Weekend Economists Down Under May 23-26, 2014

[Demeter]

Last edited Sat May 24, 2014, 08:02 AM - Edit history (1)

I don't know much about Australia.

Given my abhorrence of heat, my reluctance to get on an airplane for any length of time, let alone two days, and my refusal to buy a passport at the outrageous prices current (not discounting the fact that my country might not even let me leave, for some insanely paranoid reason to be disclosed in 60 years or so when all the idiots are dead, or LET ME BACK IN, OR JUST RANDOMLY JAIL), I probably never will see it in person.

No offense, mates, but there are places I would suffer to visit. Australia hasn't made that list, yet. Give me a good reason and that could change.

But in the meanwhile, let us gather what intelligence we may on the Land Down Under....

The Crocodile Dundee movie series is as close as most of us will get to an actual tour of Oz, as it is also known. We will include some of that, too.

Ayers Rock (Uluru) Sunrise, Northern Territory, Australia
http://www.chockstonephotos.com/



http://www.markgray.com.au/




FOR TV TOURS OF AUSTRALIA, VISIT THIS WEBSITE: http://tours-tv.com/en/australia_landscape

[Demeter]

1. One of Our Banks is Missing!

Columbia Savings Bank, Cincinnati, Ohio, was closed today by the Ohio Division of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with United Fidelity Bank, fsb, Evansville, Indiana, to assume all of the deposits of Columbia Savings Bank.

The sole branch of Columbia Savings Bank will reopen as a branch of United Fidelity Bank, fsb during their normal business hours...As of March 31, 2014, Columbia Savings Bank had approximately $36.5 million in total assets and $29.5 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the Columbia Savings Bank, United Fidelity Bank, fsb agreed to purchase essentially all of the failed bank's assets....

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $5.3 million. Compared to other alternatives, United Fidelity Bank, fsb's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Columbia Savings Bank is the eighth FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Ohio. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Bramble Savings Bank, Milford, on September 17, 2010.

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2. How Thomas Piketty and Elizabeth Warren demolished the conventional wisdom on debt

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/18/how_thomas_piketty_and_elizabeth_warren_demolished_the_conventional_wisdom_on_debt/

Those who fall into debt are shamed for spending irresponsibly. But the truth of the matter is much more alarming...In a 2006 “Saturday Night Live” sketch, Chris Parnell sums up the conventional wisdom about credit card debt:

“Did you know millions of Americans live with debt they can not control? That’s why I’ve developed this unique new program for managing your debt. It’s called, Don’t Buy Stuff You Can’t Afford.”

According to the prevailing story, debt is caused by lavish and irresponsible spending by poor and middle-class families. But like much “conventional wisdom,” an increasing amount of evidence belies this point. In fact, the decline of saving and the rise of debt was an almost inevitable consequence of families trying to scrape by in the face of rising inequality. This is the corollary of French economist Thomas Piketty’s now-famous observation: While capital is increasingly concentrated at the top, it turns out that debt is becoming concentrated at the bottom.

In the same “SNL” bit, Amy Poehler says, “There’s a whole section in here about buying expensive things using money you save.” This supposedly common-sense observation is mirrored elsewhere. The American Institute of CPAs runs an advertising campaign urging people to “Feed the Pig.” One such ad depicts a responsible couple studiously saving for a house, while another eats lobster, receives massages and then complains about “never having enough to put away.” Underlying both the real commercial and the satirical one is the idea that those who aren’t saving could do so, but are instead spending the money. But the evidence for this story is weak.

A more compelling story is that inequality has made it harder for households at the middle and bottom to save. In fact, the decline in savings has coincide with a rise in income inequality (see chart). There is evidence that these trends are connected....





MORE

[Demeter]

3. Secrets, lies and Snowden's email: why I was forced to shut down Lavabit BY Ladar Levison

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabit-shut-down-snowden-email?CMP=ema_565

For the first time, the founder of an encrypted email startup that was supposed to insure privacy for all reveals how the FBI and the US legal system made sure we don't have the right to much privacy in the first place...



My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company's network. My company, Lavabit, provided email services to 410,000 people – including Edward Snowden, according to news reports – and thrived by offering features specifically designed to protect the privacy and security of its customers. I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the US government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they travelled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet.

But that wasn't enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company's private encryption keys, and I balked. What they said they needed were customer passwords – which were sent securely – so that they could access the plain-text versions of messages from customers using my company's encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only made this demand because of my "noncompliance".) Bothered by what the agents were saying, I informed them that I would first need to read the order they had just delivered – and then consult with an attorney. The feds seemed surprised by my hesitation. What ensued was a flurry of legal proceedings that would last 38 days, ending not only my startup but also destroying, bit by bit, the very principle upon which I founded it – that we all have a right to personal privacy.

In the first two weeks, I was served legal papers a total of seven times and was in contact with the FBI every other day. (This was the period a prosecutor would later characterize as my "period of silence".) It took a week for me to identify an attorney who could adequately represent me, given the complex technological and legal issues involved – and we were in contact for less than a day when agents served me with a summons ordering me to appear in a Virginia courtroom, over 1,000 miles from my home. Two days later, I was served the first subpoena for the encryption keys. With such short notice, my first attorney was unable to appear alongside me in court. Because the whole case was under seal, I couldn't even admit to anyone who wasn't an attorney that I needed a lawyer, let alone why. In the days before my appearance, I would spend hours repeating the facts of the case to a dozen attorneys, as I sought someone else that was qualified to represent me. I also discovered that as a third party in a federal criminal indictment, I had no right to counsel. After all, only my property was in jeopardy – not my liberty. Finally, I was forced to choose between appearing alone or facing a bench warrant for my arrest.

In Virginia, the government replaced its encryption key subpoena with a search warrant and a new court date. I retained a small, local law firm before I went back to my home state, which was then forced to assemble a legal strategy and file briefs in just a few short days. The court barred them from consulting outside experts about either the statutes or the technology involved in the case. The court didn't even deliver transcripts of my first appearance to my own lawyers for two months, and forced them to proceed without access to the information they needed. Then, a federal judge entered an order of contempt against me – without even so much as a hearing. But the judge created a loophole: without a hearing, I was never given the opportunity to object, let alone make any any substantive defense, to the contempt change. Without any objection (because I wasn't allowed a hearing), the appellate court waived consideration of the substantive questions my case raised – and upheld the contempt charge, on the grounds that I hadn't disputed it in court. Since the US supreme court traditionally declines to review decided on wholly procedural grounds, I will be permanently denied justice. In the meantime, I had a hard decision to make. I had not devoted 10 years of my life to building Lavabit, only to become complicit in a plan which I felt would have involved the wholesale violation of my customers' right to privacy. Thus with no alternative, the decision was obvious: I had to shut down my company...More importantly for my case, the prosecution also argued that my users had no expectation of privacy, even though the service I provided – encryption – is designed for users' privacy.

If my experience serves any purpose, it is to illustrate what most already know: courts must not be allowed to consider matters of great importance under the shroud of secrecy, lest we find ourselves summarily deprived of meaningful due process. If we allow our government to continue operating in secret, it is only a matter of time before you or a loved one find yourself in a position like I did – standing in a secret courtroom, alone, and without any of the meaningful protections that were always supposed to be the people's defense against an abuse of the state's power.

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4. Glenn Greenwald: from Martin Luther King to Anonymous, the state targets dissenters not just "bad gu

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/13/glenn-greenwald-anonymous-mass-surveillance-governments-nasa-no-place-to-hide

A GETTYSBURG ADDRESS FOR OUR TIME

[Demeter]

5. 11 Things The Koch Brothers Don't Want You To Know, From Robert Greenwald's Newly Updated Documentar

http://www.alternet.org/election-2014/11-things-koch-brothers-dont-want-you-know-robert-greenwalds-newly-updated-documentary?akid=11824.227380.83KYb7&rd=1&src=newsletter994261&t=6




The mega-billionaire brothers, David and Charles Koch, stand apart in the world of Republicans.

In 2012, their network of hardcore libertarian political donors spent $400 million on negative campaign ads intended to destroy government safety nets and defeat Democrats. They want to repeal Obamacare, dismantle labor unions, repeal any environmental law protecting clean water and air, roll back voting rights, privatize Social Security, stop a minimum wage increase and more. They don't care about destroying the checks and balances in American democracy to get their way.

In an updated documentary by Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films, Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition, we learn many things the Kochs don't want you to know, from the origin of their radical agenda to other issues they’ve championed that haven’t made the national news, such as resegregating public schools.

Here are 11 things the Kochs don't want you to know about them:

1. The family's $100 billion fortune comes mostly from a massive network of oil and gas pipelines, and investments in other polluting industries like paper and plastics. The brothers inherited the seed money for their holdings from their father Fred Koch, who made his first fortune building oil pipelines for the Russian dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. Back in the states, Fred Koch supported racial segregation and white supremacist groups like the John Birch Society.

2. Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company in America, worth upwards of $80 billion. It is one of the country’s top 15 polluters, responsible for more than 300 oil spills. It has paid over $100 million in fines and been found guilty by a federal jury of stealing oil from Native American lands.

3. The Kochs have invested multi-millions in more than 85 right-wing organizations over the years to push an anti-government, libertarian agenda. Many local Tea Party chapters were fronts for Americans for Prosperity, one of their groups. Another big recipient, ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council, drafts bills and talking points that Republican officials cite again and again. In the 2012 presidential election cycle, the Koch’s right-wing donor network spent $400 million on electioneering.

4. The brothers work to create legal decisions to empower their efforts. They brought two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, to give speeches at their invitation-only gatherings for libertarian industrialists. That was before the Court issued its Citizens United ruling, gutting federal laws that restricted the kinds of outside campaigns they bankroll. They funded groups that filed thousands of pages of legal briefs to attack those election laws. After the Court threw out federal campaign restrictions in 2010—a ruling they help to write—the Kochs began to spend unprecedented sums to sway elections.

5. Americans for Prosperity led a successful takeover of the school board in Wake County, North Carolina in 2009, which then ended student busing to resegregate high schools. They resurrected the coded rhetoric of the old South, using terms like “forced busing” and “neighborhood schools.” After hundreds of students were sent to other schools, the uproar was so great the AFP slate was voted out two years later, but not before the kids experienced racism and prejudice.

6. As donors to higher education, the Kochs have designed grant agreements with more than 150 colleges and universities where they restrict academic freedom by exerting control over who gets hired. The programs they fund present only their views in class, curricula and in their research. They promote pro-business, libertarian inquiry, which does not allow the facts and results to lead to their own conclusions. Faculties at many universities have protested these donations and threats to academic freedom.

7. AFP was one of the lead groups in Wisconsin, encouraging Republican Gov. Scott Walker to revoke collective bargaining agreements with public employees—except for police and firefighters, who tend to support the GOP and law-and-order politicians. Through national legal advocacy groups like ALEC, they have introduced scores of reactionary anti-union bills in dozens of states.

8. Other Koch-funded efforts include the Republican national effort to unduly police the voting process to discourage young people, minorities and senior from casting ballots. The reactionary voting rights bills they have introduced in dozens of states impose stricter voter ID requirements, which do not prevent people from registering to vote but will keep them from getting a ballot if they cannot present specific paperwork. AFP and other Koch-funded groups, such as True The Vote, have recruited and trained mostly white poll watchers to challenge the credentials of mostly non-white voters, creating a climate of fear and intimidation around voting.

9. The Koch brothers make $13 million a day from their investments, but they want to eliminate minimum wage laws and oppose any increases. People earning the federal minimum wage earn about $60 a day. A minimum wage worker would have to work almost 700 years to earn what the Kochs make in a day. (Koch-funded politicians have proposed 67 bills in 25 states to reduce the minimum wage.)

10. The Koch brothers want to destroy the most popular government program of all, Social Security, by funding right-wing think tanks that spread misinformation about Social Security's long-term financial health, claiming it will not survive. They want people to invest their retirement savings on Wall Street, which is riskier and would earn billions in fees for investment firms. They want to raise the retirement age for Social Security to 70, which would especially penalize blue-collar workers who do manual labor, as their bodies wear out more quickly than white-collar workers.

11. The Koch brothers' massive investments and holdings are literally killing the planet, because their primary business is transporting gas and oil. That includes the Canadian oil tar sands, which is the dirtiest source of fossil fuel on earth. If these sands are developed for the U.S. or Chinese markets, it would be the biggest carbon bomb in decades, hastening the progress of global climate change.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's retirement crisis, the low-wage economy, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

[Demeter]

6. One of the Most Pervasive — and Wrong — Conservative Economic Myths, Debunked

http://www.alternet.org/books/one-most-pervasive-and-wrong-conservative-economic-myths-debunked?akid=11815.227380.NtmwWw&rd=1&src=newsletter993137&t=7

COMPLEX AND LENGTHY, AND WELL WORTH THE READ.

[Demeter]

10. Koch bros smacked down in Michigan but Republicans can't even do the right thing the right way

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/23/1301423/-Koch-bros-smacked-down-in-Michigan-but-Republicans-can-t-even-do-the-right-thing-the-right-way?detail=email

Efforts by the Koch brothers front group Americans for Prosperity to scuttle the Detroit bankruptcy settlement were shot down in flames as the state legislature overwhelmingly voted yesterday to contribute $194.8 million toward the deal. This was the amount needed to ensure that the deal did not collapse and which saves the Detroit Institute of Arts' priceless art collection while ensuring that retired Detroit pension holders don't see their monthly retirement checks slashed.

The vote on the 11-bill package was bipartisan and, for the most part, lopsided. The main bill passed by a 103-7 margin. It was a harsh rebuke of the meddling of the corporatist Koch brothers and other wealthy funders of AFP. That was a bridge too far even for Republican legislators who were not cowed into submission by threats of AFP spending against them in the upcoming primary election.

Vote on one bill, however, was not so lopsided. House Bill 5571, according to the House Fiscal Agency's analysis, would "amend the Art Institute Authorities Act to prohibit the renewal of the existing voter-approved 10-year millage or the levy of a new millage unless the art institute was owned by a municipality on the date the tax levy or renewal was authorized."

In other words, this particular bill prevents the DIA from raising funds from the communities that currently support it once the current millage runs out. The DIA draws no money whatsoever from the city of Detroit. The millage along with donor contributions and other funding sources allows it to be a net positive for the city, financially speaking.

Annmarie Erickson, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the DIA, explained it this way last November:

The biggest irony of all is that our incredible art museum doesn’t cost the city of Detroit a dime. The museum is managed by a nonprofit, responsible for all operations. Unlike Detroit, the DIA changed its retiree health care plan years ago. We reduced our work force, eliminated an expensive pension plan, and did all this in cooperation with our unionized staff. All this work keeps $31 million off Detroit’s books every year and brings hundreds of thousands of visitors to Midtown.

By passing this bill, the Republicans have essentially hamstrung the DIA and made it far more vulnerable to financial problems in the future.

Much like their position on the minimum wage ballot initiative, Republicans showed with this vote that they are all for democracy right up until people vote for things they don't agree with. Then the will of the people to decide things for themselves is worthy of being taken away by the patriarchal lawmakers in Lansing....

MORE LUNACY IN LANSING...THIS IS WHY I STAY IN ANN ARBOR, OR AS MY UNCLE CALLED IT: THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF ANN ARBOR....

[Demeter]

7. History of Australia

"In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light." And there was light...."

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.

For at least 40,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages grouped into roughly 250 language groups. After the European discovery of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and initially settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.

On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Since Federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The federation comprises six states and several territories. The population of 23.1 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated in the eastern states.

Australia is a developed country and one of the wealthiest in the world, with the world's 12th-largest economy. In 2012 Australia had the world's fifth-highest per capita income, Australia's military expenditure is the world's 13th-largest. With the second-highest human development index globally, Australia ranks highly in many international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the Pacific Islands Forum.

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8. Etymology

Pronounced əˈstɹæɪljə, -liə in Australian English, the name Australia is derived from the Latin australis, meaning "southern". The country has been referred to colloquially as Oz since the early 20th century. Aussie is a common colloquial term for "Australian". In neighbouring New Zealand, and less commonly in Australia itself, the noun "Aussie" is also used to refer to the nation, as distinct from its residents. The sporting anthem C'mon Aussie C'mon is an example of local use of Aussie as synonym for Australia.

Legends of Terra Australis Incognita—an "unknown land of the South"—date back to Roman times and were commonplace in medieval geography, although not based on any documented knowledge of the continent. Following European discovery, names for the Australian landmass were often references to the famed Terra Australis.

The earliest recorded use of the word Australia in English was in 1625 in "A note of Australia del Espíritu Santo, written by Sir Richard Hakluyt", published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus, a corruption of the original Spanish name "Tierra Austral del Espíritu Santo" (Southern Land of the Holy Spirit) for an island in Vanuatu. The Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. Australia was later used in a 1693 translation of Les Aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la Découverte et le Voyage de la Terre Australe, a 1676 French novel by Gabriel de Foigny, under the pen-name Jacques Sadeur. Referring to the entire South Pacific region, Alexander Dalrymple used it in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean in 1771. By the end of the 18th century, the name was being used to refer specifically to Australia, with the botanists George Shaw and Sir James Smith writing of "the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland" in their 1793 Zoology and Botany of New Holland, and James Wilson including it on a 1799 chart.

