STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 3 October 2013

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Thursday, 3 October 2013[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 2 October 2013

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 2 October 2013
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Dow Jones 15,133.14 -58.56 (-0.39%)
S&P 500 1,693.87 -1.13 (-0.07%)
Nasdaq 3,815.02 -2.96 (-0.08%)


[font color=black]10 Year 2.62% 0.00 (0.00%)
[font color=red]30 Year 3.70% +0.01 (0.27%) [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.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.








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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. I know I used a Clay Bennett 'toon yesterday, too, but.....

....this one made me laugh out loud and I just couldn't pass it up.

[Warpy]

2. I think it's entirely appropriate.

DemoTex wrote yesterday that he'd been furloughed. Hope nothing out there catches fire while the Republicans are proving once again they are unfit to do anything above the level of picking trash off highway shoulders.

[Demeter]

3. On the radio today, they announced that Michigan gets 41% of its budget from the Feds

to cover food stamps, medicaid and stuff like that.

If they default, there will be no food stamps for Thanksgiving.

Is this a great country, or what?

[tclambert]

8. I'm sure the Koch Brothers will have a sumptuous Thanksgiving anyway.

Some of their caterers and servers may go hungry, but, you know, something about making an omelet means you have to break poor people.

[Demeter]

4. This Weekend, We Recognize Tom Clancy

Some fatuous anchor on Detroit TV compared him to JKRowling....

He's more the American answer to Ian Fleming. And we will give him full honors.

[Demeter]

5. Generations in the workplace: Winning the generation game

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21586831-businesses-are-worrying-about-how-manage-different-age-groups-widely-different

Businesses are worrying about how to manage different age groups with widely different expectations...

WELL, IF TREATED LIKE PEOPLE OF EQUAL WORTHINESS OF RESPECT, THERE WOULDN'T BE A PROBLEM.

as firms seek to be more meritocratic with promotions, older staff can be dismayed to find that their years of service no longer guarantee advancement; and that as digital skills become more important, younger workers are whizzing past them.

Rolling out the red carpet for Generation Y (those born since the early 1980s) is fuelling in companies everywhere the same sort of intergenerational grudges as at Havas PR, says Ms Salzman. “Baby-boomers really resent these kids,” she says. And Generation X (born in the mid-1960s to early 1980s) is fed up of being “stuck in the middle between older workers who refuse to retire and younger ones who are treated far better than they ever were.”

Generation gaps are as old as history. Nevertheless, businesses seem to be more worried than before about managing three age groups with such differing attitudes. A recent survey by Ernst & Young, which asked American professionals from each age group their opinions of each generation, found significant differences, not all of them predictable (see chart). Baby-boomers, born between 1946 and the mid-1960s, are not slacking off as they age; they are seen as hard-working and productive. The middle ranks of Generation X-ers, who might be expected to be battling their way up the corporate ladder, are viewed as the best team players. Opinions on the youth of Generation Y, also known as “millennials”, are less surprising: good at tech stuff but truculent and a bit work-shy...


TRULY BARF-ABLE PIFFLE....MUST BE READ TO BE BELIEVED

[Hotler]

11. Here! Here! ...

[Demeter]

6. Chris Hedges | The Sparks of Rebellion

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19127-the-sparks-of-rebellion

I am reading and rereading the debates among some of the great radical thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries about the mechanisms of social change. These debates were not academic. They were frantic searches for the triggers of revolt.

Vladimir Lenin placed his faith in a violent uprising, a professional, disciplined revolutionary vanguard freed from moral constraints and, like Karl Marx, in the inevitable emergence of the worker’s state. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon insisted that gradual change would be accomplished as enlightened workers took over production and educated and converted the rest of the proletariat. Mikhail Bakunin predicted the catastrophic breakdown of the capitalist order, something we are likely to witness in our lifetimes, and new autonomous worker federations rising up out of the chaos. Pyotr Kropotkin, like Proudhon, believed in an evolutionary process that would hammer out the new society. Emma Goldman, along with Kropotkin, came to be very wary of both the efficacy of violence and the revolutionary potential of the masses. “The mass,” Goldman wrote bitterly toward the end of her life in echoing Marx, “clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify!”

