Weekend Economists Muse on Silk Stockings and Silver Spoons February 27-March 1, 2015

[Demeter]

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Humans have known Hard Times, and come through them, repeatedly. We are just the Lucky Generation to suffer this particular Hard Time. Perhaps we can learn from history, a bit? How did America get through previous Hard Times, specifically, the Great Depression?

Well, they went to the movies...to try to imagine a better future.

The Great Depression: Hollywood 1929-1941
Historic Events for Students: The Great Depression.
Editor: Richard C Hanes & Sharon M Hanes. Volume 1. Detroit: Gale, 2002.

http://www.omnilogos.com/2015/02/the-great-depression-hollywood-1929-1941.html

Introduction

"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Big bad wolf, big bad wolf?" This musical line originates from the Three Little Pigs movie, produced by Walt Disney in 1933. The big bad wolf in Walt Disney's animated short film is a metaphor for the Depression of the 1930s. People needed to sing that song through the vehicle of the movie to defend against their fear of what lay ahead. Likewise Americans needed their movies. Movies had become a cultural institution as well as a cultural necessity. No other form of entertainment had come to play as important a role in American's everyday life, not even radio. Sixty million to 75 million people still faithfully attended even if the price of a seat was too much for them to pay.

The great mass of people who were affected in some way by the economic crisis of the Great Depression, not only sought escape into the movies, but they also sought meaning as well. Frequently they sought meaning and escape in the same movie. Movies also depicted things desired or things lost, all of which Depression audiences could relate to. This period was lovingly known as "The Golden Age of Hollywood."

The 1930s were an era that brought about the advancement of film, both technically and with the establishment of specific types of film "genres." Some popular genres explored by Hollywood were gangster films, comedies, musicals, law and order (including federal agent films and westerns), social consciousness films, horror, and thrillers.

Devised by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, the production Code of 1930, enforced in 1934, had a major impact on the content of movies. Various themes important to the Depression populace ran through the films. Americans could find hope while watching a character's success and believe that betterment was still possible. They could laugh irreverently at traditional American institutions or at forces that they could not quite define but that had altered their lives in the 1930s. For two hours each week Americans could enter the dark comfortable movie houses and share in the communal experience of being transported into another reality. In 1939 the quest for better times was confirmed in Judy Garland's hit song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," one of the memorable compositions from the popular movie The Wizard of Oz. The song was a testimonial to hope that reigned at the end of the decade....

...Although the stock market crash of 1929 marked the beginning of the Great Depression, 110 million people still went to the movies in 1930. The introduction of sound proved enticing and Hollywood's profits continued. As the economic conditions, however, steadily worsened nationwide Hollywood's apprehension grew. Their fears were legitimate because attendance dropped to roughly 60 to 75 million by 1933 and profits evaporated. The unemployment rate hit 25 percent that year and almost everyone's salaries had declined significantly. The public could no longer afford to attend the movies as frequently as before.

The few cents it took to get in the movies was an extravagance for many. Still those 60 to 75 million that faithfully came represented 60 percent of the population. In comparison 10 percent of Americans attended the movies in the 1970s. This figure is a powerful testimonial to movies as a cultural institution. Ultimately the industry would be saved because movies no longer represented simply entertainment but a necessity in the lives of Americans.

There was the sophistication of Fred Astaire and his numerous dancing partners, for example:


Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in the 1937 film “Shall We Dance.”

“The culture of elegance, as represented by Astaire and the Gershwins, was less about the cut of your tie and tails than the cut of your feelings, the inner radiance that was one true bastion against social suffering. They preserved in wit, rhythm and fluidity of movement what the Depression almost took away, the high spirits of Americans, young and modern, who had once felt destined to be the heirs and heiresses of all the ages.” Sheer delight, pure escapism, serves its cathartic purpose — and it means something, too...

ADAM BEGLEY of NYTimes reviews Morris Dickstein’s “Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/books/review/Begley-t.html

The ’30s were neither uniformly red nor universally hungry, but they were undeniably shadowed by economic crisis. This was the decade in which knee-jerk American assumptions about prosperity were knocked sharply back, when the American Dream — the phrase dates from the early ’30s — took a drubbing. A 25 percent unemployment rate (the grim statistic from the winter of 1932) is bound to tell; so is the failure of more than 5,000 banks in just two years. The numbers were bleak, but not as bleak, perhaps, as the mood: “There was hardly a man or woman in the country,” the popular historian Frederick Lewis Allen wrote in 1931, “whose attitude toward life had not been affected . . . in some degree . . . by the sudden and brutal shattering of hope.”

Funny how Hollywood today doesn't meet the public's need. Have the American people changed? No, the business has. The films make their money overseas, catering to different tastes and dreams: sex and violence, mostly.

Lots of change, but no improvements, since 1929...

[Demeter]

1. But first, a moment of grief

I will do a better job next weekend...I am in shock.