The name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who pushed for it to be formally adopted as early as 1804. When preparing his manuscript and charts for his 1814 A Voyage to Terra Australis, he was persuaded by his patron, Sir Joseph Banks, to use the term Terra Australis as this was the name most familiar to the public. Flinders did so, and published the following rationale:

There is no probability, that any other detached body of land, of nearly equal extent, will ever be found in a more southern latitude; the name Terra Australis will, therefore, remain descriptive of the geographical importance of this country, and of its situation on the globe: it has antiquity to recommend it; and, having no reference to either of the two claiming nations, appears to be less objectionable than any other which could have been selected.*

In the footnote Flinders wrote:

* Had I permitted myself any innovation on the original term, it would have been to convert it to AUSTRALIA; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.

This is the only occurrence of the word Australia in that text; but in Appendix III, Robert Brown's General remarks, geographical and systematical, on the botany of Terra Australis, Brown makes use of the adjectival form Australian throughout,—the first known use of that form. Despite popular conception, the book was not instrumental in the adoption of the name: the name came gradually to be accepted over the following ten years.

The first time that the name Australia appears to have been officially used was in a despatch to Lord Bathurst of 4 April 1817 in which Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledges the receipt of Capt. Flinders' charts of Australia. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia.

[Demeter]

9. The Best Of The Paul Hogan Show (Full) (1997)

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12. CROCODILE DUNDEE (1)

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13. GANG SCENE FROM CD 2

[kickysnana]

11. Kiwi DNA spurs scientists to rethink the evolution of birds

They could also estimate how long ago the two lineages shared a common ancestor by counting up the mutations that have accumulated in the kiwi and elephant bird DNA. They estimate that the ancestral bird lived 50 million years ago.

That date poses a serious problem to the idea that ratites have been flightless since the days of Gondwana. By 50 million years ago, Madagascar and New Zealand were already separated by an ocean. “You can’t get from Madagascar to New Zealand without flying,” Cooper said. “There isn’t any other way.”

These findings have led Cooper and his colleagues to propose a new hypothesis for how ratites evolved. Rather than being flightless, their ancestor was a partridge-like bird that could travel by air. Between 65 million and 50 million years ago, early ratites flew across much of the world.

It was a lucky time for them. The large plant-eating dinosaurs had become extinct, and it would take millions of years before large plant-eating mammals would take their place. In at least six instances, Cooper argues, ratites evolved, losing their wings and becoming plant-eating birds.

http://www.startribune.com/world/260355991.html?page=all&prepage=2&c=y#continue

[Demeter]

14. UK'S Mark Carney warns insurers 'not too big to fail'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/insurance/10848389/Mark-Carney-warns-insurers-not-too-big-to-fail.html


BoE Governor warns top insurance executives will be held to account for the risks they take...

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, has warned British insurance companies they are not too big to fail and said that, like bankers, top insurance executives would be "accountable for their actions if things go wrong".

"If we think that managements’ actions today pose a risk tomorrow, we won’t hesitate to step in," he said, as he cautioned insurers to be wary when considering riskier, "less traditional investments".

Britain's insurance industry is a major part of the UK financial services sector. It is home to the third-largest insurance market in the world, which contributes £25bn to the economy, provides jobs for 300,000, manages around £2 trillion of savings and earn a third of its income abroad.

Some traditional insurance business has become "less viable" after the Bank of England was forced to keep interest rates low to underpin the economy following the 2008 financial crisis, according to Mr Carney writing in The Times,

This search for higher returns was not necessarily a problem, he said but warned: "What the Bank of England won’t do is protect insurance companies from the consequences of their own decisions."

WOW. IMAGINE ANYBODY SAYING THAT TO AIG...

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15. New York Stock Exchange Chief to Retire

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/new-york-stock-exchange-chief-to-retire/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Duncan L. Niederauer, the head of the New York Stock Exchange who negotiated a sale to an upstart exchange in Atlanta, will retire from his post earlier than expected.

Mr. Niederauer is stepping down immediately as chief executive of the NYSE Group, though he will stay on through August as president of IntercontinentalExchange, which bought the parent company of the Big Board last year, according to an announcement on Thursday. Mr. Niederauer had been chief executive since December 2007.

The move is “in light of the rapid integration” of the two exchange companies, IntercontinentalExchange said in the announcement. Mr. Niederauer will be succeeded by Thomas W. Farley, the chief operating officer of the Big Board.

“It has been a privilege to lead this great, iconic organization, and I am very proud of all that we accomplished,” Mr. Niederauer said in a statement. “The transition to ICE ownership has gone smoothly, and with our integration well on track, accelerating the final stages of my transition will only extend that progress and provide clarity on future leadership.”

&feature=kp

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16. China announces restricted capital account opening steps in Shanghai FTZ

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/china-economy-ftz-idUSL3N0O80S320140522

- China's central bank announced measures on Thursday to create a closely managed opening in the country's capital account for the Shanghai free trade zone (FTZ) in a cautious but critical step towards allowing full convertibility of China's currency. The measures allow special privileged accounts - known as tagged accounts - that can be used to conduct transactions only in the zone, and are isolated from transfers to accounts outside the zone. Economists say these accounts are needed if the FTZ is to allow further financial liberalisation such as freeing up deposit rates and allowing Chinese individuals in the zone to invest offshore. Without a way to distinguish between FTZ and non-FTZ accounts, waves of arbitrage would quickly make the financial reforms in the FTZ de facto national reforms.

In detailed rules written to guide implementation of a set of principles issued in December, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) allowed institutions and individuals in the FTZ to set up specially tagged bank accounts in the zone, effective immediately, its Shanghai headquarters said in a statement. These accounts will be allowed to exercise privileges reserved for designated zone residents, both individuals and firms, including bringing money in and out of the zone from abroad and investing in offshore markets, according to the statement published on the FTZ headquarters website, shanghai.pbc.gov.cn. However, the pace of implementation of specific reforms will remain restrained and not all reforms will be made available at once.

"There will no free convertibility, but managed convertibility," Zhang Xin, a spokesman for the PBOC's Shanghai headquarters, was quoted as saying, adding that the liberalisation would be conducted in a step-by-step fashion...

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17. ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER: 'I'll quit if reforms stymied', PM repeats

http://www.ansa.it/english/news/politics/2014/05/22/reforms-not-ep-elections-could-sink-govt_621cd57c-0b66-4e82-890b-e18f884fccce.html

A failure to deliver promised reforms, and not any fall-out from the upcoming European elections, poses the gravest existential threat to the Italian government, Premier Matteo Renzi said Thursday.

Renzi reiterated his threat to quit politics if his planned institutional reforms aimed at overhauling Italy's costly, slow-moving political machinery fail to come to fruition. "If they don't let me do the reforms, then my project will have failed and I'll go home," Renzi, the head of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), told the Radio Anch'io station. Renzi initially won the support of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, for the reform package, which includes a plan to transform the Senate into a leaner assembly of local-government representatives with limited lawmaking powers to make passing legislation easier.

But Berlusconi has said his support for the package can no longer be guaranteed in recent weeks. Renzi also faces opposition to the plan from inside the PD, although he said that this is not what worries him.

"The risk is that someone, probably not someone in the party, but someone in parliament, will try to stop the reforms," the premier said.

Renzi has stressed, however, that he will not quit even if the PD finishes second to the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) in Sunday's European elections.

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20. Samaras pledges growth and jobs to come, warns SYRIZA may put recovery at risk

OF COURSE....BLAME YOUR FAILURES ON THE SOCIALISTS, WHO AREN'T IN POWER....

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_20/05/2014_539887

Growth, jobs creation and tax cuts are Greece’s targets for the next few years, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said Tuesday as he argued that a vote for SYRIZA in Sunday’s European Parliament elections would be a vote for “turning the country back.”

With just a few days left until the crucial double election contest, which will include the second round of local elections, Samaras chose to look ahead at Greece’s prospects but also to step up the rhetoric regarding SYRIZA and what kind of threat the opposition party might prove.

Samaras pledged that Greece’s unemployment rate, currently the highest in the European Union at 26.5 percent, would fall below the EU average by 2020 on the back of a growth plan he outlined Tuesday. The prime minister said that at a conservative estimate there would be 54.5 billion euros of investment in the Greek economy over the next seven years and that there would be 870,000 jobs created during this period.

“From now on, there will be no more looking down... the recession ends this year,” Samaras said in his speech at the Benaki Museum.

BRAVE WORDS, MINISTER!

[Demeter]

18. Reader Survey

Given recently mixed signals regarding its health, how likely is it that the global economy will experience a recession in the next 12 months?

Unlikely 57%
Likely 18%
No opinion or not sure 12%
Highly unlikely 9%
Highly likely 4%


CFA Institute readership poll...


Poll analysis

"Nobody's going to their bosses saying, 'Give me a raise or else,' because they are terrified that their bosses will say 'or else,' " Scott Hoyt wrote in The Los Angeles Times.

Growth hasn't been strong enough to fully support the labor market, and unemployment has remained stubbornly high.

U.S. gross domestic product growth was barely positive in the first quarter, coming in at 0.1%.

In China, GDP growth continued slowing to 7.4%, which is markedly lower than in previous years. Although the data coming out of China are often questionable, copper prices remain some 30% below their all-time highs, confirming that the world's largest consumer of copper is slowing. Japan, perhaps the only bright spot, recorded growth of 5.9% in the quarter.

However, this bright spot was tainted by the fact that Japanese consumers were likely time-shifting future purchases into the present to beat a retail sales tax hike from 5% to 8%, which went into effect April 1. Because we are mid- to late cycle, market commentators have begun to wonder whether this sluggish data mean that we are heading into recession.

We asked NewsBrief readers what they thought about the likelihood of recession in the next 12 months. Around 22% thought that it was likely or highly likely that global GDP would enter recession territory. Nearly two-thirds of respondents felt that it was unlikely or highly unlikely. The remaining 12% of respondents had no opinion. -- Ron Rimkus, CFA, Director, Economics & Alternative Investments, CFA Institute

[Demeter]

19. Is the Russia-China Gas Deal for Real—or Just Fumes?

IS THE WEST WHISTLING PAST ITS OWN GRAVEYARD? LIKE SCROOGE AND THE THIRD SPIRIT?

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-21/is-the-russia-china-gas-deal-for-real-or-just-fumes



After negotiating for 15 years, China and Russia appear to have finally struck a deal to get into the natural gas business together and build a pipeline linking the two countries. Under the terms of the 30-year pact, China will secure the natural gas it needs to fuel its economy (and help clean its air), while Russia gets to diversify away from its testy relationship with Europe. Chances are that Russia won’t ever have to worry about being sanctioned by China.

As it has been since the late 1990s, the major sticking point in the talks was the price China would pay to buy Russia’s gas. China was always willing to invest upfront cash in return for a cheaper price. Russia was always happy to take that cash, but it never wanted to give China too great a deal, lest its other customers expect similar prices. In the end, it looks as though China will commit as much as $25 billion in advance payments to help Russia build the pipeline and develop its gas fields in Siberia.

What about that price? In announcing the deal, Russia’s de facto gas czar, Alexey Miller, chief executive officer of the state-controlled gas giant Gazprom (GAZP:RM), declined to say exactly what Russia would charge China, referring to the final price as a “commercial secret.” Still, in laying out details of the deal, he offered some clues. Miller says that under the agreement, Gazprom will annually sell 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China for 30 years, for a total value of $400 billion. According to a back-of-the-envelope calculation offered by Pavel Molchanov, senior energy analyst at Raymond James, that works out to roughly $10 per thousand cubic feet. This is roughly the price Russia charges its customers in Central Europe. “That is not a crazy number at all,” says Molchanov.

Moreover, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said that the price China pays will be linked to the price of oil, meaning that if the price of Brent crude rises 2 percent, so will the price of the gas Russia sells to China. So how can they know the value of the deal over 30 years when we can hardly forecast what the price of oil will be a month from now?

MORE

[newthinking]

21. Some great information - Kicking it up

[Demeter]

22. Welcome to WEE! we are open until Tuesday

come back often.

[Demeter]

23. Aboriginal Australia

Aboriginal Australians are believed to have first arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history.

They developed a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, established enduring spiritual and artistic traditions and utilised stone technologies. At the time of first European contact, it has been estimated the existing population was at least 350,000, while recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained.

There is considerable archeological discussion as to the route taken by the first colonisers. People appear to have arrived by sea during a period of glaciation, when New Guinea and Tasmania were joined to the continent. The journey still required sea travel however, making them amongst the world's earlier mariners. Scott Cane wrote in 2013 that the first wave may have been prompted by the eruption of Mount Toba and if they arrived around 70,000 years ago could have crossed the water from Timor, when the sea level was low - but if they came later, around 50,000 years ago, a more likely route would be through the Moluccas to New Guinea. Given that the likely landfall regions have been under around 50 metres of water for the last 15,000 years, it is unlikely that the timing will be ever be established with certainty.

The earliest known human remains were found at Lake Mungo, a dry lake in the southwest of New South Wales. Remains found at Mungo suggest one of the world's oldest known cremations, thus indicating early evidence for religious ritual among humans.

According to Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land. It remains a prominent feature of Australian Aboriginal art. Aboriginal art is believed to be the oldest continuing tradition of art in the world. Evidence of Aboriginal art can be traced back at least 30,000 years and is found throughout Australia (notably at Uluru and Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory). In terms of age and abundance, cave art in Australia is comparable to that of Lascaux and Altamira in Europe.

Manning Clark wrote that the ancestors of the Aborigines were slow to reach Tasmania, probably owing to an ice barrier existing across the South East of the continent. The Aborigines, he noted, did not develop agriculture, probably owing to a lack of seed bearing plants and animals suitable for domestication. Thus the population remained low. Of the three potential pre-European colonizing powers and traders of East Asia—the Hindu-Buddhists of southern India, the Muslims of Northern India and the Chinese—each petered out in their southward advance and did not attempt a settlement across the straits separating Indonesia from Australia. But trepang fisherman did reach the north coast, which they called "Marege" or "land of the trepang". For centuries, Makassan trade flourished with Aborigines on Australia's north coast, particularly with the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land.

The greatest population density for Aborigines developed in the southern and eastern regions, the River Murray valley in particular. Aborigines lived and utilised resources on the continent sustainably, agreeing to cease hunting and gathering at particular times to give populations and resources the chance to replenish. "Firestick farming" amongst northern Australian people was used to encourage plant growth that attracted animals. The arrival of Australia's first people nevertheless affected the continent significantly, and, along with climate change, may have contributed to the extinction of Australia's megafauna. The introduction of the dingo by Aboriginal people around 3,000–4,000 years ago may, along with human hunting, have contributed to the extinction of the thylacine, Tasmanian Devil, and Tasmanian Native-hen from mainland Australia.

Despite considerable cultural continuity, life was not without significant changes. Some 10–12,000 years ago, Tasmania became isolated from the mainland, and some stone technologies failed to reach the Tasmanian people (such as the hafting of stone tools and the use of the Boomerang). The land was not always kind; Aboriginal people of southeastern Australia endured "more than a dozen volcanic eruptions...(including) Mount Gambier, a mere 1,400 years ago." In southeastern Australia, near present day Lake Condah, semi-permanent villages of beehive shaped shelters of stone developed, near bountiful food supplies.

The early wave of European observers like William Dampier described the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Aborigines of the West Coast as arduous and "miserable". Lieutenant James Cook on the other hand, speculated in his journal that the "Natives of New Holland" (the East Coast Aborigines whom he encountered) might in fact be far happier than Europeans. Watkin Tench, of the First Fleet, wrote of an admiration for the Aborigines of Sydney as good-natured and good-humoured people, though he also reported violent hostility between the Eora and Cammeraygal peoples, and noted violent domestic altercations between his friend Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo. 19th century settlers like Edward Curr observed that Aborigines "suffered less and enjoyed life more than the majority of civilized(sic) men." Historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that the material standard of living for Aborigines was generally high, higher than that of many Europeans living at the time of the Dutch discovery of Australia.

By 1788, the population existed as 250 individual nations, many of which were in alliance with one another, and within each nation there existed several clans, from as few as five or six to as many as 30 or 40. Each nation had its own language and a few had multiple, thus over 250 languages existed, around 200 of which are now extinct. "Intricate kinship rules ordered the social relations of the people and diplomatic messengers and meeting rituals smoothed relations between groups," keeping group fighting, sorcery and domestic disputes to a minimum.

Permanent European settlers arrived at Sydney in 1788 and came to control most of the continent by end of the 19th century. Bastions of largely unaltered Aboriginal societies survived, particularly in Northern and Western Australia into the 20th century, until finally, a group of Pintupi people of the Gibson Desert became the last people to be contacted by outsider ways in 1984. While much knowledge was lost, Aboriginal art, music and culture, often scorned by Europeans during the initial phases of contact, survived and in time came to be celebrated by the wider Australian community.

The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606. Other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland. Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern coasts after 1720, possibly earlier. Other European explorers followed until, in 1770, Lieutenant James Cook charted the East Coast of Australia for Britain and returned with accounts favouring colonisation at Botany Bay (now in Sydney), New South Wales.

A First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a penal colony. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies on the continent, and European explorers ventured into its interior. Indigenous Australians were greatly weakened and their numbers diminished by introduced diseases and conflict with the colonists during this period.

[AnneD]

96. Hubby is from South India.....

I have often thought that Aboriginals have a closer link to South Indians than anyone else. Modern DNA testing has yielded some interesting findings.

My Australian film list included Rabbit Fences, Gallipoli, Tim, and the early Mad Max. More will come to me today I am sure, but Rabbit Fences was very powerful. There was another one about a couple tried for the murder of their baby whom they said had been taken from them at Ayers Rock by dingo and killed, but for the life of me I cannot remember the name.

