Weekend Economists Hail to the King January 9-11, 2015

[Demeter]

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as "the King of Rock and Roll", or simply, "the King".

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, when Presley was 13 years old he and his family relocated to Memphis, Tennessee. His music career began there in 1954, when he recorded a song with producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was an early popularizer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who managed the singer for more than two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. He was regarded as the leading figure of rock and roll after a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines that coincided with the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, made him enormously popular—and controversial.

In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender. In 1958, he was drafted into military service: He resumed his recording career two years later, producing some of his most commercially successful work before devoting much of the 1960s to making Hollywood movies and their accompanying soundtrack albums, most of which were critically derided. In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed televised comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley was featured in the first globally broadcast concert via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii. Several years of prescription drug abuse severely damaged his health, and he died in 1977 at the age of 42.

Presley is one of the most celebrated and influential musicians of the 20th century. Commercially successful in many genres, including pop, blues and gospel, he is the best-selling solo artist in the history of recorded music, with estimated album sales of around 600 million units worldwide. He was nominated for 14 competitive Grammys and won three, also receiving the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame.

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

IN MEMORY ON THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, WEE DEDICATES THIS WEEKEND TO REMEMBERING AND CELEBRATING ELVIS PRESLEY.

[Demeter]

1. NO bank failures yet--but the year is young

[MattSh]

38. This just seems appropriate...

[Fuddnik]

39. Never thought of it that way.

But, you're right.

[Demeter]

44. That's a DUZY, if anything is

But it seems we don't do DUZIES any more on DU.

[Fuddnik]

46. Jonestown lost its sense of humor a long time ago.

Unless their idea of a joke is tearing down Elizabeth Warren, and other liberals.

[Demeter]

2. Bill Black: Obama’s Vain Search for a TPP “Legacy”

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/bill-black-obamas-vain-search-tpp-legacy.html

Yves here. This post confirms what readers know all too well, that Obama will use every opportunity to sell out the middle class to corporate interests.

One thing to bear in mind is that opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and its ugly sister, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, do not split on simply party lines. This fall, when Obama was unable to get enough votes to get “fast track” approval, which the Executive Branch uses to force an up-down vote on a final trade deal, denying Congress the opportunity to influence its contents, whip counts showed that nearly 40 Republicans in the House were prepared to join Democrats in opposing it. How the numbers would break now is an open question, but that means it is worth your time and effort to call your Congressman and let them know you are firmly opposed to these toxic trade deals.

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly published with New Economic Perspectives

The banksters have given Obama an important political opportunity – which he has spurned.

The very first thing the new Republican majorities sought to do with their power was to use the Omnibus bill to extort the first of many cuts designed to destroy the Volcker rule. Naturally, Obama agreed and wouldn’t join the Democratic wing of the Party when they could have easily stopped the giveaway if they had received even mild help from the administration. Instead, the administration lobbied hard for the Omnibus bills’ Christmas gift to banksters.

Next, the Republicans sought to slip another big delay in the effective date of provisions of the Volcker bill through Congress. Progressive Democrats killed that attempt. The Obama administration couldn’t even bring itself to feign rage at the effort to gut the Volcker rule.

These Republican efforts were (a) substantively awful, (b) designed to eviscerate the key Dodd-Frank provision purportedly supported by Obama as a vital reform, and (c) would have been incredibly unpopular with the public and the Tea Party – if Obama had stirred himself to mount a public campaign opposing them ala Elizabeth Warren. But Obama never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to side with the American people against the banksters.

The Travesty Known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The third strike is that Obama has decided to ally with the Chamber of Commerce, the perennial ally of the Koch Brothers – the people that have demonized Obama and Democrats for seven years – to get “fast track” authority approved so he can pass one of the plutocrats’ great dreams – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Obama has also allied himself with the Business Roundtable, the CEOs of the 100 largest U.S. corporations. The Business Roundtable is also a bitter opponent of Democrats and Obama’s health policies. Obama has shaken off his torpor to energetically lobby the business lobbyists to pressure Democratic members of Congress to support TPP.

The obvious conclusion is that Obama’s paramount goal is to remain BFFs with the banksters. As those who listened to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s famous denunciation of the effort to use the Omnibus bill to begin to gut the Volcker rule will recall, Obama has brought the bankers inside the tent to rig the system against the workers. As she explained, Obama is notorious for placing wealthy Citigroup officials inside the government where they set key government economic policies. One of those wealthy and powerful Citigroup officials is Michael B. Froman, who is also a Robert Rubin protégé. It just gets better and better. Froman is Obama’s top trade negotiator, which helps explain why TPP is such a substantive disgrace that Froman is desperate to prevent the American people from knowing what is about to be done to them. Froman has deliberately made it impossible for members of Congress to understand TPP’s provisions by not allowing them and their staff to have copies of the documents, which are very long, complex, and full of arcane legalese. The drafts also cannot be fully understood without knowing which corporate lawyers secretly drafted them with the intent of aiding their corporate clients by disadvantaging competitors and workers.

At this juncture, if you’re not already familiar with TPP you should be asking yourself, “if the draft agreement is so secret that members of Congress are not permitted to have copies of it, how did the corporations and their attorneys not only get copies of the drafts, but actually craft the drafts for the private benefit of their clients?” You also should be appalled. Obama and Froman’s TPP is being designed and handled in a fashion that reads like the playbook was designed by someone who was trying to take all the worst aspects of crony capitalism and use them to loot the public for the benefit of the world’s most rapacious and politically powerful plutocrats. Obama and Froman aren’t dumb, they know that their natural allies on TPP are the Chamber of Commerce, big pharma, and the Business Roundtable who are salivating at the prospects of what their lawyers secretly drafted becoming law. To compound the disaster, Obama and Froman are demanding that Congress adopt TPP under “fast track” procedures in which no amendments to delete or rectify even the worst abuses emerging from the plutocrats’ plundering of America via the secret (from the public) drafting process are permitted. The members of Congress would be allowed only a single up or down vote on the entire package with minimal time for consideration and debate. When Warren aptly describes the system as being rigged against ordinary Americans she is talking about scandals like the TPP.

The TPP Can be Stopped

Larry Summers is not the Chairman of the Federal Reserve because progressives stopped Obama’s effort to please the banksters. Progressives blocked TPP last year. The New York Times reported on January 8, 2015 that progressives are gearing up to do the same the same to the TPP, and this is an issue on which most Americans oppose the TPP and Obama’s latest secret giveaway to the plutocrats.

WASHINGTON — President Obama is facing new opposition from fellow Democrats to one of his top priorities: winning the power to negotiate international trade agreements and speed them through Congress.

As Mr. Obama works to secure the so-called trade promotion authority, a coalition of Democratic lawmakers and activists from organized labor, environmental, religious and civil rights groups is stepping up efforts to stop him.

“This is one of the broadest advocacy coalitions that we’ve had,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who is leading the opposition. “There is no reason why we should exacerbate the loss of jobs or lower wages in the United States.

They argue that the president is asking for carte blanche to hammer out trade deals that would cost American jobs, weaken food safety and financial regulations, and undermine environmental and labor standards.

The same article demonstrated that the Obama administration is so blind to the interests of the American people that it doesn’t yet understand how to try to defend TPP without exposing its folly. This is the administration’s incredible response to criticisms of the TPP.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the concerns were misplaced, given Mr. Obama’s determination to agree only to deals that were beneficial to American companies.

Thanks Josh, it reaffirms my faith in America’s corporate lawyers to hear you confirm that letting them have access to secret trade documents so that they could secretly draft those trade documents to benefit their corporate clients results in documents that will be “beneficial to American companies” (or more precisely their CEOs) that those lawyers represent. Thank heavens the corporations won’t have to bring malpractice suits against their lawyers. After all, if you can’t benefit the CEO when you get to secretly draft the deal to favor the CEO then you must be an immensely incompetent lawyer. As a law professor, married to law professor, I am pleased to hear that our graduates can succeed in making their plutocrat clients even wealthier when they are engaged in the legal drafting equivalent of shooting fish in a very small barrel with a double-barreled shotgun.

I hope you are sitting down when you read this Josh, because it will obviously come as a shock to you, but the problem is that what is “beneficial to” the corporate CEOs will often be harmful to American consumers, workers, and investors. When you are trying to defend the TPP you need to resist these tendencies towards honesty. You’re not supposed to admit that you know that the TPP is designed to enrich the Nation’s largest corporations and wealthiest CEOs. Josh, though I have never had a job as a shill, I consider it likely that your boss thinks that your job is to make it appear that the administration drafted the TPP to help the American people. Indeed, while I recognize that Obama has said that he is “at heart” a “blue-dog Democrat,” I am fairly sure that a president of the Democratic Party is supposed to make it appear that the TPP was drafted to help American workers. I know, that’s a lot of hypocrisy to spout, but I’m inclined to believe that your job is claim that a trade deal that will be (net) terrible for American workers is a fabulous deal for American workers
.
Alternatively, given that the big automobile companies (two-thirds of which were bailed out by the Treasury) were the second biggest spenders on lobbying to pervert the TPP into a means to further enrich their CEOs, you could simply channel your inner Charlie Wilson and declare that you have always thought that what was “good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”

Here are the two basic problems with channeling Charlie Wilson. First, when you are negotiating a deal to help the American people and workers, rather than the corporation and CEO, you have no reason to conceal the terms from Congress and the public. You do the opposite, you solicit the views of Congress and the public and ensure that they have complete access to the drafts. We have known for thousands of years that “All those that doeth evil hateth the light.” Justice Brandeis was correct that “sunlight is … the best of disinfectants.” TPP cannot survive sunlight, which is why Froman and Obama settled on a strategy of hiding the TPP’s terms in the deepest of shadows.

Second, you would never allow corporate lobbyists and lawyers to secretly craft a trade deal. If you do let them craft the deal they will, 100 percent of the time, favor the interests of the CEOs at the expense of the public, consumers, and investors.

Obama is Manipulated Again by Big Business’ Siren Song of a “Legacy”

Obama sought, for years, to negotiate a “Grand Bargain” with the Republicans to attack the safety net and inflict austerity on the United States. This was economically illiterate, a betrayal of his campaign promises, vicious to those in need, and politically suicidal. (In short, it was just like the TPP.) As I explained in several prior articles, Obama’s efforts to commit what was really the “Grand Betrayal” would have made him a one-term President. The siren song that Timothy Geithner and Bill Daley used to convince Obama to commit this betrayal was the promise that by betraying his supporters he would establish a “legacy” as a “statesman.” Even though it should be obvious to Obama by now that Geithner and Daley were conning him by appealing to his vanity, the sad truth is that the same tactics have proven successful with Obama on the TPP. Consider this gem from the Washington Post:

The TPP will test Obama’s willingness to buck his own party in pursuit of a legacy-burnishing achievement.

The search for a “legacy” near the end of a term of office is a well-known Washington disease that Ecclesiastes 2 warned against – vanity. Lobbyists sing the siren song of “legacy” to induce behavior in lame duck leaders that is otherwise inexplicable. Note that the Washington Post, in a purported news story, treats it as if it were fact that betraying his promises and giving business lobbyists and lawyers the ability to secretly draft deals that will make corporate CEOs wealthy at the expense of the American people would be “a legacy-burnishing achievement” for Obama. I still hope we live in a Nation in which Presidents who betray their word and the people of our Nation in the vain pursuit of creating a “legacy” actually produce a legacy of shame. It will help the reader to know that the paper’s leadership pushes relentlessly in favor of the TPP.

[Demeter]

3. FROM THE COMMENTARY AT LINK

diptherio January 9, 2015 at 10:55 am

There was a spontaneous parade in my little town when the 2008 results came in. Bunch of college students and Dems all cheering and delirious. I just watched the commotion from my apartment window and thought, “suckers.”

Obama’s presidency has been the major force for disenchantment for my generation. Most people in their early-mid 30s (at least in my circle) thought Clinton was mostly alright and actually believed that electing a “black community organizer” was going to turn this country around. As an anarchosyndaclist type, I almost have to thank the man for driving so many of my cohort to increased radicalism. If Obama had actually prosecuted a few banksters, Occupy would probably never have happened, or at least not spread so far and fast.

The neo-libs/cons are over-playing their hand, methinks, and are making eventual blowback by the population at large increasingly likely.


Jason Ipswitch January 9, 2015 at 1:45 pm

The elites think they can handle the blowback when it eventually happens. Thats what the domestic surveillance, “terrorism”, and militarized police are all about. But it appears to me that crushing domestic dissent is a backup. I suspect their primary plan is to start a war as a distraction.

[Demeter]

4. ABA Reminder to Prosecutors: Owing Money Is Not A Crime

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2015/01/aba-reminder-to-prosecutors-owing-money-is-not-a-crime.html

In November, the American Bar Association issued a formal opinion that it was unethical for prosecutors to allow debt collectors to use prosecutorial letterhead when no member of the prosecutor's staff reviews the file to determine if it is likely a crime has been committed. The most amazing thing about the opinion is that it had to be said at all.

I missed the story when it first came out, but Deepak Gupta was all over it at the Consumer Law & Policy Blog with a post and some screen shots of what these letters look like. Also, the ABA Journal has a story about the ethics opinion.

SEE LINK: http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2014/11/aba-issues-formal-ethics-opinion-on-prosecutors-who-rent-out-their-letterhead-to-debt-collectors.html

[haikugal]

5. Thanks Demeter

I appreciate the information. The TPP has to be stopped and keeping abreast of the secrets and understanding how O is selling us out is distressing. Keep up the good work, we need it here!

[Demeter]

24. Welcome to WEE!

You'll find more information than you can handle, here and on Tansy Gold's daily Stock Market Watch. We aggregate REAL news that matters--and some truly scurrilous gossip, if it ties into the topics of politics/economics, and some humor--either bitter or truly comic--just to lighten the load.

You are with friends here. Come back often. Bring along your posse! We are taking back and Occupying DU (but don't tell anybody, it's a secret).

[haikugal]

45. :-)

That's so exciting! I've been here a very long time but lost my first name when I quit DU sometime around 2005/6, I think. DU was such a different place back then.... Even so I don't post often. I've always read your posts and most of Tansy Gold's but I didn't know about this group, wonderful...I'm glad you're still here occupying DU and I agree we need to take it back! Thanks again for sharing your good information!

[kickysnana]

6. My Greatuncle worked for Graceland and we got a private tour when I was about 11

When Elvis was not in residence.

Mom's cousin retired from working at the Opry, clerical only and she kept threatening to take me back stage there when I was visiting in 1999. Might have been interesting but I was more interested in the music than the glitz and I was down doing genealogy and had no mad money with me. My mother's first cousin was Elvis before this Elvis and his father also was from Mississippi but our Elvis went by Al.

I ordered a subcompact car while I was there and they auto upgraded me to a brand new red convertible. I made them change it out because doing genealogy is more of a laid back thing and new red convertibles do not fit that description.

We made a stop at the tiny town where my grandfather was born at home and checked out the cemetery. Later we were told that it was a good thing we were there on on a Weekday because on weekends the local militia trained there. Also what I was looking for was in the "old cemetery" through the trees, poison ivy, hornets and snakes. The distant was going to try to go back there after a frost but before snowfall but we lost contact. We both moved about the same time.

I did get a marriage proposal while I was down there in 1999. Pretty good adventure come to think of it.

[Demeter]

7. Debt Buyer Faces Fine and Loss of Thousands of Court Judgments By Jessica Silver-Greenberg

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/debt-buyer-faces-fine-and-loss-of-thousands-of-court-judgments/?_r=1

In courtrooms across New York State, lawsuits poured in by the hundreds as if manufactured on an assembly line. Some included generic testimony, others relied on bogus affidavits, churned out so rapidly that they were seldom viewed for accuracy. Sound familiar? The same problems that dogged the foreclosure of homes — and prompted public outcry and a multibillion-dollar settlement by some of the nation’s biggest banks — are increasingly showing up in the practices of large buyers of bad consumer debt. The companies, which buy huge swaths of soured bills from lenders for pennies on the dollar, are deluging the courts with shoddy lawsuits, according to a review of debt collection lawsuits along with interviews with state judges and prosecutors. As part of an effort to stamp out such practices, New York’s state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, reached a settlement on Friday with a debt buyer, the Encore Capital Group, over concerns that the company filed thousands of flawed debt collection lawsuits against state residents.

