STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 19 April 2013

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 19 April 2013[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 18 April 2013

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 18 April 2013
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Dow Jones 14,537.14 -81.45 (-0.56%)
S&P 500 1,541.61 -10.40 (-0.67%)
Nasdaq 3,166.36 -38.31 (-1.20%)


[font color=green]10 Year 1.68% -0.02 (-1.18%)
30 Year 2.87% -0.03 (-1.03%)[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.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.










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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]

[Tansy_Gold]

1. Of course, it would/could be ANY lobbyist. . . . n/t

[jtuck004]

13. +1 n/t

[Demeter]

2. TGIF

It could be a worse week...like 9/11/2001, but this one comes a close second.

This weekend we get away from it all, or at least, slip out for a retrospective on Jonathon Winters, late of this world. Be there, or be square!

[Demeter]

3. President Obama, One Corporate Puppet Among Many By Carl Gibson

http://www.nationofchange.org/president-obama-one-corporate-puppet-among-many-1366119639

This year, the New Deal turned 80. And those same New Deal programs championed by FDR, a Democrat, defined the bedrock of the American left political achievements for all others who would seek the presidency. Now, the corporate takeover of our government has proven that those New Deal programs can be slowly dismantled by a Democrat president, as the Obama administration fully digs its heels in on an austerity agenda.

He's not the one running the show, but rather, his strings are being pulled by Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers like Pete Peterson, who is most of the wallet behind the corporate-funded "Fix the Debt" sham campaign. Even one of Fix the Debt's key spokesmen admitted that their goal was to create an "artificial crisis" that would justify gutting Social Security.

Jack Lew, Obama's Treasury secretary, is leading the administration's doublespeak on austerity. In Europe, he's told political leaders to lighten up on austerity measures. But in America, Lew is telling Congress to endorse President Obama's proposals to cut earned benefits for vulnerable Americans who need them to survive, even though Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit. Lew is also a pawn of the corporate and financial string-pullers, coming from Citigroup before his years in the Clinton administration's division of budget. He was even guaranteed a bonus by Citigroup if he was able to secure a "high-level" federal job.

The corporations running our government want our public resources, too. The White House is currently mulling a proposal to sell off the Tennessee Valley Authority, which FDR's New Deal established as the nation's largest publicly-owned power company. Privatization of public resources is one of the key austerity measures being forced by the European Union right now, particularly in scorched-earth economies like Greece and Spain. Privatization of public resources, the selling off of a public good for corporate profit, means that the people who depended on that service are usually subject to frequent price gouging, while under the thumb of an unaccountable private corporation.

Privatization is especially high on the agenda, considering the ten oil spills that happened in America over just two weeks' time and the Senate's recent endorsement of the Keystone XL pipeline. A large public drinking water supply was tainted with 5,000 barrels of tar sands oil in Mayflower, Arkansas. Yet Bill Clinton, the only former US president from Arkansas, has been noticeably silent on Exxon's catastrophe even though Little Rock is just 25 miles North of Mayflower.

The silence from both Clinton and Obama on Mayflower is deafening, especially as Exxon has declared the area over the spill a no-fly zone, which has been enforced by Obama's FAA. Arkansas attorney general Dustin McDaniel, a Democrat, has even privatized oil spill cleanup, allowing a company that investigative journalist Steve Horn recently revealed is notorious for oil spill coverups. And since a loophole in federal law says that Exxon's spilled tar sands oil is bitumen and not oil, they won't have to pay for the cleanup. The cleanup and coverup job for Mayflower will be paid for by the taxpayers, while the corporations who created the entire mess draw more record profits. BP did the same thing after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that ruined an entire region's economy Ð wrote it off on their taxes as a loss, shifting the cost to suckers like us. The corporations who run our state and federal governments don't care which party is in power, as long as they can still control their agenda.

President Obama is also caving to the meat industry's demands to privatize poultry inspection, despite mainstream chicken producers like Tyson just recently paying a multimillion-dollar settlement for ammonia accidents. Obama's quiet signing of the Monsanto Protection Act, which exempts GMO crops from judicial review and was written by a senator who received money from Monsanto, is another indicator of the White House's subservience to big agriculture.

