STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 8 March 2013

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 8 March 2013[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 7 March 2013

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 7 March 2013
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Dow Jones 14,329.49 +33.25 (0.23%)
S&P 500 1,544.26 +2.80 (0.18%)
Nasdaq 3,232.09 +9.72 (0.30%)


[font color=red]10 Year 1.94% +0.01 (0.52%)
30 Year 3.17% +0.02 (0.63%)[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
Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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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
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.



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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]

[Fuddnik]

1. The lucky ones escaped with 201k's.

[Demeter]

2. Happy Friday, Everyone!

This Friday is Euchre Night, so I will try to start the thread early.

Somebody depressurized the water main, so the Kid, cats, and I and several thousand others are living with a "boil water" directive until further notice.

If ever there was a time to take up drinking spirits as an avocation....the Kid and I went to the grocery store to get 4 gallons of water from god knows where...but it's supposedly treated against any bacteria.

It never rains .... literally! The report in the paper (which is actually starting to print real news...how very odd!) is that we got plenty of snow so far this winter. It just all fell in February.

The latest white stuff has melted sufficiently to show that 5 intrepid and stupid snowdrops are still blooming. If you recall, these optimists showed up in full force on January 9th by the dozen. It's amazing what resilience Nature has. Let's hope it's enough to save this f-witted species of ours.

[Demeter]

3. From One Budget Fight to the Next NYT Editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/opinion/from-one-budget-fight-to-the-next.html

Unable to stop the sequester’s job-killing spending cuts, President Obama now says he wants to move past the endless wars of budget attrition. Though he still wants a long-term deficit deal, he said last week, it is time to turn to immigration, gun control, universal preschool, a higher minimum wage and voting reform. But Republicans are not going to allow that pivot. Most are unalterably opposed to all of those initiatives, and want to keep their focus on cutting domestic programs and fighting off tax increases. At a time when Republicans are divided on many social issues, the budget wars are one of the few things that unite them.

A variety of insidious new budget proposals are now emerging from the House. On Wednesday, by a 267-to-151 vote, the House approved a stopgap spending resolution to keep the government running for the last half of the fiscal year, replacing the one that expires on March 27. Such “continuing resolutions,” which fund the government at the previous year’s level, demonstrate Congress’s inability to do its most basic job of making spending decisions. But this new resolution is worse because it also includes the sequester’s brutal cuts — except in a few crucial areas that are Republican priorities. The House bill would give the Pentagon a brand-new budget, allowing it to make the cuts in low-priority areas, preventing the reductions in military readiness that generals have been warning about. It prevents staffing cuts in the Border Patrol, and adds money for Israel and embassy security. It makes health care reform a target for special cuts, and even specifies that no money is to be spent on the community group known as Acorn, though that group has not existed since 2010.

But it allows no flexibility or extra money to prevent cuts to programs like unemployment benefits, nutrition aid, housing assistance and education grants. Republicans do not care about those programs and left the sequester cuts in place for them. Simple fairness demands that Senate Democrats call for equal flexibility and money for the most important domestic programs in their version of the bill, as Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the new Appropriations Committee chairwoman, has vowed to do. (Mr. Obama already said that he would not use the threat of a government shutdown to fight the sequester cuts, rejecting the extortionate tactics Republicans regularly use.)

The Republicans have made it clear that the spending fight will never cease. They haven’t promised not to abuse the next debt-ceiling increase, necessary in the next few months, to get further cuts. And Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, will soon unveil his caucus’s 2014 budget, which will start to make good on the party’s ruinous plan to balance the budget in 10 years. To do so, he is reviving his discredited proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program, and considered making it worse by cutting benefits for people who are now 56 and younger; an earlier plan cut benefits for those 55 and below.

Republicans are hoping to wear down their opposition with these eternal battles. But their proposals are too dangerous to allow that to happen.

[Demeter]

4. Cry About the Real Wolf By CHARLES M. BLOW

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/opinion/blow-cry-about-the-real-wolf.html?_r=0

The White House horribly botched its messaging on the sequester. The Obama administration desperately wanted to define the sequester’s immediate job casualties and calamitous disruptions. In a way, Obama’s strategy was understandable, and may well have worked on a different group of Republicans from the present crop, which is constitutionally opposed to anything that this president supports. It’s like one of those Warner Brothers cartoons where Bugs Bunny argues with Yosemite Sam and then takes Sam’s position only to have Sam continue to disagree out of spite and anger and ignorance. In our version, Sam then threatens to blow the economy to smithereens. It would be funny it weren’t so tragically real.