“New York has laws in place to ensure no one can prey on consumers, and debt collectors are required to follow those rules,” said Mr. Schneiderman. He added that “today’s settlement ensures that thousands of New Yorkers will see millions in relief from debts that were not enforceable in the first place.”

The settlement, which requires Encore to pay a $675,000 penalty and vacate more than 4,500 court judgments against borrowers — is part of a broader push by state and federal authorities to root out questionable debt collection practices that can stymie vulnerable borrowers just as they are trying to dig out from the financial crisis.

“We are pleased to have addressed and resolved the attorney general’s concerns in a manner that supports consumers’ interests,” said Lisa Margolin-Feher, a spokeswoman for Encore Capital, adding that the company was committed to “treating consumers fairly and with respect.” That commitment, she said, was demonstrated when it created “the industry’s first consumer bill of rights.”

The action against Encore Capital, which is based in San Diego, is the latest in a series of enforcement actions Mr. Schneiderman has brought against debt buyers. In May, he reached agreements with two other large buyers of stale consumer debts, the PRA Group in Norfolk, Va., and the Sherman Financial Group, based in New York. Under those deals, the companies agreed to nullify judgments, valued at more than $16 million, against New York residents. Together, the settlements take aim at the booming world of buying consumer debt, an industry that scoops up billions of dollars in long-overdue credit card bills, auto loans and other debt from lenders. The sums are vast. Between 2006 and 2009, the top nine debt buyers purchased 90 million consumer accounts valued at about $143 billion, according to the Federal Trade Commission. While the total amount of bad debt has shrunk as the financial crisis recedes, one in seven adults in the United States is being pursued by debt collectors, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

To obtain payments on some of that debt, buyers like Encore Capital often turn to the courts in a practice that some state authorities say effectively turns the civil court system into a debt collection arm. In New York State alone, according to a tally by Mr. Schneiderman’s office, Encore Capital and its subsidiaries filed more than 239,000 lawsuits from 2007 to 2012. Encore Capital collected $564.7 million in legal collections in 2013, according to a regulatory filing, up more than 49 percent from those in 2011. The PRA Group brought in roughly $80.2 million through legal collections in the last three months of 2013, up roughly 22 percent from a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing. Some of those lawsuits deluging the courts are marred by errors, according to the interviews. A review by The New York Times of court records shows that some lawsuits include fabricated credit card statements created years after borrowers stopped paying their bills.

The concerns about erroneous documents recall those that arose after the 2008 mortgage crisis, when banks were accused of robo-signing — a process of producing similar documents by the hundreds without reviewing them for accuracy. But unlike mortgage foreclosure lawsuits, consumer debt collection cases often play out far from public view, consumer lawyers say, because borrowers seldom show up in court to contest the suits. As a result, an estimated 95 percent of debt collection lawsuits result in default judgments against borrowers, an automatic victory for the debt buyers that enables them to garnishee consumers’ wages or freeze bank accounts.

MORE CHICANERY

[Demeter]

8. Europe’s Lapse of Reason

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/european-union-austerity-backlash-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2015-01

At long last, the United States is showing signs of recovery from the crisis that erupted at the end of President George W. Bush’s administration, when the near-implosion of its financial system sent shock waves around the world. But it is not a strong recovery; at best, the gap between where the economy would have been and where it is today is not widening. If it is closing, it is doing so very slowly; the damage wrought by the crisis appears to be long term. Then again, it could be worse. Across the Atlantic, there are few signs of even a modest US-style recovery: The gap between where Europe is and where it would have been in the absence of the crisis continues to grow. In most European Union countries, per capita GDP is less than it was before the crisis. A lost half-decade is quickly turning into a whole one. Behind the cold statistics, lives are being ruined, dreams are being dashed, and families are falling apart (or not being formed) as stagnation – depression in some places – runs on year after year.

The EU has highly talented, highly educated people. Its member countries have strong legal frameworks and well-functioning societies. Before the crisis, most even had well-functioning economies. In some places, productivity per hour – or the rate of its growth – was among the highest in the world. But Europe is not a victim. Yes, America mismanaged its economy; but, no, the US did not somehow manage to impose the brunt of the global fallout on Europe. The EU’s malaise is self-inflicted, owing to an unprecedented succession of bad economic decisions, beginning with the creation of the euro. Though intended to unite Europe, in the end the euro has divided it; and, in the absence of the political will to create the institutions that would enable a single currency to work, the damage is not being undone. The current mess stems partly from adherence to a long-discredited belief in well-functioning markets without imperfections of information and competition. Hubris has also played a role. How else to explain the fact that, year after year, European officials’ forecasts of their policies’ consequences have been consistently wrong?

These forecasts have been wrong not because EU countries failed to implement the prescribed policies, but because the models upon which those policies relied were so badly flawed. In Greece, for example, measures intended to lower the debt burden have in fact left the country more burdened than it was in 2010: the debt-to-GDP ratio has increased, owing to the bruising impact of fiscal austerity on output. At least the International Monetary Fund has owned up to these intellectual and policy failures. Europe’s leaders remain convinced that structural reform must be their top priority. But the problems they point to were apparent in the years before the crisis, and they were not stopping growth then. What Europe needs more than structural reform within member countries is reform of the structure of the eurozone itself, and a reversal of austerity policies, which have failed time and again to reignite economic growth.

Those who thought that the euro could not survive have been repeatedly proven wrong. But the critics have been right about one thing: unless the structure of the eurozone is reformed, and austerity reversed, Europe will not recover...The drama in Europe is far from over. One of the EU’s strengths is the vitality of its democracies. But the euro took away from citizens – especially in the crisis countries – any say over their economic destiny. Repeatedly, voters have thrown out incumbents, dissatisfied with the direction of the economy – only to have the new government continue on the same course dictated from Brussels, Frankfurt, and Berlin...The issue is not Greece. It is Europe. If Europe does not change its ways – if it does not reform the eurozone and repeal austerity – a popular backlash will become inevitable. Greece may stay the course this time. But this economic madness cannot continue forever. Democracy will not permit it. But how much more pain will Europe have to endure before reason is restored?


Joseph E. Stiglitz

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book, co-authored with Bruce Greenwald, is Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress.

[Demeter]

9. ELVIS PRESLEY: Early years (1935–53)

Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Vernon Elvis Presley (April 10, 1916 – June 26, 1979) and Gladys Love Presley (née Smith, April 25, 1912 – August 14, 1958), in the two-room shotgun house built by Vernon's father in preparation for the child's birth. Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered stillborn 35 minutes before him. As an only child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an unusually close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.

Presley's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix: on his mother's side, he was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman; one of Gladys' great-great-grandmothers was Cherokee. Presley's father's forebears were of Scottish and German origin. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family.

Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evidencing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. The Presleys survived the F5 tornado in the 1936 Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of kiting a check written by the landowner, Orville S. Bean, the dairy farmer and cattle-and-hog broker for whom he then worked. He was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average". He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley's country song "Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, was his first public performance: dressed as a cowboy, the ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth.

A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family's church. Presley recalled, "I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it."

Entering a new school, Milam, for sixth grade in September 1946, Presley was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar in on a daily basis. He played and sang during lunchtime, and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played hillbilly music.

The family was by then living in a largely African-American neighborhood. A devotee of Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station WELO, Presley was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, a classmate of Presley's, who often took him into the station. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar tuition by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was 12 years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.

Teenage life in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the public housing complex known as the Lauderdale Courts.

Enrolled at L. C. Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me", in an effort to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher "agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn't appreciate his kind of singing."

He was usually too shy to perform openly, and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy". In 1950, he began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Jesse Lee Denson, a neighbor two-and-a-half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, he began ushering at Loew's State Theater. Other jobs followed, including Precision Tool, Loew's again, and MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew out his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. On his own time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing them.

Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Lauderdale Courts, he competed in Humes's Annual "Minstrel" show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with "Till I Waltz Again with You", a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: "I wasn't popular in school ... I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show ... when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, 'cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became after that."

Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and played by ear. He also frequented record stores with jukeboxes and listening booths. He knew all of Hank Snow's songs, and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills. The Southern Gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African-American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South, on only the nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations, such as WDIA-AM, that played "race records": spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African-American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he had known Presley before he was popular, when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated from high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.



Presley's birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi

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10. Ole Shep

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11. Fairley Holden and his Six Cold Papas "Keep The Cold Icey Fingers Off Of Me"

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12. Inside the Underground Bunker Condos Where 1 Percenters Plan to Ride Out the Apocalypse

http://www.alternet.org/inside-underground-bunker-condos-where-1-percenters-plan-ride-out-apocalypse?akid=12668.227380.5NspPQ&rd=1&src=newsletter1029988&t=4


If you do have a few million lying around, a piece of these fortified silos can be yours...Without the savvy to live off the land that we associate with survivalists, how are the one-percenters supposed to get through the apocalypse? It’s tough to envision the well-heeled skinning deer to feed their Wall Street dinner party guests. But now the elite have another option. Instead of handing the future to bearded crackpots building sandbag barricades on rural compounds, the rich can score a luxury underground Survival Condo nice enough to remind them of the one they left in Manhattan. Built in two underground missile bunkers at an undisclosed location in Kansas, the units run from $1.5 to $.4.5 million and typically can’t be financed—so that sum’s got to be paid up front. But if you do have a few million lying around, a piece of these fortified underground silos can be yours. So far, there’s no shortage of takers. The first silo is reportedly sold out, and the second is currently accepting contracts.

It would likely take a serious cataclysm to drive posh coasties to the Kansan underworld, and you can’t sell these things without also selling fear. In fact, the project’s website includes a photo of a colorless DC skyline ravaged by an implied nuclear holocaust, complete with a bombed-out capitol building. (Another page includes an illustration of the Statue of Liberty nearly submerged by stormy seas, with nary an ape in sight.) But project manager Larry Hall rejects the notion that these units are for tinfoil hat types: “There is a stereotype of some survivalists as being single-minded—that they spend virtually all of their time doing just survival activities with no other activities,” he wrote to me in an email. This survivalist subculture is indeed fixated, as any viewer of A&E’s hit reality series “Doomsday Preppers” would attest. But Hall says those aren’t his customers. “We are not like that. Most of our clients are professional people who run businesses and have diversified interests. The involvement in the survival condo project is a recognition that there are a lot of potential threats that could disrupt their normal lives, and they want to have a plan for that possibility.”

The luxury Survival Condos are the product of meticulous labor and forethought. Someone had to dream up and execute the three separate water supplies, dog parks, a library and classroom, food production facilities, and a general store that will presumably recognize a currency severely disrupted by all the doom raging outside. The marketing literature correctly contends that strategizing the logistics of survival beneath the clattering hooves of the Four Horsemen would be a massive drain on one’s energy. Survival Condos caters to customers rich enough to outsource those obsessive measures. But there’s not much that ideologically distinguishes buyers of luxury Survival Condos from so-called preppers: both activities are rooted in a reactionary desire to maintain the status quo, even as the world crumbles.

When I asked Hall about the likelihood of a disruptive, mass-scale disaster that would necessitate these measures, he responded with the cliche endemic to all rhetoric about things that scare us: “it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.” It was the same mantra guiding Cold War-era families to build bomb shelters under their kitchens, and that inspired the government to commission the very subterranean self-preservation tanks now hosting Hall’s project. The “if, not when” survivalist ethos is the cornerstone of every episode of “Doomsday Preppers.” Each episode profiles families across the country gearing up for their own nightmare scenario. They learn hand-to-hand combat, hoard canned produce and teach their kids to fire rifles to mow down eventual intruders from the wrong side of dystopia.

THE REST IS A MORAL PHILOSOPHY EXERCISE...

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13. Economic Update: Real vs. Fakenomics By Richard D. Wolff, Truthout | Radio Program

This episode provides updates on rising health insurance costs, rebel economists and Senate costs. We also respond to questions on the Greek crisis, falling school funding and the wealth inequality in the US that blocks "recovery." Finally, we interview London economics professor John Weeks...

PODCAST AT LINK: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28444-economic-update-real-vs-fakenomics

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14. Vermonters Lobby for Public Bank - and Win Millions for Local Investment Instead

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28455-vermonters-lobby-for-public-bank-and-win-millions-for-local-investment-instead


...There’s another group of Americans, however, with a different agenda for the future of banking—people who are also pushing hard for policy change. They’re advocates of public banking, and they want to see new banks created that would be owned and operated by the government, usually at the state or city level. (This would greatly increase the amount of investment capital available for small business development, local infrastructure, and affordable public transportation, none of which are much favored by private banks seeking a high return on investment.) Gwendolyn Hallsmith is one of those advocates. She’s currently the executive director of the Public Banking Institute, but she worked previously as a public servant in Montpelier, Vermont, where she resides with her husband and son, and ran for mayor in 2014... To Hallsmith, the main advantage of a public bank is lower-cost financing, which can enable the state to pay for things like building affordable housing, repairing infrastructure, and expanding educational opportunities. And each of these projects creates jobs. Public banks “allow cities, counties, and states to finance important public priorities without needing to rely on Wall Street and pay the hidden interest tax that Wall Street imposes on all our money,” Hallsmith said.

The quest to achieve public banking at the state and local level has been a long slog. Until quite recently, you had to go back almost 100 years to find the last major victory: the founding of the bank of North Dakota, the only state-run public bank in the United States, which was established in 1919. But interest has been picking up around the country. Santa Fe, New Mexico, voted in October to conduct a study on the feasibility of a city-run public bank. And in December, the Seattle City Council’s finance committee hosted experts in public banking to explore the topic. But nowhere have the steps toward public banking been more successful than in the state of Vermont. There, Hallsmith and other advocates won a small victory against Wall Street through an effort so relentless and strategic that it would have made any banking lobbyist proud. They combined savvy organizing with data-driven reports and policy briefs to prove the benefits of a public bank—like avoiding fat interest payments to Wall Street banks—for the state’s economy. And because the original bill put forward by Vermont state Senator Anthony Pollina and others included multiple demands—create a public bank, direct 10 percent of the state’s reserves to initially fund it, and establish an advisory committee on how best to invest locally—advocates won a decent compromise in the end.

They may not have gotten the state bank they wanted, but they were able to pass new rules that make the Vermont state treasury’s cash balances available for low-cost loans to local projects. The step Vermont took is called “10 Percent for Vermont.” Under this law, passed in June, up to 10 percent of the state treasury’s cash balance—which as of November was about $350 million—can be used for lending and investment within the state. The law also created a Local Investment Advisory Committee to advise the treasurer on “funding priorities” and “mechanisms to increase local investment.”...The final version of the 10 Percent for Vermont program did not create a public bank. But it helped to accomplish some of the same goals, like providing low-cost financing for state projects that might otherwise not be able to secure affordable or long-term funding. It’s not new for Vermont to enable its treasurer to lend locally—the state has had several similar programs in place since 2012. But typically, according to Hallsmith, the state would “borrow the money from Wall Street to do it.” Now, state officials can use the money from the state treasury’s deposits to do this kind of lending directly.