None of these measures are because corporations are struggling and need help from the government to survive. On the contrary, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 have rallied to zoom past pre-recession levels, and corporate profits are at record highs, precisely because workers' wages are so low. Yet the only bone Obama has thrown to the poor was a proposal to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9. This would make an unremarkable difference in the lifestyles of low-wage workers. As Elizabeth Warren rightly pointed out, had the minimum wage kept up with executive pay, or even just the cost of living, it would be roughly $20 an hour today.

The left has made plenty of fuss over the president's latest proposal to gut one of the programs near and dear to Americans of all political stripes. They've even promised to offer primary challengers to all Democrats running for re-election who support Obama's plan to gut Social Security. Obama has been hearing for years from the left about how Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, and has been quoted saying that he would raise the pay-in cap to ensure the program's solvency when he was campaigning for his first term. But the corporate owners of our government want our Social Security money to become a treasure trove of poker chips for their next gambling spree, and have finally gotten a Democratic president to begin chipping away at his own party's key legislative victory of the 20th century.

Instead of following his own words of the past, or heeding the calls of the people, President Obama is meeting with Wall Street bankers to enlist their help in selling his austerity agenda to the American people. While most Americans voted for the lesser of two evils last November, we still voted for evil. And with the revealing of Obama's latest plans, that evil side is showing its face even more these days. In his "American Dream" monologue, the late George Carlin warned us of our "owners" taking our retirement money, because "they don't give a fuck about you." Turns out, he was right.

The people of the United States should rightly interpret this latest slew of betrayals in government as proof that we live under the thumb of a corporate tyranny, not a legitimate constitutional republic. And we should come together to decide what a functional new government would look like, and reject the assumed legitimacy of our corporate ownership's puppet government.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News. You can view the original article here:

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/16949-president-obama-one-corporate-puppet-among-many

[mother earth]

19. TY, Demeter, will give this article the good read it deserves later. TY for all you do. :) nt

[Demeter]

4. Bradley Manning Update: How to Commit Espionage Without Trying! By Alfredo Lopez

http://www.nationofchange.org/bradley-manning-update-how-commit-espionage-without-trying-1366120406

If it wasn't clear up to now, it was made crystal clear last week. The co-defendent in the Bradley Manning trial is the Internet itself. In one of the case's most disturbing pre-trial hearings, Judge Col. Denise Lind ruled last week that prosecutors can offer as evidence files seized from Osama Bin Laden's computer as well as the testimony of a Navy Seal, part of the Bin Laden assasination team, who found them. His identity will not be revealed and the defense can cross-examine him only from a very specific and limited list of court-approved questions. The ruling is important not only because it shows the almost unimaginable absurdity of the Manning case but because it reveals the true intent of the Obama Administration in pursuing it. The hearing was about the "standard of proof" necessary to prove two charges: espionage and aiding the enemy. It also took up what kinds of evidence would be permitted in the trial to support those charges.

According to the prosecutors, Manning committed espionage and aided the enemy by giving them important intelligence and he did that by putting it on the Internet. That's it; that's the crime. His real intent is irrelevant. The government is arguing that, if you put something on the Internet that some nefarious rascal downloads, you are effectively aiding that person materially in any "relevant" crime he or she might commit. It doesn't matter if there's no evidence that the person read it and no need to prove that you intended for him or her to retrieve it. Effectively, it makes the use of the Internet a potential crime. Judge Lind ruled that to prove "espionage" you have to show that the defendent actually intended for this material to be read by the enemy; that was a defeat for the prosecution. But, she ruled, the government can pursue its theory to support the "aiding the enemy" charge.

One up and one down for Pvt. Manning. Two down for the rest of us. The Judge's decision is important for the trial but what's most important for all of us is what the Obama Admininstration is thinking and doing. It's now clear that the Administration believes that these very same acts and standards apply to both crimes. While the "aiding the enemy" charge only relates to military personnel, the "espionage" charge can be levelled at everyone and, while it failed to win the ruling in this case, it's clear that President Obama believes he can charge any of us with "espionage" for using the Internet as it's currently used.