[DemReadingDU]

100. The dingo really did take the baby

6/11/12
Thirty-two years after a 9-week-old infant vanished from an Outback campsite in a case that bitterly divided Australians and inspired a Meryl Streep film, the nation overwhelmingly welcomed a ruling that finally closed the mystery. A coroner in the northern city of Darwin concluded Tuesday that a dingo, or wild dog, had taken Azaria Chamberlain from her parents' tent near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru. That is what her parents, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and Michael Chamberlain, had maintained from the beginning.

The case became famous internationally through the 1988 movie "A Cry in the Dark," in which Meryl Streep played the mother.

more...
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/aussie-coroner-agrees-dingo-took-baby-1980-case


A Cry in the Dark (1988)
"Evil Angels" (original title)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094924/

[AnneD]

101. Thanks ...

for the assist. It was like the Jon Benet Ramsey case.

[Crewleader]

24. Well Done Demeter...all your postings!

Have a Great Weekend!



Net Neutrality

[Demeter]

25. Thank you for stopping in...WEE will be here all weekend

Thanks for the "car"-toon.

[Demeter]

26. Aboriginal Rain dream ceremony, 1967

Art and Music

Aboriginal Music Didgeridoo Dreaming "The Spirit of ULURU"

[Demeter]

27. Didgeridoo lessons in Arnhem Land by Dion Gurruwiwi

[Demeter]

28. Ex-Deutsche Bank CEO Says Technology Changed Bank Culture

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-15/ex-deutsche-bank-ceo-says-technology-changed-bank-culture.html

Hilmar Kopper, who took Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) into the league of global securities firms more than 20 years ago by buying investment bank Morgan Grenfell and hiring Merrill Lynch & Co. bankers, says electronic communication is driving a cultural shift in the industry lambasted for greed...Global investment banks including Deutsche Bank are taking steps to regain public trust as regulators probe whether they sought to profit by rigging interest rates and currencies. Digital records of traders discussing alleged rate manipulation have provided investigators with evidence to punish the companies and pushed CEOs to enforce compliance.

“It feels like what you type is gone, not documented, just somewhere on the computer,” said Kopper, 79. “People don’t understand that a hard drive is permanent, hence the name. That’s the new culture and challenge we have to deal with.”

At Deutsche Bank, Kopper introduced measures to improve ethics and conduct in the days before chat windows and e-mail became the main channels of communication in trading rooms, he said. “I was disgusted,” said Kopper, who joined the Frankfurt-based bank’s management board in 1977. “Insider trading wasn’t punishable, so it was done. Front-running was normal,” he said, referring to traders using knowledge about client orders to buy and sell securities for their own books in advance. “I belonged to the generation that objected,” he said. Kopper said he established rules that stopped managers from buying bonds before the bank arranged a sale for a client.

Insider trading became illegal in Germany in August 1994 as the country began to implement the securities trading act. Before that, banks and investors committed to voluntary self-controls starting in the early 1970s....Deutsche Bank says it’s cooperating with regulators probing various markets and that it has and will take disciplinary action against staff, if merited. It banned its investment banking staff from using chat rooms last year.


Regulators are still poring over records of conversations between traders in the probes of alleged attempts to rig Libor, used to price $300 trillion of contracts from student loans to mortgages, and the WM/Reuters rates, which determine what many pension funds and money managers pay for their foreign exchange. While some traders may have colluded in an attempt to rig benchmarks, it was probably impossible to pull it off given the time available and the number of submissions that would require coordination, Kopper said.

“I used to be a currency trader, I know what it’s like,” he said. “You lived by calling up a competitor and asking him where he saw the franc. He’d say he had a bad feeling. That could be a lie and he’d do the opposite, but that was how we communicated. Today, that’s on the verge of being punishable.”

MORE "GOOD OLD DAYS" NOSTALGIA

[Demeter]

29. Dreamtime

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamtime

In the animist framework of Australian Aboriginal mythology, Dreamtime is a place beyond time and space in which the past, present, and future exist wholly as one. Tribes-people could enter this alternate universe through dreams or various states of altered consciousness, as well as death, Dreamtime being considered the final destination before reincarnation.

The Dreaming of the Aboriginal Times

"Dreaming" is also used to refer to an individual's or group's set of beliefs. For instance, an indigenous Australian might say that he or she has Kangaroo Dreaming, or Shark Dreaming, or Honey Ant Dreaming, or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their country. This is because in "Dreamtime" an individuals entire ancestry exists as one, culminating in the idea that all worldly knowledge is accumulated through one's ancestors. Many Indigenous Australians also refer to the Creation time as "The Dreaming". The Dreamtime laid down the patterns of life for the Aboriginal people.

Dreaming stories vary throughout Australia, with variations on the same theme. For example, the story of how the sun was made is different in New South Wales and in Western Australia. Stories cover many themes and topics, as there are stories about creation of sacred places, land, people, animals and plants, law and custom. It is a complex network of knowledge, faith, and practices that derive from stories of creation. It pervades and informs all spiritual and physical aspects of an indigenous Australian's life.

This eternal part existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. Both before and after life, it is believed that this spirit-child exists in the Dreaming and is only initiated into life by being born through a mother. The spirit of the child is culturally understood to enter the developing fetus during the fifth month of pregnancy. When the mother felt the child move in the womb for the first time, it was thought that this was the work of the spirit of the land in which the mother then stood. Upon birth, the child is considered to be a special custodian of that part of his country and is taught the stories and songlines of that place. As Wolf (1994: p. 14) states: "A black 'fella' may regard his totem or the place from which his spirit came as his Dreaming. He may also regard tribal law as his Dreaming."

It was believed that before humans, animals and plants came into being, their 'souls' existed; they knew they would become physical, but they didn't know when. And when that time came, all but one of the 'souls' became plants or animals, with the last one becoming human and acting as a custodian or guardian to the natural world around them.

Traditional Australian indigenous peoples embrace all phenomena and life as part of a vast and complex system-network of relationships which can be traced directly back to the ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings of The Dreaming. This structure of relations, including food taboos, had the result of maintaining the biological diversity of the indigenous environment. It may have helped prevent overhunting of particular species.

The Dreaming, tribal law and songlines

The Dreaming establishes the structures of society, rules for social behavior, and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land. The Dreaming governs the laws of community, cultural lore and how people are required to behave in their communities. The condition that is The Dreaming is met when people live according to law, and live the lore: perpetuating initiations and Dreaming transmissions or lineages, singing the songs, dancing the dances, telling the stories, painting the songlines and Dreamings.

The Creation was believed to be the work of culture heroes who traveled across a formless land, creating sacred sites and significant places of interest in their travels. In this way songlines were established, some of which could travel right across Australia, through as many as six to ten different language groupings. The songs and dances of a particular songline were kept alive and frequently performed at large gatherings, organized in good seasons.
Waugals (yellow triangles with a black snake in the centre) are the official Bibbulmun Track trailmarkers between Kalamunda and Albany in Western Australia. The Noongar believe that the Waugal, or Wagyl, created the Swan River and is represented by the Darling scarp.

In the Aboriginal world view, every event leaves a record in the land. Everything in the natural world is a result of the past, present and future actions of the archetypal beings, whose actions are continuously creating the world. Whilst Europeans consider these cultural ancestors to be mythical, many Aboriginal people believe in their present and future literal existence. The meaning and significance of particular places and creatures is wedded to their origin in the Dreaming, and certain places have a particular potency, which the Aborigines call its dreaming. In this dreaming resides the sacredness of the earth. For example, in Perth, the Noongar believe that the Darling Scarp is the body of the Wagyl – a serpent being that meandered over the land creating rivers, waterways and lakes. It is taught that the Wagyl created the Swan River. In another example, the Gagudju people of Arnhemland, for which Kakadu National Park is named, believe that the sandstone escarpment that dominates the park's landscape was created in the Dreamtime when Ginga (the crocodile-man) was badly burned during a ceremony and jumped into the water to save himself. He turned to stone and became the escarpment. The common theme in these examples and similar ones is that topographical features are either the physical embodiments of creator beings or are the results of their activity.

In one version (there are many Aboriginal cultures), Altjira was a spirit of the Dreamtime; he created the Earth and then retired as the Dreamtime vanished, with the coming of Europeans. Alternative names for Altjira in other Australian languages include Alchera (Arrernte), Alcheringa, Mura-mura (Dieri), and Tjukurpa (Pitjantjatjara).

The dreaming and travelling trails of the Spirit Beings are the songlines (or "Yiri" in the Warlpiri language). The signs of the Spirit Beings may be of spiritual essence, physical remains such as petrosomatoglyphs of body impressions or footprints, amongst natural and elemental simulacra. To cite an example, people from a remote outstation called Yarralin, which is part of the Victoria River region, venerate the spirit Walujapi as the Dreaming Spirit of the black-headed python. Walujapi carved a snakelike track along a cliff-face and left an impression of her buttocks when she sat establishing camp. Both these dreaming signs are still discernible. In the Wangga genre, the songs and dances express themes related to death and regeneration. They are performed publicly with the singer composing from their daily lives or while Dreaming of a nyuidj (dead spirit).

[Demeter]

30. Time for some more pedestrian dreaming--see you all in the morning!

Sleep tight!

[xchrom]

31. THAI ARMY: EX-PM, PROTEST LEADERS HELD 'TO THINK'

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_THAILAND_POLITICS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-24-05-15-19

BANGKOK (AP) -- Thailand's coup leaders said Saturday that they would keep former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Cabinet members and anti-government protest leaders detained for up to a week to give them "time to think" and to keep the country calm. They also summoned outspoken academics to report to the junta.

The moves appear aimed at preventing any political leaders or other high-profile figures from rallying opposition to the military, which seized power Thursday after months of sometimes violent street protests and deadlock between the elected government and protesters supported by Thailand's elite establishment.

For a second day, hundreds of anti-coup protesters defied the military's ban on large gatherings and shouted slogans and waved signs outside a Bangkok cinema.

The demonstrators vowed to march to a nearby army base, but soldiers with riot shields prevented them.

[xchrom]

32. S&P 500 CLOSES ABOVE 1,900 FOR FIRST TIME

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WALL_STREET?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-23-17-56-14

Call it the Great Slog.

Stocks are bumbling along this year after a gangbuster 2013.

The upward grind is underscored by the Standard & Poor's 500 index, which closed above 1,900 for the first time on Friday. The index has eked out a gain of 2.8 percent this year compared with a 16 percent increase over the same period last year.

Other major indexes haven't fared any better. The Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite are barely positive for 2014.

The market's five-year bull run has slowed as investors become more evenly split between those that remain optimistic on the outlook for stocks and the economy, and those that think it's time for a sell-off. Investors haven't seen a "correction," Wall Street-speak for a drop of 10 percent of more, for an unusually long time.

"People have been waiting for this huge correction, but as soon as we have even a little bit of a pullback, people see the value in it, and they're jumping in," said Karyn Cavanaugh, senior market strategist at Voya Investment Management.

[xchrom]

33. POLL: HEALTH CARE LAW STILL FAILS TO IMPRESS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_OVERHAUL_POLL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-24-04-29-20

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama celebrated when sign-ups for his health care law topped 8 million, far exceeding expectations after a slipshod launch. Most Americans, however, remain unimpressed.

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that public opinion continues to run deeply negative on the Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature effort to cover the uninsured. Forty-three percent oppose the law, compared with just 28 percent in support.

The pattern illustrates why the health care law remains a favored target for Republicans seeking a Senate majority in the midterm elections.

The poll does have a bright spot for the administration: Those who signed up for coverage aren't reeling from sticker shock. Most said they found premiums in line with what they expected, or even lower.

[xchrom]

34. US NEW-HOME SALES ROSE 6.4 PERCENT IN APRIL

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NEW_HOME_SALES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-23-14-44-28

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sales of U.S. new homes recovered in April after slumping in the previous two months. But Americans are still buying new homes at a slower pace than they did a year ago.

The Commerce Department said Friday that sales of new homes rose 6.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 433,000. That compares with an upwardly revised annual pace of 407,000 in March, when purchases fell 6.9 percent. Buying had dropped 4.4 percent in February, in part because of winter snowstorms.

Demand for newly built homes remains one of the missing pieces of the nearly 5-year-old recovery from the Great Recession. A lack of affordability has limited buying around the country. Sales of new homes are running at roughly half the rate of a healthy real estate market.

Warmer weather has yet to heat up the housing market after a harsh winter slowed sales in January and February. Higher prices and mortgage rates over the past year have sidelined many would-be buyers.

[xchrom]

35. Piketty findings undercut by errors

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e1f343ca-e281-11e3-89fd-00144feabdc0.html#axzz32cz5Xq3i

Thomas Piketty’s book, ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, has been the publishing sensation of the year. Its thesis of rising inequality tapped into the zeitgeist and electrified the post-financial crisis public policy debate.


High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [e-mail] to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e1f343ca-e281-11e3-89fd-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz32czYjk95

But, according to a Financial Times investigation, the rock-star French economist appears to have got his sums wrong.
The data underpinning Professor Piketty’s 577-page tome, which has dominated best-seller lists in recent weeks, contain a series of errors that skew his findings. The FT found mistakes and unexplained entries in his spreadsheets, similar to those which last year undermined the work on public debt and growth of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.

The central theme of Prof Piketty’s work is that wealth inequalities are heading back up to levels last seen before the first world war. The investigation undercuts this claim, indicating there is little evidence in Prof Piketty’s original sources to bear out the thesis that an increasing share of total wealth is held by the richest few.

[xchrom]

36. Financial Times: Piketty’s Data Is Full of Errors

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/05/23/financial_times_on_piketty_his_data_is_wrong.html

***SNIP

Invoking Reinhart and Rogoff—whose famous work on the effects of national debt on GDP growth was undermined, in part, by the world's most famous Excel spreadsheet error—is a bit bold here. Already, conservative thinker and Slate contributor Reihan Salam says the paper may be "overstating its case." The FT’s main complaint seems to be that Piketty's work is based on a patchwork of historical data sources—all of which he has made available online—and in order to smooth the numbers over time, he’s made adjustments they find dubious or inexplicable. In some cases there may even be straightforward transcription errors. Most seriously, they claim, "Some numbers appear simply to be constructed out of thin air."



But as Matt Yglesias notes, their disagreements about some countries seem fairly minor. Here, for instance, is the data on France, with Piketty’s trend line in blue and the FT’s corrected version in red. In the end, they basically overlap. (You can find this graph, and the FT’s more detailed explanation of its conclusions, here).

However, the paper does level two somewhat serious accusations. First, it says Piketty has covered up a giant gap in America's historical records on wealth concentration. "There is simply no data between 1870 and 1960," the newspaper states. "Yet, Prof. Piketty chooses to derive a trend." This charge is neutered a bit by the fact that Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez recently released a detailed analysis of U.S. wealth inequality dating back to 1913 that shows an even more dramatic increase than what Piketty found. But Piketty will nonetheless need to spell out how he reached his own conclusions in a bit more detail.



The much more important point of contention is Great Britain. The FT argues that Piketty’s graphs simply “do not match” his underlying data on the UK, and that official estimates show no significant increase in the country’s concentration of wealth since the 1970s.

[xchrom]

37. in the FT -- piketty has answered his critics with research

that came out AFTER his book the supports his research.

[AnneD]

97. What are you going to believe.....

what we tell you is the truth or you lying eyes.

[xchrom]

38. ECB's Mersch: Banks need to be strong enough to meet credit demand

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/24/uk-ecb-mersch-idUKKBN0E403B20140524

(Reuters) - Euro zone banks need to be strong enough to support a pick up in credit demand to keep the euro zone recovery going, European Central Bank Executive Board member Yves Mersch said on Saturday.

Tougher regulatory standards and a stronger sense of risk-aversion in the wake of the financial crisis have led banks to scale back lending and raised interest rates on loans.

That has made it more difficult for companies, especially smaller and medium-sized ones, to obtain credit to fund expansion or growth.

Mersch said the euro zone had started to recover and was reaching a point where companies could no longer rely on their own funds but were increasingly in need of external funding to keep growing.

[xchrom]

39. Austria pushes Hypo debt bail-in despite Moody's warning

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/24/uk-austria-hypo-idUKKBN0E40AH20140524

(Reuters) - Austria will propose within weeks draft legislation to make Hypo Alpe Adria's subordinated creditors help pay for winding down the nationalised bank despite ratings agency Moody's warning about the impact of imposing haircuts on bondholders.

The legislation will focus on "bailing in" holders of nearly 900 million euros (728.8 million pounds) of debt guaranteed by Hypo's home province of Carinthia, not the 1 billion euros of debt with federal guarantees, a finance ministry spokesman said on Saturday.

Late on Friday Moody's cut to junk status its ratings for Hypo's guaranteed subordinated debt, citing the government's plan to hit up holders of subordinated debt backed by Carinthia.

Moody's also downgraded its guaranteed senior unsecured ratings to non-investment grade "to reflect the heightened risk to all bondholders arising from the government's apparent willingness to impose losses on creditors notwithstanding the existence of a statutory guarantee".

[xchrom]

40. Coeure: ECB's options include negative interest rates - paper

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/24/uk-ecb-coeure-idUKKBN0E406P20140524

(Reuters) - The European Central Bank has a range of options to consider at its June 5 policy meeting and negative interest rates are among them, ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said.

Coeure told Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in an interview conducted on May 16 that if the uneven pace of the recovery was confirmed and if the ECB saw a risk of inflation being too low for too long, "we can take action in June".

"We can act in various ways, depending on the situation," Coeure was quoted as saying, adding that interest rates "are low but they can still go lower".

Cutting all three interest rates would imply pushing the rate on overnight deposits, now at zero, into negative territory, which would mean that banks would have to pay to park their money at the central bank.

