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but but but don't forget the olives!
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-wells-fha-refunds-20121027,0,2097257.story
The bank says the customers paid unnecessary fees for their loans. If customers cash the checks, they can't later sue Wells Fargo....Thousands of Wells Fargo & Co. home loan customers recently received a surprise in the mail: refund checks from the big bank, along with letters saying they had paid unnecessary fees for their mortgages.
The unsolicited offers of thousands of dollars arrived with a catch — if the borrowers cash the checks, they can't later sue the No. 1 U.S. home lender. The San Francisco bank said in the letters that borrowers were put into more expensive loans when they could have qualified for cheaper ones.
Analysts said the letters sent to potentially 10,000 Wells Fargo borrowers were a way for the bank to sidestep further litigation over "steering" customers into unfavorable loans — allegations that the government has made about certain Wells Fargo operations in the past.
It's one in a long series of legal troubles for major mortgage lenders, the five largest of which agreed in February to a $25-billion settlement of accusations that they "robo-signed" foreclosure affidavits and otherwise abused distressed borrowers. Mortgage investors have barraged them with lawsuits over defaulted loans, and the government also recently filed separate complaints against banks including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp.
"It sounds like they either found some problems themselves or the regulators discovered them and told them to get things fixed," said Paul J. Miller, an analyst who follows Wells Fargo for Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co.
Wells Fargo's mailed refunds involve government-backed FHA mortgages made from 2009 through 2011. These loans are often made to borrowers with shaky credit or those who can't come up with the 20% down payments required for conventional loans.
Though they require as little as 3.5% down, the FHA loans are also more expensive because they require borrowers to pay steep insurance payments to protect against a default. However, in this case, the borrowers actually had the down payments or home equity needed to get a conventional loan, bank officials said.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Vickee Adams said the problematic FHA loans turned up as the bank reviewed operations at two mortgage channels it has closed down: a subprime lending arm, Wells Fargo Financial, and a wholesale arm that made loans through independent brokers.
The bank previously paid a combined $260 million to settle Federal Reserve and Justice Department allegations that its lending, pay and sales quota practices in the home lending business caused borrowers to be placed into higher-cost mortgages. It didn't admit wrongdoing....
IF IT LOOKS LIKE A CON, AND SMELLS LIKE A CON, AND TASTES LIKE A CON...
http://4closurefraud.org/2011/11/10/must-read-paper-the-mers-mortgage-in-massachusetts-genius-shell-game-or-invitation-to-fraud/
The bank says the customers paid unnecessary fees for their loans. If customers cash the checks, they can't later sue Wells Fargo....Thousands of Wells Fargo & Co. home loan customers recently received a surprise in the mail: refund checks from the big bank, along with letters saying they had paid unnecessary fees for their mortgages.
The unsolicited offers of thousands of dollars arrived with a catch — if the borrowers cash the checks, they can't later sue the No. 1 U.S. home lender. The San Francisco bank said in the letters that borrowers were put into more expensive loans when they could have qualified for cheaper ones.
Analysts said the letters sent to potentially 10,000 Wells Fargo borrowers were a way for the bank to sidestep further litigation over "steering" customers into unfavorable loans — allegations that the government has made about certain Wells Fargo operations in the past.
It's one in a long series of legal troubles for major mortgage lenders, the five largest of which agreed in February to a $25-billion settlement of accusations that they "robo-signed" foreclosure affidavits and otherwise abused distressed borrowers. Mortgage investors have barraged them with lawsuits over defaulted loans, and the government also recently filed separate complaints against banks including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp.
"It sounds like they either found some problems themselves or the regulators discovered them and told them to get things fixed," said Paul J. Miller, an analyst who follows Wells Fargo for Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co.
Wells Fargo's mailed refunds involve government-backed FHA mortgages made from 2009 through 2011. These loans are often made to borrowers with shaky credit or those who can't come up with the 20% down payments required for conventional loans.
Though they require as little as 3.5% down, the FHA loans are also more expensive because they require borrowers to pay steep insurance payments to protect against a default. However, in this case, the borrowers actually had the down payments or home equity needed to get a conventional loan, bank officials said.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Vickee Adams said the problematic FHA loans turned up as the bank reviewed operations at two mortgage channels it has closed down: a subprime lending arm, Wells Fargo Financial, and a wholesale arm that made loans through independent brokers.
The bank previously paid a combined $260 million to settle Federal Reserve and Justice Department allegations that its lending, pay and sales quota practices in the home lending business caused borrowers to be placed into higher-cost mortgages. It didn't admit wrongdoing....