The White House wanted to cause enough outcry that it would pressure Republicans into a deal that would avert indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts. But the outcry never came. Republicans gambled that it never would. They called the White House’s bluff. The public had grown numb with the sky-is-falling hysterics in Washington, so much so that few were paying close attention to the sequester. A CBS News poll issued this week found that only 28 percent of Americans said that they were paying very close attention. Many Republicans played down the sequester’s potential fallout, while fact checkers castigated the White House for exaggerating it. This seems to have won some converts among the tangentially engaged electorate.

Sure, most people preferred some balance of spending cuts and tax increases, and a plurality blamed Republicans in Congress for not coming up with a deal, according the CBS News poll. But the percentage of people who said that the sequester would either be good for the country or wouldn’t have a real impact was equal to the percentage of people who believed that it would be bad for the country. And, since the country didn’t fall apart during the first week of the sequester, many Americans may be even more open to the argument that the administration was crying wolf. In fact, the Dow Jones industrial average hit a record high this week, and there were no long lines at airports for any reason other than a brewing snowstorm. (THE REAL PROBLEM, IMO, IS THE FIRST HURT ARE THE LEAST REGARDED: THE INVISIBLE AMERICANS...THE POOR AND POWERLESS--DEMETER)

But remember that in the story of the boy who cried wolf, ultimately, a real wolf does show up after all the false cries, and that very real wolf destroys a vulnerable flock. The lesson, as applied to our present dilemma, is that alarmism erodes credibility, but real danger can still lurk...The pain of the sequester is that kind that lurks: a slow, creeping disaster mainly affecting those Americans on the fringes who are barely inching their way back into a still-bleak job market — or hopelessly locked out of it — and poor Americans too old or too young to participate in it. That is how the effects should always have been framed: not as a danger to air travelers and contractors, but as a prowling danger to the most vulnerable in our flock. Not framing it this way harkens back to a larger problem in our culture: a failure, or outright unwillingness, to acknowledge America’s poor — both working and not — and to appreciate their struggle. When I think about the effects of the sequester, I can’t help thinking about the people in my hometown in rural north Louisiana and in places like it. In my hometown, the median family income is less than $30,000, and poverty rates are staggeringly high, according to the American Community Survey. This isn’t necessarily because people don’t take work if they can find it, but because much of the work they can find doesn’t pay a living wage. So they supplement their salaries with the public benefits they’re eligible to receive. The town is also home to the Head Start program for the area, and some of the only professional jobs available are at the school. It is in places like this, places full of the working poor who don’t take airplanes or own stock, that the effects of the sequester will be all too real...MORE

[Demeter]

5. Who’s Very Important? By PAUL KRUGMAN JULY 12, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/krugman-whos-very-important.html?_r=3&smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto&

“Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P.” That remark, by a donor waiting to get in to one of Mitt Romney’s recent fund-raisers in the Hamptons, pretty much sums up the attitude of America’s wealthy elite. Mr. Romney’s base — never mind the top 1 percent, we’re talking about the top 0.01 percent or higher — is composed of very self-important people. Specifically, these are people who believe that they are, as another Romney donor put it, “the engine of the economy”; they should be cherished, and the taxes they pay, which are already at an 80-year low, should be cut even further. Unfortunately, said yet another donor, the “common person” — for example, the “nails ladies” — just doesn’t get it.

O.K., it’s easy to mock these people, but the joke’s really on us. For the “we are V.I.P.” crowd has fully captured the modern Republican Party, to such an extent that leading Republicans consider Mr. Romney’s apparent use of multimillion-dollar offshore accounts to dodge federal taxes not just acceptable but praiseworthy: “It’s really American to avoid paying taxes, legally,” declared Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. And there is, of course, a good chance that Republicans will control both Congress and the White House next year. (GOOD THING THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN....OR DID IT? DEMETER) If that happens, we’ll see a sharp turn toward economic policies based on the proposition that we need to be especially solicitous toward the superrich — I’m sorry, I mean the “job creators.” So it’s important to understand why that’s wrong.