[xchrom]

41. BOJ's Kuroda says options remain if further easing needed

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/24/uk-japan-economy-boj-idUKKBN0E400R20140524

(Reuters) - Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the central bank still has policy options left if it were to ease monetary policy further to fend off risks that may threaten the achievement of its price target.

Kuroda repeated his view that the world's third-largest economy is making steady progress toward meeting the BOJ's 2 percent price target, with core consumer inflation having reached 1.3 percent for four straight months in March.

"But we are ready to adjust policy, be it further monetary easing or something else, if changes in economic and financial developments derail the path toward meeting the price target," he said in an interview with the Nikkei business daily published on Saturday.

Kuroda said the BOJ will not ease incrementally in response to temporary fluctuations in the economy, suggesting that the bank will consider acting again only if it sees enough evidence that doing so is necessary to meet the price target.

[xchrom]

42. The Economic Inequality Lurking Among The 99 Percent

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/23/3441063/education-gap-inequality/

Debates on economic inequality over the past few years have focused on the growing divide between the top 1 percent of Americans and everyone else. Recent graphs even show that it’s the top 0.01 percent making the biggest income gains.

But a new paper looks at a larger divide, this time among the 99 percent: the education gap. “An exclusive focus on the concentration of top incomes ignores the component of rising inequality that is arguably even more consequential for the ‘other 99 percent’,” said David Autor, author of the study and an economist at MIT.

Autor found dramatic growth in the earning potential of people who get a college degree, which rose 20 to 56 percent in the last 35 years, accompanied by a large decline in the value of a high school diploma, which fell 11 percent. The result is an earnings gap between the two groups that has grown four times greater than the income shift to the top 1 percent since the 1980s.

If the wealth gained by the top 1 percent between 1979 and 2012 was divided equally among the total population, each household would get around $7,100 each. But the gap in median earnings between households with high-school educated workers and college-educated ones has grown by $28,000 in the same period.

[xchrom]

43. Chamber Of Commerce Claims Calculating How Much More CEOs Make Than Their Workers Is ‘Egregious’

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/23/3440984/chamber-ceo-pay-ratio/

This week, the Chamber of Commerce released a report claiming that a new requirement under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill that corporations calculate and disclose the ratio of CEO pay to an average worker’s pay is “egregious.”

The report notes that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has to issue the regulation, estimated that the new rule would require an average of just 190 extra hours of paperwork each year per company, costing an extra $18,000.

But the Chamber contends that different data that it gathered from surveying 118 companies, or 3.1 percent of covered businesses, show the costs would be higher. The companies said it would take an average of 952 hours each year to comply, costing them $185,600. Yet it also says that 13 companies reported it would cost them less than $10,000 and “a few” said it would cost almost nothing. The discrepancy, it says, is that large multinational companies may have many different payroll systems and therefore will take them longer to calculate what everyone is paid.

But these costs don’t have to be nearly so high. As Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at Public Citizen, points out, the proposed rule would permit statistical sampling, which wouldn’t require corporations to collect all compensation data for every worker across the company. “The Chamber’s own data reveal that some companies can complete the calculation for $10,000, which is already an exaggeration,” he says in a press release. “A well-managed company should already know how much its employees make.”

[Demeter]

44. "EGREGIOUS"

outstandingly bad; shocking.
extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant: an egregious mistake; an egregious liar.

"egregious abuses of copyright"

synonyms: shocking, appalling, terrible, awful, horrendous, frightful, atrocious, abominable, abhorrent, outrageous; More




Antonyms: tolerable, moderate, minor, unnoticeable.


I THINK THINKPROGRESS NEEDS A VOCABULARY LESSON. CAN'T JUST LEAVE "EGREGIOUS" HANGING OUT THERE WITHOUT A NOUN...AH, THERE IT IS:

Either way, to claim egregious costs in the current climate is to ignore the health of corporate profits. They have not just rebounded from the recession: between 2009 and 2011, 88 percent of national income growth went to corporate profits. But they have continued to climb to new highs. After-tax profits for American companies hit a record high in 2013, reaching $1.68 trillion. They also hit a record as a share of total income. They are now making more as a percentage of the economy than they have since records have been kept.

THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IS CONCERNED ABOUT THE COST OF THIS DATA PROCESSING...HOW SOLICITOUS OF THEM!



G'day, X!

[Demeter]

45. Rolf Harris was the first Australian Performer to come to my attention, back in the 70's

Long before Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Yahoo Serious, and the rest.

[Demeter]

46. And of course, the national ballad

[DemReadingDU]

67. Interesting history of the lyrics

Watzing Matilda lyrics ... some written by Rolf Harris ... namely the intro

Spoken
( Waltzing Matilda is a song about an Australian Hobo I guess you'd call him. He wanders through the bush- land of Australia and he takes all his meager belongings wrapped up in an old blanket which is strung across his shoulders with an old piece of twine ... and this is called his swag. Hence the name swagman.
Now affectionately or otherwise he refers to his swag as Matilda, its like his only companion as he wanders through the bush tracks ... he finds himself talking to it as if its a real person ... So the term Waltzing Matilda is nothing to do with dancing at all, it means in fact carrying this thing on your back through the long lonely stretches of the Australian bush...
Couple of other terms quickly, pay attention because I will be asking questions afterwards about this, (the
audience titters a bit) ... couple of other terms. A billabong is a pool of deep water, a billy is a little tin can they boil the tea in, a jumbuck is a sheep ... err tucker bag is a bag for carrying tucker (more audience twitters with one guy giving it deep gwaarfs) food bag ... tucker is food ... sort of like a knapsack.
What else ??? the squatter is the big land owner, THAT'S ENOUGH LET'S GET ON WITH THE SONG.)


Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a Coolibah tree
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Then down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Then down came the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred
Down came the troopers one two three
Right-o where's that jolly jumbuck that you've got in your tucker bag?
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me
Right-o where's that jolly jumbuck that you've got in your tucker bag?
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

So up jumped the swagman and he sprang into that billabong
You'll never take me alive said he
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong
You'll come a-waltz ....

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.

[Demeter]

47. Australia’s economy is healthy, so how can there be a budget crisis?

IT'S PROBABLY A SCAM, SAM, TO ROB THE POOR AND GIVE TO THE RICH...

http://theconversation.com/australias-economy-is-healthy-so-how-can-there-be-a-budget-crisis-26036

As the 2014-15 budget nears, Australians are hearing that the government must mount an urgent repair job to address the looming structural crisis that will see the budget in deficit for decades to come. The “budget crisis” is a convenient narrative - but how true is it?

In the first of our series, University of Canberra Professor Phil Lewis argues Australia’s economy is strong - and why it is wrong to draw a straight line between it and the budget...


Prime Minister Tony Abbott has suggested that “You can’t fix the economy unless you fix the budget“.

If we are to believe the over-the-top Commission of Audit report it will take far more than this to bring the budget to surplus by 2023. But few seriously think many of the recommendations will be implemented.

While it is correct to say that lower debt would allow more government revenue to fund worthwhile projects to improve economic outcomes, it is not clear why lower (or zero) deficits or debt necessarily implies the economy will perform better.

A balanced budget may be a very valuable, but not essential, condition for good economic management. There are even fellow economists who argue (in my view wrongly) that increasing deficits and debt are necessary at the moment to increase current economic growth and reduce unemployment...

[Demeter]

48. Geography and climate

Australia's landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres (2,941,300 sq mi) is on the Indo-Australian Plate. Surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is separated from Asia by the Arafura and Timor seas, with the Coral Sea lying off the Queensland coast, and the Tasman Sea lying between Australia and New Zealand. The world's smallest continent and sixth largest country by total area, Australia—owing to its size and isolation—is often dubbed the "island continent", and is sometimes considered the world's largest island. Australia has 34,218 kilometres (21,262 mi) of coastline (excluding all offshore islands), and claims an extensive Exclusive Economic Zone of 8,148,250 square kilometres (3,146,060 sq mi). This exclusive economic zone does not include the Australian Antarctic Territory. Excluding Macquarie Island, Australia lies between latitudes 9° and 44°S, and longitudes 112° and 154°E.

The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, lies a short distance off the north-east coast and extends for over 2,000 kilometres (1,240 mi). Mount Augustus, claimed to be the world's largest monolith, is located in Western Australia. At 2,228 metres (7,310 ft), Mount Kosciuszko on the Great Dividing Range is the highest mountain on the Australian mainland. Even taller are Mawson Peak (at 2,745 metres or 9,006 feet), on the remote Australian territory of Heard Island, and, in the Australian Antarctic Territory, Mount McClintock and Mount Menzies, at 3,492 metres (11,457 ft) and 3,355 metres (11,007 ft) respectively.


Australia's size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with tropical rainforests in the north-east, mountain ranges in the south-east, south-west and east, and dry desert in the centre. It is the flattest continent, with the oldest and least fertile soils; desert or semi-arid land commonly known as the outback makes up by far the largest portion of land. The driest inhabited continent, only its south-east and south-west corners have a temperate climate.

The population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, is among the lowest in the world, although a large proportion of the population lives along the temperate south-eastern coastline.

Eastern Australia is marked by the Great Dividing Range, which runs parallel to the coast of Queensland, New South Wales and much of Victoria. The name is not strictly accurate, because parts of the range consist of low hills, and the highlands are typically no more than 1,600 metres (5,249 ft) in height. The coastal uplands and a belt of Brigalow grasslands lie between the coast and the mountains, while inland of the dividing range are large areas of grassland. These include the western plains of New South Wales, and the Einasleigh Uplands, Barkly Tableland, and Mulga Lands of inland Queensland. The northernmost point of the east coast is the tropical-rainforested Cape York Peninsula.

The landscapes of the northern part of the country—the Top End and the Gulf Country behind the Gulf of Carpentaria, with their tropical climate—consist of woodland, grassland, and desert. At the north-west corner of the continent are the sandstone cliffs and gorges of The Kimberley, and below that the Pilbara. To the south of these and inland, lie more areas of grassland: the Ord Victoria Plain and the Western Australian Mulga shrublands. At the heart of the country are the uplands of central Australia; prominent features of the centre and south include the inland Simpson, Tirari and Sturt Stony, Gibson, Great Sandy, Tanami, and Great Victoria deserts, with the famous Nullarbor Plain on the southern coast.

The climate of Australia is significantly influenced by ocean currents, including the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, which is correlated with periodic drought, and the seasonal tropical low-pressure system that produces cyclones in northern Australia. These factors cause rainfall to vary markedly from year to year. Much of the northern part of the country has a tropical, predominantly summer-rainfall (monsoon) climate. The southwest corner of the country has a Mediterranean climate.[176] Much of the southeast (including Tasmania) is temperate.

[Demeter]

49. European Parliament Elections: Our choice between Euro-loyalists, Euro-sceptics & Euro-critics

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/05/24/european-parliament-elections-our-choice-between-euro-loyalists-euro-sceptics-euro-critics/

In this European Parliament election, Europeans are confronted with a stark trilemma; with three competing narratives on the state of the Union one of which we must adopt and vote accordingly.

• The Euro-loyalist view The European Union, however frustratingly slowly, is nevertheless moving in the right direction. From blunder to blunder and from crisis to crisis, Europe progresses along the right path. Even if the institutional changes are too half-hearted, they are in the direction that will bring a better foundation for shared prosperity.
  
  
• Second Narrative: The Euro-sceptic view The way the European Union has been structured, it has become a steel cage in which Europe’s people languish. An irredeemably undemocratic bureaucracy that the people of Europe should dismantle forthwith, beginning with the Eurozone and proceeding to the insufferable Brussels bureaucracy.
  
  
• The Euro-critical view The Eurozone, and therefore the European Union, is not moving slowly in the right direction but relatively briskly in the wrong direction toward the fragmentation of its core, the impoverishment of its periphery, the weakening of its economies and the dissolution of its democracy. The only way it can be prevented from going down that hideous path, as it should be prevented, is if Europeans confront head on and decisively the dominant Euro-loyalist views of the Brussels-Berlin-Frankfurt triangle and the policies these underpin.
  
  Our vote in this election for the European Parliament will have to reflect one of these three views.
  
  
• Euro-loyalism is served by the political parties behind the candidature for the Presidency of the European Commission of Mr Yunker, Mr Schultz and Mr Verthofen. Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Liberals are united in their loyalty to the view that Europe is on the right track.
  
  
• Euro-scepticism takes a great variety of forms: From UKIP and many of Britain’s tories to the Greek Communist Party, Ms Le Pen in France etc. They have no candidate for the Presidency of the European Commission both because it is impossible for such a diverse array of political forces to coordinate and because it would be paradoxical to run for an office which they want to see dismantled.
  
  
• Euro-critics are a much smaller force. Their project to save Europe from its establishment by confronting the latter’s Euro-loyalism is not an easy sell amongst the downhearted and confused peoples of Europe. The Euro-critics best, and possibly only chance, is the candidature for the Presidency of the European Commission of Alexis Tsipras.
  
  Our task is, before we choose whom to cast our vote in favour of, to clarify in our own mind whether we agree with the main thrust of the Euro-loyalists, the Euro-sceptics or the Euro-critics. I, for one, being a declared Euro-critic, will be casting my ballot tomorrow for Alexis Tsipras for the reasons explained in the video below and which I have codified at the video’s end in the form of a synopsis that is reproduced below. SEE LINK

[Demeter]

50. Suddenly The EU's Break-Up Has Moved From A Possibility To A Near-Certainty Eamonn Fingleton

THEY SHOULD BE SO LUCKY. I'M NOT HOLDING MY BREATH. NOTHING LAST LONGER THAN A BAD IDEA FIXED IN THE MINDS OF IGNORANT, POWERFUL, CARELESS PEOPLE.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2014/05/23/suddenly-the-eus-break-up-has-moved-from-a-possibility-to-a-near-certainty/

Although British voters have for decades wanted out of the European Union, that possibility has hitherto been expertly forestalled by a less-than-democratic left-right alliance of London-based elites. Now suddenly all bets are off. In local council elections yesterday, England’s long-suffering grass-roots voters finally rose up. They snubbed both main parties, the Conservatives and Labor, to support the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), a relatively new and hitherto marginalized party whose main agenda is to get the U.K. out of the European Union. Yesterday’s vote, a personal triumph for UKIP leader Nigel Farage, seems likely to trigger a chain-reaction in which it becomes impossible for the London elites any longer to hold out Canute-like against the democratic will.

As things stand, Prime Minister David Cameron has already – to his own evident distaste – succumbed to pressure to hold an in-out referendum if his party wins a majority in next year’s general election. Yesterday’s election results strengthen the hand of such anti-EU Conservative politicians as Douglas Carswell, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Peter Bone, who want their party to cut a deal with UKIP that would further undermine the London elites’ pro-EU program.

So far the Labor hierarchy has continued to oppose a referendum but that may be changing. A year ago a pressure group called Labor for a Referendum was set up by Labor MPs who have been arguing that a promise of a referendum offers Labor the best hope of winning the next election. The results of yesterday’s elections will do nothing to muffle the group’s message. Meanwhile Labor leader David Milliband has nowhere to turn. If he does not belatedly support a referendum, he risks a devastating rebellion among party activists. Many Labor members of Parliament are in marginal constituencies and risk losing their seats if their party cannot match Cameron’s referendum pledge. Yesterday’s elections powerfully exacerbated their fears because traditional Labor supporters evidently deserted the party in droves for UKIP. Not the least of Milliband’s embarrassment is that in putting obstacles in the way of an in-out referendum, he finds himself in the same bed with denizens of the despised London financial district. Just last month Michael Sherwood, a London-based vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs, made headlines by voicing strong opposition to the UK’s leaving the EU. It need hardly be added that his intervention may have proved counterproductive in that Goldman Sachs’s reputation in recent years has taken as much of a shellacking in Britain as in the United States.

It probably does not help that various other transnational corporations have also been trying to keep the UK in the EU. Prominent among them is Ford. In January, Stephen Odell, chief executive of Cologne-based Ford of Europe, threatened that the company could “reassess” its British operations if the UK left the EU. Even more unsubtly, Renault-Nissan chief Carlos Goshn let it be known that the Nissan might reassess its big plant in Sunderland in the North of England. Other prominent business leaders who have publicly try to sway British feelings against a pull-out include Jan du Plessis, South African-born chairman of Rio Tinto, Sir Michael Rake of the BT telecommunications giant, and Sir Martin Sorrell of the advertising and public relations company, WPP.

Why is the EU so unpopular? One major issue is that under EU regulation constantly lampooned in the British press as stupid and intrusive. Voters are also incensed about disproportionately large inflows of immigrants from other EU nations.




A former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times, Eamonn Fingleton spent 27 years monitoring East Asian economics from a base in Tokyo. In September 1987 he issued the first of several predictions of the Tokyo banking crash and went on in "Blindside," a controversial 1995 analysis that was praised by John Kenneth Galbraith and Bill Clinton, to show that a heedless America was fast losing its formerly vaunted leadership in advanced manufacturing -- and particularly in so-called producers' goods -- to Japan. His 1999 book "In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity" anticipated the American Internet stock crash of 2000 and offered an early warning about the abuse of new financial instruments. In his 2008 book "In the Jaws of the Dragon: America’s Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony," he challenged the conventional view that China is converging to Western economic and political values. His books have been translated into French, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. They have been read into the U.S. Senate record and named among the ten best business books of the year by Business Week and Amazon.com.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

[Demeter]

51. Bad U.S. Policy Pushes Russia, China and Iran Closer Together

IT'S THAT ELEVENTH DIMENSIONAL CHESS GAME....