[Demeter]

6. My younger daughter, off celebrating school break with her boyfriend

just called to offer condolences. (Maybe I'm not a total failure as a mother, after all).

[bread_and_roses]

45. I feel that way too ...

Such an icon for my generation .... so sad to hear he's gone. My sister and I always sign off our Skype calls with his "LLaP" .... I don't think she knows - she is immersed in a project and scarcely knows what the weather is. I don't want to tell her because I know how sad it will make her .... after our mother's death last year, each loss brings that sorrow back.

"After the first death, there is no other."
Dylan Thomas

[Demeter]

2. There has been a bank failure in Puerto Rico, an expensive, extensive one

Doral Bank, San Juan, Puerto Rico, was closed today by the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, to acquire the banking operations, including all the deposits, of Doral Bank.

Doral Bank's 26 former branches will reopen under normal business hours beginning Saturday, February 28th....Banco Popular will operate eight of Doral Bank's 26 former branches. It entered into separate agreements with three banks to acquire 18 of the remaining locations. FirstBank Puerto Rico, Santurce, Puerto Rico, will operate and assume the deposits of Doral Bank's 10 other branches in Puerto Rico; Banco Popular's affiliated bank, Banco Popular North America, will operate all three locations in New York City; and Centennial Bank, Conway, Ark., will operate and assume the deposits of Doral Bank's five branches in the panhandle area of Florida. All depositors were fully protected...

As of December 31, 2014, Doral Bank had approximately $5.9 billion in total assets and $4.1 billion in total deposits. As part of the transaction with the FDIC, Banco Popular will purchase $3.25 billion of Doral Bank's assets. Banco Popular agreed to pay the FDIC a premium of 1.59 percent for the right to assume Doral Bank's deposits.

The FDIC entered into two separate agreements to sell $1.3 billion of Doral Bank's assets to other parties. Those sales are expected to close in 30 days. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $748.9 million. Compared to other alternatives, Banco Popular's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Doral Bank is the fourth FDIC-insured institution to fail this year, and the first in Puerto Rico. The last time an FDIC-insured institution was closed in Puerto Rico was on April 30, 2010.

[Demeter]

3. Silk Stockings

Silk Stockings is a 1957 Metrocolor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer CinemaScope musical film adaptation of the 1955 stage musical of the same name, which itself was a remake of Ninotchka. It was directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. The supporting cast included Janis Paige, Peter Lorre, Jules Munshin, and George Tobias repeating his Broadway role.

It received Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Film and Best Actress (Charisse) in the Comedy/Musical category.

The score was embellished with the song "The Ritz Roll and Rock," a parody of the then-emerging rock and roll genre. The number ends with Astaire symbolically smashing his top hat, considered one of his trademarks, signaling his retirement from movie musicals, which he announced following the film's release.

A brash American film producer, Steve Canfield (Fred Astaire), wants Russian composer Peter Illyich Boroff (Wim Sonneveld) to write music for his next picture, which is being made in Paris. But when the composer expresses his wish to stay in Paris, three comically bumbling operatives, Comrades Brankov (Peter Lorre), Bibinski (Jules Munshin) and Ivanov (Joseph Buloff), are sent from Moscow to take Boroff back.

Canfield manages to corrupt them with decadent western luxuries (champagne, nightclubs etc.) and talks them into allowing Boroff to stay. He also arranges for his leading lady, Peggy Dayton (Janis Paige), to ‘convince’ Boroff to cooperate.

Fearful of his own precarious position, a commissar at the Ministry in Moscow summons a dedicated and humourless workaholic operative, Nina ‘Ninotchka’ Yoschenko (Cyd Charisse), to bring all four men back home. Canfield succeeds in romancing her, despite her determination not to fall prey to the decadent attractions of Paris. He even proposes marriage. She and Boroff are horrified when they realise what changes have been made to Boroff’s music. They decide to return to Moscow.

Canfield does not give up, arranging for the pliable Brankov, Bibinski and Ivanov to be sent back to Paris, knowing that they will be seduced again by the city's charms. Ninotchka is sent after them, giving Canfield time to convince her to give in to her love for him.

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

Ninotchka is a 1939 American film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch that stars Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch, based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. Ninotchka is Greta Garbo's first full comedy, and her penultimate film. It is one of the first American movies which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray when compared to the free and sunny Parisian society of prewar years.



Three Russians, Iranov (Sig Ruman), Buljanov (Felix Bressart), and Kopalsky (Alexander Granach), are in Paris to sell jewelry confiscated from the aristocracy during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Upon arrival, they meet Count Leon d'Algout (Melvyn Douglas), on a mission from the Russian Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), who wants to retrieve her jewelry before it is sold. He corrupts them and talks them into staying in Paris. The Soviet Union then sends Nina Ivanovna "Ninotchka" Yakushova (Greta Garbo), a special envoy whose goal is to go through with the jewelry sale and bring back the three men. Rigid and stern at first, she slowly becomes seduced by the West and the Count, who falls in love with her.