IF IT LOOKS LIKE A CON, AND SMELLS LIKE A CON, AND TASTES LIKE A CON...
http://4closurefraud.org/2011/11/10/must-read-paper-the-mers-mortgage-in-massachusetts-genius-shell-game-or-invitation-to-fraud/
SWITZERLAND tops the latest global competitiveness ranking of 144 countries by the World Economic Forum, best known for its annual shindig in Davos (a Swiss ski resort). It is closely followed by Singapore, while Finland has replaced Sweden in third place. That may be some comfort to the Finns, whose economy is lagging while Sweden’s is thriving. Of the big emerging economies, China remains on top, with Brazil moving up. The most striking fall is for the United States, which has dropped in the rankings for four years in a row. It is now seventh. The rankings, based on criteria such as availability of capital, flexibility of labour markets, economic stability, infrastructure and public services, also reveal the mountains that the troubled countries of southern Europe need to climb. Greece is in 96th place. Plotting the rankings against GDP per person reveals an unsurprising link: competitiveness brings wealth, but rich countries can most easily afford competitiveness. They can also squander it though. Outliers on the chart include countries that are more wealthy than their competitiveness suggests—or even vice-versa.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/09/daily-chart-2
Sunday is my birthday, and this chart seems to sum up my feelings:
The Rolling Stones have a new album, oops, CD coming out next month. Here's a tune from it:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/nobody-should-have-audits-crammed-down-throat.html
Last month, a Senate investigative panel put a spotlight on how the accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP helped Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) use gimmicks and loopholes to avoid taxes on billions of dollars of profits stashed overseas.
The program involved money transfers through the Cayman Islands, as well as transactions structured to make cash distributions into the U.S. from offshore subsidiaries seem like nontaxable loans. Ernst & Young isn’t just a tax consultant to HP; it is also the computer maker’s outside auditor.
hat means Ernst & Young had to opine on whether HP accounted properly for the financial-reporting effects of Ernst & Young’s own tax advice. This dual role -- auditor of the books, plus adviser on how to get around the tax laws -- is allowed under U.S. auditor-independence rules, even though it results in firms auditing their own work. That’s not the worst part, though.
Here we have the U.S. approaching the edge of a fiscal cliff. More than $600 billion of federal spending cuts and tax increases are set to take effect in January unless Congress acts. And it isn’t just politicians who are to blame. Tax avoidance, legal and otherwise, by large multinational corporations is a significant cause of the budget deficit.
Last month, a Senate investigative panel put a spotlight on how the accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP helped Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) use gimmicks and loopholes to avoid taxes on billions of dollars of profits stashed overseas.
The program involved money transfers through the Cayman Islands, as well as transactions structured to make cash distributions into the U.S. from offshore subsidiaries seem like nontaxable loans. Ernst & Young isn’t just a tax consultant to HP; it is also the computer maker’s outside auditor.
hat means Ernst & Young had to opine on whether HP accounted properly for the financial-reporting effects of Ernst & Young’s own tax advice. This dual role -- auditor of the books, plus adviser on how to get around the tax laws -- is allowed under U.S. auditor-independence rules, even though it results in firms auditing their own work. That’s not the worst part, though.
Here we have the U.S. approaching the edge of a fiscal cliff. More than $600 billion of federal spending cuts and tax increases are set to take effect in January unless Congress acts. And it isn’t just politicians who are to blame. Tax avoidance, legal and otherwise, by large multinational corporations is a significant cause of the budget deficit.
http://www.businessinsider.com/lance-roberts-the-latest-exports-data-is-troubling-2012-10
Over the past several months we have been discussing that this is no longer your "father's economy." What we have meant by this is the economic environment today is vastly different than that which most of our parents grew up in. We recently discussed in "Debt: Driving Our Economy Since 1980" that: "From the 1950’s through the late 1970’s...the U.S. was the manufacturing and production powerhouse of the entire global economy post the wide spread devastation of Europe, Germany and Japan during WWII. The rebuilding of Europe and Japan, combined with the years of pent up demand for goods domestically, led to a strongly growing economy and increased personal savings. However, beginning in 1980 the world changed. The development of communications shrank the global marketplace while the rise of technology allowed the U.S. to embark upon a massive shift to export manufacturing to the lowest cost provider in order to import cheaper goods."
The importance of this shift in the U.S. from away from being the epicenter of global production and manufacturing to a service and finance based economy should not be overlooked. This transition is responsible for the issues that are impeding economic growth in the U.S. today from structural unemployment, declining wage growth and lower economic prosperity. The four-panel chart below gives you a visualization of this transition showing the year-over-year change in the data, with the exception of the personal savings rate which is linear, prior and post-1980.