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/bad-u-s-policy-pushes-russia-china-iran-closer-together.html



...As we’ve repeatedly warned, the neocons and neolibs have pushed so hard to ensure a “New American Century” – i.e. American hegemony for another 100 years – that they’ve instead created “No American Century”.

Heck of a job, guys …

[Demeter]

52. Crimea: an EU-US-Exxon Screwup

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/23/crimea-an-eu-us-exxon-screwup/



On 17 May, William Broad’s piece, “In Taking Crimea, Putin Gains a Sea of Fuel Reserves”, appeared in the New York Times. Broad explained how the annexation of Crimea by Russia changed the legal claims for exclusive access to the maritime resources for the littoral nations of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. At the core of the change is the 200 NM exclusion zone promulgated by the Law of the Sea, 1982. Typically for the Grey Lady, Broad spun this fact into an anti-Putin tapestry using a charged mix of verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Nevertheless, Broad’s report contains tantalizing information that hints at a fascinating alternative explanation for the events leading up to the Crimean annexation.

The facts in Broad’s report appear to come almost entirely from an interview Broad had with Dr. William B. F. Ryan, a marine geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, including the maps showing each littoral country’s Law of the Sea exclusion zones. Ryan’s facts are not in dispute.

A point not mentioned by Broad is that no geographic location in either the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov is more than 200 NM from a coastline of the six littoral nations — Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, or Georgia. This can be seen by superimposing the 200 NM scale on the map below (Figure 1). The overlap of all the “exclusion” zones covers 100% of both seas, with the six areas divvied up according to the separation rules codified by the Law the Sea. The extensive overlap means that the change in the Ukraine-Russian border produces a profound shift in the exclusion zones belonging to Russia and Ukraine, as shown in Dr. Ryan’s before and after maps (Figure 2 below).





The division of exclusion zones in the Black Sea is a big deal, because many geologists believe the floor of the Black Sea, like that of the North Sea, contains massive reserves of oil and gas, especially in deep water. We have added the 600 foot depth contour in red on Figure 1. This contour marks the beginning of the medium blue transition zone between the shallow coastal shelf waters and the deep sea waters outlined by the 6000 feet contour enclosing the deep blue area in Figure 1. (note: the contour lines in Figure 1 are in fathoms; 1 fathom = 6 feet.) With the exception of the northwestern portion of the Black Sea, coastal waters with depths of less than 600 feet cover only small distances from the national coastlines....Now let’s turn our attention to the exclusion zones. The Ryan maps in Figure 2 break up the Black Sea and Sea of Azov into the six exclusion zones introduced above. They show how Russia’s annexation of Crimea did not change anything for Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, or Georgia...


**************************************************************

To fully savor the possible dimensions of a US-EU-Exxon screw-up, let’s look at a chronology of the recent, none-too-subtle moves on the EU-Ukraine-Russian chessboard.

The EU started openly pushing Ukraine for a really raw, exploitative trade deal in March 2012. A month later, in April 2012, Putin signed up with ENI-Italy to explore Russian Black Sea oil/gas. In August 2012 Exxon put up big bucks to outbid Russia’s Lukoil for exploring Ukrainian Black Sea oil/gas (a deal crucial to Exxon’s breaking of Russia’s stranglehold on gas supplies for Europe). Over the next year, Yanukovych (no doubt convinced by massive contributions to his Bahamian bank accounts) pushed the Ukrainian parliament to pass all the laws required to meet the EU/IMF’s draconian austerity requirements. (see Michael Hudson’s “New Cold War Ukraine Gambit” for an explanation of neoliberal looting economics.) When it looked like he might succeed, Putin quickly imposed the gas/trade embargo on Ukraine in August 2013, starting a precipitous drop in the Ukrainian economy–and Yanukovych started backing away from the EU deal.

That’s when the EU-US-EXXON made their monumentally stupid move of unleashing the coup against Yanukovych, beginning with the November 2013 Maidan protests leading to the neo-fascist incited riots that ended in the coup of 27 February 2014. The US-EU inspired coup, of course, gave Putin the perfect opening to welcome the grateful Crimeans back into the Russian fold–thereby swelling Putin’s domestic approval ratings enough to keep him in power for the next ten years. (For a good analysis of how Putin may view the world, see Mark Ames’ analysis of how he is exploiting the politics of resentment in Russia, Nixon-style.) And, perhaps not coincidentally, welcoming the grateful Crimeans also happened to more than double Putin’s Black Sea oil/gas holdings, while ruining Exxon’s chances for breaking his stranglehold on European gas supplies.

Putin certainly isn’t the greatest European strategist since Bismarck. But it doesn’t take much to win when opposed by dumb, ultra-greedy opponents guided by the arrogance of ignorance. All Putin needed was seeing one tiny move further ahead.

The only thing dumber than the transparent US-EU-Exxon moves was the American and European media’s slavish coverage of the same.

[Demeter]

53. New Home Sales "Better, Not Strong", and Regionally Very Uneven: US +6.7%, Midwest +47.4%, Northeast

New Home Sales "Better, Not Strong", and Regionally Very Uneven: US +6.7%, Midwest +47.4%, Northeast -26.7%

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/05/new-home-sales-better-not-strong-and.html

[Demeter]

54. Are you more stressed at home than at work?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/05/22/are-you-more-stressed-at-home-than-at-work/

In her 1997 book, “The Time Bind,” the sociologist Arlie Hochschild shook up conventional notions of family life when she argued that work was becoming more like home for many parents, a place of order and belonging where they willingly put in long hours. “I come to work to relax,” one person told her. Home, Hochschild said, was becoming more like work, with sullen children, resentful spouses, endless chores, stress and chaos. Hochschild blew everyone’s mind by arguing that home, that once- sacred haven of rest and renewal, was in fact more stressful for people than work.

And now, researchers have the data to prove she was right.

In a newly released study in the Journal of Science and Medicine, researchers carefully examined the levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, of a variety of workers throughout the day. The data clearly showed that both men and women are significantly less stressed out at work than they are at home. And the women they studied said they were happier at work. While the men said they felt happier at home.

“We found a big gender difference,” said Sarah Damaske, a sociologist and women’s studies professor at Penn State and one of the report authors. “Women were much happier at work than at home. And men were only moderately happier at home than at work.”

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



But before you go off and think that parents, and mothers in particular, are heartless workaholics who prefer endless hours at the office or on the job to the joys of home and hearth, consider this key point: Both men and women were a lot less stressed out on the weekend – when they were home – than on the weekdays.

What does this tell you? It’s not so much that people prefer to be at work rather than at home or with kids. It’s that trying to do both in the same day is stressful. It’s the juggling that’s killing us.

I'LL DRINK TO THAT...AND FREQUENTLY DO, IF I DON'T FALL ASLEEP, FIRST.

[AnneD]

98. So I go to a meeting....

where they are telling us next years schedule and they honour this years retirees. The first Nurse drones on about how we should sacrifice ourselves on the alter of duty, public health. We should keep carrying on despite how we are put upon. You get the gist. We have another retiree in the same vein.

So then they call me. I thank my friends who truly got me though the tough times. I then encourage Nurses to become politically active because there are people in Austin who are right now making decisions that directly effect your job and the access your kids have to health care. They need to hear from School Nurses-they will listen to you. And then I paused and said that you have to have a good work life balance and to always remember...it is coffee before the shift, alcohol after the shift. Boss looked startled but it brought down the house. The next speaker said her thank yous but at the end she said....oh and you WILL need that drink.

At the 'Nurse Meeting' the dayafter....we were laughing our heads off. They said they were adding that to my list of Anneisms (it is a long list). Alcohol helps restore the balance. At least that is what I remember my parents doing.

Anne D...just keeping it real.

[DemReadingDU]

99. Good job!

[Demeter]

55. A Woman With Perfect Grades Is Worth The Same As A Man With A 2.0 Average

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/21/3439865/women-gender-wage-gap-gpa/

[Demeter]

56. Chocolate tycoon heads for landslide victory in Ukraine presidential election

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/23/petro-poroshenko-heads-landslide-ukraine-election

... Poroshenko is on the brink of becoming Ukraine's new president. Opinion polls suggest he will win the first round of Sunday's presidential election by a landslide. Such is his lead he may even beat his nearest rival, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in the first round, avoiding the need for a run-off vote on 15 June.

For Poroshenko, it has been a steep rise to popularity that begs two questions: how has he managed it? And will this support help him accomplish one of the toughest jobs in the world today: running Ukraine?

Softly spoken, articulate, and fluent in English, Poroshenko bears little resemblance to the bear-like ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych. A former foreign minister and minister of trade, Poroshenko is no political newbie. But he has managed to dodge the unpopularity that has engulfed the rest of Ukraine's governing class.

Poroshenko's current popularity has much to do with adroit positioning. He wasn't one of the three opposition leaders – the current prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, boxer Vitali Klitschko and ultra-nationalist Oleh Tyahnybok – who signed a deal with Yanukovych. And his business fortune came not from the murky world of energy but from something altogether more palatable: chocolate....

[Demeter]

57. Financial Crisis, Over and Already Forgotten

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/business/the-financial-crisis-already-forgotten.html

Michael S. Barr, a law professor at the University of Michigan who was an assistant Treasury secretary when the financial crisis was at its worst, is working on a book titled “Five Ways the Financial System Will Fail Next Time.”

The first of them, he says, is “amnesia, willful and otherwise,” regarding the causes and consequences of the crisis. (Let’s hope the others are not here yet.) Amnesia was on full view this week when the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on “the dangers” of financial regulation. Mr. Barr, who helped write the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, was the sole witness who thought it made sense for regulators to study the asset management and insurance industries.

In his opening statement, the chairman of the committee, Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, proclaimed “it is almost inconceivable that an asset manager’s failure could cause systemic risk.” He also saw no danger to the system from insurance companies, which are “heavily regulated at the state level.”...My request for an interview with Mr. Hensarling was turned down. I would have asked him about Long-Term Capital Management and the American International Group. The first, a money manager, caused a crisis when it failed in 1998; the other, an insurance company, had to be bailed out in 2008....That hearing was part of an attack on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, known as FSOC (pronounced “F-sock”). That group, established by the Dodd-Frank law, is headed by the Treasury secretary and includes the heads of eight financial regulatory agencies, and is supposed to coordinate the work of all of them. The council has the authority to designate large nonbank financial institutions as “systemically important,” and thus allow the Federal Reserve to require them to have more capital. So far the council has identified three such institutions, A.I.G., GE Capital and Prudential. The Fed has yet to actually impose regulations on them, so we really don’t know much about the effect of such designations, but that has not kept both the mutual fund industry and the insurance industry from lobbying heavily. They do their best to leave us with the impression that the only asset managers around are plain-vanilla mutual fund companies. Hedge funds, like Long-Term Capital, are studiously ignored.

FSOC also has the authority to suggest that one of its regulatory members act on an issue it sees as systemically important. It has done so on money market mutual funds, but so far the Securities and Exchange Commission has not acted. It is far from clear that FSOC is going to try to impose any regulation on large mutual fund companies, but the council is gathering information on them and asking questions of them. That seems to have outraged the industry and its friends in Congress. The campaign against FSOC has been innovative in its arguments. The mutual fund industry says that designating a fund manager as systemically important could raise its costs. Those costs could be passed on to fund investors, who are taxpayers, and so would amount to a taxpayer bailout...

MORE MINDLESS STUPIDITY IN GOVERNMENT AT LINK

[Demeter]

58. Senator Wyden: “Every American Has The RIGHT To Know When Their Government Believes It Is Allowed To

Senator Wyden: “Every American Has The RIGHT To Know When Their Government Believes It Is Allowed To KILL Them!”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/senator-wyden-every-american-right-know-government-believes-allowed-kill.html


The Fact that a Senator Even Needs to SAY This Shows How Far We’ve Fallen

Senator Ron Wyden said yesterday:

Every American has the RIGHT to know when their government believes it is allowed to KILL them!

That’s a good point, given that:

A top constitutional and military law expert says that Obama claims the right to assassinate any American citizen without charge (updates here and here)

The defense department says that even the identity of enemies which our government is at war against is classified

Secret agencies are making life-and-death decisions in secret, using secret evidence and secret witnesses … and even the laws upon which the decisions are made are secret

The fact that a senator even needs to say that shows how far we’ve fallen.

[Demeter]

59. NSA Spying Is a Power Grab: Mass Surveillance Is Completely Unnecessary

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/nsa-spying-power.html

Top security experts – including the highest-level government officials and the top university experts – say that mass surveillance actually increases terrorism and hurts security. They say that our government failed to stop the Boston bombing because they were too busy spying on millions of innocent Americans instead of focusing on actual bad guys. Moreover, high-level NSA executive Bill Binney – who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information – made it easy for the NSA to catch bad guys without spying on innocent Americans … all while strengthening America against security breaches. (Binney is a 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency. Binney was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees. Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.) Binney’s system automatically encrypted information about Americans … but that information could be decrypted if a judge ordered that a specific American was a bad guy or was connected with a bad guy.

But after 9/11, the NSA instead switched to the current system which conducts mass surveillance on all Americans. Specifically, the system rolled out by the NSA after 9/11 used parts of Binney’s system … but stripped out all of the encryption which would have protected Americans’ privacy absent a court order.

Why Did They Do It?

Why did the NSA switch from the privacy-protecting system which worked to catch terrorists to one that spied on all Americans in violation of their constitutional rights? A very high-level congressional committee security staffer – Diane Roark – gave a hint on a Frontline show this month. Roark was the congressional staffer in charge of overseeing the NSA for the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. Roark explains:

NARRATOR: [Senior House Intelligence Committee staff between 1985-2002 Diane] Roark was summoned to the top deck at the NSA to meet with Director Hayden.

DIANE ROARK: My whole point in going there was to ask him why he had taken off the protections, the encryptions and the automated tracking. I asked this any number of times, and he always evaded answering. And I finally just decided I was not going to leave the room until I got an answer. And so I kept asking.

So about the fifth time, he looked down, and I remember he could not look me in the eye, and he said, “We have the power. We don’t need them.” And he made clear that the power he was referring to was the commander-in-chief’s chief’s wartime authority.

In other words, the Constitution was tossed out the window and all Americans have been subjected to Orwellian surveillance ever since – not because it’s necessary or even efficient – but simply because they decided that they had the raw power to do so. Washington’s Blog asked Roark to explain what the NSA chief meant when he told her that NSA had the power to ignore the Constitution. She explained (via email):

Article II Powers

General Hayden referred to the President’s Article II powers [as commander-in-chief during wartime]. The Administration has defended these powers as allowing the President to override existing laws, and has said that the 2001 congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) was in essence a declaration of war and thus allows him to do so. The AUMF has never been revoked, and this obviously is necessary to stop the practice. In its January 2006 White Paper defending the portion of the program that had leaked in the NYT, toward the end DOJ also argued that wartime surveillance did not have to be accomplished “in the lease intrusive manner possible,” or words to that effect.

The use of Article II is continuing, despite extremely permissive legislation such as the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendment Act of 2008. While all eyes are focused on PA provisions 215 and 702, that fall under the FISA court, it appears that the great majority of the collection actually occurs under Executive Order 12333, invoking these Article II powers. Those powers are not subject to even the very weak FISA Court oversight (that was further eviscerated by the FAA in 2008). Regarding EO 12333, see Richard Clarke’s testimony before Senate Judiciary 1/14/14 in answer to Sen. Chris Coons. Greenwald/Snowden documents also reference the EO.

I believe the executive prefers this even more secret exercise of power mostly because Americans would be rebellious if they knew the full extent of surveillance. Another reason for invoking them appears to have been Mr. Cheney’s known determination to recover presidential powers, especially national security powers, that he believed were much weakened after Watergate; this issue was covered by Frontline. And of course the administration would claim it is because of the need for secrecy so terrorists would not take precautions — although as Greenwald notes, there is now “nowhere to hide,” at least to communicate electronically in privacy.

The exercise of these alleged powers appear to include, e.g.

- past torture and rendition practices

- massive “upstream” collection from fiber optic cables as referenced in Snowden documents and as revealed by Mark Klein in 1/06.

- massive postal mail surveillance
Clarke testimony refers to “a great deal of metadata collected by the national security letter program.”

- amassing of government data on US persons. This is contrary to an explicit privacy law provision forbidding the practice, and apparently under an alleged national security exception other than that for air travel. See Julia Angwin, WSJ 12/12/12, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006

- collection of citizen “business records” other than communications records.

- claiming state secrets to avoid regular (Article III) court review of such tactics, as well as withholding from these courts the source of evidence against defendants that was collected through such means, including “parallel construction” of a fake evidentiary trail to present during trial discovery. See e.g. Reuters 8/13, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805.
DOJ went so far as to allow the Solicitor General to lie (apparently unknowingly) to the Supreme Court about this.

THINTHREAD

One part of [Binney's system] that was critical to The Program [i.e. the NSA's unconstitutional mass surveillance system] after 9/11 was adopted but was significantly changed for the worse, both in design and in operational rules. This part, for instance, contained the software for encryption and for automated tracking of accesses to the collection files, and that code was deactivated.

Looking at the history of The Program, it is pretty clear that there were operational reasons why the software was deactivated and the Fourth Amendment skirted.

- First, they did not get any warrants initially and they did not want to have to get warrants. Even later when the program was “legalized,” the government successfully insisted that it be allowed to obtain group rather than individual warrants for the material coming under FISC. As of FAA of 2008, the FISC could not turn down such a warrant request, although the Court could insist on modifying it.