In 2014, the treasurer’s office made several local investments that counted toward the “10 Percent” total, but were authorized under previous laws. One example is the Vermont Clean Energy Loan Fund, which allocated $6.5 million in loans to encourage energy efficiency in residential home projects in the state, such as in Shelburne and Rutland counties. Another is a $2.8 million loan to Vermont’s Housing Finance Agency to support 111 units of multifamily affordable housing. A third is a loan fund approved in June that allocated $8 million for improved energy efficiency in state government buildings, with the goal of reducing their energy use by at least 5 percent (the state currently spends $14 million a year on energy bills). All told, in 2014, Vermont’s treasury lent out $24.5 million to local projects. Even though this money was authorized by prior legislation, it still counts toward the 10 percent of the state’s cash balance—that is, $35 million—that the treasury may lend to the community. That means there is still approximately $10 million in additional funds available for local investment—money that the treasurer would not have been able to lend were it not for the 10 percent program.

AND THE STRUGGLE FOR A PUBLIC BANK GOES ON...MORE AT LINK

Alexis Goldstein is a former wall street professional and current Occupy Wall Street activist

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15. Greg Palast: Greece Is a Crime Scene, and Vulture Funds Are to Blame

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28446-greg-palast-greece-is-a-crime-scene-and-vulture-funds-are-to-blame

Michael Nevradakis: In light of the upcoming elections, Greece at the present time has unemployment that has surpassed 27 percent, youth unemployment at around 60 percent, hundreds of thousands of Greeks who have migrated abroad, a social state in shambles, and a government in the process of selling off key state industries, public lands and utilities. What is your take on the current economic situation in Greece?

Greg Palast: Well, it's fascinating, because if you read the Western press, Greece is now a "success story." By success meaning you're paying off your creditors; your stock market has recovered and the bond market has recovered somewhat. So as far as most of the press is concerned, everything is fine in Greece. The fact that people are unemployed, that people are still losing their homes and livelihoods, doesn't mean much to the press, because all that matters is the stock market and your creditors. I've been investigating the causes of Greece's collapse; it's a crime scene; it's not something that was a matter of Greeks living beyond their means or being lazy, olive pit-spewing slackers, as the Germans would have it. In fact, I actually looked it up: The average Greek worker works 400 hours more a year than the average German worker. It's a hard-working nation. In fact, I think Greeks are harder on themselves than even the Germans are. It's a hard-working nation, a successful nation, and what happened was your economy was stolen from you.

Continuing this narrative of Greece being a so-called success story: After so many years of IMF and troika involvement in Greece, there are many who still maintain that Greece has no other choice but to continue along this path. You've done a lot of investigating into what entities such as the IMF and the World Bank have done elsewhere, in Latin America and in Asia. What has been the impact of IMF involvement and austerity policies in these other regions?

Well, as my fellow economists Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz have noted, the austerity programs are like medieval bloodletting. If you're sick, they would drain the blood from you, and if you didn't get better, they would say "oh, the problem is that we didn't drain enough blood" and they would bleed you some more. That's how austerity works....No one has yet beaten Keynes' formula, which is that when there's no demand for products, your economy is going to fall apart. Rebuilding demand is the opposite of austerity. This is when you need to borrow; this is when you need to go into deficit. This is when you need to devalue your currency so you can once again export. But you are chained like a prison sentence to the Deutsche mark, which is called the euro right now. You are forced to accept Germany's currency, which makes Greece and its economy overpriced. So the way that your economy is balanced is by reducing wages rather than by reducing the value of your currency, and that's disastrous in many ways, because it's a death spiral. The fact that money is being sliced out of your gut to pay off bondholders - to me that is not a sign of health, that is not a sign of recovery: that's a sign of jackals and vultures chewing at the national economic corpse.

Greg, the main opposition party, Syriza, is currently leading in the polls. Syriza's economic program does not mention anything about a departure from the eurozone or a unilateral stoppage of payments or even a write-down of Greece's debt. Instead, it calls for a renegotiation of the debt load within the confines of the eurozone. What is your reaction to such proposals?

We know which economies have succeeded, that ran into these crises when there was an attack by international financiers. You've had Argentina, you've had Brazil, you've had Ecuador, and the way that they have recovered is, you have to tell these creditor nations and the IMF you're not going to pay. What is the reason that they would renegotiate, what fantasy world do you live in if you're going to say "well, we'll stay in the eurozone, we'll keep paying, but we're begging you to give us a break"? I remember speaking with the president of Ecuador, Alfredo Palacio, many years ago when he went into office and Ecuador was on its back financially. The IMF was dictating the terms of its economy - it was suffering from austerity - and he said he was going to go and try to speak to then-president George Bush and the IMF in Washington and explain to them that if you kill us, if our nation dies economically, we can't pay you: Dead people can't pay off a debt. But unfortunately, the idea of using reason and getting sympathy didn't work at all, so his successor, Rafael Correa, who I also spoke with, said something simple: we're not paying. We're not going to pay this serious interest; we're not going to pay vulture funds; we're not going to pay ransom for our own economy - and the result was that Ecuador has grown enormously by saying no, and the same with Brazil, which threatened default, and same with Argentina, which did the same thing that Greece should do, which is get rid of the euro....Argentina was tied to the dollar. Right now they're going through another fight with international financial vultures, and they're holding strong, and their economy has not only recovered, but they've roared ahead like a rocket, with high employment, and huge increases in national wealth and huge increases in salary in the past decade and a half while they were resisting the IMF diktats. So that's the path for Greece, I mean: Follow Brazil; follow Argentina; follow Ecuador. They did it, they said no. You can't beg your way out of this problem.

Sticking with what you've just said about Argentina in particular, you've done extensive investigative reporting on the activities of so-called vulture funds and how they have targeted countries such as Greece or such as those in Latin America or Africa. One individual in particular, Paul Singer, has been at the heart of your investigations, and is tied both to Greece and to Argentina. Who is Paul Singer and what does he have to do with the cases of these two countries?

Well, if you read my book Vulture's Picnic, which should be coming out in Greek quite soon, these vulture funds - and I didn't give them the name vulture funds, that's what they called themselves for many years - they buy up debts of nations-when there's a crisis like in Greece, when you can buy up the debts at pennies at the dollar, at a fraction of their face value, and then after a deal has been worked out with everyone else, they are the final holdouts and they demand, in the case of Greece for example, you had creditors who accepted a large cut in the principal of the bonds; the bonds were revalued downward, interest rates were cut - Singer and one of his associates were the holdouts, and they not only didn't take a loss on their bonds, they were paid multiples and earned something in the area of 200 to 300 percent profit on their bonds. The Greek government made exceptions and paid them additional money.

What they do is they hold your nation ransom. They're doing the same thing in Argentina, but Argentina has said, the president of Argentina Christina Fernandez Kirchner, said "I do not pay ransom, I will not pay vultures." And they are simply refusing to pay these creditors. They're simply not going to pay ransom. Other nations have fought these vultures, and in fact, their activities. The people who have been attacking Greece like Paul Singer, the vulture, his activities have been outlawed in, for example, the British Commonwealth . . . England, Canada, and throughout the British Commonwealth. These are rogue financiers, their activities are banned and are criminal or quasi-criminal in some parts of the world, but these are the people who are dictating to your economics ministers.

MORE ON GREECE, VULTURES, REAGAN AND THATCHER AND THE EURO, AT LINK

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16. ELVIS: First recordings (1953–55) Sam Phillips and Sun Records

In August 1953, Presley walked into the offices of Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". He would later claim that he intended the record as a gift for his mother, or that he was merely interested in what he "sounded like", although there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer Peter Guralnick argues that he chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, "I sing all kinds." When she pressed him on who he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, "I don't sound like nobody." After he recorded, Sun boss Sam Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man's name, which she did along with her own commentary: "Good ballad singer. Hold."

In January 1954, Presley cut a second acetate at Sun Records—"I'll Never Stand In Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You"—but again nothing came of it. Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows. He explained to his father, "They told me I couldn't sing." Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver. His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, leader of Smith's professional band, which had an opening for a vocalist. Bond rejected him after a tryout, advising Presley to stick to truck driving "because you're never going to make it as a singer".

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring to a broader audience the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'" In June, he acquired a demo recording of a ballad, "Without You", that he thought might suit the teenage singer. Presley came by the studio, but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session.

The session, held the evening of July 5, 1954, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the last two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended in order to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed he was black. During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.

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17. Elvis Presley - I'll Never Stand in Your Way

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18. Elvis Presley - My Happiness (1953)

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19. Elvis Presley-That's When Your Heartaches Begin.(private 1953).

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21. AND THE FIRST COMMERCIAL RECORDING

Elvis Presley.... Thats Alright (Mama)- First Release - 1954

Blue Moon of Kentucky

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75. Thanks for all these old Elvis tunes!

He had so many songs, albums, even movies.
He died too young.

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20. Elvis Presley-It Wouldn't Be The Same Without You (1954)

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22. IN COURT AND CONGRESS, OBAMA'S RESISTANCE TO PIPELINE TESTED

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_KEYSTONE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-09-22-20-33

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a double blow, the newly empowered Republican-led Congress and the Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday undercut President Barack Obama's opposition to the long Keystone XL oil pipeline.

But the White House, which issued a veto threat earlier in the week, said its "position and posture" remained unchanged, and environmentalists said Obama should kill what would amount to "a global warming disaster."

The House voted 266-153 to approve a bill authorizing construction of the Canada-to-Texas pipeline, with 28 Democrats joining majority Republicans in support. It was one of the first pieces of legislation considered by the new, GOP-controlled Congress, which has made approval of the pipeline a top priority and has long been headed for a confrontation with Obama on the issue.

The Republican cause was emboldened Friday, when Nebraska's highest court tossed out a lawsuit challenging the pipeline's route, an obstacle the White House said must be removed before it could decide whether the huge cross-border project was in the national interest and the administration could proceed with its own review.

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23. Will Obama Fold? What do you think, X?

I think that for the sake of everyone on the planet AS WELL AS the US economy, the pipeline should be killed....

but this is Obama, who takes a perverse delight in screwing real people so that the Corporations get their way....maybe the Koch Bros. have ticked him off and he won't buckle?

...the suspense is agonizing....

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26. i know i want growth in green technology.

does the beltway including obama feel the same?

the magic 8 ball is doubtful.

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30. Unfortunately, we are all standing behind that 8 ball...

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32. I'm bringing back the Saturday Morning Cartoon tradition...

if you're going for nostalgia, go all the way, I always say.

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25. The Dark Side Of the Jobs Report: Shrinking Workforce, Stagnant Wages DEAN BAKER

http://ourfuture.org/20150109/the-dark-side-of-the-jobs-report-shrinking-workforce-stagnant-wages

The unemployment rate edged down to 5.6 percent in December from 5.7 percent in November (revised from an earlier reported 5.8 percent), the Labor Department reported today. However, the main reason was that 273,000 workers reportedly left the labor force. The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) was unchanged at 59.2 percent, roughly 4.0 percentage points below the pre-recession level.

The establishment survey showed the economy adding 252,000 jobs in December. With upward revisions to the prior two months’ data, this brings the three-month average to 289,000. Some of the job growth in December was likely attributable to better than usual weather for the month. For example, construction reportedly added 48,000 jobs; restaurant employment rose by 43,600. But even without these strong gains, there was still healthy job growth. Manufacturing added 17,000 jobs, finance added 10,000, and professional and business services added 52,000. Unlike prior months, the jobs in this sector were mostly (35,200) in the less well-paying administrative and waste services category. The health care sector added 34,100 jobs. Job growth in this sector has accelerated sharply, averaging 36,500 over the last three months. By comparison, it averaged just 21,200 in the year from September 2013 to September 2014. Retail added just 7,700 jobs. This reflects the earlier than usual Christmas hiring, which added 88,300 jobs the prior two months.

The story on wages is less encouraging. The widely touted November jump in wages was almost completely reversed, with the December data showing a 5-cent drop from a downwardly revised November figure. The average over the last three months grew at a 1.1 percent annual rate compared with the average of the prior three months, down from a 1.7 percent growth rate over the last year. This may be due in part to a shift to lower paying jobs in restaurants, retail, and the lower-paying portions of the health care industry. However, it is also possible that we are just seeing anomalous data. Nonetheless, the claims of accelerating wage growth have no support in the data.



Interestingly, there seems to be some shift to generally less-skilled production and non-supervisory workers. The index of weekly hours for these workers is up 3.6 percent from its year-ago level. By contrast, the index for all workers is up by just 3.3 percent. Since the former group is more than 80 percent of the payroll employees, hours for supervisory workers would have risen by just 2.5 percent. This is consistent with employment data showing much sharper employment gains for workers with high school degrees or less than for college grads. The EPOP for college grads is actually down by 0.2 percentage points over the last year...Other data worth noting in the household survey include a rise in the employment-to-population ratio for African Americans of 1.8 percentage points over the last year and for African-American men of 2.2 percentage points. The EPOP for African Americans is up by 3.9 percentage points from its low in 2011, although it is still down by 4.0 percentage points from pre-recession levels. The 10.4 percent December unemployment rate for African Americans is down from a recession peak of 16.8 percent.

This report shows some evidence of the labor market effects of the Affordable Care Act. While the number of people choosing to work part-time was down slightly from its November level, it is still 1.1 million above its year-ago level. The number of people who are self-employed is also up from its year-ago level. Averaging the last three months, the number of self-employed workers is up by 480,000 (3.5 percent) from the same months of 2013. (It had been dropping in 2013.) Also, the over-55 age group comprised just 37.6 percent of employment growth in 2014, compared to an average of 65.3 percent in the prior two years. This could indicate that many pre-Medicare age workers now feel they can retire since they can get insurance through the exchanges. On the whole, this is clearly a very positive report with the strong December jobs number (even if inflated by weather) coupled with upward revisions to the prior two months. However, quit rates are still very low and wage growth remains weak. This should remind the public of how far the labor market has to go before making up the ground lost in the recession.

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27. The Right Tries (and Fails) to Justify Its Assault on Social Security RICHARD ESKOW

http://ourfuture.org/20150109/the-right-tries-and-fails-to-justify-its-attack-on-social-security

How does the right justify the kind of action Congress took this week, when it moved to cut disability benefits for millions of people by 20 percent? Answer #1: With buzzwords and rhetorical dodges. Answer #2: Not very well.... Republicans moved to cut Social Security disability benefits by blocking a routine reallocation of funds. That’s bad enough, but their end game is even worse: broad Social Security cuts and the privatization of the entire program. That would be bad for most Americans, but great for the people who finance the Republican Party – and think tanks like Heritage. There would be less pressure to increase taxes on billionaires. Wall Street would have more money under its control. And the far right’s antigovernment ideology would have claimed another scalp.

Heritage’s defense of the House is a good example of the right’s time-worn strategies for concealing – perhaps, at times, even from itself – the moral and human implications of its actions. It’s written by Romina Boccia, the “Grover M. Hermann fellow in federal budgetary affairs in the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation” – (now there’s a title!) – and is called “The House Just Made It Harder for Politicians to Steal From Social Security Retirement Fund.”--See what they did there, before we’ve even read the text? They changed the subject from “disabled Americans” to “politicians.” (People hate “politicians,” right?) But the money wouldn’t go to “politicians,” who have generous retirement and disability plans. It would go to the disabled. And it wouldn’t be “stolen.” It would be borrowed – from the same payroll tax which funds retirement benefits. The Heritage piece is a compendium of right-wing Social Security feints, many brewed up in the manifold organizations funded by anti-government hedge fund billionaire Pete Peterson. We’re told, for example, that the House’s parliamentary move “set the stage for long-overdue Social Security reforms to protect disabled Americans and seniors from indiscriminate benefit cuts” –

(As opposed to ‘discriminate’ benefit cuts?)

– and that it “strengthens the integrity of Social Security’s separate trust funds” by “prevent(ing) lawmakers from raiding retirement funds to shore up the bleeding disability trust fund.” (Emphases mine.)