Over the past several months we have been discussing that this is no longer your "father's economy." What we have meant by this is the economic environment today is vastly different than that which most of our parents grew up in. We recently discussed in "Debt: Driving Our Economy Since 1980" that: "From the 1950’s through the late 1970’s...the U.S. was the manufacturing and production powerhouse of the entire global economy post the wide spread devastation of Europe, Germany and Japan during WWII. The rebuilding of Europe and Japan, combined with the years of pent up demand for goods domestically, led to a strongly growing economy and increased personal savings. However, beginning in 1980 the world changed. The development of communications shrank the global marketplace while the rise of technology allowed the U.S. to embark upon a massive shift to export manufacturing to the lowest cost provider in order to import cheaper goods."
The importance of this shift in the U.S. from away from being the epicenter of global production and manufacturing to a service and finance based economy should not be overlooked. This transition is responsible for the issues that are impeding economic growth in the U.S. today from structural unemployment, declining wage growth and lower economic prosperity. The four-panel chart below gives you a visualization of this transition showing the year-over-year change in the data, with the exception of the personal savings rate which is linear, prior and post-1980.
http://www.businessinsider.com/cold-caller-firm-pays-out-for-wasting-businessmans-time-2012-10
Richard Herman, 53, was so upset with firms phoning him up and trying to sell him goods and services he decided to charge them for the time they took out of his day.
He recorded the calls and then sent an invoice charging £10 for every minute he spent on the phone.
When they refused to pay up he sued them at the small claims court and won.
The marketing company AAC agreed to pay the full £195 for 19-and-a-half minutes of calls, plus a £25 court fee.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cold-caller-firm-pays-out-for-wasting-businessmans-time-2012-10#ixzz2AV8DXGFI
Richard Herman, 53, was so upset with firms phoning him up and trying to sell him goods and services he decided to charge them for the time they took out of his day.
He recorded the calls and then sent an invoice charging £10 for every minute he spent on the phone.
When they refused to pay up he sued them at the small claims court and won.
The marketing company AAC agreed to pay the full £195 for 19-and-a-half minutes of calls, plus a £25 court fee.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cold-caller-firm-pays-out-for-wasting-businessmans-time-2012-10#ixzz2AV8DXGFI
that was a good one.THE REAL QUESTION IS: WHO IS THE LIAR? AND CONSIDER HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE IN THE NORTHEAST, AND THEN SAY THAT THINGS ARE "LOOKING UP".
AND BY THE WAY, UNEMPLOYMENT IS UP IN MICHIGAN
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/20/unemployment-is-falling-everywhere-except-the-northeast-what-gives/
The U.S. economy has an unexpected weak spot. It’s not Ohio or Michigan or any of the usual suspects. It’s the Northeast... According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. unemployment is falling in 41 states — including most of the swing states. But there’s one huge exception. Unemployment in the Northeast United States appears to have been getting significantly worse over the past year. (That includes everything from Pennsylvania and New Jersey up to Maine.) The Northeast unemployment rate has risen from 7.9 percent in April to 8.5 percent this past September:
You can see a similar story in this chart from Calculated Risk. Unemployment rates in states like Ohio, Michigan, even California and Nevada have all dropped significantly from their recession peak. Even if some of those states are still struggling, the trend is encouraging.* (* Correction: Actually, as Marcy Wheeler points out, I spoke too soon in the case of Michigan. The state’s unemployment rate is up from 8.3 percent in April to 9.3 percent in September. It did go down last month—and Michigan is still in a far better place than it was during the worst of the recession—but that’s a worrisome uptick.)But it’s the opposite in states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Those states have barely improved at all since the worst of the recession. Indeed, as Evan Soltas observed at Bloomberg, the recent deterioration of the Northeast — a region that was holding up relatively well in 2010 and 2011 — helps explain why the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen so slowly this year.
So… any theories? The popular line among politicians in New York and New Jersey is that the unemployment numbers are just plain wrong. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the jobless rate in New York climbed from 8.2 percent when Gov. Andrew Cuomo took office last year to 9.1 percent today. Cuomo’s administration, by contrast, says that this is out of whack with state payroll data that show rising job growth. (It’s possible, for instance, that BLS’s household surveys are missing population growth in New York City.) Another theory is that the Northeast has been hit harder by the slowdown and debt crisis in Europe than anywhere else. As Steve Cochrane of Moody’s Analytics has noted, the Northeastern U.S. exports more to Europe than any other region. Manufacturing has shrunk more rapidly here than anywhere else in the country this year. And the already-shrinking financial sector in New York and Connecticut has been battered by the euro zone’s debt crisis.