- It is obvious that they wanted to be able to look at the identifying information of any US person communications or metadata that they collected – the claim that they have only numbers and email addresses is quite disingenuous. They could easily go to the telcos and IT firms and ask for it, or provide them a National Security Letter that does not require a warrant, not to mention the availability to anyone of reverse white pages and the fact that many email addresses contain the user’s name.

- The automated tracking of all accesses to the database was always opposed by analysts who feared their individual levels of productivity would be compared. But surely the main reason why the government deactivated it was so that there would not be a high probability that unauthorized use of the material would be detected. Otherwise, why would they deactivate a far less labor-intensive system that is not only efficient but also virtually foolproof (except maybe from abuse by a system administrator).

- Remember that the 12 unauthorized “Lovint” cases [where NSA employees were caught spying on love interests] were detected through routine polygraphs, or at least so I once read.

- Initially, if you recall, compliance was monitored only through a) paper files containing the authorizations to analyze US person communications that could be issued by 22 or so designated persons and b) the observation of human supervisors. This was what Hayden said in his 1/06 press conference, I believe, and it was often repeated thereafter. Snowden shows and NSA admits that in some cases all the analysts have to do is fill out a brief computerized form, choosing among “canned” rationales for access to a given file. Further, it has been admitted publicly that use of the data now extends beyond its initial confinement to counterterrorism.

- As the extensively-sourced Reuters article above indicates, this databased material already is being used for criminal cases and has been withheld from the courts — so doubtless NSA does not want that practice to be automatically tracked.

- Further, Russell Tice has alleged that there are extremely compartmented sub-programs in which US opinion leaders and high-level officials are deliberately tracked. Again, NSA obviously would not want such activity to be subject to automated tracking.

Washington’s Blog also asked senior NSA veteran Bill Binney why he thought NSA switched from an automatic privacy-protecting encryption program to its current dragnet.

Binney told us:

When you drop the privacy protections, you are able to spy on all your political opponents and do the things that the IRS does plus get rid of people you don’t want in government, like General Petraeus and General Allen and others like Elliot Spitzer, etc.

The data they used against Spitzer was from what I understand: phone calls, e-mail and money transactions. All part of this mass collection of data.

Others were confronted with their data too. Like [Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter] Jim Risen, [chief Fox News Washington correspondent] Jim Rosen, AP, Jesselyn Radack [former ethics adviser to the United States Department of Justice, and attorney for Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake and other high-level whistleblowers], the NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake, Kirk Wiebbe, me, etc. In at least our case, they had a warrantless wire tap on us as early as May 2006.

Further, you can target Supreme Court Judges, other judges, Senators, Representatives, law firms and lawyers, and just anybody you don’t like … reporters included.

Not to mention the tea party and other politically active or wanna be’s.

It also meant they did not have to go to the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] to get a warrant to look into US citizens.

Spitzer – the tough New York Attorney General who went after corrupt bankers more than anyone since – was snared through the Patriot Act. Former CIA director General Petraeus was brought down when the government spied on his email communications. Binney has previously said that Petraeus seems to have gotten on the government’s “enemies list”, and was thus spied on … and drummed out as CIA director. General Allen was also relieved of his position when his emails were leaked. The government has now admitted that it spied on the Associated Press... More.

Binney has also said that “We are now in a police state“, because the government is “laundering” data generated by mass surveillance, to go after people that – for whatever reason – the government doesn’t like. This is especially concerning because it is clear that mass surveillance is being used more to crush dissent than to stop terrorism. (And that’s been true for 500 years...). Another high-level NSA whistleblower – Russel Tice (mentioned above by Diame Roark) – says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers, including Supreme Court Justices, high-ranked generals, Colin Powell and other State Department personnel, and many other top officials...He says the NSA started spying on President Obama when he was a candidate for Senate...

[Demeter]

60. Tim Geithner Lays into FDR for Not Working with Hoover

http://mattstoller.tumblr.com/post/86220809713/tim-geithner-lays-into-fdr-for-not-working-with-hoover


This is another tidbit from Geithner’s new book.

Franklin Roosevelt had refused to lift a finger to help the outgoing administration relieve the suffering of the Depression, so he could draw a starker contrast with President Hoover after his own inauguration. Senator Obama did not follow that politically shrewd but costly example. He did whatever he could to help support our efforts to save the economy on President Bush’s watch, even though it blurred his message of change.

Obama made this comment as well a few years ago as well. Tom Ferguson has some good context. Basically Hoover offered to hand over power to FDR during the transition instead of making him wait to be inaugurated to take power, on the condition that FDR not implement what eventually became the New Deal. FDR said no. And now Geithner’s giving him shit for it.




FROM THE COMMENTS:



"I welcome their hatred." - FDR
"Why don't they like me?" - Obama

[Demeter]

61. How do we prevent the next Tim Geithner? MATHBABE

http://mathbabe.org/2014/05/19/how-do-we-prevent-the-next-tim-geithner/

When you hate on certain people and things as long as I’ve hated on the banking system and Tim Geithner, you start to notice certain things. Patterns...I read Tim Geithner’s book Stress Test last week, and instead of going through and sharing all the pains of reading it, which were many, I’m going to make one single point. Namely, Tim was unqualified for his jobs and head of the NY Fed, during the crisis, and then as Obama’s Treasury Secretary. He says so a bunch of times and I believe him. You should too.

He even is forced at some point to admit he had no idea what banks really did, and since he needed someone or something to blame for his deep ignorance, he somehow manages to say that Brooksley Born was right, that derivatives should have been regulated, but that since she was at the CFTC everybody (read: Geithner’s heroes Larry Summers and Robert Rubin) dismissed her out of hand, and that as a result he had no ability to look into the proliferating shadow banking or stuff going on at all the investment banks and hedge funds. So it was kind of her fault that he wasn’t forced to understand stuff, even though she warned people, and when shit got real, all he could do was preserve the system because the alternative would be chaos. And people should fucking thank him. That’s his 600 page book in a nutshell.

Let’s put aside Tim Geithner’s mistakes and his narrow outlook on what could have been done better, and even what Dodd-Frank should accomplish, for a moment. It’s hard to resist complaining about those things, but I’ll do my best. The truth is, Tim Geithner was a perfect product of the system. He was an effect, not a cause. When I dwell on the fact that he got the NY Fed job with no in-the-weeds knowledge or experience on how banks operate, there’s no reason, not one single reason, to think it’s not going to happen again.

What’s going to prevent the next NY Fed bank head from being as unqualified as Tim Geithner? Put it another way: how could we possibly expect the people running the regulators and the Treasury and the Fed to actually understand the system, when they are appointed the way they are? In case you missed it, the process currently is their ability to get along with Larry Summers and Robert Rubin and to look like a banker...Before you go telling me I’m asking for a Goldman Sachs crony to take over all these positions, I’m not. It’s actually not impossible to understand this system for a curious, smart, skeptical, and patient person who asks good questions and has the power to make meetings with heads of trading floors. And you don’t have to become captured when you do that. You can remember that it’s your job to understand and regulate the system, that it’s actually a perfectly reasonable way to protect the country. From bankers. Here’s a scary thought, which would be going in the exact wrong direction: we have Hillary Clinton as president and she brings in all the usual suspects to be in charge of this stuff, just like Obama did. Ugh.

I feel like a questionnaire is in order for anyone being considered for one of these jobs. Things like, how does overnight lending work, and what is being used for collateral, and what have other countries done in moments of financial crisis, and how did that work out for them, and what is a collateralized debt obligation and how does one assess the associated risks and who does that and why. Please suggest more.

[Demeter]

62. FROM THE COMMENTS

One of the things that you learn as a mathematician is that there are such things as impossibility theorems. Certain goals cannot be achieved with only simple tools. Some people believe that if we just think harder, it’ll be possible to design a system that runs a modern society with mechanisms even an idiot could manage. I think it’s just as reasonable that trying to design such a system is akin to trying to trisect an angle with ruler and straightedge.

Let’s say we don’t allow banks that are too big to fail. That pretty much rules out other entities that are too big to fail as well, because there is no way for them to accumulate enough capital to get that big. There goes any entity capable of engineering or building an airplane with 150 passengers or a range of more than 2000 miles. Also, there goes any airline with more than a dozen planes. Your trip to a conference in Romania now takes eight flights on five different airlines, some of which you had better research carefully to make sure they have a decent safety record. At least the two airlines you connect between in Reykjavik have managed to coordinate their schedules. Obviously you’re not booking this without the help of a travel agent. Actually, you’re probably not taking the trip, because not only will the trip take 2 days each way with all the inconvenient layovers, the airfare is going to cost $5K.

You want to have your conference by Skype instead? Good luck getting it to all work on fifteen mutually incompatible flavors of Unix running on fifty different hardware configurations, some of which require really odd drivers which behave weirdly from time to time, not to mention an Internet run by tens of thousands of different ISPs who have trouble coordinating standards among all of them. If you look at the e-mail standards, they have lots and lots of redundancy built into them so that, even on an unreliable Internet with lots of ISPs that intermittently have trouble communicating with each other (as was the case 25 years ago), your e-mail will eventually get through even if it takes a few days. Skype can’t work that way.

I rather suspect that if we only allow systems that an idiot can run, we’d have to have a society at roughly the technological level of the Amish (with a few choice exceptions), and we’d have to carefully consider, as the Amish do, the introduction of each piece of technology into society.

Maybe living like the Amish is a good idea (and I mean this seriously), but I don’t think the world will go for it.


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

Geithner was not prepared for what happened on his watch. But one of the main architects of the disaster was Robert Rubin, was he not? How do we prevent the next Robert Rubin?

[Demeter]

63. What Timothy Geithner Really Thinks NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/magazine/what-timothy-geithner-really-thinks.html

EVIDENTLY, HE DOESN'T NOT REALLY, NOT EVER....

[Demeter]

64. Why Everything You've Read About Ukraine Is Wrong

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2014/05/19/why-everything-youve-read-about-ukraine-is-wrong/

MEATY, WORTHY ARTICLE

[Demeter]

65. I'm going to take a break to deal with the real world

enjoy your trip Down Under! See you later....alligator!

[DemReadingDU]

66. Stocks are telling you a bear market is coming

5/18/14 Michael Sincere: Stocks are telling you a bear market is coming

Bear markets start with a whimper or a bang. When it starts with a bang, the first clue will be a major break in the market that no one can correctly explain. That will eventually be followed by a correction (or crash), and everyone will know that something bad has happened. The indexes will fall by double digits, investors will panic, and stocks get slaughtered.

Investors will be told to stay calm and not sell — but they will when the financial pain gets too great. They are also told that the market always comes back (although not all stocks will). Anxiety turns to fear as the market plunges. After a correction or crash, investors look for scapegoats while commentators ask, “Who could have known?” (Hint: Those willing to act on the clues and indicators were out of the market well before the most damage was done.)

But when a bear market starts with a whimper, it confuses nearly everyone. A meandering, volatile market is frustrating. At first, bulls are hopeful that the market will keep going up, but eventually, the market tops out and retreats.

I call this “death by a thousand pullbacks.” Instead of new highs, the market will make a series of short-lived but painful pullbacks. At first, the buy-on-the-dip investors will enter the market with new orders. As the bear market continues, the buy-on-the-dip strategy will stop working (along with most other long strategies).

Typically, a market making new highs is a healthy sign. In a looming bear market, new highs on lower volume is a red flag. That’s happening now. Also, leading technology stocks have gotten smashed, replaced by new leaders. After these new leaders fail there will be nowhere to hide.

Eventually there will be a pivot (or inflection) point, and the market will snap. No one knows what the catalyst will be. It could be an economic event, a geopolitical crisis, or a spike in interest rates. When the market snaps, nearly everyone but the biggest believers will realize the market is in trouble. By that time, there will be a mad rush for the exits as everyone attempts to sell at once. No matter how many times you tell investors to be wary of a dangerous market, most don’t listen. Based on the clues, indicators, and personal observations, crunch time is getting closer. No one knows when, but I am certain: a bear market is inevitable — sooner rather than later. This is not doom and gloom. It is market reality.

more...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stocks-are-telling-you-a-bear-market-is-coming-2014-05-14?

[hamerfan]

68. Musical Interlude

Tom Traubert's Blues by Tom Waits:

[antigop]

69. Musical interlude: "Down Under" -- Men at Work

[antigop]

70. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert --- one of my all-time favs!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Queen_of_the_Desert_%28musical%29

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a musical with a book by Australian film director-writer Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott, using well-known pop songs as its score. Adapted from Elliott's 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the musical tells the story of two drag queens and a transsexual, who contract to perform a drag show at a resort in Alice Springs, a resort town in the remote Australian desert. As they head west from Sydney aboard their lavender bus, Priscilla, the three friends come to the forefront of a comedy of errors, encountering a number of strange characters, as well as incidents of homophobia, while widening comfort zones and finding new horizons.

Produced by Allan Scott in coalition with Back Row Productions, Michael Chugg, Michael Hamlyn and John Frost, the Simon Phillips-directed and Ross Coleman-choreographed original production of Priscilla debuted in Australia at the Lyric Theatre, Sydney in October 2006. Having had a successful run in Sydney, the production transferred to Melbourne in 2007 and then New Zealand in 2008, before returning to Sydney for a limited engagement for its second anniversary. The Australian success of Priscilla provoked a two year strong West End production in addition to its Bette Midler-produced Broadway debut in 2011. While the original production received one out of its seven Helpmann Award nominations, Priscilla was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical as well as two Tony Awards, winning these awards in the costume design categories.

Tony award for costuming --- fabulous!

[DemReadingDU]

71. The Thorn Birds in Ten Minutes

The Thorn Birds in Ten Minutes
The entire 1983 8 hour Thorn Birds miniseries in ten minutes.

The Thorn Birds is a television mini-series broadcast on ABC between 27 and 30 March 1983. It starred Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward, Barbara Stanwyck, Christopher Plummer, Jean Simmons, Richard Kiley, Bryan Brown, Mare Winningham, and Philip Anglim. It was directed by Daryl Duke and based on a novel by Colleen McCullough. The series was enormously successful and became the United States' second highest rated mini-series of all time behind Roots; both series were produced by television veteran David L. Wolper. Set primarily on Drogheda, a fictional sheep station in the Australian outback, the story focuses on three generations of the Cleary Family and spans the years December 1920 to December 1963.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thorn_Birds_%28TV_miniseries%29

[xchrom]

72. Europe's New Status Quo: 'Ukraine Is Fighting Our Battle'

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/experts-discuss-what-ukraine-crisis-means-for-future-of-europe-a-971032.html


From left, Anton Shekhovtsov, Timothy Snyder, Konstanty Gebert.

Even though the battles over the future of Ukraine have shifted to the country's southeast, there are still tents on Kiev's Maidan Square. Smoke rises from the protesters' makeshift stoves, between the neon signs of Western corporations and the burned-out ruin of the trade union building. There are photos everywhere of those who died here, an action film is being shown on a large screen and a man is playing the guitar and belting out revolutionary songs. There are donation cans and flags fluttering here and there, in this odd mixture of tent city, Occupy protest camp and youth hostel.

Earlier this month, at the nearby National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, American historian Timothy Snyder hosted an international conference called "Thinking Together." Intellectuals from the United States, Western Europe and Eastern Europe gave lectures and participated in small group discussions over what the events in Ukraine mean for European and the rest of the world. Their aim was to demonstrate solidarity.

The atmosphere at the conference resembled the emotionally charged Cold War-era writer meetings, where intellectuals discussed ways to escape oppression and oppose aggressors. But instead of issuing manifestos against Russian President Vladimir Putin, attendees of the Kiev conference mostly just listened.

Snyder, who switched back and forth between Ukrainian and English, was the soul of the conference, and his presence could be felt everywhere. During his opening lecture in the university's large lecture hall last Thursday, even the aisles were filled with people. Most of the attendees were young, a microcosm of the country's future.

[xchrom]

73. Essay: We Ought To Be EU-Skeptic

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/construction-faults-at-the-heart-of-the-eu-will-cause-its-disintegration-a-971283.html

The European Union is in a deep crisis. The reasons for the crisis are manifold, and would, each on its own, have been endurable, even over decades. In the present situation, however, they have become intertwined and so will persist. If those responsible don't face up to them decisively, the long-term prospects for Europe do not look good.

The debt and currency crisis makes it abundantly clear there is something very wrong with the constitutional structure of the EU, as well as with the political conduct of particular members. One doesn't know which is more puzzling: that some new members could trick their way into the euro zone and into the EU itself with false figures, or that those in Brussels failed to notice bogus applications.

Average citizens, even halfway informed about current developments, will be concerned and will expect reassurance above all on two points: They would like the prosperity achieved in Europe to be reasonably secure, and they will also want Europe to be strong enough for Europe's voice to be heard in the newly forming world concert. Such citizens deserve to be understood.

The description of the "new tasks" may sound brief. In reality it encompasses a huge program, which only a very strong institution would be capable of mastering. Whether today's EU is able to display this strength is open to doubt, therefore this issue is worth pursuing in greater detail.

[xchrom]

74. Flirting with Populism: Is Germany's AFD a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-portrait-of-bernd-lucke-and-the-new-german-right-a-969589.html


Bernd Lucke, the founder of the anti-euro Alternative for Germany party is often labelled as a dangerous right-wing populist. Now that the AFD is likely to win seats in the European Parliament on Sunday, he is trying to put on the friendliest face he can.

Mr. and Mrs. Lucke mull things over before deciding whether or not to show the reporter the room upstairs. They say it hasn't been cleaned, but it looks just fine. The room in which the Lucke's brown wooden desk is located is an orderly office, with a computer, striped wallpaper and pictures of people, animals and landscapes on the wall.