For those who aren't familiar with this case or need an update, Pvt. Bradley Manning is a whistle-blower. Sometime in 2010, when he was working as an information technologist with the Army, Manning sent about 750,000 computer files to Wikileaks. These included a shocking video of a U.S. Air Force helicopter firing at a wedding party in Bagdad, killing several people, and then firing at an ambulance there to evacuate the injured. All the while, ground support and helicopter personnel laughed and encouraged the pilot to "kill" and "shoot" the people, as if playing a video game with real humans as targets. The video became a major embarassment to Washington and, while there was a lot about the Wikileaks revelations that made Washington very unhappy, this video provoked the final pull on the trigger. The U.S. government determined to go after Wikileaks and the source of this classified material. A short while after turning over the material, Manning began corresponding and chatting on-line with Adrian Lamo, a technologist who had built a reputation for hacking into corporate servers, telling the company about it through an intermediary and then offering to fix the vulnerability for money. Lamo befriended Manning, spending hours with him in on-line chat rooms and email talking about the difficulties Manning was having. Manning is gay, he told his new friend, and he found the often homophobic military culture punishing. But, he also told Lamo, he had all these documents that made clear how wrong the war in Iraq was and holding that truth from the world was eating at him so he finally published them. Upon reading that, Lamo turned Manning in and the torturous case began...

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

17. Despite Manning Defense Objection, Judge Rules Bin Laden Raid Evidence Obtained Can Be Used in Trial

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/despite-manning-defense-objection-judge-rules-evidence-obtained-during-bin-laden?akid=10315.227380.Wr3iNK&rd=1&src=newsletter823405&t=14


Digital files obtained during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden can be used to determine whether Wikileaks’ leaker Army Pfc. Bradley Manning “aided” Al Qaeda, a judge ruled during a pre-trial hearing Wednesday....As Firedoglake’s Kevin Gosztola reported from Fort Meade, Judge Denise Lind rejected a motion from Manning’s defense to disallow files obtained from Bin Laden’s compound on the basis that “evidence of circumstances surrounding receipt is relevant to whether he did give it to the enemy.”

According to court documents Tweeted by independent journalist Alexa O’Brien, the defense argued that such files are “not relevant” and serve “unfair prejudices” and “confusion of the issues.” Part of their argument rests on the question of “receipt.” As Gosztola notes, whether Bin Laden accessed files leaked by Manning does not prove the soldier personally passed them along to Al Qaeda:

No evidence has been presented yet to indicate that Manning gave information to WikiLeaks and then someone within WikiLeaks turned around and passed that information to an Al Qaeda member. The government is making its entire argument on the fact that it was published to the Internet and accessible to the “enemy” and, therefore, Manning “aided the enemy.”

Judge Lind added that it is up to the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pfc. Manning had “reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the US,” raising the bar for conviction. The ruling follows along the same lines as Manning’s defense argument that the government must prove that Manning demonstrated “general evil intent” when he leaked hundreds of thousands of war logs, State Department cables and battlefield footage showing a helicopter gunman shooting journalists and children to Wikileaks between 2009 and 2010. Manning has stated that he carefully chose files that would expose American “bloodlust” and “seemingly criminal activity that didn’t seem characteristic of the de facto leader of the free world.” Lind also accepted a request from the government to call a witness who is likely one of the Navy SEALs who participated in the raid at Abbottabad that killed Bin Laden. The witness will appear in a disguise during a hearing closed off from the press and public, one of several closed or partially closed testimonies scheduled to place during Manning’s military tribunal. Gosztola reports that the government wants to bar the defense from accessing the witness on the grounds that it “could reveal his true identity.”

...Manning pled guilty to leaking classified information, but denied aiding the enemy, the most serious charge leveled against him...If convicted of “aiding the enemy,” Manning could face life in prison without parole. His trial is scheduled to begin June 3 at Fort Meade.