One thing Cochrane pointed out in his “U.S. Regional Outlook” report last year was that the Northeast had greater “downside risks” and was more susceptible to a global slowdown than any other region in the country. The South has benefited greatly from oil and gas production. The West is buoyed by growth in technology firms. The Midwest has “the most diversified export markets.” But, he noted, the Northeast is still getting crunched by the slowdown in the financial sector. Note also that the housing market has been slower to recover in the Northeast than in the rest of the country, at least judging from the latest data on home sales and prices. And, as Soltas points out, states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut are all seeing a sharp cutback in public sector employment. In any case, the Northeast’s woes aren’t likely to get a ton of political attention, since most of the states here aren’t swing states for the presidential race. But this slowdown might help explain why the Senate contest in Connecticut remains so close—that’s usually a clear blue state—as well as why Pennsylvania is a tight race. But either way, it’s certainly an important economic story.
HE DOESN'T HAVE TO SOUND SO CHIPPER ABOUT IT!
THAT WOULD BE IRONIC, WOULDN'T IT? ONCE THE SCREAMING AND DYING WERE OVER, OF COURSE...
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-10-26/more-dozen-nuclear-plants-near-hurricane-sandy%E2%80%99s-path-brace-impactcc
Bloomberg reports:
“Because of the size of Hurricane Sandy, we could see an impact to coastal and inland plants,” Neil Sheehan, a spokesman based in Philadelphia for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said by phone today. “We will station inspectors at the sites if we know they could be directly impacted.”
The NRC met earlier today to discuss the necessary precautions to take for the storm, Sheehan said. Plants must begin to shut if wind speeds exceed certain limits, he said. As of 2 p.m. New York time (FRIDAY), Sandy had winds of 75 miles (121 kilometers) per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was about 430 miles south-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, moving north at 7 mph. The current Hurricane Center track calls for the system to come ashore just south of Delaware Bay on Oct. 30.
Reuters provides a list:
The following lists the nuclear reactors and utilities in Sandy’s potential path.
While we don’t foresee any problems, the risk of nuclear accident in the U.S. is actually much greater than it was in Japan before Fukushima. For example, fuel pools in the United States store an average of ten times more radioactive fuel than stored at Fukushima, and have virtually no safety features.
Let’s review the list and look at examples of problems experienced by the nuclear plants in Hurricane Sandy’s path:
It’s not surprising that there have been problems at all of these nuclear plants. After all, the U.S. has 23 reactors which are virtually identical to Fukushima. The archaic uranium reactor designs developed more than 40 years ago are only good for making bombs. Most American nuclear reactors are old. They are aging poorly, and are in very real danger of melting down. And yet the NRC is relaxing safety standards at the old plants. Indeed, while many of the plants are already past the service life that the engineers built them for, the NRC is considering extending licenses another 80 years, which former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and now senior adviser with Friends of the Earth’s nuclear campaign David Freeman calls “committing suicide”.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/fast-industrializing-china-faces-tough-choices-a-863331.html
The elite Beijing Sports Car Club was founded in 2009 and meets once per week in an exclusive lounge near the city's football stadium. The club's 700 members also travel on luxury trips together to places like Las Vegas and London.
A visit with Mr. Huang, one of the richest and most controversial men in the People's Republic of China, is full of surprises. Take, for example, the four pairs of climbing boots lined up like exhibits behind the door to his office. "I was at the South Pole and North Pole, and twice on Mt. Everest with these," says Huang, pointing proudly to a series of photos that serve as proof of his adventures. There are Buddha statues and various animals in the adjacent rooms, including rhesus monkeys and pygmy rabbits in cages, as well as small sharks swimming in circles in a large aquarium leaning against a wall.
"I love nature," says Huang Nubo, 56, a businessman with an estimated net worth of at least $1 billion (€772 million). The founder and chairman of the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group, Huang discovered a market niche: He builds resorts with an emphasis on sustainable design. His company benefits from the new wanderlust and "green" consciousness of the affluent Chinese upper and middle classes.
He tells the short version of life story while a Siam cat purrs on his lap. He was orphaned at 13, and in 1960 his father committed suicide after a quarrel with a party secretary. His mother later died of grief. He attended Beijing University, joined the Communist Party to further his career and became an official in the party's propaganda division. Then he withdrew from politics and founded his company.
"As an entrepreneur, you have more freedom than you do in politics, and you can usually move around more," says Huang, whose party connections certainly didn't hurt his growing business. But, as he points out, "Chinese society has developed unevenly, which isn't good. Too many people are losing out." This is why Huang gives a substantial portion of his profits to the needy. With charitable donations of about $5 million a year, he is seen as one of the country's most generous philanthropists.
The elite Beijing Sports Car Club was founded in 2009 and meets once per week in an exclusive lounge near the city's football stadium. The club's 700 members also travel on luxury trips together to places like Las Vegas and London.