It's the intellectual hub of Lucke's party, the upstart euroskeptic Alternative for Germany (AFD), which is likely to land seats in the European Parliament this Sunday for the first time. The party has been raising eyebrows across Europe as it flirts with populism, with many wondering if it will become Germany's answer to Europe's recent surge of right-wing populist parties, like France's National Front and the United Kingdom Independence Party. Despite their anti-European nature, polls indicate right-wing populist parties may be the true victors in the EU vote.

This is where Lucke thinks about the party's big picture -- its platforms and where it stands in relationship to Islam, for example. If you want to understand his party's politics, it helps to look at his campaign posters, with slogans like "Have Courage to Be Germany," "For a Solid Currency Instead of Euro Debt Insanity," "Draghi Gambles, You Pay," "Clear Rules Are Needed for Immigration," or "Immigration Yes, But not Into Our Social System." One shows Kim Jong Un and poses the question: "What do the fat Korean kid and the EU have in common? Their understanding of democracy."

The room is also where he looks at the drawings of his eldest daughter Charlotte who, like his oldest son Friedrich, is also a member of the party. Lucke's wife Dorothea is, of course, a member and also helps out, even on policy matters. She manages the discussions, mans party stands at markets and events and also distributes election signs. Here in the Luckes' red brick house, in Winsen an der Luhe, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Hamburg, the AFD looks like a fun family enterprise.

[xchrom]

75. GASOLINE PRICES HAVE FAMILIAR LOOK AS SUMMER NEARS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUMMER_GASOLINE_PRICES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-24-10-15-21

NEW YORK (AP) -- The price of gasoline looks familiar this Memorial Day. For the third year in a row, the national average will be within a penny or two of $3.64 per gallon.

Stability wasn't always the norm. Between 2003 and 2008 average retail gasoline prices more than doubled, reaching an all-time high of $4.11 per gallon in 2008. Prices then collapsed as the U.S. plunged into recession. But after a two-year run-up between 2009 and 2011, the price of gasoline has remained in a range of roughly $3.25 to $3.75 per gallon.

Drivers can handle that, according to AAA, and are ready to head out for Memorial Day driving trips in the highest numbers since 2005. "It is unlikely that gas prices will have a significant effect on travel plans compared to a year ago," AAA wrote in its annual Memorial Day forecast.

Steady gasoline prices are largely the result of relatively steady crude oil prices, even though there has been a long list of global supply disruptions and political turmoil that that typically would push the price of oil higher

[Demeter]

82. NO, they can't handle that

and gasoline sales figures reveal that the economy continues to shrink under the pounding of gasoline costs:






...What we see here is that gasoline sales on a per-capita basis are 8.4% lower than it was at the end of the Great Recession....




What does this analysis suggest about the state of the economy? From an official standpoint, the Great Recession ended 58 months before the most recent gasoline sales monthly data point. But if we want a simple confirmation that the economy is in recovery, gasoline sales continues to be the wrong place to look.

In addition to improvements in fuel efficiency, the decline in gasoline consumption is attributable in large part to some powerful secular changes in US demographics and cultural in general:

• We have an aging population leaving the workforce, which we clearly see in the sustained contraction in the employment-population ratio.
  
• There is growing trend toward a portable workplace and the ability to work from home (I'm a typical example).
  
• Social media have provided powerful alternatives to face-to-face interaction requiring transportation (Internet apps, games, the ubiquitous cell phone for talk and texting).
  
• There has been a general trend in young adults to drive less (related to points two and three above). See this PDF report for details.
  
• The US is experiencing accelerating urban population growth, which reduces the per-capita dependence on gasoline.

For a striking example of an apparent "disconnect" between government transportation expenditures and demographics trends, see the WISPIRG commentary Driving Wisconsin's "Brain Drain".

As I've continued to observe, we are living in interesting times.

from the website: http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Gasoline-Sales.php

[xchrom]

76. AUTO PARTS PRICE-FIXING PROBE RATTLES INDUSTRY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AUTO_PARTS_PRICE_FIXING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-25-07-27-28

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A price-fixing investigation into the auto parts industry has mushroomed into the Justice Department's largest criminal antitrust probe ever, and it's not over.

The investigation was made public four years ago with FBI raids in the Detroit area.

It's led to criminal charges against dozens of people and companies, stretched across continents and reverberated through an industry responsible for supplying critical car components.

Thirty-four individuals have been charged and 27 companies have pleaded guilty or agreed to do so. Collectively, they've agreed to pay about $2.3 billion in fines.

[Demeter]

83. Was there some green-as-grass innocent who thought there was ONE corner of the economy

that WASN'T rigged?


How sad to burst that bubble...

[xchrom]

77. THAI COUP OFFICIAL: DEMOCRACY CAUSED 'LOSSES'

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_THAILAND_POLITICS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-25-07-07-22

BANGKOK (AP) -- A spokesman for Thailand's coup leaders said Sunday that democracy had caused "losses" for the country, as the junta sought to combat growing international condemnation and hundreds of protesters angrily confronted soldiers in central Bangkok.

Small protests have persisted since the army seized power on Thursday after months of conflict between the elected government and a fierce opposition protest movement, and the junta has been pleading for patience.

Troops fanned out Sunday in one of Bangkok's busiest shopping districts and blocked access to the city's Skytrain in an attempt to prevent a third day of anti-coup demonstrations. They were soon met by a crowd of about 1,000 people, who shouted, "Get out, get out, get out!"

Tensions ran high, and at one point a group of soldiers was chased away by the crowds in the Ratchaprasong shopping district. By late afternoon, the protesters had moved to Victory Monument, a city landmark a few kilometers (miles) away, and their numbers had swelled past 2,000. Rows of soldiers were gathered, but troops did not move to break up the rally.

[xchrom]

78. STATES SCRUTINIZE INSURANCE ENROLLMENT WORKERS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_OVERHAUL_WORKER_SECURITY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-24-14-36-30

DOVER, Del. (AP) -- Republican lawmakers around the country are adding criminal background checks or licensing requirements for workers hired to help people enroll in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, taking aim at perceived security risks involving customers' personal information.

More than a dozen GOP-controlled states have passed legislation tightening requirements for the enrollment counselors, and bills in other states are pending. While the federal government does not require criminal background checks for navigators, states can set their own rules.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last month signed a bill requiring licensing and background checks for navigators who help people buy health insurance on the federal marketplace. Republican proponents said the requirements will help protect consumers from identity theft. Louisiana's legislature unanimously approved a similar measure with a Senate vote Tuesday.

Still, there's no sign that enrollment guides, even those with criminal records, have misused consumers' personal information in any state.

[xchrom]

79. HEALTH LAW: EMBRACE, AVOID OR IN BETWEEN FOR DEMS

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/health-law-embrace-avoid-or-between-dems

ATLANTA (AP) — Democratic candidates are trying to figure out whether to embrace or avoid President Barack Obama's health care overhaul — or land somewhere in between.

The president says his party shouldn't apologize or go on the defensive about the Affordable Care Act.

Candidates aren't so sure.

Two top recruits for Senate races — Michelle Nunn in Georgia and Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky — won't say how they would have voted when the Senate passed the bill in 2010. Their refusals are overshadowing their endorsements of individual parts of the law that are more popular than the law itself.

In Montana, Sen. John Walsh, appointed to office in February and now running for a full term, reminds voters that he was nowhere near Congress in 2010.

[Demeter]

84. Go for Universal Single Payer, and win!

[xchrom]

80. U.S. Retailers Missing Estimates by Most in 13 Years

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/4M3N9n

U.S. retailers’ first-quarter earnings are trailing analysts’ estimates by the widest margin in 13 years after bad weather and weak spending by lower-income consumers intensified competition.

Chains are missing projections by an average of 3.1 percent, with 87 retailers, or 70 percent of those tracked, having reported, researcher Retail Metrics Inc. said in a statement today. That’s the worst performance relative to estimates since the fourth quarter of 2000, when they missed by 3.3 percent. Over the long term, chains typically beat by 3 percent, the firm said.

Extreme winter weather through February and March forced store closings and stifled sales, Swampscott, Massachusetts-based Retail Metrics said. Lower- and moderate-income consumers had little discretionary spending power, and chains also faced price competition from e-commerce sites.

“The American consumer is not fully back and remains cautious,” Ken Perkins, Retail Metrics’ president, wrote in the report.

***so if we have a year where the polar vortex event is worse than this year or several years of vortex events -- then what?

[Demeter]

85. Maybe the liars' tongues will freeze to the roofs of their mouths

and we will get some truth, for once. And a "correction" that takes all hope and speculation out.

[xchrom]

81. Draghi’s Mountain Retreat Contemplates New ECB Horizon

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-24/draghi-s-mountain-retreat-contemplates-new-ecb-horizon.html

When Mario Draghi secludes himself with Europe’s top minds in central banking this week he won’t be able to escape one question: What’s next?

After all but promising that he’ll ease monetary policy in June, the European Central Bank president must now manage market expectations as banks from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Societe Generale SA speculate whether he’ll go further and deploy large-scale asset purchases in coming months. Draghi will today open the first ECB Forum, a gathering of policy makers and academics to be held annually in the mountains northwest of Lisbon.

What Draghi says in three appearances over the next two days could provide clues on how he plans to overcome the stubbornly-low inflation that’s threatening the euro area’s return to economic health. Officials have said they’re working on a package of possible measures for the June 5 policy meeting, including interest-rate cuts and liquidity injections, while holding out the prospect of quantitative easing as a more-powerful option.

“An important part of the package will be the accompanying words,” said Francesco Papadia, a former director general of market operations at the ECB and now chairman of Prime Collateralized Securities in Frankfurt. “If he says that the council has given a first installment of measures and will be ready to do more if needed, especially when it comes to bringing inflationary expectations more quickly toward 2 percent, this could give more weight to the easing package.”

[Demeter]

86. I supppose jailing bansters is out?

[xchrom]

89. banisters?!?! i love banisters. nt

[Demeter]

90. Banksters

My fingers need glasses.

Happy Memorial Day Eve, X!

[Demeter]

87. Convicts and colonial society AUSTRALIA'S PENAL COLONY BOTANY BAY

Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 161,700 convicts (of whom 25,000 were women) were transported to the Australian colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen's land and Western Australia. Historian Lloyd Robson has estimated that perhaps two-thirds were thieves from working class towns, particularly from the Midlands and north of England. The majority were repeat offenders. Whether transportation managed to achieve its goal of reforming or not, some convicts were able to leave the prison system in Australia; after 1801 they could gain "tickets of leave" for good behaviour and be assigned to work for free men for wages. A few went on to have successful lives as emancipists, having been pardoned at the end of their sentence. Female convicts had fewer opportunities.

Some convicts, particularly Irish convicts, had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion, so authorities were consequently suspicious of the Irish and restricted the practice of Catholicism in Australia. The Irish led Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804 served to increase suspicions and repression. Church of England clergy meanwhile worked closely with the governors and Richard Johnson, chaplain to the First Fleet was charged by Governor Arthur Phillip, with improving "public morality" in the colony and was also heavily involved in health and education. The Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765–1838) had magisterial duties, and so was equated with the authorities by the convicts, becoming known as the 'flogging parson' for the severity of his punishments.

The New South Wales Corps was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment to relieve the marines who had accompanied the First Fleet. Officers of the Corps soon became involved in the corrupt and lucrative rum trade in the colony. In the Rum Rebellion of 1808, the Corps, working closely with the newly established wool trader John Macarthur, staged the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history, deposing Governor William Bligh and instigating a brief period of military rule in the colony prior to the arrival from Britain of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810.

Macquarie served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social and economic development of New South Wales which saw it transition from a penal colony to a budding free society. He established public works, a bank, churches, and charitable institutions and sought good relations with the Aborigines. In 1813 he sent Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the great plains of the interior. Central, however to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipists, whom he decreed should be treated as social equals to free-settlers in the colony. Against opposition, he appointed emancipists to key government positions including Francis Greenway as colonial architect and William Redfern as a magistrate. London judged his public works to be too expensive and society was scandalised by his treatment of emancipists. Egalitarianism would come to be considered a central virtue among Australians.

The first five Governors of New South Wales realised the urgent need to encourage free settlers, but the British government remained largely indifferent. As early as 1790, Governor Arthur Phillip wrote; "Your lordship will see by my...letters the little progress we have been able to make in cultivating the lands ... At present this settlement only affords one person that I can employ in cultivating the lands..." It was not until the 1820s that numbers of free settlers began to arrive and government schemes began to be introduced to encourage free settlers. Philanthropists Caroline Chisholm and John Dunmore Lang developed their own migration schemes. Land grants of crown land were made by Governors, and settlement schemes such as those of Edward Gibbon Wakefield carried some weight in encouraging migrants to make the long voyage to Australia, as opposed to the United States or Canada.

Early colonial administrations were anxious to address the gender imbalance in the population brought about by the importation of large numbers of convict men. Between 1788 and 1792, around 3546 male to 766 female convicts were landed at Sydney. Women came to play an important role in education and welfare during colonial times. Governor Macquarie's wife, Elizabeth Macquarie took an interest in convict women's welfare. Her contemporary Elizabeth Macarthur was noted for her 'feminine strength' in assisting the establishment of the Australian merino wool industry during her husband John Macarthur's enforced absence from the colony following the Rum Rebellion. The Catholic Sisters of Charity arriving in 1838 and set about pastoral care in a women's prison, visiting hospitals and schools and establishing employment for convict women. The sisters went on to establish hospitals in four of the eastern states, beginning with St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney in 1857 as a free hospital for all people, but especially for the poor. Caroline Chisholm (1808–1877) established a migrant women's shelter and worked for women's welfare in the colonies in the 1840s. Her humanitarian efforts later won her fame in England and great influence in achieving support for families in the colony. Sydney's first Catholic Bishop, John Bede Polding founded an Australian order of nuns—the Sisters of the Good Samaritan—in 1857 to work in education and social work. The Sisters of St Joseph, were founded in South Australia by Saint Mary MacKillop and Fr Julian Tenison Woods in 1867. MacKillop travelled throughout Australasia and established schools, convents and charitable institutions. She was canonised by Benedict XVI in 2010, becoming the first Australian to be so honoured by the Catholic Church.

From the 1820s, increasing numbers of squatters occupied land beyond the fringes of European settlement. Often running sheep on large stations with relatively few overheads, squatters could make considerable profits. By 1834, nearly 2 million kilograms of wool were being exported to Britain from Australia. By 1850, barely 2,000 squatters had gained 30 million hectares of land, and they formed a powerful and "respectable" interest group in several colonies.

In 1835, the British Colonial Office issued the Proclamation of Governor Bourke, implementing the legal doctrine of terra nullius upon which British settlement was based, reinforcing the notion that the land belonged to no one prior to the British Crown taking possession of it and quashing any likelihood of treaties with Aboriginal peoples, including that signed by John Batman. Its publication meant that from then, all people found occupying land without the authority of the government would be considered illegal trespassers.

Separate settlements and later, colonies, were created from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, New Zealand in 1840, Port Phillip District in 1834, later becoming the colony of Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory was founded in 1863 as part of South Australia. The transportation of convicts to Australia was phased out between 1840 and 1868.

Massive areas of land were cleared for agriculture and various other purposes in the first 100 years of Europeans settlement. In addition to the obvious impacts this early clearing of land and importation of hard-hoofed animals had on the ecology of particular regions, it severely affected indigenous Australians, by reducing the resources they relied on for food, shelter and other essentials. This progressively forced them into smaller areas and reduced their numbers as the majority died of newly introduced diseases and lack of resources. Indigenous resistance against the settlers was widespread, and prolonged fighting between 1788 and the 1920s led to the deaths of at least 20,000 indigenous people and between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans. During the mid-late 19th century, many indigenous Australians in south eastern Australia were relocated, often forcibly, to reserves and missions. The nature of many of these institutions enabled disease to spread quickly and many were closed as their populations fell.

[Demeter]

88. Reasons for PENAL transportation

Poverty, social injustice, child labor, harsh and dirty living conditions and long working hours were prevalent in 19th-century Britain. Dickens' novels perhaps best illustrate this; even some government officials were horrified by what they saw. Only in 1833 and 1844 were the first general laws against child labor (the Factory Acts) passed in the United Kingdom.

According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, the population of England and Wales, which had remained steady at 6 million from 1700 to 1740, began rising considerably after 1740. By the time of the American Revolution, London was overcrowded, filled with the unemployed, and flooded with cheap gin. Crime had become a major problem. In 1784 a French observer noted that "from sunset to dawn the environs of London became the patrimony of brigands for twenty miles around."

Each parish had a watchman, but British cities did not have police forces in the modern sense. Jeremy Bentham avidly promoted the idea of a circular prison, but the penitentiary was seen by many government officials as a peculiarly American concept. Virtually all malefactors were caught by informers or denounced to the local court by their victims.

Pursuant to the so-called "Bloody Code", by the 1770s there were 222 crimes in Britain which carried the death penalty, almost all of which were crimes against property. These included such offences as the stealing of goods worth over 5 shillings, the cutting down of a tree, the theft of an animal, even the theft of a rabbit from a rabbit warren.

The Industrial Revolution led to an increase in petty crime due to the economic displacement of much of the population, building pressure on the government to find an alternative to confinement in overcrowded gaols. The situation was so dire that hulks left over from the Seven Years' War were used as makeshift floating prisons. Eight of every 10 prisoners were in jail for theft. The Bloody Code was gradually rescinded in the 1800s because judges and juries considered its punishments too harsh. Since lawmakers still wanted punishments to deter potential criminals, they increasingly applied transportation as a more humane alternative to execution.