[Demeter]

5. Why This is the Worst Recovery on Record By Robert Reich

http://www.nationofchange.org/why-worst-recovery-record-1366119949

The biggest economic debate is between Keynesians (who want more government spending and lower interest rates in order to fuel demand) and supply-side “austerics” (who want lower taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to boost incentives to hire and invest, and who see government deficits crowding out private investment). But both approaches have problems. George W. Bush tried supply-side tax cuts but nothing trickled down. Jobs and wages declined. And austerity economics has been a disaster for Europe. Unfortunately the U.S. is now adopting supply-side austerics by making the Bush tax cuts permanent for 98 percent of taxpayers, hiking Social Security taxes back up, and implementing the sequester.

I’m on the Keynesian side. Yet the biggest weakness of modern Keynesian economics is it doesn’t have a clear answer for how much spending is necessary in an economy, like ours, in which wages keep dropping and government debt keeps growing. Simply arguing “more” won’t cut it. John Maynard Keynes urged that governments “prime the pump” to stimulate demand but pump priming has limited effect if the well is running dry.

Both sides of the modern debate have neglected the scourge of widening inequality. We’re now witnessing what happens when all of the economic gains go to the top, and the rest of the population doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going. Four years into a so-called recovery and we’re still below recession levels in every important respect except the stock market. A measly 88,000 jobs were created in March, and total employment remains some 3 million below its pre-recession level. Labor-force participation is its lowest since 1979. Businesses won’t hire and expand unless they have more customers, but most Americans can’t spend more. Last Friday’s retail sales report showed sales down .4 percent in March. Consumer sentiment has fallen to its lowest level in nine months The underlying problem is the vast middle class is running out of money. They can’t borrow more — and shouldn’t, given what happened after the last borrowing binge. Real annual median household income keeps falling. It’s down to $45,018, from $51,144 in 2010. All the gains from the recovery continue to go to the top.

Widening inequality is not inevitable. If we wanted to reverse it and restore middle-class prosperity, we could.

We could award tax cuts to companies that link the pay of their hourly workers to profits and productivity, and that keep the total pay of their top 5 executives within 20 times the pay of their median worker. And impose higher taxes on companies that don’t.

We could raise the minimum wage to half the average wage.

We could increase public investment in education, including early-childhood.

We could eliminate college loans and allow all students to repay the cost of their higher education with a 10 percent surcharge on the first 10 years of income from full-time employment.

We could expand the Earned Income Tax Credit.

And we could pay for all this by adding additional tax brackets at the top and increasing the top marginal tax rate to what it was before 1981 – at least 70 percent.



But none of this will happen until the public understands why widening inequality is so damaging. Even the rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than a large share of one that’s barely growing at all. Our political leaders in Washington have for now chosen supply-side austerity economics over Keynesian economics. That’s bad enough. Their inability or unwillingness to do much of anything about widening inequality will prove a larger problem.

[Demeter]

6. Morgan Stanley posts $958 million profit as wealth management grows

http://news.yahoo.com/institutional-business-drives-morgan-stanley-958-million-profit-112631629--sector.html

Morgan Stanley reported a stronger-than-expected first-quarter profit of $958 million, compared with a year-earlier loss of $119 million, as its wealth management business grew. The sixth-largest U.S. bank by assets said on Thursday it earned 49 cents per share on a consolidated basis in the first three months of the year, compared with a loss of 6 cents per share a year earlier. Excluding a charge related to debt value adjustment (DVA), or changes in the value of the company's debt, Morgan Stanley earned $1.2 billion, or 61 cents per share. On the same basis, analysts had expected earnings of 57 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. However, revenue from fixed income and commodities trading fell to $1.5 billion from $2.6 billion a year earlier, reflecting declines in commodities and rates.

Shares of the bank, which has reported a profit excluding items in every quarter since the first quarter of 2012, were up slightly at $21.55 before the bell. Excluding items, total revenue fell 4.8 percent to $8.48 billion, beating the average analyst forecast of $8.35 billion.Revenue in the wealth management group, which had been expected to drive earnings, rose 5.4 percent to $3.47 billion, making up about 41 percent of total revenue.