“Strengthen.” “Integrity.” Raiding.” “Bleeding.” These are code words designed to fire neurons in the lizard brain. Take them away and what’s left? The distasteful sight of prosperous Republican House members cutting disabled people’s already meager benefits. As for the transfer of funds, Ms. Boccia doesn’t mention that Congress has made this very minor adjustment 11 times in the past. She makes it sound as if President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew are proposing something novel, strange – even dangerous. She even throws in a scare paragraph from a fellow Heritage employee suggesting that the entire program is in danger and warning of the “destitution” that might ensue. Then she tips her organization’s hand:

“This change,” Ms. Boccia writes of the House’s move, “sets the stage for comprehensive Social Security reform in the 114th Congress.”

Well, of course it does. Disability benefits are just the prelude. They’re after bigger game. The right wants what it has wanted ever since Social Security was first created: its dismantlement.

MORE AT LINK

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34. Want 5.8 Million New U.S. Jobs? Do This. DAVE JOHNSON

http://ourfuture.org/20140226/want-5-8-million-new-us-jobs-do-this



The United States could create up to 5.8 million new jobs, reduce our trade deficits by up to $500 billion per year by 2015 and increase U.S. gross domestic product by up to $720 billion per year if we act to end global currency manipulation. Simple as that. Currency manipulation makes the U.S. dollar more expensive than it would be in a free currency market. This means that products made and services performed in the U.S. cost more than products made and services performed in other countries. Business migrates to companies located in the manipulators’ countries, which costs U.S. jobs and increases the trade deficit. A report released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), titled “Stop Currency Manipulation and Create Millions of Jobs,” shows how currency manipulation by China and others are costing the United States between 2.3 million to 5.8 million jobs.

According to the report, realigning exchange rates could:

Reduce U.S. trade deficits by up to $500 billion per year by 2015;
Increase U.S. GDP by up to $720 billion per year (a 4.9 percent increase);
Support creation of up to 5.8 million jobs (a 4.1 percent increase); and,
Increase manufacturing jobs by up to 2,337,300 jobs (a 15.9 percent increase).

Also, increased tax revenues and reduced safety net expenditures would reduce the 2015 federal budget deficit by up to $266 billion, up to an 86.1 percent decline in the projected federal deficit.

From the report:

Reducing trade deficits by eliminating currency manipulation would cost the federal government nothing; in fact, increased tax revenues and reduced safety net expenditures would reduce federal budget deficits by between $107 billion and $266 billion in 2015 (34.4 percent to 86.1 percent), and net state and local resources would increase by between $40 billion and $101 billion.

Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said on a press call about the report, “This report so clearly outlines that currency manipulation has such an impact on jobs and workers, it is a key part of the trade imbalance.” Levin also said that the “TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] has to address this currency issue.”

The Obama administration doesn’t label countries like China as currency manipulators with the “intent” of being more competitive (a requirement of the current law), likely because the administration wants China’s cooperation in dealing with countries like North Korea. (Coincidentally, it seems that when pressure to confront China over currency increases, tensions with North Korea increase, and pressure over currency is dropped.) A bill that would force action on currency manipulation has passed the Senate, but as is so often the case, the Republican House leadership is obstructing a vote.

Currency manipulation is a very big deal. It isn’t complicated; it’s one more way we allow other countries to take our jobs, factories and money. There are people making vast fortunes from this, and those fortunes make them very powerful enough politically to purchase congressional obstruction. Call your senators and your representative and let them know you are paying attention to this.

FUNNY, I HAVE NOTICED THAT THE US IS ALWAYS TRYING TO BOOST THE DOLLAR. WOULDN'T THAT COUNT AS CURRENCY MANIPULATION, TOO?

[xchrom]

28. Russia Cut to One Step Above Junk by Fitch on Oil, Sanctions

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/russia-credit-grade-cut-to-step-above-junk-by-fitch-on-oil-slide.html

Russia’s credit rating was cut to the lowest investment grade by Fitch Ratings after plummeting oil prices and the conflict over Ukraine triggered the worst currency crisis since the country’s 1998 default.

Fitch, which last downgraded Russia in 2009, cut the sovereign one step to BBB-, according to a statement issued Friday in New York. The grade, on par with India and Turkey, has a negative outlook.

“The economic outlook has deteriorated significantly since mid-2014 following sharp falls in the oil price and the ruble, coupled with a steep rise in interest rates,” Fitch said in the statement. “Plunging oil prices have exposed the close link between growth and oil.”

The world’s biggest energy exporter is on the brink of a recession after crude fell more than 50 percent since June and the U.S. and its allies imposed sanctions following President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March. The penalties have locked Russian corporate borrowers out of international debt markets and curbed investor appetite for the ruble, stocks and bonds.

[Demeter]

33. Betcha Warren Buffett is buying up Russian bonds

Fitch has a lot of nerve.

[Fuddnik]

35. I think he's quietly moving into commercial real estate.

I've been seeing a lot of properties, and office buildings around here lately, with Berkshire-Hathaway signs on them.

Never saw them before, until recently.

[Demeter]

36. That's a long-term investment, IMO

I expect Russia's economy will recover long before the US's economy. Either they take the screws off Mother Russia, or the whole West comes tumbling down...because the Eurozone is screaming for mercy, and Europe is our biggest trading partner.

[xchrom]

29. Gross Says Wage Growth Isn't Great Enough to Sustain U.S. Expansion

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/gross-says-wage-growth-not-enough-to-sustain-u-s-expansion.html


Bill Gross said growth in wages lagging behind increases in U.S. employment gains makes it difficult to maintain the economic expansion at a pace that the Federal Reserve would like to see to raise interest rates.

“It’s about wages” as to why the U.S. 10-year note yield is so low, Janus Capital Group Inc. (JUCIX)’s Gross said in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Mike McKee. “The market is conflicted over what the Fed will do.’

Employment rose a more than forecast 252,000 positions in December and the jobless rate declined to 5.6 percent, a Labor Department report showed. The report wasn’t all good news as earnings unexpectedly declined 0.2 percent from a month earlier.

‘‘We are creating a lot of jobs, part of it may be part-time,” said Gross, who used to run the world’s biggest bond fund before joining Janus in September. “The creation of jobs is one thing, the creation of wages is another. Minus 0.2 percent in the month and a 1.7 percent annual hourly increase, just isn’t enough to sustain a U.S. economy.”

[xchrom]

31. Oil Drillers Bail on U.S. Boom, Idle Most Rigs Since 1991

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/u-s-oil-rigs-decline-by-most-in-a-week-since-1991.html


After six straight months of plunging oil prices, U.S. shale drillers have sent the clearest signal to date that they’re retreating.

Thirty-five horizontal rigs, their weapon of choice for reaching oil deposits in tight-rock formations such as North Dakota’s Bakken shale and Texas’s Permian Basin, were idled last week alone. It was the biggest single-week drop since a drilling boom touched off six years ago that propelled domestic production to the highest level in three decades and eventually helped trigger the global price war that the U.S. and OPEC find themselves in today.

The decline, the largest in a decade and the seventh in a row, threatens to halt U.S. oil production growth by slowing drilling in tight-oil plays that make up virtually all of the nation’s new output. Bending to the pressure of crude below $50 a barrel, the country’s explorers idled the most rigs last quarter since 2009.

“The message from the market, that drillers need to start changing their behavior, has now been received by the big boys in the shale plays,” Harold York, vice president of integrated energy at consulting company Wood Mackenzie Ltd., said yesterday by telephone from New York. “The tight-oil players have received the message, and they’re taking action.”

[Fuddnik]

37. Anybody know where I can get a couple of good flak jackets?

We have tickets to see "Book of Mormon" in 2 weeks, and want to be prepared in case the Mormons get their magical underwear all twisted up in a knot.

[Demeter]

42. Good luck to you

Everything I've heard of that show make me determined NOT to see it, ever...

How's the -rent situation?

It's incredibly cold and brightly sunny. I would be content just to stay in and drowse in the sun, by the monitor, but the Kid wants out (she was sick all week and is now going stir-crazy). They are showing the Wizard of Oz (restored, I hope) at the cinema. That's more my speed, and hers.

Wow! We're up to 7F! They said earlier it wouldn't get above zero today....and we are up to maybe 5-6 inches of snow on the ground. It falls in half-inch to one inch amounts, once or twice a day.

I came in fourth out of 7 at euchre, last night. The cards weren't with me, and I had a partner that never let me bid...whenever I had a good hand. Sigh. Partners are assigned by lot.

I am slowly recovering from LAST winter. Every day I wake up and smile and say: "I don't have to go out and throw the papers today!" It's amazing how much that took out of me last year.

We had two huge crashes yesterday: highway 23 was closed about 7 miles south of here for 12 hours in both directions.

The southbound lanes of US-23 at Carpenter Road have reopened after a crash involving several vehicles and semi trucks...Twelve semi trucks and 15 cars were strewn across the highway. Two people had to be extracted from vehicles -- one from a vehicle and the other from a semi truck -- with the Jaws of Life. Police said one person was pronounced dead at St. Joe's after the incident.



94 was closed around Kalamazoo, reportedly fireworks were involved.

I-94 Still Closed After Massive 193 Vehicle Pileup

Both sides of I-94 in southwestern Michigan remain closed as crews remove acid and tow away vehicles stuck in an extraordinary pileup on the snowy highway.

The number of vehicles involved in a series of crashes Friday in Kalamazoo County has fluctuated. State police now say there were 193, including dozens of semis.

A truck carrying fireworks caught fire, triggering a spectacular explosion of the cargo. A 57-year-old truck driver from Ottawa, Canada, was killed and about two dozen people were taken to hospitals — including two firefighters who were injured while attempting to extinguish fires from vehicles.

Police said approximately 50 cars and trucks remained in westbound lanes Saturday morning and four trucks are in eastbound lanes.

“One of the things that is slowing down the cleanup is having to transfer the chemicals from the one damaged trailer to another damaged trailer,” State Police Sgt. Scott Leroy told WWJ’s Lauren Barthold. “At this point, there is still no estimate as to when the roads are going to be reopened.”

Work to clear the scene has been described as “brutal,” especially with temperatures barely above zero. ?w=620&h=349&crop=1

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2015/01/10/i-94-still-closed-after-massive-193-vehicle-pileup/

There are more crashes today...people are nuts, driving like the Speedway on glaze ice.

[Fuddnik]

47. I saw the fireworks on The Weather Channel this morning.

It's been crazy here. We went up to SC and brought my dad back over xmas. What is normally an 8 1/2 -9 hour drive, became almost 14. All the delays in SC.

He had his meds all screwed up, and couldn't remember taking or not taking anything. And he wouldn't eat or drink hardly anything, so he got dehydrated again, and I put him in the hospital on Jan. 2. He's still there, and may get out on Monday, and go into rehab for PT. Then find him a home.

The only good thing is, he's too weak to walk to his car, so the public is a little safer.

[Demeter]

51. Good luck with that

It seems like this is the hardest time in the life cycle...can you actually get him to go along with your plan for his care? That's the hardest part. The standards for competence are laughably low.

[MattSh]

40. Ukraine Says $450 Million Was Stolen from Its Military in 2014 | The Smirking Chimp

President’s Aide Says Far Right Refuses to Obey the President

Yury Biryukov, an aide to Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, said on January 6th that during the year 2014, up to $450 million was stolen from Ukraine’s military. This amount happens to be precisely the same maximum amount of money that the U.S. Government, in legislation that was supported by more than 98% of U.S. Senators and Representatives and that was signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on December 18th, will donate to Ukraine’s military for this year, 2015. Biryukov, who spoke on Ukraine’s Channel 5 TV (which had formerly been owned by Poroshenko), (my note: this is the first time I've heard anything about his channel 5 being sold) said that the amount stolen in 2014 constituted “about 20 to 25 percent” of Ukraine’s military budget for 2014, which was a total of $1.8 billion. During 2015, that budget is scheduled to be $3.2 billion (in constant dollars), or a 78% increase, in order for the Government to prosecute its war against the Donbass region, where the residents had voted 90% for President Viktor Yanukovych, whom the Obama Administration overthrew in February 2014 in a coup that was disguised as being the result of popular demonstrations for democracy but were actually anti-corruption demonstrations — and corruption now is even higher than it was under President Yanukovych. Indeed, Biryakov admitted that in the Ministry of Defense there is now “total corruption.”

However, this phrase might also be applied to the entire Government; for example, recently ‘gold’ bars in a Ukrainian Central Bank vault in Odessa were found to be actually lead bars covered with gold-colored paint. Prior to the discovery that these gold bars were fakes, the Ukrainian Central Bank had said on November 14th that it cannot account for why Ukraine’s gold reserves were only $123.6 million, when what was alleged to be there was supposedly instead $988.7 million. Now that some of those bars are known to be fakes, even the $123.6 million must have been an overestimate. At the time of the overthrow on February 22nd, there was $1.8 billion of gold in Ukraine’s Central Bank main vault, in Kiev. On March 7th at 2 a.m., $1.8 billion of gold was observed being loaded onto a plane at Borosipol Airport near Kiev and was allegedly being sent to the U.S. Federal Reserve basement at Wall Street (33 Liberty Street), but the Ukrainian Central Bank has never confirmed this, and the U.S. Federal Reserve also hasn’t. All that’s known is that Ukraine’s Central Bank now cannot demonstrate that it has any gold, though until the coup last February, it had $1.8 billion in gold.

Clearly, the “total corruption” goes beyond merely Ukraine’s military.

Biryukov also said that Ukraine’s Right Sector, which is a nazi organization that has contributed enormously to the Government’s war-effort and provided troops against the residents in the Donbass region, is refusing to obey President Poroshenko, and Biryukov charged that they insist upon their independence from his Government. Biryukov went on: “The armed forces mean first of all discipline, order and the subordination and command system. And when a patriotic union wants to be sort of a legal, but at the same time autonomous, unit, which subordinates to nobody, this is pure fiction.” However, he could not deny that this same “fiction” has been terrifically effective at slaughtering the people who live in Donbass, nor that its fighters had overthrown the former President, Yanukovych, in February, in a coup that Poroshenko acknowledged at the time to have been a coup.

So, President Poroshenko is heavily indebted to Right Sector, and dependent upon it, as the Right Sector’s chief has constantly stated in public.

Complete story at - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/60357

[MattSh]

41. Was this a strange week, or was it just me?

This whole Charlie Hedbo thing just seemed so so strange. Yes, it was tragic and all, but it just seemed soooo overblown. But I finally found someone who put words to my feelings. We had a full-blown 9/11 (over) reaction to a terrorist attack on a magazine. 9/11 killed 3000+ and by the time this whole Charlie Hedbo thing is over with, there might be a max of 25 dead. Tragic? Yes. But not the scale of a 9/11 tragic.

Then I'm thinking that well, it's because journalists are standing behind their own. So, 8 (I think) of the dead were cartoonists. More journalists have died in Ukraine in 2014, but there was hardly a peep from the journalism establishment. Yeah, most of those dead were Russian, who were ranked way down the human/sub-human scale last year. Of course, they've always ranked poorly in the western world ever since the time of Napoleon. And likely earlier.

Welcome to 2015, I guess. Just like 2014, but with way more stupidity.

If you're so inclined, away.

[Demeter]

43. It was excellent cover for somebody, to be sure.

There's an update on Edward Snowden in NYTimes, and the flaming in the comments doesn't bear thinking about. I am reminded of "The Lord of the Flies", which was probably the first and last book of that type I ever read, or ever shall. Well, I did read Marathon Man, because of my respect for the author's other work, but I walked out of the film at the waterboarding scene....it's amazing the field of dentistry didn't completely dry up from it!

I don't think stupidity is up, I think the brazenness is. After all, they got away with it all last year, and that was an election year, too!

The French people are in shock, though. We in the US know how that feels...when your pissing on others comes back to bite. And Hollande is ass-deep in alligators, and he has no friends inside or outside of France. Poor man! He really ought to have delivered the hardware to Russia...Putin can be a good friend and an implacable enemy.

But, Hollande truckled to the White House, and will have to pay the consequences of leaning on a broken twig. He knew Obama was feckless, or he should have.