Transportation had been applied as a punishment for both major and petty crimes since the seventeenth century. Around 60,000 convicts were transported to the British colonies in North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When the American Revolutionary War brought an end to that means of disposal, the British Government looked elsewhere. After James Cook's famous voyage to the South Pacific in which he visited and claimed the east coast of Australia in the name of the British Empire, he described Botany Bay, the bay on which present-day Sydney sits, as an ideal place to establish a settlement. In 1788 the First Fleet arrived and the first British colony in Australia was established.

Alternatives to the American colonies were investigated and the newly discovered and mapped East Coast of New Holland was proposed. The details provided by James Cook during his expedition to the South Pacific in 1770 made it the most suitable.

On 18 August 1786 the decision was made to send a colonisation party of convicts, military, and civilian personnel to Botany Bay. There were 775 convicts on board six transport ships. They were accompanied by officials, members of the crew, marines, the families thereof and their own children who together totaled 645. In all, eleven ships were sent in what became known as the First Fleet. Other than the convict transports, there were two naval escorts and three storeships. The fleet assembled in Portsmouth and set sail on 13 May 1787.

The fleet arrived at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788. It soon became clear that it would not be suitable for the establishment of a colony, and the group relocated to Port Jackson. There they established the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent, New South Wales, on 26 January. The area has since developed into Sydney. This date is still celebrated as Australia Day.

There was initially a high mortality rate amongst the members of the first fleet due mainly to shortages of food. The ships carried only enough food to provide for the settlers until they could establish agriculture in the region. Unfortunately, there were insufficient skilled farmers and domesticated livestock to do this, and the colony waited on the arrival of the Second Fleet. The second fleet was an unprecedented disaster that provided little in the way of help and upon its delivery in June 1790 of still more sick and dying convicts, which actually worsened the situation in Port Jackson.

Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Bourke was the ninth Governor of the Colony of New South Wales between 1831 and 1837. Appalled by the excessive punishments doled out to convicts, Bourke passed 'The Magistrates Act', which limited the sentence a magistrate could pass to fifty lashes (previously there was no such limit). Bourke's administration was controversial, and furious magistrates and employers petitioned the crown against this interference with their legal rights, fearing that a reduction in punishments would cease to provide enough deterrence to the convicts.

Bourke, however, was not dissuaded from his reforms and continued to create controversy within the colony by combating the inhumane treatment handed out to convicts, including limiting the number of convicts each employer was allowed to seventy, as well as granting rights to freed convicts, such as allowing the acquisition of property and service on juries. It has been argued that the suspension of convict transportation to New South Wales in 1840 can be attributed to the actions of Bourke and other men like Australian-born lawyer William Charles Wentworth. It took another 10 years, but transportation to the colony of New South Wales was finally officially abolished on 1 October 1850.

If a convict was well behaved, the convict could be given a ticket of leave, granting some freedom. At the end of the convict's sentence, seven years in most cases, the convict was issued with a Certificate of Freedom. He was then free to become a settler or to return to England. Convicts who misbehaved, however, were often sent to a place of secondary punishment like Port Arthur, Tasmania or Norfolk Island, where they would suffer additional punishment and solitary confinement.

Tasmania

In 1803, a British expedition was sent from Sydney to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) to establish a new penal colony there. The small party, led by Lt. John Bowen, established a settlement at Risdon Cove, on the eastern side of the Derwent River. Originally sent to Port Philip, but abandoned within weeks, another expedition led by Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins arrived soon after. Collins considered the Risdon Cove site inadequate, and in 1804 he established an alternative settlement on the western side of the river at Sullivan's Cove, Tasmania. This later became known as Hobart, and the original settlement at Risdon Cove was abandoned. Collins became the first Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land.

When the convict station on Norfolk Island was abandoned in 1807-8, the remaining convicts and free settlers were transported to Hobart and allocated land for re-settlement. However, as the existing small population was already experiencing difficulties producing enough food, the sudden doubling of the population was almost catastrophic.

Starting in 1816, more free settlers began arriving from Great Britain. On 3 December 1825 Tasmania was declared a colony separate from New South Wales, with a separate administration.

The Macquarie Harbour penal colony on the West Coast of Tasmania was established in 1820 to exploit the valuable timber Huon Pine growing there for furniture making and shipbuilding. Macquarie Harbour had the added advantage of being almost impossible to escape from, most attempts ending with the convicts either drowning, dying of starvation in the bush, or (on at least two occasions) turning cannibal. Convicts sent to this settlement had usually re-offended during their sentence of transportation, and were treated very harshly, labouring in cold and wet weather, and subjected to severe corporal punishment for minor infractions.

In 1830, the Port Arthur penal settlement was established to replace Macquarie Harbour, as it was easier to maintain regular communications by sea. Although known in popular history as a particularly harsh prison, in reality its management was far more humane than Macquarie Harbour or the outlying stations of New South Wales. Experimentation with the so-called model prison system took place in Port Arthur. Solitary confinement was the preferred method of punishment.

Many changes were made to the manner in which convicts were handled in the general population, largely responsive to British public opinion on the harshness or otherwise of their treatment. Until the late 1830s most convicts were either retained by Government for public works or assigned to private individuals as a form of indentured labour. From the early 1840s the Probation System was employed, where convicts spent an initial period, usually two years, in public works gangs on stations outside of the main settlements, then were freed to work for wages within a set district.

Transportation to Tasmania ended in 1853

Queensland

In 1823 John Oxley sailed north from Sydney to inspect Port Curtis and Moreton Bay as possible sites for a penal colony. At Moreton Bay he found the Brisbane River, which Cook had guessed would exist, and explored the lower part of it. In September 1824, he returned with soldiers and established a temporary settlement at Redcliffe. On 2 December 1824, the settlement was transferred to where the Central Business District (CBD) of Brisbane now stands. The settlement was at first called Edenglassie. In 1839 transportation of convicts to Moreton Bay ceased and the Brisbane penal settlement was closed. In 1842 free settlement was permitted and people began to colonize the area voluntarily. On 6 June 1859 Queensland became a colony separate from New South Wales.

Western Australia

Transportation of convicts to Western Australia began in 1850 and continued until 1868. During that period, 9,668 convicts were transported on 43 convict ships.

The first convicts to arrive in what is now Western Australia were convicts transported to New South Wales, and sent by that colony to King George Sound (Albany) in 1826 to help establish a settlement there. At that time the western third of Australia was unclaimed land known as New Holland. Fears that France would lay claim to the land prompted the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, to send Major Edmund Lockyer, with troops and 23 convicts, to establish a settlement at King George Sound. Lockyer's party arrived on Christmas Day, 1826. A convict presence was maintained at the settlement for nearly four years. In November 1830, control of the settlement was transferred to the Swan River Colony, and the troops and convicts were withdrawn.

In April 1848, Charles Fitzgerald, Governor of Western Australia, petitioned Britain to send convicts to Western Australia because of labor shortages. Britain rejected sending fixed term convicts, but offered to send first offenders in the final years of their terms.

Most convicts in Western Australia spent very little time in prison. Those who were stationed at Fremantle were housed in the Convict Establishment, the colony's convict prison, and misbehaviour was punished by stints there. The majority of convicts, however, were stationed in other parts of the colony. Although there was no convict assignment in Western Australia, there was a great demand for public infrastructure throughout the colony, so that many convicts were stationed in remote areas. Initially, most convicts were set to work creating infrastructure for the convict system, including the construction of the Convict Establishment itself.

In 1852 a Convict Depot was built at Albany, but closed 3 years later. When shipping increased the Depot was re-opened. Most of the convicts had their Ticket-of-Leave and were hired to work by the free settlers. Convicts also manned the pilot boat, rebuilt York Street and Stirling Terrace; and the track from Albany to Perth was made into a good road. An Albany newspaper noted the convict's good behaviour and wrote, "There were instances in which our free settlers might take an example".

Western Australia's convict era came to an end with the cessation of penal transportation by Britain. In May 1865, the colony was advised of the change in British policy, and told that Britain would send one convict ship in each of the years 1865, 1866 and 1867, after which transportation would cease. In accordance with this, the last convict ship to Western Australia, the Hougoumont, left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868.

Victoria

In 1803 two ships arrived in Port Phillip, which Lt. John Murray in the Lady Nelson had discovered and named the previous year. The Calcutta under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Collins transported 300 convicts, accompanied by the supply ship, Ocean. Collins had previously been Judge Advocate with the First Fleet in 1788. He chose Sullivan Bay near the present-day Sorrento, Victoria for the first settlement - some 90 km south east of present-day Melbourne. About two months later the settlement was abandoned due to poor soil and water shortages and Collins moved the convicts to Hobart. Several convicts had escaped into the bush and were left behind to unknown fates with the hostile local aboriginal people. One such convict, the subsequently celebrated William Buckley, lived in the western side of Port Phillip for the next 32 years before approaching the new settlers and assisting as an interpreter for the indigenous peoples.

A second settlement was established at Westernport Bay, on the site of present-day Corinella, in November 1826. It comprised an initial 20 soldiers and 22 convicts, with another 12 convicts arriving subsequently. This settlement was abandoned in February 1828, and all convicts returned to Sydney.

The Port Phillip District was officially sanctioned in 1837 following the landing of the Henty brothers in Portland Bay in 1834, and John Batman settled on the site of Melbourne.

Between 1844 and 1849 about 1,750 convicts arrived there from England. They were referred to either as "Exiles" or the "Pentonvillians" because most of them came from Pentonville Probationary Prison. Unlike earlier convicts who were required to work for the government or on hire from penal depots, the Exiles were free to work for pay, but could not leave the district to which they were assigned. The Port Phillip District was still part of New South Wales at this stage. Victoria separated from New South Wales and became an independent colony in 1851.

Women

Approximately 20% of the transportees were women. For protection, most quickly attached themselves to male officers or convicts. Although they were routinely referred to as courtesans relatively few had been prostitutes in England; prostitution, like murder, was not a transportable offense.

Political prisoners

Political prisoners made up a small proportion of convicts. They arrived in waves corresponding to political unrest in Britain and Ireland. They included the First Scottish Martyrs in 1794; British Naval Mutineers (from the Nore Mutiny) in 1797 and 1801; Irish rebels in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1868; Scots Rebels (1820); Yorkshire Rebels (1820 and 1822); leaders of the Merthyr Tydfil rising of 1831; The Tolpuddle Martyrs (1834); Swing Rioters and Machine Breakers (1828–1833); Upper Canada rebellion/Lower Canada Rebellion (1839) and Chartists (1842).

Cessation of transportation

With increasing numbers of free settlers entering New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) by the mid-1830s, opposition to the transportation of felons into the colonies grew. The most influential spokesmen were newspaper proprietors who were also members of the Independent Congregation Church such as John Fairfax in Sydney and the Reverend John West in Launceston, who argued against convicts both as competition to honest free labourers and as the source of crime and vice within the colony. The anti-transportation movement was seldom concerned with the inhumanity of the system, but rather the hated stain it was believed to inflict on the free (non-emancipist) middle classes.

Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, by which time some 150,000 convicts had been sent to the colonies. The sending of convicts to Brisbane in its Moreton Bay district had ceased the previous year, and administration of Norfolk Island was later transferred to Van Diemen's Land.

The continuation of transportation to Van Diemen's Land saw the rise of a well-coordinated anti- transportation movement, especially following a severe economic depression in the early 1840s. Transportation was temporarily suspended in 1846 but soon revived with overcrowding of British gaols and clamour for the availability of transportation as a deterrent. By the late 1840s most convicts being sent to Van Diemen's Land (plus those to Victoria) were designated as "exiles" and were free to work for pay while under sentence. In 1850 the Australasian Anti-Transportation League was formed to lobby for the permanent cessation of transportation, its aims being furthered by the commencement of the Australian gold rushes the following year. The last convict ship to be sent from England, the St. Vincent, arrived in 1853, and on 10 August 1853 Jubilee festivals in Hobart and Launceston celebrated 50 years of European settlement with the official end of transportation.

Transportation continued in small numbers to Western Australia. The last convict ship to arrive in Western Australia, the Hougoumont, left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868. In all, about 164,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies between 1788 and 1868 on board 806 ships. Convicts were made up of English and Welsh (70%), Irish (24%), Scottish (5%) and the remaining 1% from the British outposts in India and Canada, Maoris from New Zealand, Chinese from Hong Kong and slaves from the Caribbean.

Only South Australia and the Northern Territory had never accepted convicts directly from England but they still accepted ex-convicts from the other states. Many convicts were allowed to travel as far as New Zealand to make a new life after being given limited freedom, even if they were not allowed to return home to England. At this time the Australian population was approximately 1 million and the colonies could now sustain themselves without the need for convict labour.

[Demeter]

91. Colleges Are Buying Stuff They Can’t Afford and Making Students Pay For It

http://www.thenation.com/blog/179993/colleges-are-buying-stuff-they-cant-afford-and-making-students-pay-it#

READ IT AND WEEP--AND BEHIND IT ALL: THE BANKSTERS

[Demeter]

92. What Tim Geithner doesn't know about Social Security is ... shocking Michael Hiltzik

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80191463/

...We're more interested in a nugget in which Geithner demonstrates that he didn't actually understand how Social Security works or its paramount importance to the way most Americans -- those who aren't rich bankers -- live. This is especially shocking because as Treasury secretary, Geithner served as an ex officio Social Security trustee.

Here's the passage from the book:

"I remember during one Roosevelt Room prep session before I appeared on the Sunday shows, I objected when Dan Pfeiffer [a senior advisor to the Obama White House] wanted me to say Social Security didn’t contribute to the deficit. It wasn’t a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute. Pfeiffer said the line was a 'dog whistle' to the left ... code to the Democratic base, signaling that we intended to protect Social Security."

Geithner's anecdote already has been seized upon by the usual enemies of Social Security on the right to suggest that he, the lone truth-teller in the administration, was warned off Social Security "reform" for political reasons. Here's Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute grousing that Pfeiffer's "'dog whistle' also signals to everyone else that you’re not committed enough to entitlement reform to give it to people straight." Over at Fox Business (go figure) they wrap Geithner's yarn into a sizable helping of comprehensive Social Security ignorance. Guess what: It fits right in.

But let's get to the nub. Does Social Security "contribute to the deficit"?

The answer is, bluntly, no. By law, it can't contribute to the federal deficit, because Social Security isn't allowed to spend more than it takes in. Those who claim -- as Geithner has at one point or another -- both that the program contributes to the deficit yet will be forced to reduce benefits to retirees once its trust fund is depleted are trying to have things both ways: The reasoning behind the threat of reduced benefits is that Social Security can't engage in spending money it doesn't have, i.e., deficit spending.

Pick one, fellas. If it can contribute to the deficit, then there's no reason to cut benefits.

The confusion arises because people like Geithner forget that almost all of Social Security's revenues come from the payroll tax, though some of that revenue is invested and therefore deferred. The payroll tax is one of the program's three major sources of current income: the others are federal income taxes levied on retiree benefits (about 3.25% of the total in 2012) and interest on the program's Treasury bonds (about 13%). Those Treasury bonds, however, were purchased with surplus payroll taxes -- the sums collected in advance, starting in 1984, to cover the wave of baby-boomer retirements that is now upon us. Something has had to be done with those funds between their collection and their payout, and that something is investing them in T-bonds, at interest. Geithner either knows that, or he was an amazingly inattentive T-secretary. You see, every year he served in Washington he put his signature to the Social Security trustees' report that listed the program's T-bond purchases, in numbing detail. (The accountings of trust fund purchases and a list of its holdings from the 2013 Trustees' report SEE LINK.)

Let's be charitable, and assume Geithner knew what those purchases signified, where the purchasing funds came from, and how the proceeds would be used when they were needed. Customarily, the funds raised by Treasury bond sales has been used for productive investments by the government, such as road- and bridge-building, scientific research grants and national defense, all of which have helped the economy more than double in size (adjusting for inflation) since the current trust fund began to get funded in 1984....Of course, there also have been unproductive investments, notably the George W. Bush tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the wealthy and created a huge deficit at the very time when the country was fighting two wars. But that history tells you that the contributor to the deficit isn't Social Security, but the tax cuts and imprudent financing of the wars. By blaming Social Security for even a portion of the deficit, Geithner underscores what some reviewers of his book point to as his self-identification with the investment and banking communities. He's now president and managing director of the Wall Street firm Warburg Pincus.

They love to point at Social Security as a guilty party in the deficit, because they know that if they can't blame Social Security recipients for the deficit, the blame will fall on them. But Geithner knows better. Or at least, he should know better. What's his excuse for pretending he doesn't?

[Demeter]

93. Swiss Voters Defeat $24.65 Minimum Wage by a Wide Margin

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/business/international/swiss-defeat-minimum-wage-by-large-margin.html?ref=business&_r=1

...The proposed rate — considerably higher than elsewhere in Europe and more than double the $10.10 President Obama has sought in the United States — found little support in a national referendum, with 76.3 percent opposed, according to initial results released by the government...

BAD NEWS HAS NO TIME LIMIT: FROM MAY 18

[Demeter]

94. I'M GOING TO START A SEPARATE MONDAY MEMORIAL DAY THREAD TOMORROW

This one is getting too long and it seems only mete....

[hamerfan]

95. Musical Interlude II

Over The Rainbow, performed by Tommy Emmanuel (he's from Australia and if you like well done acoustic guitar work, check him out on Utoob):