The revolutionists of history counted on a mobilized base of enlightened industrial workers. The building blocks of revolt, they believed, relied on the tool of the general strike, the ability of workers to cripple the mechanisms of production. Strikes could be sustained with the support of political parties, strike funds and union halls. Workers without these support mechanisms had to replicate the infrastructure of parties and unions if they wanted to put prolonged pressure on the bosses and the state. But now, with the decimation of the U.S. manufacturing base, along with the dismantling of our unions and opposition parties, we will have to search for different instruments of rebellion.

We must develop a revolutionary theory that is not reliant on the industrial or agrarian muscle of workers. Most manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and, of those that remain, few are unionized. Our family farms have been destroyed by agro-businesses. Monsanto and its Faustian counterparts on Wall Street rule. They are steadily poisoning our lives and rendering us powerless. The corporate leviathan, which is global, is freed from the constraints of a single nation-state or government. Corporations are beyond regulation or control. Politicians are too anemic, or more often too corrupt, to stand in the way of the accelerating corporate destruction. This makes our struggle different from revolutionary struggles in industrial societies in the past. Our revolt will look more like what erupted in the less industrialized Slavic republics, Russia, Spain and China and uprisings led by a disenfranchised rural and urban working class and peasantry in the liberation movements that swept through Africa and Latin America. The dispossessed working poor, along with unemployed college graduates and students, unemployed journalists, artists, lawyers and teachers, will form our movement. This is why the fight for a higher minimum wage is crucial to uniting service workers with the alienated college-educated sons and daughters of the old middle class. Bakunin, unlike Marx, considered déclassé intellectuals essential for successful revolt.

It is not the poor who make revolutions. It is those who conclude that they will not be able, as they once expected, to rise economically and socially. This consciousness is part of the self-knowledge of service workers and fast food workers. It is grasped by the swelling population of college graduates caught in a vise of low-paying jobs and obscene amounts of debt. These two groups, once united, will be our primary engines of revolt. Much of the urban poor has been crippled and in many cases broken by a rewriting of laws, especially drug laws, that has permitted courts, probation officers, parole boards and police to randomly seize poor people of color, especially African-American men, without just cause and lock them in cages for years. In many of our most impoverished urban centers—our internal colonies, as Malcolm X called them—mobilization, at least at first, will be difficult. The urban poor are already in chains. These chains are being readied for the rest of us. “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread,” W.E.B. Du Bois commented acidly....

[Demeter]

7. Nuclear Engineer: Japan's PM "Lying to the Japanese People" About Safety of Fukushima

VIDEO INTERVIEW AT LINK: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36401.htm

[Demeter]

9. A Shutdown or A Coup? How It Was Engineered By Danny Schechter

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36411.htm

What is the Tea Party and where did it come from? Was it a grass roots movement nurtured in the bowels of deep dissatisfaction in the American electorate with “big government” and its inexorable turn towards Socialism?

Hate to disappoint folks who buy the populist revolt theory. Anyone remember the mad rant of Rick Santelli in 2009? He’s a fixture on the pro-business channel CNBC who actually was first to call for a Tea Party by millionaires in Chicago to protest against any relief for homeowners who were on the verge of being foreclosed upon.

It was this loudmouth who used his bully pulpit on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade to make the original call...The idea resonated with the armies of the resentful who always feel that the government should not help those in need—characterizing them as people living in bigger houses than they can afford and unfairly demanding a bailout from tax payers. (Rick and the traders cheering for him apparently never heard about or cared about predatory lending and bank practices that have since led to massive fines and paybacks for years of mortgage scams...)

HISTORY OF THE TEA PARTY....UP UNTIL THE WHEELS CAME OFF. MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

10. Why Obamacare Is Another Private Sector Rip-Off Of Americans By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36407.htm

The private sector allied with government is a second IRS...

The government of the “world’s only superpower,” the “exceptional,” the “indispensable” country, claims to know what is best for Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Mali, Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, China, indeed for the entire world. However, the “indispensable” country cannot even govern itself, much less the world over which the “superpower” desires hegemony. The government of the “world’s only superpower” has shut itself down. The government has shut itself down, because it cannot deal with the budget deficit and mounting public debt caused by twelve years of wars, by financial deregulation that allows “banks too big to fail” to loot the taxpayers, and by the loss of jobs, GDP, and tax base that jobs offshoring forced by Wall Street caused.