The first thing you need to know is that America wasn’t always like this. When John F. Kennedy was elected president, the top 0.01 percent was only about a quarter as rich compared with the typical family as it is now — and members of that class paid much higher taxes than they do today. Yet somehow we managed to have a dynamic, innovative economy that was the envy of the world. The superrich may imagine that their wealth makes the world go round, but history says otherwise. To this historical observation we should add another note: quite a few of today’s superrich, Mr. Romney included, make or made their money in the financial sector, buying and selling assets rather than building businesses in the old-fashioned sense. Indeed, the soaring share of the wealthy in national income went hand in hand with the explosive growth of Wall Street.

Not long ago, we were told that all this wheeling and dealing was good for everyone, that it was making the economy both more efficient and more stable. Instead, it turned out that modern finance was laying the foundation for a severe economic crisis whose fallout continues to afflict millions of Americans, and that taxpayers had to bail out many of those supposedly brilliant bankers to prevent an even worse crisis. So at least some members of the top 0.01 percent are best viewed as job destroyers rather than job creators. Did I mention that those bailed-out bankers are now overwhelmingly backing Mr. Romney, who promises to reverse the mild financial reforms introduced after the crisis? To be sure, many and probably most of the rich do, in fact, contribute positively to the economy. However, they also receive large monetary rewards. Yet somehow $20 million-plus in annual income isn’t enough. They want to be revered, too, and given special treatment in the form of low taxes. And that is more than they deserve. After all, the “common person” also makes a positive contribution to the economy. Why single out the rich for extra praise and perks? So, are the very rich V.I.P.? No, they aren’t — at least no more so than other working Americans. And the “common person” will be hurt, not helped, if we end up with government of the 0.01 percent, by the 0.01 percent, for the 0.01 percent.

[Demeter]

6. The Stock Market: Food Stamps for the 1%

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/01/31/the-stock-market-food-stamps-for-the-1/#more-3416

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
- Henry David Thoreau

Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.
- Edward Abbey

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

The Stock Market: Food Stamps for the 1%

For most of the past four or five years, I have spent the majority of my time studying the dominant forces that fuel the power structure that exists in these United States today, and indeed throughout the world. My education began quite suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of the last decade when I started understanding fiat money, Central Banking and the global monetary system. Since then, I have expanded my understanding to mainstream media brainwashing, the military-industrial complex, the role of the political oligarchs in Washington D.C., the corruption of the food industry under the complicity of the FDA itself and much more. The more I peered under the curtain, no matter what the industry, the clearer it became that the system had no chance of survival under its current form. What’s worse, it became obvious that the very small 0.01% of the population that I call oligarchs (financial and political), who are actively gaming the system for their own pleasure, are well aware of the system’s terminal nature. That’s why they are rapidly putting in place the police state grid.

That said, this article is not about the implementation of the surveillance state. I cover that pretty much daily these days. This post is more of a philosophical stream of consciousness; a guilty pleasure that I have not engaged in as of late.

I have mentioned many times in the past that food stamps are just a payoff to the poor. While I think a permanent and expanding welfare state is completely and utterly destructive to an economy and culture, I do not demonize these folks. The vast majority of them would like to work and be productive. They are victims and this is being done to them quite intentionally. It creates dependency. It keeps them off the streets. It’s an unspoken bribe plain and simple. The oligarchs do not want angry, roving, hungry masses on the streets while they strip mine what’s left of the economy. Food stamps, disability and all sorts of other freebies take care of this segment of the population as the oligarchs continue on with their crimes and prepare for the day of reckoning (hence the surveillance grid).

However, the oligarchs have another problem to deal with. This problem is the huge group of people that resides in between them and the poor. Ideally, they would like to shove all of them into the poverty category and keep them barely alive and on dole of the government. That way, the politically connected large corporations that do not pay taxes and receive bailouts can continue to pay them peasant wages while the government takes care of the rest. It’s a win-win. The situation I just described is exactly what is happening as we speak and has been occurring at an ever frequent pace since the coup of 2008. This is exactly why people are buying guns, gold and are extremely negative on the economy and the future of the United States. I recently discussed this in my post Gallup Poll: Americans Most Negative on the Nation and Economy in 30 Years. If you read the Gallup data in detail you will see that this level of negative readings only occur during very bad economic times. The average person can feel themselves getting poorer despite the nonsense spewed by the mainstream media. Their standards of living don’t lie and no amount of false statistics can change that. As John Adams famously said: Facts are stubborn things...

MORE MUST READ

[Demeter]

7. Oi, Oi, Oi, my inbox has ballooned lately

the penalty for letting the Real World intrude...well, I'll try to sift through and get it down to manageable size again over the Weekend. If my heart and soul can withstand the despair-laden articles, that is.