It's beginning to feel as if there will be a mass rush for the Euro-exits...maybe they will get together and work out an amicable separation?

[MattSh]

48. 11 Predictions of Economic Disaster in 2015 from Top Experts All over the Globe | The Daily Sheeple

Will 2015 be a year of financial crashes, economic chaos and the start of the next great worldwide depression? Over the past couple of years, we have all watched as global financial bubbles have gotten larger and larger. Despite predictions that they could burst at any time, they have just continued to expand. But just like we witnessed in 2001 and 2008, all financial bubbles come to an end at some point, and when they do implode the pain can be extreme. Personally, I am entirely convinced that the financial markets are more primed for a financial collapse now than they have been at any other time since the last crisis happened nearly seven years ago. And I am certainly not alone. At this point, the warning cries have become a deafening roar as a whole host of prominent voices have stepped forward to sound the alarm. The following are 11 predictions of economic disaster in 2015 from top experts all over the globe…

#1 Bill Fleckenstein: “They are trying to make the stock market go up and drag the economy along with it. It’s not going to work. There’s going to be a big accident. When people realize that it’s all a charade, the dollar will tank, the stock market will tank, and hopefully bond markets will tank. Gold will rally in that period of time because it’s done what it’s done because people have assumed complete infallibility on the part of the central bankers.”

#2 John Ficenec: “In the US, Professor Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio – or Shiller CAPE – for the S&P 500 is currently at 27.2, some 64pc above the historic average of 16.6. On only three occasions since 1882 has it been higher – in 1929, 2000 and 2007.”

#3 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, one of the most respected economic journalists on the entire planet: “The eurozone will be in deflation by February, forlornly trying to ignite its damp wood by rubbing stones. Real interest rates will ratchet higher. The debt load will continue to rise at a faster pace than nominal GDP across Club Med. The region will sink deeper into a compound interest trap.”

#4 The Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, which correctly predicted the bursting of the subprime mortgage bubble in 2007: “Clearly the direction of most of the recent global economic news suggests movement toward a 2015 downturn.”

Complete story at - http://www.thedailysheeple.com/11-predictions-of-economic-disaster-in-2015-from-top-experts-all-over-the-globe_012015

[magical thyme]

49. Hewlett-Packard is offering a one-time pension cashout

We can opt to remain in the pension, or roll our funds into a 401K or personal IRA, or take full distribution. Details to be mailed on 1/15.

Unless it's a really tiny amount of money, I'm rolling mine into an IRA. According to the teacher in my IRA class yesterday, the large companies make it really worth your while to take the offer. Her first word was take-it. When I told her it was H-P, she she said they'll make it worth my while. Her sister works at H-P and I could hear her wheels spinning over the phone. A co-worker of mine had a tiny pension with a company where he'd worked p/t a couple decades ago. When he left if was $1,000. ~20 years later they offered him a cashout of $10,000.

Fingers crossed here.

[DemReadingDU]

50. This is for current H-P employees? or already retired?

[magical thyme]

57. I'm a former DEC employee. The only limitations I see on the brochure are

"the lump sum value as of July 1 must be between $5K and $50K (using plan defintion of of actuarial equivalence for payments commencing July 1, 2014)."

To be honest, I don't know exactly what they mean by that statement. My benefits were to start being paid in 2018. I don't know what the actuarial value is.

There are other requirements that will be listed in the detailed statements.

I'm trying really hard not to get too excited. After talking to the co-employees I'm thinking I may be able to pay off my student loans and even have some money left over...but I just noticed the upper limit. Don't know if that means that's the upper limit of the payout or what...

[DemReadingDU]

58. Sounds like for future pensioners

I was 'retired' from Electronic Data Systems (EDS) 10 years ago.
When I received my meager pension, it was managed by State Street Bank.
Then a few years ago, H-P bought EDS.
But now my pension is managed by Fidelity.

It's crazy trying to understand what is going on.

[magical thyme]

66. I can't tell either...

my actuarial lifespan varies depending on who's actuarial life expectancy tables you look at. But in July 1, 2014 tables it's somewhere between 82 (IRS single LE tables for IRAs) and 85 (social security LE tables). With payouts beginning when I'm 65, that's 17-20 years. That payout works out to 70-75K.

So do they mean how much money my pension is holding as of July 1, 2014? Or how much would be paid out by the time I reach my life expectancy?

I don't know. But I've decided if I don't qualify I'm going to raise a big stink. It's discrimination -- they should offer it to *everybody.* This is the 2nd time a buyout has been offered. DEC offered it to laid off people -- one or two years *after* I was laid off, so I didn't qualify for it that time either.


I'm fighting it -- at least calling them up and raising effing hell -- because for me, it's potentially life-changing. I could pay off my student loans once and for all and be out from under this mess.

Otherwise, the loans will keep growing until I'm 83. Every time I earn a little bit more, my payments go up, but never enough to pay down the loans; only enough to keep me from being able to save. Once the loans are forgiven, I'll owe a one-time tax payment on the forgiven amount. By then, they'll be so huge I'll lose everything to the taxes. They'll be throwing an 83 year old out into the street. So my plan, if I'm still alive, is to check out at that time.

And in the meantime, I'm forced to file my income taxes by early February or the loans automatically revert to their normal amount, which I simply can't afford to pay. From the time my W2s finally arrive, I'm racing to get them done and the effing online systems fail over and over, so I spend a couple days doing nothing but trying to get them filed electronically. It pushes everything so tight that I've come within hours of having to give up and send them overnight mail.

This system is so corrupt it makes me sick.

[antigop]

64. are they converting an annuity to a lump sum? If so...be VERY careful.... nt

[magical thyme]

68. if the lump sum is enough to pay off the student loans

that I'm currently unable to even come close to paying down, I'm taking it. It's that simple. The small monthly payment I'd be getting will be worth nothing compared to getting out from under that burden once and for all.

The income-based repayment program sucks. It's better than being thrown out of my house now, but it's a huge burden that weighs me down. I live in fear that a future adminstration will change the rules to go after anybody who has any asset they can grab. At least now I have a roof over my head until I'm 83 and I owe taxes on the forgiven amount.

In my situation, it's a no brainer. The sheer relief I felt when I first thought I just might be rid of it for good was all I needed to know. My fear is I won't qualify for the program.

[DemReadingDU]

77. Let us know what the package really says when you receive it

Hope it is beneficial for you!

Since I am already retired, I don't expect to receive anything. But with that pension rider in that year-end cronybus legislation, it wouldn't surprise me to get notification that my pension would be reduced.

[magical thyme]

78. one of my fears is knowing that pensions are no longer protected from bankruptcies

My aunt lost her pension in a bankruptcy many, many decades ago. They supposedly changed the laws to prevent that from happening in the future, but all it takes is for a future administration to change them back. Which is what always happens. They change the laws to prevent it, sucker a new generation into taking less salary for greater long-term benefits, then change the laws back and steal the money.

That's another fear I have of the income-based student loan repayment program. The terms and practical issues are bad enough. But there's nothing that says that another administration won't make it worse, or take it away altogether. Just another way to enslave us totally until we die in harness.

The loans have grown so much in just 3 1/2 years that now even reducing the interest rate won't help me. I should have been almost halfway through paying them off by now, but the government employment statistics (14% growth for foreseeable future) were a lie (it's shrinking, not growing), the 100% employment rate per the state university was a lie (well, maybe everybody got jobs...but most had to go back to their old jobs), and salary range quoted to me and a classmate by local HR was a lie (she pumped up the starting rate by 25%). So the work wasn't and isn't there, the pay isn't and will never be there, so the ability to repay simply isn't there.

[DemReadingDU]

82. Pensions are supposed to be protected by PBGC when companies go bankrupt

protected by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
But, one only gets a small percentage of the original amount.

However, with that December cronybus spending bill, there was a rider that said pensions could be reduced up to 50% if the pension fund was underfunded. This supposedly impacted multi-employer union pensions, but the wording was vague. Wouldn't surprise us if that rider applied to all pensions.

It seems to me that the new rules for pensions are the beginning, and eventually will lead to similar reductions in social security.
As Hotler said yesterday "It is time to rise up. It is time to get fighting mad."

Before you take a cashout, while it sounds good to pay off school loans, read the small print.
Good luck!

[Fuddnik]

84. Right. I only get about 1/3 of what I was supposed to get.

And no COLA's, and health insurance went out the window.

[antigop]

90. Companies are offering buyouts to those already retired.

GM for example:

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/GM-Ford-offer-buyouts-to-jettison-pension-plans-3671507.php

[DemReadingDU]

92. Interesting

I have heard nothing from EDS, now H-P.

[Demeter]

52. The role of global supply chains in the transmission of shocks: Firm-level evidence from the 2011 To

http://www.voxeu.org/article/global-supply-chains-and-transmission-shocks



There is an ongoing debate among economists whether international trade contributes to business cycles synchronisation. So far, causal evidence has been limited. This column presents new research on the role of multinational firms in the transmission of shocks. The authors use a rich firm-level dataset from the US Census Bureau and the 2011 Japanese earthquake/tsunami as a natural experiment. They find that US firms with high dependence on Japanese inputs suffered large output losses following the earthquake. Global supply chains, therefore, play an important role in the cross-country transmission of shocks....

IN OTHER NEWS, WATER IS STILL WET

WORD FOR THE CENTURY: autarky

au·tar·ky
ˈôˌtärkē/
noun
noun: autarky; noun: autarchy

economic independence or self-sufficiency.
a country, state, or society that is economically independent.

[Demeter]

53. A brief guest appearance

[Demeter]

54. Fighting Corporate Abuse of Low-Paid Workers, Trial Attorney Takes on AIG, Wins Big

http://truth-out.org/news/item/28408-fighting-corporate-abuse-of-low-paid-workers-trial-attorney-takes-on-aig-wins-big

Randi McGinn, an Albuquerque, New Mexico, based attorney, has spent her career fighting for workers and ordinary people harmed by corporate greed or abuses of government power, winning major victories for her clients and for the public. McGinn and her all-women team of attorneys have taken on AIG, the Albuquerque Police Department, national hospital chains, product manufacturers and many other giants - and won.

Known for her creativity in the courtroom, she once cross-examined a lying government informant until he threw up. She recreated an unjustified shooting inside the courtroom, sang part of one closing argument and rolled around on the floor in front of the jury rail to demonstrate the agony of a client who was having a heart attack.

In her new book, Changing Laws, Saving Lives: How to Take on Corporate Giants and Win (Trial Guides; November 2014), McGinn recounts her battle with insurance giant AIG over a settlement for a young single mother of three who was working the night shift, alone, with no security whatsoever in a convenience store in a rural area near Hobbs, New Mexico. She explains her innovative approach to taking on corporations as well as the Albuquerque Police Department. She also poses five questions for the grand jury members in Missouri who failed to indict Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown killing...

MORE

"The thing corporate America fears the most is the American jury - the only incorruptible American institution that can hold it accountable."

[Demeter]

55. Why Did Swiss Voters Reject Single-Payer Health Care?

BECAUSE...IT WASN'T REALLY SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE? TRUTH IN LABELING!

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2014/12/why-did-swiss-voters-reject-single-payer-health-care



Supporters of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care system in the U.S. were puzzled September 27 when Swiss voters rejected a reform proposal by 62 percent. The new law would have replaced the current system, where about 60 insurance companies offer mandatory health coverage, with a single insurer, the government. It would have offered all medically necessary care, paid for by taxes adjusted to each person’s ability to pay. To Americans who’ve worked for such a system here, nationally and state by state, it was a blow. What’s not to like about single payer?

Swiss and American media, academia, and business sectors rushed to interpret the results. Virtually all crowed that the Swiss people had rejected government-run national health insurance because they preferred private insurers. But these convenient interpretations rely on false assumptions to justify a model of health insurance that is unraveling—less conspicuously in Switzerland, but dramatically in the U.S. Let’s look at what’s wrong with these pro-business interpretations, and see what lessons the Swiss referendum has for single-payer advocates here.

Mainstream Answers

Washington Post “policy wonk” Jason Millman wrote that the Swiss rejection shows that single-payer has little chance of gaining popular support in the U.S. He notes that in 1996, the Swiss voted for an individual mandate that compels everyone to buy a basic package of health services. That law eliminated discrimination for pre-existing conditions, meaning companies have to sell equal plans at equal prices to all customers. The government subsidizes low-income people. In Millman’s view, the resulting Swiss system is very much like Obamacare. Another policy reporter, Avi Roy from Forbes, asserted that Obamacare (and Romneycare before it) was modeled on the Swiss system: people shopping among competing private plans with little government interference. Roy says the referendum demonstrates the “political popularity” of universal coverage via private insurance. He concludes that because the Swiss have rejected single payer, there’s good reason to believe Americans will reject it, too.

What’s Wrong With the ‘Official View’?

These interpretations are based more on ideology than on facts. Why?

First, Swiss health care is not a version of Obamacare. The differences are critical to understanding the implications of the Swiss referendum for health care reform here.

Second, Swiss health care, though far superior to ours in terms of access, quality, and equity, has critical problems that threaten the system. Those problems illustrate why, four years after Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, health care access, quality, and equity are increasingly threatened here too. The Swiss is a model to reject, not to embrace.

Third, the referendum does not prove that the Swiss don’t want government involvement in health care, nor that they like private insurance companies. Quite the opposite. Indeed, an analysis of a series of referendums over several years shows that, like the U.S. population, the Swiss are increasingly unhappy with treating health care as a business, rather than a social good.

1) Obamacare is not a version of the Swiss system.

• The current National Health Care Law, known as LaMal, requires that everybody living and working in Switzerland carry health insurance—we call this an “individual mandate.” So the Swiss are required to purchase insurance for a uniform, comprehensive package of medical services.
  
  
• But the national government operates at every level to make everything run smoothly. To more than 50 percent of the population, the government offers full or partial subsidies to purchase insurance. So more than 99 percent of the population is covered.
  
  
• The government also compels insurers to sell policies to everybody at the same price, irrespective of health status, medical history, gender, age, or location (within each canton, the administrative equivalent of a U.S. state). A 25-year-old and an 80-year-old pay exactly the same premium for the same plan. The only exception: those under 25 pay substantially less. If your income changes, or job changes, or marital status changes, your doctor need not change.
  
  
• The government also enforces a “basic” package that is very comprehensive—in the U.S., some call it “Cadillac,” as if only spoilt Americans would dare demand it! Thus basic insurance, Swiss-style, includes outpatient care—essentially whatever a doctor prescribes—hospital care, mental health, all pharmaceuticals on the government’s list, some rehabilitation services, some dental care, some herbal medicine, and acupuncture.
  
  
• Importantly, the government forbids insurers to make a profit from the sale of the mandatory package, and it compels them to contract with every single health care provider in Switzerland.
  
  
• The government also imposes a system of risk equalization. It compensates companies that enroll individuals with more expensive medical needs, taking the money from companies that enroll healthier users.
  
  
• The government also compels mechanisms to deal with prices. Within each canton, prices must be negotiated between associations of providers and insurers, and everybody must abide by them. So providers within a canton are paid equal amounts for equal services, regardless of which plan the patient has.
  
  ]
• Finally, the state also enforces limited deductibles (about $300 U.S.) in all plans, and a maximum out-of-pocket cost of about $700.Users can choose to purchase cheaper policies as a trade-off for higher deductibles (up to 2,500 Swiss francs, or about $2,500 U.S., for adults, and 600 francs, or about $600 U.S., for children). They can also choose policies with restricted provider networks, though few do.

As you can see, this looks nothing like “no government interference.” Nor does it look like a version of Obamacare. A few comparative points:

Obamacare does not cover 100 percent of the population. In fact, more than 30 million people living in the U.S., the majority of them citizens or legal residents, will remain uninsured by 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Obamacare does not guarantee a homogeneous, generous basic package of services.