The Republicans are using the fight over the limit on new public debt to block Obamacare. The Republicans are right to oppose Obamacare, but they are opposing Obamacare largely for ideological reasons when there are very good sound reasons to oppose Obamacare.

Last February 3, I posted on this website a column, “Obamacare: A Deception,” written by an expert on the subject. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/02/03/obamacare-a-primer/

When Republicans for ideological reasons blocked a single-payer health system like the rest of the developed world has and, indeed, even some developing countries have, the Obama regime, needing a victory, went to the insurance companies and told them to come up with a health care plan that the insurance lobby could get passed by Congress. Obamacare was written by the private insurance industry with the goal of raising its profits with 50 million mandated new customers.

Obamacare works for the insurance companies, but not for the uninsured. The cost of using Obamacare is prohibitive for those who most need the health coverage. The cost of the premiums net of the government subsidy is large. It amounts to a substantial pay cut for people struggling to pay their bills. In addition to the premium cost, it is prohibitive for hard pressed Americans to use the policies because of the deductibles and co-pays. For the very poor, who are thrown into Medicaid systems, any assets they might have, such as a home, are subject to confiscation to cover their Medicaid bills. The only people other than the insurance companies who benefit from Obamacare are the down and out who are devoid of all assets. This might prove to be a growing percentage of Americans. On September 19 the New York Times on the front page of the business section reported what I have reported for years: that real median family incomes in the US are where they were a quarter of a century ago. In other words, in a quarter of a century there has been no income growth for the median American family. In 2013 payroll employment is below where it was six years ago. During 2013 most of the new jobs, barely sufficient to stay even with population growth and insufficient to recover the job loss from the recession, have been part-time jobs that do not provide any discretionary income with which to drive a consumer economy.

Obamacare has resulted in the health insurance companies, who thought that they would be living in high profits from the mandated health coverage, being outsmarted by employers, who have reduced their full-time workers to part-time in order to avoid Omamacare’s requirement to provide health coverage to those employees who work 30 hours a week or more. Employers can get away with this, because jobs are hard to find. The lack of employment opportunities results in Americans with engineering degrees working as retail sales clerks and as shelf stockers in Walmart and Home Depot. Despite the abundance of unemployed and under-employed American technical and engineering workers, the large corporations lobby Congress for more H-1B visas to bring in lowly paid foreigners with the argument that there is a shortage of qualified Americans for technical work. As I have pointed out so many times, if there were a shortage of engineering and technical workers, salaries would be rising, not falling.

For millions of employees, Obamacare means cut hours and less take home pay plus out-of-pocket expenses to purchase an Obamacare health policy. For most people covered by Obamacare, this is a lose-lose situation. It is also a lose-loss situation for the vast majority of the young. Most young people, unless they have jobs that provide health coverage, do without it, because the chances of the young having heart attacks, cancer, and other serious health problems is low. Obamacare, however, requires the healthy young to pay premiums for coverage or to pay a penalty to the IRS...In my day this might not have been a problem. However, today there are few jobs for the young that pay enough to have an independent existence. The monthly payroll jobs reports do not show well-paying jobs. The Labor Department’s projections of future jobs are not jobs that pay well. For the youth, it seems that the penalty is less than the premium, so youthful penalties paid out of waitress and bartender tips will subsidize the unusable Obamacare health policies for the poor adults who are not thrown into Medicaid, which confiscates their assets, if any.

Obamacare benefits only two classes of people. It benefits employers who drop their employees working hours below the hours specified for Obamacare coverage, and it benefits the insurance companies or the IRS who collect the premiums and penalties. Many of the people who pay the premiums won’t be able to use the policies because of co-pays and deductions. The very poor with no assets might receive health care if they reside in states that accept the Medicaid provisions of Obamacare.

In 21st century America, the few people who have experienced income gains are the executives and shareholders of firms who offshored their production for US markets, Wall Street which makes bets covered by the Federal Reserve, and the military-security complex which has been enriched by the neoconservatives’ wars. Every other American has lost.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

[xchrom]

12. ANALYSIS: REPUBLICANS GET OPPOSITE OF STATED GOALS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BUDGET_BATTLE_REPUBLICANS_ANALYSIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-03-03-15-43

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans insisted they wanted to shut down the nation's 3-year-old health care overhaul, not the government. They got the opposite, and now struggle to convince the public that responsibility for partial closure of the federal establishment lies with President Barack Obama and the Democrats.