A visit with Mr. Huang, one of the richest and most controversial men in the People's Republic of China, is full of surprises. Take, for example, the four pairs of climbing boots lined up like exhibits behind the door to his office. "I was at the South Pole and North Pole, and twice on Mt. Everest with these," says Huang, pointing proudly to a series of photos that serve as proof of his adventures. There are Buddha statues and various animals in the adjacent rooms, including rhesus monkeys and pygmy rabbits in cages, as well as small sharks swimming in circles in a large aquarium leaning against a wall.
"I love nature," says Huang Nubo, 56, a businessman with an estimated net worth of at least $1 billion (€772 million). The founder and chairman of the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group, Huang discovered a market niche: He builds resorts with an emphasis on sustainable design. His company benefits from the new wanderlust and "green" consciousness of the affluent Chinese upper and middle classes.
He tells the short version of life story while a Siam cat purrs on his lap. He was orphaned at 13, and in 1960 his father committed suicide after a quarrel with a party secretary. His mother later died of grief. He attended Beijing University, joined the Communist Party to further his career and became an official in the party's propaganda division. Then he withdrew from politics and founded his company.
"As an entrepreneur, you have more freedom than you do in politics, and you can usually move around more," says Huang, whose party connections certainly didn't hurt his growing business. But, as he points out, "Chinese society has developed unevenly, which isn't good. Too many people are losing out." This is why Huang gives a substantial portion of his profits to the needy. With charitable donations of about $5 million a year, he is seen as one of the country's most generous philanthropists.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/26/163729003/storms-uncertain-track-defies-weather-rules?ft=1&f=1001
In this satellite image provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Hurricane Sandy's huge cloud extent of up to 2,000 miles churns over the Bahamas, as a line of clouds associated with a powerful cold front approaches the U.S. East Coast on Friday.
It's still not clear whether Sandy will be a devastating storm or just a bad one. It is clear, however, that Sandy will be remembered as the storm that broke all the rules and baffled the nation's top weather forecasters. Early Saturday morning, the storm was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm by the National Weather Service — only to be returned to hurricane status a few hours later. Either way, forecasters warn, "widespread impacts" are still expected along the coast. Three days before reaching land — a time when the National Hurricane Center usually puts a bulls-eye on a small stretch of coast — government forecasters were still talking about the possibility of the storm striking anywhere from Maryland to New York.
Their uncertainty was especially surprising because hurricane track forecasts have become so good in the past couple of decades. They are usually accurate five or more days out. Yet during a press conference on Friday, James Franklin of the NHC was still deflecting reporters' questions about Sandy's track. "We cannot be precise at this stage about exactly where it will come in," he said.
Forecasters say Sandy just isn't like other hurricanes. "The whole thing is unprecedented," Henry Margusity of AccuWeather told NPR's Melissa Block. "We've never seen anything like this."
For one thing, Sandy is about to start moving the opposite direction from a typical storm system. Tropical storms in the Atlantic usually make a right turn and head out to sea as they travel north up the coast. But Sandy is expected to turn left and head straight inland. That's because the storm is expected to encounter a highly unusual weather pattern. This pattern "blocks the system from going north and east and forces it to go more westward," said Louis Uccellini of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Another odd thing about Sandy is that it is expected to get slightly stronger as it moves north. Usually, hurricanes weaken as they reach cooler waters. The reason for this strengthening is that Sandy is about to undergo a strange metamorphosis, forecasters say. Shortly before it reaches land, it will begin to encounter cold air from the north, and this cold air will change Sandy to something more like a winter storm. As a practical matter, this means that instead of drawing its power primarily from warm ocean water the way a hurricane usually does, Sandy will be powered by pressure and temperature differences in the atmosphere, Uccellini says. So it can pick up strength when most storms would be weakening.
Becoming a winter-type storm also means Sandy won't have the usual structure of a hurricane, with a clearly defined eye. Instead it will be an enormous swirling mass of wind and rain, and even snow. Of course Sandy isn't the first late-season storm to behave oddly. In 1991, right around Halloween, a hurricane named Grace merged with a powerful nor'easter to become what's still known as "the perfect storm."
I DON'T REMEMBER GRACE--SHE PROBABLY DIDN'T MAKE IT TO NH.
In this satellite image provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Hurricane Sandy's huge cloud extent of up to 2,000 miles churns over the Bahamas, as a line of clouds associated with a powerful cold front approaches the U.S. East Coast on Friday.