It does not guarantee equal prices for equal services—hence all these calls for greater transparency of prices so “consumers” can shop more productively! Prices vary according to age—older people pay up to three times as much—geographical location (over 18 different ones only in California!), even gender composition of the workforce insured.

Providers under Obamacare are paid differently depending on the patient’s plan—which is unheard of, and would be scandalous, in Switzerland.

Obamacare does not guarantee access to every provider in your state—only to providers in your plan, and only as long as your plan does not change.

As to maximum out-of-pocket, we’re not even close to the Swiss.

As to the celebrated choice of plans, it hardly applies to the 160 million Americans with employer-sponsored coverage (now 60 percent of the non-elderly population; it was close to 70 percent back in 2000), who are stuck with whatever “choices” their employers offer (assuming they offer any).

Last and not least, insurers in the U.S. can and do make a profit for selling you insurance for medically necessary care. Which is the only reason they are in the business of selling insurance!

So the belief that Swiss health care and U.S. health care after the ACA are “more or less the same” is quite misguided. At the center of the ACA is a well-oiled money-making machinery for the medical-industrial complex: insurance companies, Big Pharma, and for-profit (and many non-profit) medical establishments.

2) Over the last decade corporate interests have hijacked the Swiss system, despite the strong government oversight. This has led to increasing overall and out-of-pocket costs, making the Swiss system the third most expensive in the world. To control costs, the Swiss government has promoted managed-care options and encouraged users to comparison-shop. So in addition to the classic comprehensive plans, insurers are offering narrower provider networks and higher deductibles and co-pays, and users are prompted to choose plans annually. However, the Swiss appear not to like all these “new choices” after all, because in a 2012 referendum more than 70 percent voted against a dramatic expansion of managed care, proposed as a key mechanism to “control costs and improve the system.” And only a very small minority chooses to change plans every year. Last, a growing number find health care unaffordable and are failing to pay their premiums.

Simply put, all the problems the Swiss are grappling with are rooted in the for-profit nature of the companies that participate in the system. As these companies become more financially successful, and hence more powerful, they get harder to tame—and their influence on the politicians who decide health policies grows stronger and stronger. Clearly, even in the best-case scenario—the highly regulated environment of Swiss private insurers—entrusting them with the provision of health care is assigning a fox to guard the henhouse. The attempt to achieve justice in health care via competing private insurers is a pipe dream.

3) The defeat of the single-payer referendum does not mean the Swiss people reject a government-run system and support private insurance. The Swiss have rejected almost all referendums since 1891—only 20 out of 191 have succeeded, even when issues were popular. Critically, one successful referendum was LaMal, the 1996 health insurance law that banned profit from the sale of medically necessary care. It also allowed the government to pass on money from companies spending less on patient care, to those spending more—certainly not an indicator that the Swiss shun “government interference” on behalf of ordinary people, nor that they trust private insurance to do well by them without supervision. Also worth noting: in 2007 single payer was rejected by 71 percent, but the figure fell to 62 percent in 2014. Maybe the Swiss are beginning to cut through the anti-single-payer propaganda?

Why, then, was single payer defeated? What can we learn?

SEE LINK

Claudia Chaufan, MD, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of California San Francisco and a member of Single Payer Now and of Physicians for a National Health Program.

[Demeter]

56. Thank You Western Taxpayer: Russia To Accelerate $3bn Of Ukraine Debt

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-10/thank-you-western-taxpayer-russia-accelerate-3bn-ukraine-debt

Just 13 short months ago - two months before then President Yanukovich was ousted - Russia lent Ukraine $3 billion (by buying their Eurobonds). As Reuters reports, the terms of that loan included a condition that Ukraine's total state debt should not exceed 60% of its GDP. As of last month, based on Moody's estimates, Ukraine has violated that condition with a debt-to-GDP of 72% (and will likely rise to 85% of GDP in 2015).. and so, according to Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov, "Russia has the right to demand early return of this loan." With European aid 'contingent on major reforms' and possibly taking up to 1 year, this leaves the good old IMF (i.e. the US and European taxpayer) to bridge Ukraine's 'gap' and ironically bailout Russia. As Reuters reports, Russia can demand early repayment of the $3 billion loan at any time...

Ukraine has violated the terms of a $3 billion Russian loan but Moscow has not yet decided whether to demand early repayment, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was quoted on Saturday as saying.

Russia lent the money in December 2013 by buying Ukrainian Eurobonds, two months before Ukraine's then-president, the pro-Moscow Viktor Yanukovich, fled the country amid mass protests against his rule.

The terms of the loan deal included a condition that Ukraine's total state debt should not exceed 60 percent of its annual gross domestic product (GDP).

Last month, rating agency Moody's estimated that Ukraine's debt amounted to 72 percent of GDP in 2014 and would rise to 83 percent in 2015. It also said "the risk of default is rising".

"Ukraine has definitely violated the terms of the loan, and in particular (the condition) not to increase its state debt above 60 percent of GDP," Russia's Siluanov said, according to Interfax news agency.

"So Russia definitely has the right to demand early return of this loan. At the same time, at present this decision has not yet been taken."

But, as Bloomberg notes, the European Union "support" could take a while and it is entirely contingent upon tough reforms for Ukraine...

The European Union is considering a further 1.8 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in aid to Ukraine to help the former Soviet republic overhaul its economy, which has been ravaged by a separatist conflict in its easternmost regions.

The European Commission, the EU executive, said the fresh loans, on top of $17 billion already pledged in the International Monetary Fund-led rescue of the troubled country, were contingent on the Ukrainian government pushing through economic reform measures and fighting corruption.

The EU has provided “unprecedented financial support and today’s proposal proves that we are ready to continue providing that support,” Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said today in a statement. “Solidarity goes hand in hand with commitment to reform, which is urgently needed in Ukraine.”
...
Disbursement of the aid, which must still be approved by the European Parliament and the EU’s 28 governments, will depend on Ukraine’s adherence to the conditions of the IMF program, which include fiscal consolidation, changes in the energy and banking industries, and other measures, the commission said.

This would be the EU’s third package of loans to Ukraine, following two totaling 1.6 billion euros approved last year. A final portion of 250 million euros from the earlier aid is due to be given within the first months of this year, according to the commission.

* * *

So - while Russia 'suffers' under the thumb of plunging oil prices and a tumbling currency crisis, a simple decision to push Ukraine into early repayment could leave Europe - having paid out their entire Ukraine bailout to Russia - asking for more help from the IMF (i.e. The US Taxpayer) to keep the 'crucial' nation state of Ukraine from default.

[Demeter]

59. Half-Full Glasses 2013 FEB

By Dave Altig, executive vice president and research director of the Atlanta Fed

http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2013/02/half-full-glasses.html

Just in case you were inclined to drop the "dismal" from the "dismal science," Northwestern University professor Robert Gordon has been doing his best to talk you out of it. His most recent dose of glumness was offered up in a recent Wall Street Journal article that repeats an argument he has been making for a while now:

The growth of the past century wasn't built on manna from heaven. It resulted in large part from a remarkable set of inventions between 1875 and 1900...

This narrow time frame saw the introduction of running water and indoor plumbing, the greatest event in the history of female liberation, as women were freed from carrying literally tons of water each year. The telephone, phonograph, motion picture and radio also sprang into existence. The period after World War II saw another great spurt of invention, with the development of television, air conditioning, the jet plane and the interstate highway system…

Innovation continues apace today, and many of those developing and funding new technologies recoil with disbelief at my suggestion that we have left behind the era of truly important changes in our standard of living…

Gordon goes on to explain why he thinks potential growth-enhancing developments such as advances in healthcare, leaps in energy-production technologies, and 3-D printing are just not up to late-19th-century snuff in their capacity to better the lot of the average citizen. To paraphrase, your great-granddaddy's inventions beat the stuffing out of yours.

There has been a lot of commentary about Professor Gordon's body of work—just a few examples from the blogosphere include Paul Krugman, John Cochrane, Free Exchange (atThe Economist), Gary Becker, and Thomas Edsall (who includes commentary from a collection of first-rate economists). Most of these posts note the current-day maladies that Gordon offers up to furrow the brow of the growth optimists. Among these are the following:

And inequality in America will continue to grow, driven by poor educational outcomes at the bottom and the rewards of globalization at the top, as American CEOs reap the benefits of multinational sales to emerging markets. From 1993 to 2008, income growth among the bottom 99% of earners was 0.5 points slower than the economy's overall growth rate.

Serious considerations, to be sure, but there is actually a chance that some of the "headwinds" that Gordon emphasizes are signs that something really big is afoot. In fact, Gordon's headwinds remind me of this passage, from a paper by economists Jeremy Greenwood and Mehmet Yorukoglu published about 15 years ago:

A simple story is told here that connects the rate of technological progress to the level of income inequality and productivity growth. The idea is this. Imagine that a leap in the state of technology occurs and that this jump is incarnated in new machines, such as information technologies. Suppose that the adoption of new technologies involves a significant cost in terms of learning and that skilled labor has an advantage at learning. Then the advance in technology will be associated with an increase in the demand for skill needed to implement it. Hence the skill premium will rise and income inequality will widen. In the early phases the new technologies may not be operated efficiently due to a dearth of experience. Productivity growth may appear to stall as the economy undertakes the (unmeasured) investment in knowledge needed to get the new technologies running closer to their full potential. The coincidence of rapid technological change, widening inequality, and a slowdown in productivity growth is not without precedence in economic history.

Greenwood and Yorukoglu go on to assess, in detail, how durable-goods prices, inequality, and productivity actually behaved in the first and second industrial revolutions. They conclude that game-changing technologies have, in history, been initially associated with falling capital prices, rising inequality, and falling productivity. Here is a representative chart, depicting the period (which was rich with technological advance) leading up to Gordon's (undeniably) golden age:

http://macroblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c834f53ef017c367e8c7f970b-800wi



Greenwood and Yorukoglu conclude their study with this pointed question:

Plunging prices for new technologies, a surge in wage inequality, and a slump in the advance of labor productivity - could all this be the hallmark of the dawn of an industrial revolution? Just as the steam engine shook 18th-century England, and electricity rattled 19th-century America, are information technologies now rocking the 20th-century economy?

I don't know (and nobody knows) if the dark-before-the-dawn possibility described by Greenwood and Yorukoglu is the apt analogy for where the U.S. (and global) economy sits today. But I will bet you there was some commentator writing in 1870 who sounded an awful lot like Professor Gordon.

Suppose this is true. Does it necessarily imply that addressing some of these problems, e.g. reducing wage inequality, would undermine the "dawn" in this "dark-before-the-dawn" story? Does brightening the dark prevent the dawn?

[Demeter]

60. Why has US Oil Consumption Steadily Fallen since 2004? FROM FEB 2013 By Gail Tverberg

AND WE FINALLY SEE THE PRICE CRASH--ONLY TOOK 10 YEARS!

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Why-has-US-Oil-Consumption-Steadily-Fallen-since-2004.html



United States oil consumption in 2012 will be about 4.7 million barrels a day, or 20% lower than it would have been, if the pre-2005 trend in oil consumption growth of 1.5% per year had continued. This drop in consumption is no doubt related to a rise in oil prices starting about 2004. Oil prices started rising rapidly in the 2004-2005 period (Figure 2, below). They reached a peak in 2008, then dipped in 2009. They are now again at a very high level.



Given the timing of the drop off in oil consumption, we would expect that most of the drop off would be the result of “demand destruction” as the result of high oil prices. In this post, we will see more specifically where this decline in consumption occurred. A small part of the decline in oil consumption comes from improved gasoline mileage. My analysis indicates that about 7% of the reduction in oil use was due to better automobile mileage. The amount of savings related to improved gasoline mileage between 2004 and 2012 brought gasoline consumption down by about 347,000 barrels a day. The annual savings due to mileage improvements would be about one-eighth of this, or 43,000 barrels a day.

Apart from improved gasoline mileage, the vast majority of the savings seem to come from (1) continued shrinkage of US industrial activity, (2) a reduction in vehicle miles traveled, and (3) recessionary influences (likely related to high oil prices) on businesses, leading to job layoffs and less fuel use.

Gasoline Savings from Better MPG, Fewer Miles Traveled



... Under “normal” circumstances, we would expect gasoline consumption to continue to rise, along with oil products in general, as shown in Figure 1 at the top of the post...The amount of gasoline consumed reflects at least two different influences (1) the number of miles traveled, and (2) savings due to more fuel efficient cars. Based on data compiled by the US Department of Transportation, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) were rising by 2.2% per year prior to 2004, then suddenly flattened (Figure 4, below) about the time oil prices started to rise significantly.







...If we apply the 2004 rate of fuel usage (or MPG) to 2012 VMT, we find that the improvement in fuel mileage between 2004 and 2012 reduced fuel usage by 347 thousand barrels a day over the eight year period, which is equivalent to a reduction of about 43 thousand barrels a day, per year. The total reduction in gasoline use between 2004 and 2012, relative to what would have been expected, (based on the trend line in Figure 1, assuming the mix of products each retain their 2004 proportions) is about 1.49 million barrels a day. Thus, this calculation implies that about 23% of gasoline savings is from better mileage; the other 77% is from driving fewer miles.

One point of interest is the fact that US population has recently been growing by 1% per year. Because of the growing population, a person would expect VMT to grow by at least 1% per year, unless per capita miles driven is shrinking. Since 2004, vehicle miles traveled have been growing less rapidly than population growth. As a result, mileage per person has been shrinking, recently by a little over 1% per year. Prior to 2004, vehicle miles traveled were growing at 2.2% a year while population was growing at 1.1% per year, implying that per capita miles traveled were increasing by 1.1% per year. How do vehicle miles per person go from increasing to decreasing? There are a couple of possible ways. One is by a reduction in the number of drivers; the other is by decreasing the number of miles driven for individual drivers. My friends who are automobile insurance actuaries tell me that at least part of the change recently is that fewer young people are driving. This is not too surprising–young people today have very high unemployment rates, so they are less able to afford the cost of a car.

Fuel Savings for Distillate and for Other Oil Products



At least part of the reason the “All Other” portion is shrinking is the fact that the All Other category includes quite a bit of oil products for industrial use, and the amount oil products used by the industrial sector shrank by 7.9%, comparing 2011 to 1994. We can also look at the use of other energy products by sector, to see additional evidence that the Industrial Sector is shrinking, or at least, not growing nearly as much as the other sectors are growing. For example, if we look at electricity use by sector, residential use is up by 41% since 1994, commercial use (office and stores) is up by 44% since 1994, while industrial use is down by 3%.



Also, between 1994 and 2011, use of natural gas by the industrial sector declined by 8.5% further suggesting that it is the industrial sector that is shrinking. One factor in this shrinkage is likely increased competition from China, once they joined the World Trade Organization in December 2001. Of course, part of the reason for the lower growth in oil products use by All Other could be greater industrial efficiency...Another point of interest is the fact that the trend in gasoline and in distillate consumption both roughly follow the trend in the number of jobs available in the US economy.



There is a theoretical reason why gasoline consumption might rise and fall with employment. People who have jobs can afford to buy cars and drive them. People who don’t, often can’t afford to drive...

Summary of Where Oil Savings Comes From

As stated at the beginning of the post, United States oil consumption is about 4.7 million barrels a day lower in 2012 than would have been expected based on pre-2005 patterns. The way that this savings breaks out by product grouping is as follows:



Decreased gasoline usage due to improved gasoline mileage amounts to 7% of the total, decreased gasoline usage because of fewer miles traveled amounts to 25% of the total, and a decrease in distillate use amounts to 17% of the savings. The majority of the decrease, 51%, comes from a decrease in the “All Other” category, which is most closely related to a decrease in industrialization.