Operating pre-tax profit in the wealth management business was the highest in the bank's history, Chief Executive James Gorman said in a statement. Gorman has staked the future of the company on the wealth management business, arguing that it offers more stable returns that will help offset volatility in the bank's trading and investment banking businesses. Gorman made good on his promise to deliver a "midteens" pre-tax margin in the business by June -- after initially aiming for 20 percent. The unit's profit margin was unchanged from the fourth quarter at 17 percent, compared with 11 percent a year earlier. Record earnings from wealth management came not just from a pickup in stock and bond market values, but from higher transaction revenue, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said in an interview. Higher closed-end fund issuance also helped as firms tapped retail investors for new funds in equities and high-yield debt, she said.

"It really highlights the operating leverage in this business because it's not as though the markets have a robust new issue environment, and yet you see the impact on profitability," she said....Morgan Stanley's revenue from wealth management has grown to $13.5 billion last year from $5.5 billion a year before the financial crisis. There have been setbacks, though, including cost overruns and problems with technology. "Morgan Stanley has seen a huge shift to global wealth management, which should pay off," said Bernie Williams, vice-president of discretionary money management at USAA Investments, which has $55 billion in assets under management, including Morgan Stanley shares. "I'm attracted to that business because it has fewer regulatory obstacles than trading and it provides more stable earnings," said Williams, who spoke before the bank's results were released...Morgan Stanley's business model can make it difficult to compare to other banks and brokerages. Its closest competitors are Goldman Sachs Group Inc , which is far more heavily weighted in trading and principal investments, and Merrill Lynch, which is owned by Bank of America. Other big investment banks are divisions of commercial banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup Inc , which do not have large retail brokerages. Morgan Stanley and Citigroup jointly own brokerage Smith Barney, but Citi has been selling down its stake, leaving Morgan Stanley with about 65 percent of the venture. Gorman said on Thursday that Morgan Stanley looked forward to buying the rest of Smith Barney once it gets regulatory approval.

[Demeter]

7. BOUNCING CHECKS FOR THE WRONGFULLY BOUNCED

from an email newletter

After a two-year investigation into wrongful foreclosures and a subsequent class-action lawsuit that concluded last January, a group of homeowners finally got checks, after weeks of delay, from banks that had mistakenly kicked them out of their homes. Then the checks bounced. It's unknown how many of the 1.4 million payments mailed last week didn't clear because of insufficient funds—housing advocates and some regulators say they are being bombarded with complaints—but Rust Consulting, the entity in charge of delivering them, claims it knows of only 12. The Federal Reserve said that Rust, also known for bungling the distribution of payments after a similar case in 2006, has cleaned up its act and will now deliver payments on time. Michael Redman, a paralegal who runs a website for victims of foreclosure abuse and received 15 complaints about bad checks on Tuesday, says the snafu is fitting. "It’s the perfect ending for such a debacle," he says.

[Demeter]

8. FEELS GOOD TO BE A BANKSTER

from an email newsletter

It's a great time to be a banker in America: Financial services companies have been on a tear, reporting near-record quarterly profits. JP Morgan's earnings jumped 33 percent, to $6.53 billion. Wells Fargo wasn't far behind, earning $5.17 billion. And even beleaguered Citigroup's profit soared 30 percent. Goldman Sachs, the great vampire squid on the face of capitalism or the smartest guys in the room—depending on who you're talking to—managed to beat analysts expectations, and set aside nearly $4.5 billion for employee compensation. For a comparison, that's equal to Bermuda's entire GDP.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Europe on Tuesday voted to reign in the excessive bonuses handed out by big banks; the new rules would limit payments to that of one year's salary, according to The New York Times. “This is a question of fairness," said José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. "If taxpayers are being asked to pick up the bill after the financial crisis, banks must also make a contribution.”

[Demeter]

9. Efforts to Revive the Economy Lead to Worries of a Bubble

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/efforts-to-revive-the-economy-lead-to-worries-of-a-bubble/?ref=business

Are we moving from the crash to the bubble, dispensing with that pesky economic recovery thing altogether?

The Federal Reserve is well into its third round of “quantitative easing,” in which it buys longer-term assets to bring down long-term lending rates. We are about five and a half years into the Fed’s extraordinary monetary policies (its out-of-the-box lending programs began before the crash, in late 2007).