There's ample evidence otherwise, beginning with Speaker John Boehner's refusal to permit the House to vote on Senate-passed legislation devoted solely to reopening the government.

In the days leading to the impasse, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said he would do "everything and anything possible to defund Obamacare," including a filibuster against legislation to prevent a partial closure of the federal government.

In the House, Rep. Jack Kingston told reporters his Georgia constituents would rather have a shutdown than Obamacare, and Rep. Tim Huelskamp added recently that in his Kansas district, "If you say government is going to shut down, they say, `OK, which part can we shut down?'"

[xchrom]

13. ASIA STOCKS MUTED ON US GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORLD_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-03-05-28-32

BANGKOK (AP) -- Asian stock markets Thursday withstood some of the gloom seeping into other financial markets as the partial shutdown of the U.S. government dragged on for a third day.

Some nonessential public services across the U.S. ground to a halt earlier this week after Congress failed to approve short-term funding for the government after the fiscal year ended Monday. Some 800,000 federal workers have been put on unpaid leave and many agencies and programs across the U.S. have been idled.

Analysts said investors in Asia were more or less expecting lawmakers from the two political parties to negotiate a solution or put the shaky U.S. economic recovery at risk.

"I think people believe the Republicans and Democrats will come to their senses sooner or later, so they should stop behaving like children," said Francis Lun, chief economist at GE Oriental Financial Group in Hong Kong.

[xchrom]

14. EUROZONE RECOVERY GATHERING MOMENTUM

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-03-05-32-03

LONDON (AP) -- Another round of eurozone economic data Thursday provided compelling evidence that the currency bloc's recovery from recession has become broad-based and self-sustaining.

Particularly encouraging was the news that retail sales across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro rose by a forecast-busting 0.7 percent in August, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistics office.

That added to the previous month's 0.5 percent increase - itself revised higher - and was above market expectations for a more modest 0.2 percent increase.

Retail sales are an important barometer of economic confidence as they show that consumers are more willing to spend rather than save for a rainy day.

[xchrom]

15. SHUTDOWN GIVES OBAMA UNLIKELY ALLY: BIG BUSINESS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_BIG_BUSINESS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-02-14-02-26

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Business leaders are taking sides with Democratic President Barack Obama after failing to persuade their traditional Republican allies in Congress to avert a government shutdown.

Obama, whose health care and regulatory agenda they have vigorously opposed, is embracing the business outreach, eager to employ groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street CEOs to portray House Republicans as out of touch even with their long-established corporate and financial patrons.

Yet, the partial closing of the government and the looming confrontation over the nation's borrowing limit highlight the remarkable drop in the business community's influence among House Republicans, who increasingly respond more to tea party conservatives than to the Chamber of Commerce.

On Wednesday, Obama hosted 14 chief executives from the nation's biggest financial firms for more than an hour of meetings. Moreover, the Chamber of Commerce has sent a letter to Congress signed by about 250 business groups urging no shutdown and warning that a debt ceiling crisis could lead to an economic disaster. They say that the policy disputes over health care and spending that are separating Democrats and Republicans should be debated later.

***unlikely...is that like 'unexpected'?

[xchrom]

16. The 10 Stealth Economic Trends That Rule the World Today

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/the-10-stealth-economic-trends-that-rule-the-world-today/280107/

What’s going on in the world today? It’s hard to keep up. Some facts are familiar to anyone who reads the news. Unemployment is high. Growth is slow. Shale gas is a big deal. But beyond the caps-lock headlines, subtler, but no less significant, shifts are changing the U.S. economy and reshaping the global financial order. Here are ten that have surprised—and might surprise.

1) Old Trend: Expensive solar, surviving only on subsidies.
New Trend: Cheap solar, disrupting old industries.

Since the 1970s, it has become a cliché that solar power is an expensive boondoggle, kept alive only by government subsidies. But every cliché is right until the day it’s suddenly wrong. And for solar, that day is today. Since Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, the price of solar cells has fallen over 99 percent. No, that’s not a typo. And the exponential cost-drop shows no sign of slowing down, with dozens of new technologies in the pipeline. Installation and land costs are falling too. What this means is that in sunny states like Arizona, solar can already compete with fossil fuel electricity even with zero government subsidies. In fact, rooftop solar panels are becoming so popular that utility companies are trying to tax solar power in order to pay for grid maintenance! The technology that was a punch line for decades is about to launch an energy revolution, and most people aren’t even paying attention.