[Demeter]

8. Obama lunches with budget hawk Ryan, deal still far off

http://news.yahoo.com/house-passes-funding-bill-obama-reaches-senate-011236847--business.html

OBAMA SHOULD BE LUNCHING ON RYAN, NOT WITH HIM

[Fuddnik]

23. I think it's called a conspiracy.

Birds of a feather. Pigeons, I think.

[Demeter]

9. Unintentionally funny

[bread_and_roses]

10. "In choosing Burwell, President Obama has made his priorities clear."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/07-0

Published on Thursday, March 7, 2013 by The Guardian/UK
Burwell as Obama's Budget Director: Walmart Wins, Working Families Lose
As head of Walmart Foundation lobbying, Sylvia Mathews Burwell spent millions to open stores that pay poverty wages
by Bertha Lewis

says it all

except I meant to add ...

http://www.aflcio.org/content/search/?SearchText=burwell&x=0&y=0

Search

No results were found when searching for "burwell".

Appalling.

[xchrom]

11. Mondragon: Spain's giant co-operative where times are hard but few go bust

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/07/mondragon-spains-giant-cooperative


A worker at Mondragon's Fagor electrical appliances plant. Photograph: Rafa Rivas/AFP/Getty Images

José María Ormaetxea is the co-founder of Spain's seventh biggest industrial group, but he potters around Mondragon in a Ford Fiesta and lives in an ordinary flat in this industrial town tucked into a valley in the country's northern Basque region.

"Imagine how rich he could have been if he had founded a different sort of company," said Kepa Oliden, a local newspaper reporter from this town of 23,000 people. "But you won't find anyone driving a Rolls-Royce in Mondragon."

Visitors also find little of the new poverty sweeping through other parts of Spain, for up the steep slopes of what locals jokingly call the "sacred mountain" lies the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation, the remarkably recession-proof company that Ormaetxea helped found in 1956.

There is little flashy about the offices of the Basque country's biggest industrial company, but then there is nothing normal about what is now the world's biggest workers co-operative … with global sales of €15bn (£13bn).

[Tansy_Gold]

20. + another billion n/t

[xchrom]

12. President Obama and his secret executive friends

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/07/president-obama-secret-executive-friends

In one memorable episode of The Wonder Years, Kevin found himself struggling with the problem of what to do with his friend Margaret – a quirky oddball whom he found likeable, but whose weird charms were not yet recognized in the harsh social hierarchies of his suburban middle school.

Kevin came up with a brilliant solution that would allow him to retain his social position and stay friends with Margaret. It was "secret friends."

"I like you," Kevin told the bespectacled, pigtailed Margaret. "We could talk to each other – but not at school. Or at my house. Or in front of anybody. But you know, we could still be friends … just no-one would have to know about it. We'd be secret friends, OK?"

Margaret turned down the deal. Some CEOs have not been so wise when they've been essentially offered the same relationship by the Obama administration: friendships when they are convenient, but never close enough to be associated with each other, and always at arm's length.

[Demeter]

24. It's the Ones that AREN'T at Arm's Length that Worry Me!

[xchrom]

13. Citizens in Europe are rejecting austerity policies as deeply misguided

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/mar/06/citizens-europe-reject-austerity-misguided

The outcome of the Italian elections should send a clear message to Europe's leaders: the austerity policies that they have pursued are being rejected by voters.

The European project, as idealistic as it was, was always a top-down endeavour. But it is another matter altogether to encourage technocrats to run countries, seemingly circumventing democratic processes, and foist upon them policies that lead to widespread public misery.

While Europe's leaders shy away from the word, the reality is that much of the EU is in depression.

The loss of output in Italy since the beginning of the crisis is as great as it was in the 1930s. The youth unemployment rate in Greece now exceeds 60%, and the figure for Spain is above 50%.

[Demeter]

25. Sorry, but I don't think the USA can Escape When Europe is in a Depression

no matter how much money Uncle Ben shovels into the banksters' pockets.

[xchrom]

14. Widespread quantitative easing risks 'QE wars' and stagnation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/feb/28/quantitative-easing-risks-qe-wars-roubini


Most observers regard unconventional monetary policies such as quantitative easing (QE) as necessary to jump-start growth in today's anemic economies. But questions about the effectiveness and risks of QE have begun to multiply as well. In particular, 10 potential costs associated with such policies merit attention.