It's still not clear whether Sandy will be a devastating storm or just a bad one. It is clear, however, that Sandy will be remembered as the storm that broke all the rules and baffled the nation's top weather forecasters. Early Saturday morning, the storm was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm by the National Weather Service — only to be returned to hurricane status a few hours later. Either way, forecasters warn, "widespread impacts" are still expected along the coast. Three days before reaching land — a time when the National Hurricane Center usually puts a bulls-eye on a small stretch of coast — government forecasters were still talking about the possibility of the storm striking anywhere from Maryland to New York.
Their uncertainty was especially surprising because hurricane track forecasts have become so good in the past couple of decades. They are usually accurate five or more days out. Yet during a press conference on Friday, James Franklin of the NHC was still deflecting reporters' questions about Sandy's track. "We cannot be precise at this stage about exactly where it will come in," he said.
Forecasters say Sandy just isn't like other hurricanes. "The whole thing is unprecedented," Henry Margusity of AccuWeather told NPR's Melissa Block. "We've never seen anything like this."
For one thing, Sandy is about to start moving the opposite direction from a typical storm system. Tropical storms in the Atlantic usually make a right turn and head out to sea as they travel north up the coast. But Sandy is expected to turn left and head straight inland. That's because the storm is expected to encounter a highly unusual weather pattern. This pattern "blocks the system from going north and east and forces it to go more westward," said Louis Uccellini of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Another odd thing about Sandy is that it is expected to get slightly stronger as it moves north. Usually, hurricanes weaken as they reach cooler waters. The reason for this strengthening is that Sandy is about to undergo a strange metamorphosis, forecasters say. Shortly before it reaches land, it will begin to encounter cold air from the north, and this cold air will change Sandy to something more like a winter storm. As a practical matter, this means that instead of drawing its power primarily from warm ocean water the way a hurricane usually does, Sandy will be powered by pressure and temperature differences in the atmosphere, Uccellini says. So it can pick up strength when most storms would be weakening.
Becoming a winter-type storm also means Sandy won't have the usual structure of a hurricane, with a clearly defined eye. Instead it will be an enormous swirling mass of wind and rain, and even snow. Of course Sandy isn't the first late-season storm to behave oddly. In 1991, right around Halloween, a hurricane named Grace merged with a powerful nor'easter to become what's still known as "the perfect storm."
I DON'T REMEMBER GRACE--SHE PROBABLY DIDN'T MAKE IT TO NH.
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/?source=newsletter
Bottom line: The president is complicit in creating an increasingly unequal -- and unjust -- society...this piece is an attempt at laying out the progressive case for why one should not vote for Barack Obama for reelection, even if you are in a swing state.
There are many good arguments against Obama, even if the Republicans cannot seem to muster any. The civil liberties/antiwar case was made eloquently a few weeks ago by libertarian Conor Friedersdorf, who wrote a well-cited blog post on why he could not, in good conscience, vote for Obama. While his arguments have tremendous merit, there is an equally powerful case against Obama on the grounds of economic and social equity. That case needs to be made...So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.
The above is a chart of corporate profits against the main store of savings for most Americans who have savings — home equity. Notice that after the crisis, after the Obama inflection point, corporate profits recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs, whereas home equity levels have remained static. That $5-7 trillion of lost savings did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did. Also notice that this is unprecedented in postwar history. Home equity levels and corporate profits have simply never diverged in this way; what was good for GM had always, until recently, been good, if not for America, for the balance sheet of homeowners. Obama’s policies severed this link, completely. This split represents more than money. It represents a new kind of politics, one where Obama, and yes, he did this, officially enshrined rights for the elite in our constitutional order and removed rights from everyone else (see “The Housing Crash and the End of American Citizenship” in the Fordham Urban Law Journal for a more complete discussion of the problem). The bailouts and the associated Federal Reserve actions were not primarily shifts of funds to bankers; they were a guarantee that property rights for a certain class of creditors were immune from challenge or market forces. The foreclosure crisis, with its rampant criminality, predatory lending, and document forgeries, represents the flip side. Property rights for debtors simply increasingly exist solely at the pleasure of the powerful. The lack of prosecution of Wall Street executives, the ability of banks to borrow at 0 percent from the Federal Reserve while most of us face credit card rates of 15-30 percent, and the bailouts are all part of the re-creation of the American system of law around Obama’s oligarchy.
The policy continuity with Bush is a stark contrast to what Obama offered as a candidate. Look at the broken promises from the 2008 Democratic platform: a higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and labor protections in the FAA bill. Each of these pledges would have tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush, and then went back on his word because these promises didn’t fit with the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision. For sure, Obama believes he is doing the right thing, that his policies are what’s best for society. He is a conservative technocrat, running a policy architecture to ensure that conservative technocrats like him run the complex machinery of the state and reap private rewards from doing so. Radical political and economic inequality is the result. None of these policy shifts, with the exception of TARP, is that important in and of themselves, but together they add up to declining living standards.
