif.

For the past six years, Elaine Tettemer Marshall, the fourth-richest woman in the U.S., has avoided the spotlight that ordinarily accompanies great wealth.

The 70-year-old Dallas resident controls almost 15 percent of Koch Industries Inc., the second-largest closely held company in the U.S. Her stake in the Wichita, Kansas-based industrial conglomerate, which generates annual sales of $110 billion, is worth more than $12.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which has expanded to 100 names. The only American women richer are Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) heiresses Alice and Christy Walton, and 71-year-old candy scion Jacqueline Mars.

Marshall, who gained control of the Koch stake following the death of her husband, E. Pierce Marshall, in 2006, has never appeared on an international wealth ranking, although her estate has been at the center of two U.S. Supreme Court cases involving her mother-in-law, Anna Nicole Smith.

“The Marshalls have never been a lightning rod, because they’ve never been in the public view financially,” said Richard Lieb, a research professor of bankruptcy law at St. John’s University School of Law in New York, who filed briefs to the Supreme Court with his students when the cases were being heard. “No one went after them to find out what their evil deeds were, if any.”

[Fuddnik]

60. That could generate a nasty headline.

Koch sucked dry by Stripper!