MORE DETAIL AT LINK

[Demeter]

61. IMF sees 140m jobs shortage in ageing China as 'Lewis Point' hits FEB 2013By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9845959/IMF-sees-140m-jobs-shortage-in-ageing-China-as-Lewis-Point-hits.html

We can now discern more or less when the catch-up growth miracle will sputter out. Another seven years or so (2020) - enough to bouy global coal, crude, and copper prices for a while - but then it will all be over. China’s demographic dividend will be exhausted. Beijing revealed last week that the country’s working age population has already begun to shrink, sooner than expected. It will soon go into “precipitous decline”, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Japan hit this inflexion point fourteen years ago, but by then it was already rich, with $3 trillion of net savings overseas. China has hit the wall a quarter century earlier in its development path. The ageing crisis is well-known. It is already six years since a Chinese demographer shocked Davos with a warning that his country might have to resort to mass suicide in the end, shoving pensioners onto the ice. Less known is the parallel - and linked - labour drain in the countryside. A new IMF paper - “Chronicle of a Decline Foretold: Has China Reached the Lewis Turning Point?” - says the reserve army of peasants looking for work peaked in 2010 at around 150 million. The numbers are now collapsing. The surplus will disappear soon after 2020. A decade after that China will face a labour shortage of almost 140m workers, surely the greatest jobs crunch ever seen. “This will have far-reaching implications for both China and the rest of the world,” said the IMF.


Source: IMF

These farm workers are the footloose migrants that pour into the cities from the interior, the raw material of China’s manufacturing workshops They are carefully regulated by the semi-feudal Hukuo system to keep their families tied to villages at home, and to keep the lid on social revolt. There is little Beijing can do to head off the shock. The effects of low fertility rates - and the one child policy - are already baked into the pie. It would take half a century to turn around the demographic supertanker.

The Lewis Point, named after St Lucia's Nobel economist Sir Arthur Lewis, is when the supply of workers dries up and city wages soar. It is when labour turns the tables on capital, and profits crash.

You could argue that such a process already well under way, and is why Chinese equities are trading at a third of their 2007 peak in real terms. Manufacturing pay has risen 16pc a year over the last decade in the East Coast hubs of Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, though this slowed sharply in 2012. Boston Consulting Group says that “productivity-adjusted wages” were just 22pc of US levels as recently as 2005. They will reach 43pc by 2015, or 61pc for the American South. It is a key reason why General Electric, Ford, Caterpillar and others are “re-shoring” from China back to the US, though cheap shale gas, a weaker dollar, and shipping costs all play their part.

This is no bad thing. The world economy is rebalancing. China’s current account surplus has fallen from 10pc of GDP to just 2.5pc.

China’s corrosive gap between rich and poor should narrow. The GINI coefficient measuring inequality should come down from stratospheric levels, 0.61 according to researchers at Chengdu University. Yet it is also a dangerous moment for Beijing. The Lewis Point is the great test for catch-up economies, when they can no longer rely on cheap labour, copied technology, and export-led growth to keep the game going. The air is thinner at the technology frontier. Success depends on such intangibles as the rule of law and the free flow of ideas. Those that fail to adapt in time slide into the `middle income trap’, and most do fail.

The Soviet Union failed. The Philippines -- richer than Korea in the 1950 -- failed. Most of the Mid-East failed. So did most of Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, and it is far from clear that Argentina and Brazil will break free this time.


AND THE US, AMBROSE? WHAT ABOUT THE US FAILURE?

I PREFER TO THINK OF IT AS "PAUSES" AS READJUSTMENTS ARE MADE BETWEEN GENERATIONS AND CLASSES AND THE FEUDALISM/DEMOCRACY DRAMA PLAYS OUT.

2020--THAT'S WHEN THE BOOMERS (THE PIG IN THE PYTHON) PASS OUT OF THE US LABOR FORCE, TOO.

HMMMM.....

[Demeter]

62. One graph that says much about America, and our future: the growth in jobs vs. food stamp use

?w=600&h=727



http://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/02/06/foodstamps-job-48565/

[Demeter]

63. Guess What Happened The Last Time The Price Of Oil Crashed Like This? By Michael Snyder

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/guess-happened-last-time-price-oil-crashed-like

There has only been one other time in history when the price of oil has crashed by more than 40 dollars in less than 6 months. The last time this happened was during the second half of 2008, and the beginning of that oil price crash preceded the great financial collapse that happened later that year by several months. Well, now it is happening again, but this time the stakes are even higher. When the price of oil falls dramatically, that is a sign that economic activity is slowing down. It can also have a tremendously destabilizing affect on financial markets. As you will read about below, energy companies now account for approximately 20 percent of the junk bond market. And a junk bond implosion is usually a signal that a major stock market crash is on the way. So if you are looking for a “canary in the coal mine”, keep your eye on the performance of energy junk bonds. If they begin to collapse, that is a sign that all hell is about to break loose on Wall Street...

MORE

[Demeter]

65. ELVIS: Early live performances and signing with RCA

The trio played publicly for the first time on July 17 at the Bon Air club—Presley still sporting his child-size guitar. At the end of the month, they appeared at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming. Moore recalled, "During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild".

Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as "really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something". Soon after, Moore and Black quit their old band to play with Presley regularly, and DJ and promoter Bob Neal became the trio's manager.

From August through October, they played frequently at the Eagle's Nest club and returned to Sun Studio for more recording sessions, and Presley quickly grew more confident on stage. According to Moore, "His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He'd do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick."

Presley made what would be his only appearance on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry on October 2; after a polite audience response, Opry manager Jim Denny told Phillips that his singer was "not bad" but did not suit the program. Two weeks later, Presley was booked on Louisiana Hayride, the Opry '​s chief, and more adventurous, rival.

The Shreveport-based show was broadcast to 198 radio stations in 28 states. Presley had another attack of nerves during the first set, which drew a muted reaction. A more composed and energetic second set inspired an enthusiastic response. House drummer D.J. Fontana brought a new element, complementing Presley's movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs.

Soon after the show, the Hayride engaged Presley for a year's worth of Saturday-night appearances. Trading in his old guitar for $8 (and seeing it promptly dispatched to the garbage), he purchased a Martin instrument for $175, and his trio began playing in new locales including Houston, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas.

By early 1955, Presley's regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought the singer to the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business.

Having successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold, Parker was now working with the new number-one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow's February tour. When the tour reached Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. ... I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it."

Presley made his television debut on March 3 on the KSLA-TV broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Soon after, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on the CBS television network. By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill"; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer.

Some of the songs, like "That's All Right", were in what one Memphis journalist described as the "R&B idiom of negro field jazz"; others, like "Blue Moon of Kentucky", were "more in the country field", "but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both". This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley's music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country-music disc jockeys would not play it because he sounded too much like a black artist and none of the rhythm-and-blues stations would touch him because "he sounded too much like a hillbilly." The blend came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".

Presley renewed Neal's management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year.

Neal recalled, "It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we'd have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody'd always try to take a crack at him. They'd get a gang and try to waylay him or something."

The trio became a quartet when Hayride drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose "Rock Around the Clock" had been a number-one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.

At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year's most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000.

Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract. Parker arranged with the owners of Hill and Range Publishing, Jean and Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forgo one third of their customary royalties in exchange for having him perform their compositions. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.

[xchrom]

67. Japan Will Propose A Record $800 Billion Budget For Next Fiscal Year

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-japan-readies-record-800-billion-2015-16-budget-sources-2015-1

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's government will propose a record budget for next fiscal year of more than $800 billion but cut borrowing for a third year, government officials said on Sunday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks to maintain growth while curbing the heaviest debt burden in the industrial world.

The third annual budget since Abe swept to power in late 2012 also highlights his struggle to contain bulging welfare costs for the fast-ageing society while increasing discretionary spending in areas such as the military.

Abe's 96.3 trillion yen ($813 billion) draft budget for the year from April, to be approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday and submitted to an upcoming session of Parliament, is up from this fiscal year's initial 95.9 trillion, the two officials told Reuters.

But spending restraint and a surge in tax revenues as the economy recovers allows the government to cut bond issuance by 4.4 trillion yen to 36.9 trillion, the lowest in six years, the officials said.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-japan-readies-record-800-billion-2015-16-budget-sources-2015-1#ixzz3OVsSbpGg

[xchrom]

69. The American Dream Is Dying

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-american-dream-peaked-in-the-early-2000s-2015-1

Owning a home has long been a big part of the American Dream. Despite this, the proportion of adults who own their homes has been on the decline.

Homeownership rates have been dropping since the middle of the past decade. Rental vacancies spiked during the Great Recession and have plummeted since, indicating a shift from owning homes to renting apartments.

Nordea Markets economist Aurelija Augulyte tweeted out this chart comparing US homeownership rates with rental vacancies:



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-american-dream-peaked-in-the-early-2000s-2015-1#ixzz3OVvapMkR

[xchrom]

70. OIL COULD DRIVE DOWN ETHANOL PROFITS, BUT INDUSTRY SHIELDED

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FOOD_AND_FARM_OIL_COLLAPSE_ETHANOL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-10-10-29-38

SHENANDOAH, Iowa (AP) -- Roughly 100 grain trucks a day filled with corn continued to flow into the Green Plains ethanol plant in southwest Iowa this week - even as crude oil prices continued to collapse.

Oil prices may have dipped below $50 a barrel for the first time since April 2009, but ethanol plants across the nation continue to operate at a brisk pace in order to satisfy a domestic and export demand that hasn't weakened.

The cheap oil will likely cut into ethanol profits because refiners will want to pay less for the corn-based fuel additive, but the industry is somewhat shielded by a federal biofuel mandate and the need to boost octane in gasoline. Plus, ethanol producers could thrive beyond the current strong demand if exports or gasoline consumption grow more than expected.

Ethanol accounts for about 10 percent of U.S. gasoline, and remains cheaper than anything else refiners could use to deliver the octane varieties drivers expect at the pump such as premium gasoline.

[xchrom]

71. U.S. Retakes the Helm of the Global Economy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/u-s-retakes-the-helm-of-the-global-economy.html


The U.S. is back in the driver’s seat of the global economy after 15 years of watching China and emerging markets take the lead.

The world’s biggest economy will expand by 3.2 percent or more this year, its best performance since at least 2005, as an improving job market leads to stepped-up consumer spending, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank AG and BNP Paribas SA. That outcome would be about what each foresees for the world economy as a whole and would be the first time since 1999 that America hasn’t lagged behind global growth, based on data from the International Monetary Fund.

“The U.S. is again the engine of global growth,” said Allen Sinai, chief executive officer of Decision Economics in New York. “The economy is looking stellar and is in its best shape since the 1990s.”

In the latest sign of America’s resurgence, the Labor Department reported on Jan. 9 that payrolls rose 252,000 in December as the unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent, its lowest level since June 2008. Job growth last month was highlighted by the biggest gain in construction employment in almost a year. Factories, health-care providers and business services also kept adding to their payrolls.

[xchrom]

72. The Weird Contradiction in Obama's Plan to Help First-Time Home Buyers

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2015-01-09/the-weird-contradiction-in-obamas-plan-to-help-firsttime-homebuyers

Does the president want us to buy a home we can afford, or doesn't he?

You could be forgiven for coming away from his speech this week not knowing which.

One of the much-remarked qualities of the long, slow U.S. housing recovery has been the reluctance of first-time home buyers, a group that's largely been shut out of the recovery by rising home prices and stagnant wages. In the speech yesterday, at a Phoenix high school, President Obama announced a plan to bring more virgin homeowners into the fold. As Bloomberg News reported he would, the president announced a reduction in the mortgage insurance premiums that borrowers pay on Federal Housing Administration loans, a reduction of half a percentage point—enough to save FHA borrowers about $900 a year.

That may be more than the $550 the Energy Information Administration has said falling gas prices save the average family, but it's still not a lot. The median sale price for a single-family home in the greater Phoenix area was $208,000 in October, according to the Center for Real Estate Theory & Practice at Arizona State University. At that price, an FHA borrower making a minimum down payment of $7,280 for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage would pay $1,230 a month before homeowner’s insurance or property taxes, according to this calculator.

[Demeter]

73. ObamaCare “Shared Responsibility Payments” Come Due on April 15, and It Won’t Be Pretty

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/obamacare-shared-responsibility-payments-come-due-april-15-wont-pretty-2.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

YOU'LL HAVE TO READ IT TO BELIEVE IT

I'LL LEAVE YOU WITH THE COMMENTATOR'S THOUGHTS:

Conclusion

I put on my yellow waders, and I work through this crap, this steaming pile of crap that should not exist in the first place, a system that insults every citizen consumer forced to participate in it, and I think of France under the Bourbons, the ancien regime. People knew the ancien regime was broken for decades before 1789, and earnestly tried to fix it, but no fix was possible. Perhaps we will do better.

[MattSh]

81. Whew...

At least living outside the USA, I'm not subject to this BS.

Of course, if I was still living in the states, I'd likely still be working for the state of NJ, which does supply health insurance. Of course, I'm sure Christie has screwed up a few things while I've been away. Still, the choice of NJ and Christie vs. Ukraine and Yatsenyuk/IMF would not be a pleasant one to have to make.

[DemReadingDU]

83. What if a person has no job

no job, no income, no savings, no money, no insurance

Why would a person even need to file a return to the IRS?
How could such a person be charged a penalty for not having Obamacare?

[magical thyme]

85. no penalty under the exemptions

and that person should qualify for Medicaid even in states that didn't expand Medicaid.

In the meantime, Maine didn't expand Medicaid, but I think I made a smidgen too much to even have qualified for an expanded Medicaid. Which leads me to a question that needs an answer, so I'll post it separately.

[magical thyme]

86. So Maine didn't expand Medicaid last year, which would qualify some for penalty exemption

How do you know if you would have qualified for an expanded Medicaid?

I seem to remember reading something at some point in time where I determined that I made a little too much to qualify for an expanded Medicaid. But that's as far as my fuzzy memory goes. I don't know what I read or where I read it, never mind what it said.

At least I saw the fine print that the penalty was the larger of $95 or 1% AGI. So I'm prepared for the higher penalty.

[magical thyme]

87. how in the eff are people in the income-based student loan program supposed to file an insurance

form that is mailed sometime in February, when you are required to file your 1040 with the student loan program early in February?

Yet another mess. Thank effing dog I took the penalty.

Misestimating my true income, which I really don't know til the end of the year, was a big fear for me. My p/t job I can predict; my per diem job I cannot predict.

The only good I am praying comes out of this GOP congress is to repeal the law in its entirety. Just start the eff over. Wouldn't it be a trip if they replaced it with single payer

[xchrom]

74. Oil Slump Slams Mexico With Cuts Causing 10,000 Job Losses

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-08/mexico-cuts-10-000-oil-service-jobs-as-pemex-funds-fall.html

More than 10,000 people working at Mexican oil service companies were laid off this week as state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos cut contracts in the face of the global slump in crude prices. More job losses are expected.

Most of the companies are based in Ciudad del Carmen, on the Campeche Bay in the Gulf of Mexico, and were told this week that contracts wouldn’t be renewed with Pemex, as the world’s ninth largest oil producer is known. Job losses could rise to 50,000, Gonzalo Hernandez, secretary at the Ciudad del Carmen Economic Development Chamber, said in a phone interview.

“The city is in shock,” Stuart Hill, managing director of Xperto Offshore in Mexico, said in an interview from Ciudad del Carmen. “We were told it was based on Pemex’s budget reductions.”

While a Pemex official said the contract cancellations won’t reduce oil output, they come as some U.S. producers bail out of long-term contracts for drilling rigs as prices slide below $50 a barrel. Oil is trading near the lowest levels since April 2009 amid concern that a global supply surplus will persist this year.

[xchrom]

76. Why January Is Cruelest Month in Draghi's Fight Against Deflation

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/why-january-is-cruelest-month-in-draghi-fight-against-deflation.html


Europe’s slide toward deflation couldn’t have happened at a worse time of year for Mario Draghi.

The 0.2 percent December decline in euro-area consumer prices would have been bad in any month, but it’s especially difficult for monetary policy makers to start the new year that way, according to Marchel Alexandrovich, an economist at Jefferies International Ltd. in London.