While life has never been fair, the chart above shows that, since World War II, this level of official legal, political and economic inequity for the broad mass of the public is new (though obviously for subgroups, like African-Americans, it was not new). It is as if America’s traditional racial segregationist tendencies have been reorganized, and the tools and tactics of that system have been repurposed for a multicultural elite colonizing a multicultural population. The data bears this out: Under Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every dollar. That’s right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress. And it’s not strictly a result of the financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.
This is the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional, it is the modern American order, and it has a certain equilibrium, the kind we identify in Middle Eastern resource extraction based economies. We are even seeing, as I showed in an earlier post, a transition of the American economic order toward a petro-state. By some accounts, America will be the largest producer of hydrocarbons in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This is just not an America that any of us should want to live in. It is a country whose economic basis is oligarchy, whose political system is authoritarianism, and whose political culture is murderous toward the rest of the world and suicidal in our aggressive lack of attention to climate change...MUCH MORE WORTHYOF YOUR READING....We need to build a different model of politics, one in which people who want a different society are willing to actually bargain and back up their threats, rather than just aesthetically argue for shifts around the margin. The good news is that the changes we need to make are entirely doable. It will cost about $100 trillion over 20 years to move our world to an entirely sustainable energy system, and the net worth of the global top 1 percent is $103 trillion. We can do this. And the moments to let us make the changes we need are coming. There is endless good we can do, if enough of us are willing to show the courage that exists within every human being instead of the malevolence and desire for conformity that also exists within every heart.
Systems that can’t go on, don’t. The political elites, as much as they kick the can down the road, know this. The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we?
Bottom line: The president is complicit in creating an increasingly unequal -- and unjust -- society...this piece is an attempt at laying out the progressive case for why one should not vote for Barack Obama for reelection, even if you are in a swing state.
There are many good arguments against Obama, even if the Republicans cannot seem to muster any. The civil liberties/antiwar case was made eloquently a few weeks ago by libertarian Conor Friedersdorf, who wrote a well-cited blog post on why he could not, in good conscience, vote for Obama. While his arguments have tremendous merit, there is an equally powerful case against Obama on the grounds of economic and social equity. That case needs to be made...So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.
The above is a chart of corporate profits against the main store of savings for most Americans who have savings — home equity. Notice that after the crisis, after the Obama inflection point, corporate profits recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs, whereas home equity levels have remained static. That $5-7 trillion of lost savings did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did. Also notice that this is unprecedented in postwar history. Home equity levels and corporate profits have simply never diverged in this way; what was good for GM had always, until recently, been good, if not for America, for the balance sheet of homeowners. Obama’s policies severed this link, completely. This split represents more than money. It represents a new kind of politics, one where Obama, and yes, he did this, officially enshrined rights for the elite in our constitutional order and removed rights from everyone else (see “The Housing Crash and the End of American Citizenship” in the Fordham Urban Law Journal for a more complete discussion of the problem). The bailouts and the associated Federal Reserve actions were not primarily shifts of funds to bankers; they were a guarantee that property rights for a certain class of creditors were immune from challenge or market forces. The foreclosure crisis, with its rampant criminality, predatory lending, and document forgeries, represents the flip side. Property rights for debtors simply increasingly exist solely at the pleasure of the powerful. The lack of prosecution of Wall Street executives, the ability of banks to borrow at 0 percent from the Federal Reserve while most of us face credit card rates of 15-30 percent, and the bailouts are all part of the re-creation of the American system of law around Obama’s oligarchy.
The policy continuity with Bush is a stark contrast to what Obama offered as a candidate. Look at the broken promises from the 2008 Democratic platform: a higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and labor protections in the FAA bill. Each of these pledges would have tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush, and then went back on his word because these promises didn’t fit with the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision. For sure, Obama believes he is doing the right thing, that his policies are what’s best for society. He is a conservative technocrat, running a policy architecture to ensure that conservative technocrats like him run the complex machinery of the state and reap private rewards from doing so. Radical political and economic inequality is the result. None of these policy shifts, with the exception of TARP, is that important in and of themselves, but together they add up to declining living standards.
While life has never been fair, the chart above shows that, since World War II, this level of official legal, political and economic inequity for the broad mass of the public is new (though obviously for subgroups, like African-Americans, it was not new). It is as if America’s traditional racial segregationist tendencies have been reorganized, and the tools and tactics of that system have been repurposed for a multicultural elite colonizing a multicultural population. The data bears this out: Under Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every dollar. That’s right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress. And it’s not strictly a result of the financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.