2. Old Trend: The Latinization of America.
New Trend: The Asiafication of America.

“The huge boom in Mexican immigration is over.” The improving Mexican economy, lower Mexican fertility, the U.S. construction bust, and increased enforcement have combined to bring net Mexican immigration to zero or negative since 2008. That bears repeating: On net, Mexicans are no longer moving to the United States at all. So who is? Lots of people, but Asians more than anyone. Asians are moving here at a rate of about half a million a year, and the Asian-American percentage of the population has already reached 6%. Most studies say immigration is good for the economy, so this is good news, especially because many of the new Asian arrivals are high-skilled, entrepreneurial types who will start businesses and hire the rest of us.

[Egalitarian Thug]

29. K&R&Thanks. Good news in the medium-long-term.

[xchrom]

17. Not Raising the Debt Ceiling: A Crisis, If We're Lucky, a Historic Calamity If We're Not

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/not-raising-the-debt-ceiling-a-crisis-if-were-lucky-a-historic-calamity-if-were-not/280057/

It's what Donald Rumsfeld would call a known unknown.

We know that we don't know what would happen if we don't raise the debt ceiling before we run out of cash to pay all our bills on time. It might "only" crush consumer confidence, send markets cliff-diving, and slow down our already slow recovery -- if not push us back into recession. Or it might be a historic blunder that not only flattens the economy today, but also forever raises our borrowing costs and lowers our standard of living tomorrow. So the stakes are fairly high. We just don't know how high. And that, as my colleague Derek Thompson puts it, is the most terrifying thing of all.

But there are a few things we do know. We do know what will determine whether this is a self-inflicted wound to the foot or to the head. That's whether we outright default on the debt or not. Remember, the debt ceiling doesn't stop us from borrowing more to pay for new spending. It stops us from borrowing more to pay for old spending. And it only stops us from borrowing more, because we say so. See, it's not that lenders don't want to lend to us anymore; after inflation, they're still paying us to borrow for 5 years. No, it's that we've said we won't borrow anymore, just because. It's a self-imposed limit.

And if we don't lift that self-imposed limit, we enter a world of economic pain. We couldn't borrow more to pay for the spending Congress has already authorized. We'd have to pay what we owe out of tax receipts and rolled-over debt instead. But as the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) points out, tax receipts and rolled-over debt would only cover 68 percent of our bills. So we'd have to cut the rest. This immediate 32 percent austerity could hit anything from Social Security checks to food stamps to the debt itself. Now, this last one is unlikely, but not impossible. How unlikely depends on whether the Treasury can prioritize its payments. Let's think about what would happen if it can and if it can't.

Scenario #1: Treasury can prioritize the debt, so we get austerity but not default. Suppose the government doesn't pay its bills as they come due. Suppose instead it pays back the debt before anything else. In that case, interest rates wouldn't rise -- they'd fall. At least longer rates. Now, short-term term rates on debt due to be paid back right after the debt ceiling hits would rise. But that's it. After all, investors flee to the safety of U.S. government debt (which pushes down rates) anytime things look grim.

[xchrom]

18. Jesse Ventura Calls for an End to Taxes and a Peaceful Revolution

http://samuel-warde.com/2013/10/jesse-ventura-time-for-revolution/

CNN’s Piers Morgan spoke last night with Jesse Ventura about the government shutdown and the nation’s elected officials.

The former Governor of Minnesota called for a cessation of taxes during the government shutdown and a peaceful revolution against Democrats and Republicans amid cheers and applause from the audience.

“I guess my question would be since the government is shut down, that should mean we shouldn’t have to pay any taxes, right? It’s not going to work that way is it. Even though they’re not working we’re still gonna be paying.
I think its time for a revolt in this country. I’ve been advocating a revolution for years now. Revolutions don’t have to be violent, but we need one and I would tell everyone here ‘vote them all out of office’ and don’t vote in a new Democrat or Republican. Vote for anyone but Democrats and Republicans.”

[Hotler]

26. I've been calling for mass protest (revolution) for awhile also.

We had a chance this past spring to start the march on Washington. Now fall is here and winter is coming. Maybe next year.