The effect the central bank hopes to produce hasn’t materialized. Despite modest growth, the economy remains a wellspring of misery, with mass unemployment, wage stagnation and factories going unused. In March, a smaller percentage of working-age people were actually working than at any other time since 1979.

Through its unconventional policies, the Fed is trying to ease the crisis. It has succeeded in driving down lending rates. Ben S. Bernanke and company would also like to kindle inflation expectations, spurring people to buy and companies to invest today instead of waiting until tomorrow. Supposedly, all of this will drive a self-sustaining economic recovery...

IN A PIG'S EYE IT WILL

THERE ARE NONE SO FOOLISH AS THOSE THAT INSIST THAT REALITY BEND TO THEIR FANTASIES....

[Demeter]

11. Before the Collapse, A Call to Action By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

http://www.nationofchange.org/collapse-call-action-1366295531

The economic news in the last two weeks points to bad news for the economy and a reason for people to mobilize and demand change. We want to emphasize that as bad as the situation looks, there are solutions and ways to protect ourselves. The time to act is now.

Before we get to the impact of the Obama budget, let’s explode a critical myth: there is no recovery (at least for the 99%). Last month’s unemployment numbers revealed the fraud of the unemployment rate. Even though the country produced less than 90,000 new jobs, when over 120,000 are needed to keep up with growth, the unemployment rate declined. Why? Because hundreds of thousands are giving up on work each month and they don’t get counted.

At present, over 100 million working age Americans do not have a job that is 41.5%. And, for some groups, African Americans and youth in particular, this is a persistent jobs crisis that ensures low incomes and little wealth for the future. And, workers who do have jobs are paid way too little, about half of the value of what they actually produce. There will be no recovery until these fundamentals change.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/kgkkOg9I8bg1jq3aSpQvd32ohXzw4YtKeHQi5X_iAe3MGjroPmi6JyahG7NE_O8C-PPHSyTIQYilu468Pve4HUVNlLb24CiNZ2KGQWc4ObaDG1el572-v587Ay02-cLdZA

The combination of poor federal economic policy – which is getting more off-track – and a corrupt economy is bringing on the next crash. In an article in Truthout last week, we point out the deep corruption of the finance system, which dominates the economy. Security fraud expert Bill Black told us that the evidence shows that fraud is “pervasive” among the “most elite financial institutions,” yet the Obama government policy was no prosecution. The Economic Collapse Blog points out there are 11 crashes going on right now: gold, silver, bitcoins, consumer confidence, 401(k) retirement accounts, casino gambling, Greek employment, European financial stocks, Spanish bankruptcies and energy demand; and predicts the bloated US stock market is next. As we approach the next crash, the government’s across the board sequester is beginning to have big impacts on people’s lives and will lead to further shrinking of the economy. Here are 100 cutbacks that are affecting people as of early April and the pace is picking up. These impacts are very real, thousands of Medicare patients with cancer are being turned away at health clinics because of sequester cut-backs. And, at a time of increasing poverty, Greg Kaufman writes the sequester means: “up to 140,000 fewer low-income families receiving housing vouchers, more children exposed to lead paint, higher rent for people who can’t afford it and a rise in homelessness.”


SO MUCH MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

10. The Army Goes Off the Grid By Jim Hightower

http://www.nationofchange.org/army-goes-grid-1366298587

Do you know about “net zero”? That’s the wonky phrase attached to an elegant idea: converting communities to total renewable energy, complete recycling, and a culture of conservation to bring humankind’s carbon footprint into a sustainable balance with a healthy earth.

Now, imagine the last place you’d expect this ideal to take root…and even flourish. How about an Army base? In Texas? Well, astonishingly enough, the Army is pioneering America’s net-zero future. Fort Bliss, a sprawling military base accommodating 35,000 soldiers in El Paso, is one of our armed forces’ leading hotbeds of energy conservation and creativity.