This is the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional, it is the modern American order, and it has a certain equilibrium, the kind we identify in Middle Eastern resource extraction based economies. We are even seeing, as I showed in an earlier post, a transition of the American economic order toward a petro-state. By some accounts, America will be the largest producer of hydrocarbons in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This is just not an America that any of us should want to live in. It is a country whose economic basis is oligarchy, whose political system is authoritarianism, and whose political culture is murderous toward the rest of the world and suicidal in our aggressive lack of attention to climate change...MUCH MORE WORTHYOF YOUR READING....We need to build a different model of politics, one in which people who want a different society are willing to actually bargain and back up their threats, rather than just aesthetically argue for shifts around the margin. The good news is that the changes we need to make are entirely doable. It will cost about $100 trillion over 20 years to move our world to an entirely sustainable energy system, and the net worth of the global top 1 percent is $103 trillion. We can do this. And the moments to let us make the changes we need are coming. There is endless good we can do, if enough of us are willing to show the courage that exists within every human being instead of the malevolence and desire for conformity that also exists within every heart.
Systems that can’t go on, don’t. The political elites, as much as they kick the can down the road, know this. The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we?
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/27-2
A range of protesters from communists to academics mount a 'No Monti Day' demonstration against government austerity policies in downtown Rome October 27, 2012. (Photo: Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi)
Tens of thousands of anti-austerity protesters marched through Rome on Saturday, declaring "No Monti Day" in growing anger over austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister Mario Monti.
Since last November, Monti's government has pushed through extreme painful spending cuts, pension overhauls, and tax hikes, all of which reach into the pockets of the lower and working classes of Italy.
"We are here against Monti and his politics, the same politics as all over Europe, that brought Greece to its knees and that are destroying half of Europe, public schools, health care," said demonstrator Giorgio Cremaschi, expressing the growing regional discontent with the Eurozone's handling of the financial crisis.
"United with a Europe that is rebelling. Let's get rid of the Monti government," read one of the banners held at the demonstration.
A range of protesters from communists to academics mount a 'No Monti Day' demonstration against government austerity policies in downtown Rome October 27, 2012. (Photo: Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi)
Tens of thousands of anti-austerity protesters marched through Rome on Saturday, declaring "No Monti Day" in growing anger over austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister Mario Monti.
Since last November, Monti's government has pushed through extreme painful spending cuts, pension overhauls, and tax hikes, all of which reach into the pockets of the lower and working classes of Italy.
"We are here against Monti and his politics, the same politics as all over Europe, that brought Greece to its knees and that are destroying half of Europe, public schools, health care," said demonstrator Giorgio Cremaschi, expressing the growing regional discontent with the Eurozone's handling of the financial crisis.
"United with a Europe that is rebelling. Let's get rid of the Monti government," read one of the banners held at the demonstration.
Kiddies at 2 PM, and it goes on till we close (or drop of exhaustion).
I have to go make the lasagna now. Be good, say warm and dry, and
I hope all those condo dwellers appreciate all the time and effort you do.
http://www.businessinsider.com/german-finance-minister-says-no-way-to-a-new-greek-debt-haircut-2012-10
Wolfgang Schaeuble
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's finance minister has dismissed the idea of governments and other public creditors taking a hit on their Greek debt holdings, arguing that it wouldn't be legally feasible.
However, Wolfgang Schaeuble said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio broadcast Sunday that a debt buyback program — under which Greece would get loans that would allow it to pay off debts — might be possible. That, he said, "is not a trick; it is a consideration that can seriously be engaged in."
Greece is pushing for a two-year extension of the 2014 deadline to meet the terms of its bailout program, a move expected to incur substantial extra costs.
Private creditors agreed earlier this year to take a so-called haircut, or restructuring, on their Greek debt holdings — accepting a 53.5 percent loss on the face value of bonds.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/german-finance-minister-says-no-way-to-a-new-greek-debt-haircut-2012-10#ixzz2AbJoysSO
Wolfgang Schaeuble
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's finance minister has dismissed the idea of governments and other public creditors taking a hit on their Greek debt holdings, arguing that it wouldn't be legally feasible.
However, Wolfgang Schaeuble said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio broadcast Sunday that a debt buyback program — under which Greece would get loans that would allow it to pay off debts — might be possible. That, he said, "is not a trick; it is a consideration that can seriously be engaged in."
Greece is pushing for a two-year extension of the 2014 deadline to meet the terms of its bailout program, a move expected to incur substantial extra costs.
Private creditors agreed earlier this year to take a so-called haircut, or restructuring, on their Greek debt holdings — accepting a 53.5 percent loss on the face value of bonds.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/german-finance-minister-says-no-way-to-a-new-greek-debt-haircut-2012-10#ixzz2AbJoysSO