That’s because companies are more likely to set wages and prices in January, meaning a falling inflation rate will set the tone for such decisions, increasing the likelihood that prices extend their slide further and for longer.

For European Central Bank President Draghi that means greater pressure to inject even more monetary stimulus this month in the form of government bond-buying in the hope that jolts inflation back toward his target of just below 2 percent.

[xchrom]

79. A Dark Side to the Drop in the Jobless Rate

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2015-01-09/theres-a-dark-side-to-the-drop-in-the-jobless-rate#r

The drop in the U.S. jobless rate to 5.6 percent, the lowest since June 2008, is good news and bad news. It’s good, of course, in that fewer people who are in the labor market can’t find jobs. It’s bad because it’s a sign that the economy is getting closer to its speed limit—the fastest it can go without overheating like a car with a boiling-over radiator.

This chart shows the surge in the jobless rate and subsequent fall over the past decade.



One reason that the jobless rate is this low is that during the long slump, many people simply dropped out of the labor force. Here’s a chart of the employment-to-population ratio—i.e., the number of employed people as a share of the adult population.

[xchrom]

80. Splitting Banks Should Be Last Resort, EU Lawmaker Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-08/splitting-banks-should-be-last-resort-eu-lawmaker-says.html

Splitting consumer and trading activities at the European Union’s biggest banks should be a supervisor’s last resort after other crisis-management tools fail, a key member of the bloc’s legislature said.

Gunnar Hoekmark, a Swede who’s leading the European Parliament’s work on a bank-structure bill put forward last year by the European Commission, said separation should be used only if banks deemed too big to fail don’t take other measures such as boosting capital or increasing issuance of loss-absorbing debt.

Banks that can’t be safely wound down should they fail would face “enhanced supervision, or a call for higher levels of capital, or a change of structure, or in the end what could be separation,” Hoekmark said Jan. 7 in an interview in Brussels. “The key issue is resolvability.”

The commission’s proposal to ban proprietary trading at the EU’s largest banks and assess whether their trading arms should be turned into separately capitalized units needs considerable work before it can be put into practice, Hoekmark said. National governments in the 28-nation EU are also devising ways to streamline the measure.

[Hotler]

88. This will be intewresting.

Why the Silk Road Trial Matters

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technology/why-the-silk-road-trial-matters/ar-AA7Yq5y?ocid=iehp

Ulbricht, 29, faces charges that include running a narcotics, hacking and money laundering conspiracy, as well as a “kingpin” charge usually reserved for mafia dons and drug lords. The case against him is likely strong; prosecutors already have shown in pre-trial hearings that they caught Ulbricht with his laptop seemingly logged into a Silk Road page called “Mastermind,” showing a detailed accounting of the site’s activities and finances . They’ve also revealed that they found a logbook on his hard drive and a journal that allegedly detailed his day-to-day activities running the site. (Stringer Bell was right, by the way: Don’t take notes on your criminal conspiracy .)

The Silk Road pioneered a new kind of online marketplace, one that’s open to the public but whose administrators, buyers, and sellers are anonymous, thanks to tools like the software Tor and bitcoin. The prosecution’s case will need to cut through that anonymity to prove Ulbricht is indeed the masked mastermind of Silk Road known as the Dread Pirate Roberts. For the industry of copycat sites that followed the Silk Road, including popular black markets like Evolution and Agora , that makes this trial a case study in the vulnerabilities law enforcement uses to attack the Dark Web’s hidden contraband bazaars and identify the people who run them.

[Hotler]

89. One of my favorites from the King.

[Hotler]

91. Dwight Yoakam doing Suspicious Minds

[Demeter]

93. Commercial breakout and controversy (1956–58)

First national TV appearances and debut album


On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending the singer's by now customary backup of Moore, Black, and Fontana, RCA enlisted pianist Floyd Cramer, guitarist Chet Atkins, and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill out the sound.

The session produced the moody, unusual "Heartbreak Hotel", released as a single on January 27. Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS's Stage Show for six appearances over two months. The program, produced in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. After his first appearance, on January 28, introduced by disc jockey Bill Randle, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA's New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins' rockabilly anthem "Blue Suede Shoes". In February, Presley's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart. Neal's contract was terminated and, on March 2, Parker became Presley's manager.

RCA Victor released Presley's self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the evolving sound of rock and roll: "Blue Suede Shoes"—"an improvement over Perkins' in almost every way", according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presley's stage repertoire for some time, covers of Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these "were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists ... who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions of songs in the '50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases."

It became the first rock-and-roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks. While Presley was not an innovative guitarist like Moore or contemporary African American rockers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argues that the album's cover image, "of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar ... as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music."

[Demeter]

94. Milton Berle Show and "Hound Dog"

Presley made the first of two appearances on NBC's Milton Berle Show on April 3. His performance, on the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, prompted cheers and screams from an audience of sailors and their dates. A few days later, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when an engine died and the plane almost went down over Arkansas.

Twelve weeks after its original release, "Heartbreak Hotel" became Presley's first number-one pop hit. In late April, Presley began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The shows were poorly received by the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests—"like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party," wrote a critic for Newsweek.

Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, taking in 15 cities in as many days. He had attended several shows by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Vegas and was struck by their cover of "Hound Dog", a hit in 1953 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became the new closing number of his act.

After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message on the letterhead of the local Catholic diocese's newspaper was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that "Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. ... His actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. ... After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley's room at the auditorium. ... Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls ... whose abdomen and thigh had Presley's autograph."

The second Milton Berle Show appearance came on June 5 at NBC's Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour. Berle persuaded the singer to leave his guitar backstage, advising, "Let 'em see you, son." During the performance, Presley abruptly halted an uptempo rendition of "Hound Dog" with a wave of his arm and launched into a slow, grinding version accentuated with energetic, exaggerated body movements.

Presley's gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. ... His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. ... His one specialty is an accented movement of the body ... primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway." Ben Gross of the New York Daily News opined that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley. ... Elvis, who rotates his pelvis ... gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos".

Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation's most popular, declared him "unfit for family viewing". To Presley's displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as "Elvis the Pelvis", which he called "one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin' from an adult."

Steve Allen Show and first Sullivan appearance

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC's Steve Allen Show in New York. Allen, no fan of rock and roll, introduced a "new Elvis" in a white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang "Hound Dog" for less than a minute to a basset hound wearing a top hat and bow tie. As described by television historian Jake Austen, "Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd ... he set things up so that Presley would show his contrition". Allen, for his part, later wrote that he found Presley's "strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing" and simply worked the singer into the customary "comedy fabric" of his program. Just before the final rehearsal for the show, Presley told a reporter, "I'm holding down on this show. I don't want to do anything to make people dislike me. I think TV is important so I'm going to go along, but I won't be able to give the kind of show I do in a personal appearance." Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career.

[ Later that night, he appeared on Hy Gardner Calling, a popular local TV show. Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, "No, I haven't, I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong. ... I don't see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it's only music. ... I mean, how would rock 'n' roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?"

The rivalry between variety show hosts Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan (pictured) helped catapult Presley to unprecedented fame.

The next day, Presley recorded "Hound Dog", along with "Any Way You Want Me" and "Don't Be Cruel". The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, the singer made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis at which he announced, "You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight."

In August, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, ordered Presley to tame his act. Throughout the following performance, he largely kept still, except for wiggling his little finger suggestively in mockery of the order. The single pairing "Don't Be Cruel" with "Hound Dog" ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley's second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Leiber and Stoller, the writers of "Hound Dog," contributed "Love Me."

[Demeter]

95. Ed Sullivan Eats Crow

Allen's show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS's Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings.

Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked the singer for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience.

Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan recuperated from a car accident. Presley appeared in two segments that night from CBS Television City in Los Angeles. According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot from only the waist up. Watching clips of the Allen and Berle shows with his producer, Sullivan had opined that Presley "got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants–so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. ... I think it's a Coke bottle. ... We just can't have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!"

Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, "As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots." In fact, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style: screaming.

Presley's performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad "Love Me Tender", prompted a record-shattering million advance orders. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.

Accompanying Presley's rise to fame, a cultural shift was taking place that he both helped inspire and came to symbolize. Igniting the "biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra ... Presley brought rock'n'roll into the mainstream of popular culture", writes historian Marty Jezer. "As Presley set the artistic pace, other artists followed. ... Presley, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture."

I WANT YOU ALL TO KNOW THIS IS ANCIENT HISTORY TO ME...I WAS 17 MONTHS OLD AT THE TIME...

[Demeter]

96. Crazed crowds and movie debut

The audience response at Presley's live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, "He'd start out, 'You ain't nothin' but a Hound Dog,' and they'd just go to pieces. They'd always react the same way. There'd be a riot every time."

At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, 50 National Guardsmen were added to the police security to prevent crowd trouble.

Elvis, Presley's second album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one. Assessing the musical and cultural impact of Presley's recordings from "That's All Right" through Elvis, rock critic Dave Marsh wrote that "these records, more than any others, contain the seeds of what rock & roll was, has been and most likely what it may foreseeably become."

Presley returned to the Sullivan show at its main studio in New York, hosted this time by its namesake, on October 28. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy.

His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21. Though he was not top billed, the film's original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on his latest number one record: "Love Me Tender" had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. To further take advantage of Presley's popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The movie was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and jammed with them. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley material, he made sure the session was captured on tape. The results became legendary as the "Million Dollar Quartet" recordings—Johnny Cash was long thought to have played as well, but he was present only briefly at Phillips' instigation for a photo opportunity.

The year ended with a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Presley merchandise had brought in $22 million on top of his record sales, and Billboard '​s declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted. In his first full year at RCA, one of the music industry's largest companies, Presley had accounted for over 50 percent of the label's singles sales.

[Demeter]

97. Leiber and Stoller collaboration and draft notice

Presley made his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance on January 6, 1957—on this occasion indeed shot only down to the waist. Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity.

In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley "did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, with all stops out."

To close, displaying his range and defying Sullivan's wishes, Presley sang a gentle black spiritual, "Peace in the Valley". At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley "a real decent, fine boy".

Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1A and would probably be drafted sometime that year.

Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: "Too Much", "All Shook Up", and &quot Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear". Already an international star, he was attracting fans even where his music was not officially released. Under the headline "Presley Records a Craze in Soviet", The New York Times reported that pressings of his music on discarded X-ray plates were commanding high prices in Leningrad.

Between film shoots and recording sessions, the singer also found time to purchase an 18-room mansion eight miles (13 km) south of downtown Memphis for himself and his parents: Graceland. Loving You—the soundtrack to his second film, released in July—was Presley's third straight number one album. The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were then retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for Jailhouse Rock, Presley's next movie. The songwriting team effectively produced the Jailhouse sessions and developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his "good-luck charm".

Presley undertook three brief tours during the year, continuing to generate a crazed audience response. A Detroit newspaper suggested that "the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you're liable to get killed."

Villanova students pelted him with eggs in Philadelphia, and in Vancouver, the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage.

Frank Sinatra, who had famously inspired the swooning of teenaged girls in the 1940s, condemned the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article, he decried rock and roll as "brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious. ... It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. ... This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore."

Asked for a response, Presley said, "I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it. ... This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago."

Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis' Christmas Album. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley's request: "Santa Claus Is Back In Town", an innuendo-laden blues.

The holiday release stretched Presley's string of number one albums to four and would eventually become the best selling Christmas album of all time. After the session, Moore and Black—drawing only modest weekly salaries, sharing in none of Presley's massive financial success—resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks later, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley's inner circle for some time.

On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment to finish the forthcoming King Creole, in which $350,000 had already been invested by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis.

A couple of weeks into the new year, "Don't", another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presley's tenth number one seller. It had been only 21 months since "Heartbreak Hotel" had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood mid-January. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be the last time they worked closely with Presley. A studio session on February 1 marked another ending: it was the final occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley. He died in 1965.

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98. Military service and mother's death (1958–60)

On March 24, Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army as a private at Fort Chaffee, near Fort Smith, Arkansas. His arrival was a major media event. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus; photographers then accompanied him into the fort. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military stint, saying he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: "The Army can do anything it wants with me."

Soon after Presley commenced basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, he received a visit from Eddie Fadal, a businessman he had met on tour. According to Fadal, Presley had become convinced his career was finished—"He firmly believed that." But then, during a two-week leave in early June, Presley recorded five songs in Nashville.

In early August, his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis and her condition rapidly worsened. Presley, granted emergency leave to visit her, arrived in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure, aged 46. Presley was devastated; their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

After training, Presley joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1. Introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant while on maneuvers, he became "practically evangelical about their benefits"—not only for energy, but for "strength" and weight loss, as well—and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, later including it in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley's wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity. He donated his Army pay to charity, purchased TV sets for the base, and bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit.

While in Friedberg, Presley met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla says that despite his worries that it would ruin his career, Parker convinced Presley that to gain popular respect, he should serve his country as a regular soldier rather than in Special Services, where he would have been able to give some musical performances and remain in touch with the public.

Media reports echoed Presley's concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year hiatus. Armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases.

Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the best-selling "Hard Headed Woman", and "One Night" in 1958, and &quot Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number one "A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959. RCA also generated four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis' Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

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99. Elvis Is Back!

Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant on March 5. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans.

On the night of March 20, he entered RCA's Nashville studio to cut tracks for a new album along with a single, "Stuck on You", which was rushed into release and swiftly became a number one hit. Another Nashville session two weeks later yielded a pair of his best-selling singles, the ballads "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", along with the rest of Elvis Is Back! The album features several songs described by Greil Marcus as full of Chicago blues "menace, driven by Presley's own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis's singing wasn't sexy, it was pornographic."

As a whole, the record "conjured up the vision of a performer who could be all things", in the words of music historian John Robertson: "a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold; a tempestuous, dangerous lover; a gutbucket blues singer; a sophisticated nightclub entertainer; [a] raucous rocker". Released only days after recording was complete, it reached number two on the album chart.

Presley returned to television on May 12 as a guest on The Frank Sinatra Timex Special—ironic for both stars, given Sinatra's not-so-distant excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley's first film since his return, was a number one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later. It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in Great Britain, remarkable figures for a gospel album.

In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, on behalf of 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records.

A 12-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley's next studio album, Something for Everybody. As described by John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that would define country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley himself over the next half-decade, the album is largely "a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis's birthright." It would be his sixth number one LP.

Another benefit concert, raising money for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25, in Hawaii. It was to be Presley's last public performance for seven years.

Lost in Hollywood

Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy moviemaking schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical comedies. Presley at first insisted on pursuing more serious roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein—Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961)—were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. Among the 27 movies he made during the 1960s, there were few further exceptions. His films were almost universally panned; one critic dismissed them as a "pantheon of bad taste". Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. Hal Wallis, who produced nine of them, declared, "A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood."

Of Presley's films in the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs. The movies' rapid production and release schedules—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music.

According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: "three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie". As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse".

Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that he hated many of the songs chosen for his films. The Jordanaires' Gordon Stoker describes how Presley would retreat from the studio microphone: "The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn't sing it." Most of the movie albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll." Regardless of the songs' quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment. Critic Dave Marsh heard the opposite: "Presley isn't trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like 'No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car' and 'Rock-a-Hula Baby.'"

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley's soundtrack albums hit number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and "Return to Sender" (1962). ("Viva Las Vegas", the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished.

During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top-ten hit: "Crying in the Chapel" (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-movie albums, between the June 1962 release of Pot Luck and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art (1967). It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was "arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time and really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs."

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas.

The flow of formulaic movies and assembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. "By then, of course, the damage had been done", as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. "Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans."

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100. THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO THE ELVIS STORY

Shall we go for another weekend? Post your answer below this one.

I really have to do some useful work now...see you on SMW!