[Demeter]

19. PHILOSOPHICAL POINT TO PONDER--CALVIN & HOBBES

http://assets.amuniversal.com/73192c00807d01302581001dd8b71c47

[xchrom]

20. Goldman Sachs' Blankfein warns on debt ceiling impasse

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24375342


Goldman Sachs' boss Lloyd Blankfein has warned that a failure to raise the nation's borrowing limit would be "extremely adverse".

The warning came after a meeting between US President Barack Obama and 15 heads of large companies on Wednesday.

Business leaders want Washington to understand "the long-term consequences of a shutdown," said Mr Blankfein.

The US government has been shut down since Tuesday, 1 October.

[Demeter]

27. OBAMA BETTER HAVE CUT OFF THE GOVERNMENT TEAT FOR THE BANKSTERS

[xchrom]

21. MORGAN STANLEY: 'The Government Of The United States Is Not Going To Default'

http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-us-default-last-resort-2013-10

There's not much good to be said about the ongoing U.S. government shutdown, which was triggered by Congress' inability to come to a budget deal.
However, most experts are now saying that the shutdown and budget debacle is just a sideshow to the real risk: the debt ceiling.

"The budget debate and the looming debt ceiling are two distinct issues: the former is related to appropriations authority and the later pertains to debt issuance authority," wrote Morgan Stanley's Vincent Reinhart.

There's a fear out there that the U.S. may have to default on its obligations if the debt ceiling isn't raised.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-us-default-last-resort-2013-10#ixzz2getuGEYS

[xchrom]

22. The 5 Most Important Algorithms In Tech

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-5-most-important-algorithms-in-tech-2013-10



***SNIP

Pagerank – how Google calculates search results
The broad strokes of how Google's search algorithm works have been public for over fifteen years, though the exact way it organises search results remains the company's most closely guarded secret.

***SNIP

Public key cryptography - keeping credit card data secure
Public key cryptography is the name for a broad collection of algorithms which lie at the heart of nearly every form of security online. Using what is perhaps best described as 'magic maths', public key cryptography lets people encode data with a key which cannot then decode it.

***SNIP

Correcting errors
CDs are temperamental beasts. When they were introduced, they were hailed as being a resilient replacement for vinyl and cassettes, but as anyone who has tried to play a carelessly preserved album found in their car's glovebox can attest to, that's only half true.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-5-most-important-algorithms-in-tech-2013-10#ixzz2gev96nz0

[xchrom]

23. In Pilot Program, The NSA Secretly Collected The Crown Jewel Of Metadata From Americans

http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-collected-us-cellphone-locations-in-2010-and-2011-2013-10

In 2010 and 2011, the National Security Agency conducted a secret pilot program that collected the location data of Americans’ cellphones, Charlie Savage of The New York Times reports.
Locational data is the ultimate form of metadata (i.e. data about communications as opposed to content) because it can reveal where a person has been over months or years.

Combined with other metadata, someone's entire life can be documented over time.

An official familiar with the test project told Savage that the program's purpose was to see how the location data would flow into the NSA's systems, adding that the data was never used as part of any investigation.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-collected-us-cellphone-locations-in-2010-and-2011-2013-10#ixzz2gewPntX2

[Demeter]

28. I SURE HOPE THEY WERE BORED SILLY

There ain't anything worth observing in most of our lives...

[xchrom]

24. Markets Are Up In Europe As Day 3 Of The Shutdown Begins

http://www.businessinsider.com/european-markets-october-3-2013-2013-10

Markets are up slightly across Europe.
Britain's FTSE 100 is up 0.2%.

France's CAC40 is down 0.2%.

Germany's DAX is flat.

Spain's IBEX is up 0.1%.

Italy's FTSE MIB is up 0.1%.

It's day three of the U.S. government shutdown, and the markets have calmed down a bit. But Wednesday's sell-off reminds us that this might not be a smooth ride.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/european-markets-october-3-2013-2013-10#ixzz2gezIZv00

[xchrom]

25. The 25 Biggest Landowners In America

http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-private-landowners-2013-10?op=1

#25 Jeff Bezos owns 290,000 acres.


#24 The Nunley Family owns 301,500 acres.


#23 The Collins Family owns 310,472 acres.


#22 Pat Broe owns 317,677 acres.