The post already has a 1.4-megawatt solar array and has placed rooftop solar panels on enough base housing to generate 13.4-megawatts of energy. It’s partnering with El Paso Electric to add a 200-acre, 20-megawatt solar farm by 2015. The base’s managers plan to convert its own waste into energy. Oh, and it’s engaged in wind power, geothermal, and conservation projects while promoting energy-efficient vehicles and building bicycle lanes.

The Army! Who knew they cared?

At Fort Bliss, the rank and file, as well as the brass, are committed to achieving the goal of net zero by 2018. By that date, the base is supposed to generate all of the energy it uses — solely relying on renewable alternatives. Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas, aims to get there by 2020. The troops have earned their green stripes by planting nearly 15,000 trees and embracing recycling. To encourage the latter, base commander Gen. Dana Pittard has invested the revenue from recycling into skate parks, gyms, and other morale-boosting recreation projects...

[Demeter]

12. See you all in the morning

There's only so much doom and gloom a body can stand at any one time...

[Demeter]

14. American Public Suffered Recession for 4 Decades Before the Financial Crisis Hit

http://www.alternet.org/economy/american-public-suffered-recession-4-decades-financial-crisis-hit?akid=10310.227380.Vnr-PU&rd=1&src=newsletter822302&t=22&paging=off

...In the early 1970s, General Motors set up the fastest auto assembly line in the world in Lordstown, Ohio, and staffed it with workers whose average age was 24. GM’s management hoped that such healthy, inexperienced workers could handle 101 cars an hour without balking the way more established autoworkers might. What GM got instead of balkiness was a series of slowdowns and snafus that management labeled systematic “sabotage” until they realized that the word hurt car sales. I visited Lordstown the week before a strike vote was to be taken, amid national speculation about whether a generation of “hippy autoworkers” could “humanize the assembly line” and so change forever the way America worked...When Duane and his friends talked about quitting well-paying jobs, they weren’t just blowing off steam. In those years, there was enough work around that if a friend moved to Atlanta or there was a band you liked in Cincinnati, you could hitchhike there and find a job in a day or two that would cover your rent and food.

That, of course, made it harder to run a business. GM echoed many other U.S. employers in its complaints about absenteeism and high turnover among young workers. In retrospect, this was probably the moment when many U.S. manufacturers began looking around to see just what could be done about their labor problem. But neither Duane nor I had any premonition of the outsourcing and offshoring that would start the Great Recession decades early for so many working families. For us, it was still a time when jobs abounded and Americans talked not about finding work, but “humanizing” it.

......

Between 1971 and 2007, real hourly wages in the U.S. rose by only 4%. (That’s not 4% a year, but 4% over 36 years!) During those same decades, productivity essentially doubled, increasing by 99%. In other words, the average worker’s productivity rose 25 times more than his or her pay. This was, of course, a bonanza for corporations and for the richest Americans. In 1976, the top 1% of U.S. families held 19% of the country’s wealth. By 2000, they held 40% of it. In those same years, 58% of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1%. There was, however, one small problem: we Americans sell to one another more than 70% of what we produce. If the majority of American workers were producing more without earning more, who was going to buy all the stuff?

CEOs and financiers were desperate to answer that question, for during those years of high productivity and low wages, immense profits and “returns” kept accumulating in brokerage accounts and banks. But a bank can’t keep its money in the bank. Under the pressure of those swelling piles of capital, the answer they offered to worker-consumers like Duane was: instead of paying you enough to buy what you produce, we’ll lend you the money. The answer offered to those who had ever less money to spend was: take out more loans. The folly of lending money to people with stagnant or declining wages may seem obvious now, but like many houses of cards it must have looked solid enough to some back then. Still, let’s not underestimate our major financiers. On a CNBC program, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was asked why no one had seen the mortgage crisis coming and told the bankers, “You know what? This is going to end badly.”

Greenspan answered: “It’s not that they weren’t aware that the risks were there, I mean I spoke to them. It’s not that the people were dumb. They knew precisely what was going on. The vast majority of them thought that they knew when to get out.”

THAT'S THE TIPOFF THAT IT WAS A CON GAME, RIGHT THERE.