First, while a purely "Austrian" response (that is, austerity) to bursting asset and credit bubbles may lead to a depression, QE policies that postpone the necessary private- and public-sector deleveraging for too long may create an army of zombies: zombie financial institutions, zombie households and firms, and, in the end, zombie governments. So, somewhere between the Austrian and Keynesian extremes, QE needs to be phased out over time.

Second, repeated QE may become ineffective over time as the channels of transmission to real economic activity become clogged. The bond channel doesn't work when bond yields are already low; and the credit channel doesn't work when banks hoard liquidity and velocity collapses. Indeed, those who can borrow (high-grade firms and prime households) don't want or need to, while those who need to – highly leveraged firms and non-prime households – can't, owing to the credit crunch.

Moreover, the stock market channel leading to asset reflation following QE works only in the short run if growth fails to recover. And the reduction in real interest rates via a rise in expected inflation when open-ended QE is implemented risks eventually stoking inflation expectations.

[xchrom]

15. CHART OF THE DAY: THE SCARIEST JOBS CHART EVER

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-the-scariest-jobs-chart-ever-2013-3

This morning, we got some great news. The U.S. economy added 236k jobs in February and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent.
Although the numbers were much better than economists' expectations, they still reflect a job market that remains incredibly weak almost four years into the economic recovery.
Calculated Risk runs a chart every month putting the current jobs recovery into perspective.
"This shows the depth of the recent employment recession - worse than any other post-war recession - and the relatively slow recovery due to the lingering effects of the housing bust and financial crisis," writes Bill McBride of Calculated Risk.

[Tansy_Gold]

21. and how many of those "new" jobs

don't pay shit?

[Roland99]

22. We turned a corner

We're on the right path

Things are looking up

It will take time to heal



yadda yadda yadda

[xchrom]

16. ROUBINI: Markets Will Be Shocked By How Much of A Slowdown Is Coming This Year, And Stocks Will Dive

http://www.businessinsider.com/roubini-calls-for-market-fall-2013-3

Roubini was interviewed by CNBC's Ross Westgate in Italy today, and Roubini had a lot of negative things to say a bunch of stuff.
Some key bullets:
Italy is signalling the start of a political storm. It's a protest against austerity.
Not just Italy. People are protesting austerity everywhere.
US growth is crap, and people are going to be surprised by how slow the US growth this year.
Total growth will be 1.5% (at best) this year.
The US market will then correct in the second half of the year.
The US has stolen growth from the future by being to aggressive fiscally, and now we must have austerity.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/roubini-calls-for-market-fall-2013-3#ixzz2MxZ7nGGa

[Demeter]

26. Es verdad!

[xchrom]

17. China exports beat forecasts on strong US demand

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21710581

Chinese exports rose more than expected in February, adding to optimism over a recovery in its economy.

Shipments jumped 21.8% from a year earlier, boosted by strong demand from the US and South East Asia. Most analysts had expected a 15% rise.

Exports, which are a key driver of China's growth, have been hurt recently by a slowdown in its key markets.

Analysts said the data may be skewed due to the Lunar New Year, but added that the trend was that of a recovery.

[xchrom]

18. Japan growth figures lift recovery hopes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21712748

Japan's economy stopped contracting in the final quarter of 2012, figures have shown, raising hopes of a recovery.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual pace of 0.2% in the quarter, the government said, up from its previous estimate of a 0.4% contraction.

Compared with the previous quarter, GDP showed no growth, an improvement on the initial estimate of a 0.1% contraction.

Higher than expected corporate spending and household consumption are thought to have contributed to growth.

[xchrom]

19. Wholesale Inventories in U.S. Increase More Than Forecast

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-08/wholesale-inventories-in-u-s-jump-by-most-in-more-than-a-year.html

Inventories at U.S. wholesalers jumped in January by the most in more than a year as companies shrugged off concerns about fiscal policy and ramped up in anticipation of rising consumer demand.

The 1.2 percent increase in stockpiles exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists and was the biggest since December 2011, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Sales fell, reflecting a slump in non-durable goods including petroleum and farm products.

Distributors are restocking warehouses as consumer spending picked up at the end of 2012 as the holiday season drew shoppers and auto sales rebounded. Combined with another report today showing employment accelerated in February, the figures indicate the world’s largest economy is strengthening in early 2013.

“The economy looks like it’s on better footing,” said Sean Incremona, a senior economist with 4Cast Inc. in New York.