[Demeter]

15. Those free-spirited workers also led to mandatory drug testing...such profits!

How Big Pharma Is Bringing Forced Drug Tests To a State Near You

http://www.alternet.org/how-big-pharma-bringing-forced-drug-tests-state-near-you?akid=10307.227380.us2gbm&rd=1&src=newsletter822182&t=8&paging=off

...Now, with fewer and fewer employers implementing drug tests because they have shown “no demonstrable return on investment,” the industry has turned to another lucrative market: those receiving public assistance and unemployment benefits. Several recently passed state laws that require public benefits applicants to take drug tests have been struck down by courts, but that hasn’t stopped other states from moving forward with random drug-testing provisions. In South Carolina in 2012, with unemployment still above 9 percent, state legislators pushed three different bills to drug-test the unemployed. And several other states have done the same in the wake of a federal provision that authorizes the tests. Of course, these laws propose testing for drugs consumed illegally without a prescription. So if those consuming marijuana for stress or trouble sleeping happen to turn instead to prescription use of another federally legal drug, such as Valium or sleeping pills, Hoffman-La Roche just happens to have profited twice over from the process...

[Demeter]

16. Obama's New Treasury Secretary Pushes Austerity That Spreads Global Misery

http://www.alternet.org/economy/obamas-new-treasury-secretary-pushes-austerity-spreads-global-misery?page=0%2C1&akid=10312.227380.HlEoAO&rd=1&src=newsletter822794&t=6&paging=off


...Obama’s decision to send Lew, the great proponent of self-destructive austerity, to Europe to urge them to end their self-destructive austerity exemplifies the incoherence of the administration’s financial policies. The fact that Obama is simultaneously proposing the Great Betrayal – its sixth form of austerity that Obama has agreed to inflict on our Nation since 2011 – produces a level of incoherence, incompetence, and hypocrisy so epic that it is likely to cause economists to act like manic depressives bouncing between wild-eyed gales of laughter and crying jags...Putting two lawyers together to discuss macroeconomic policy also leads to discussions that cause economists’ jaws to drop in shock. If you understand economics you may wish to put on a neck brace before reading the next passage lest its incoherence cause whiplash.

“Standing next to Mr. Schäuble, Mr. Lew said pointedly that deficit reduction needed to be balanced with growth and investment policies. While growth targets may be different for different countries, he said, ‘I think it is fair to say that zero isn’t a good target for anybody and negative is very bad.’”

“Growth targets” are meaningless in this context. You cannot counteract austerity dragging your economy deeper into recession or depression by saying: “we are targeting a growth rate of four percent.” There is no magic incantation that can remove austerity’s destructive effect. A country cannot “balance” austerity with “growth and investment policies.” Austerity is an anti-growth policy. It frequently makes the debt-to-GDP ratio larger because it causes such a large fall in GDP. Krugman explained this in the same article I cited above.

“Meanwhile, austerity hasn’t even achieved the minimal goal of reducing debt burdens. Instead, countries pursuing harsh austerity have seen the ratio of debt to G.D.P. rise, because the shrinkage in their economies has outpaced any reduction in the rate of borrowing.”

Investment programs can be very helpful in conjunction with overall stimulus budgets, but they cannot counteract austerity. This has been one of Obama’s recurrent blind spots. He seems to believe that if he can implement a new $2 billion infrastructure investment or jobs program that can overcome the damage to the economy caused by austerity in the form of a combined $300 billion in reduced spending and increased tax revenues. The net effect is $288 billion in lost demand due to austerity. This slows growth. If the austerity is large enough it causes growth to turn negative and throws the Nation back into recession or depression. We may know why Obama has this blind spot about the damage he is inflicting through austerity – he gets his advice from Lew. AND ROBERT RUBIN


Bill Black is the author of 'The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One' and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He spent years working on regulatory policy and fraud prevention as Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention, Litigation Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and Deputy Director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement, among other positions.

[Fuddnik]

18. Sheesh. I can't even say what I think of these incompetent buffoons.

Thoroughly corrupt, self-serving, banksters and lawyers.

The whole system needs to be thrown out. It can't be reformed. Elections won't fix it.