The three Russians also accommodate themselves to capitalism, but the last joke of the film is that one of them carries a sign protesting that the other two are unfair to him.

Released in 1939 in the United States, the movie was released during World War II in Europe, where it became a great success. It was, however, banned in the Soviet Union and its satellites. Despite that, it went on to make $2,279,000 worldwide.

The film was marketed with the catchphrase, "Garbo Laughs!", commenting on Garbo's serious and melancholy image and implying she had not laughed or played comedy before. However her canon reveals this not to be the case. Although all her films were dramatic to this point, Garbo laughs heartily and often. In the most famous example, Queen Christina (1933), she disguises herself as a man and jokes with her co-star John Gilbert and others throughout the first half of the picture.

[DemReadingDU]

49. Not heard of these movies

But there are lots that I haven't heard about.
Bookmarking for further reading.

[Demeter]

4. John Helmer: What is Russia’s Answer to Greece’s Plan B? Smile, Blow the Whistle, Pass the Red Card

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/john-helmer-russias-answer-greeces-plan-b-smile-blow-whistle-pass-red-card.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Yves here. Helmer’s post confirms our view that Russia will not rescue Greece, and for many of the same reasons that we’ve stated.

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

The Kremlin doesn’t want to say so exactly. But right now it is as reluctant to support the Greek Government in its conflict with Germany, as Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Politburo wanted to back the Greek Communist Party during the Greek civil war between 1946 and 1949. So, when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Moscow with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotsias two weeks ago, he offered Athens a hypothetical conditional: “Russia is also in a tough financial situation caused by a unilateral illegitimate policy of our Western colleagues. However, if the government of Greece ever comes up with any requests then, as Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said, they will, of course, be considered…”

Speaking a few hours before on Athens television, the new Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos proposed the Greek hypothetical conditional: “if we see that Germany remains rigid and wants to blow apart Europe, then we have the obligation to go to Plan B. Plan B is to get funding from another source. It could the United States at best, it could be Russia, it could be China or other countries.”

Asked to say what Greek Government requests Finance Minister Siluanov is considering, the ministry spokesman said today – nothing. That’s to say, the Greeks haven’t proposed a Plan B, and if they do, the Russian response will be — nothing. The Russian reason – the new Greek Government, like its predecessors, is regarded by the Kremlin as a US client, engaged in secret dealings with Washington which would put a Russian loan, if it were extended, at risk of being wasted, or lost.

In an American television interview on January 30, Siluanov had said: “we can imagine any situation, so if such [a] petition is submitted to the Russian government, we will definitely consider it, but will take into account all the factors of our bilateral relationships between Russia and Greece, so that is all I can say. If it is submitted we will consider it.”

Asked today to clarify Siluanov’s hypothetical conditional – had the Greeks proposed any form or value of a Russian loan – the spokesman for the Finance Ministry in Moscow replied: “we do not comment on this topic before the decision will be taken.”

In the circumstances, this was being diplomatic. Siluanov’s (below, left) deputy for international relations, Sergei Storchak (right) very clearly said no on Tuesday. Storchak was quoted by the state news agency RIA-Novosti as saying that financial aid to the government in Athens is excluded because there is no budget allocation. “To date, financial aid to Greece is ruled out because the law on the federal budget does not provide such facilities.”

MORE

[Demeter]

5. How Gaza’s Natural Gas Became the Epicenter of an International Power Struggle

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/gazas-natural-gas-became-epicenter-international-power-struggle.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29



By Michael Schwartz, an emeritus distinguished teaching professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, is a TomDispatch regular and the author of the award-winning books Radical Protest and Social Structure and The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz). His TomDispatch book, War Without End, focused on how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq. His email address is [e-mail]. Originally published at TomDispatch

Guess what? Almost all the current wars, uprisings, and other conflicts in the Middle East are connected by a single thread, which is also a threat: these conflicts are part of an increasingly frenzied competition to find, extract, and market fossil fuels whose future consumption is guaranteed to lead to a set of cataclysmic environmental crises. Amid the many fossil-fueled conflicts in the region, one of them, packed with threats, large and small, has been largely overlooked, and Israel is at its epicenter. Its origins can be traced back to the early 1990s when Israeli and Palestinian leaders began sparring over rumored natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Gaza. In the ensuing decades, it has grown into a many-fronted conflict involving several armies and three navies. In the process, it has already inflicted mindboggling misery on tens of thousands of Palestinians, and it threatens to add future layers of misery to the lives of people in Syria, Lebanon, and Cyprus. Eventually, it might even immiserate Israelis. Resource wars are, of course, nothing new. Virtually the entire history of Western colonialism and post-World War II globalization has been animated by the effort to find and market the raw materials needed to build or maintain industrial capitalism. This includes Israel’s expansion into, and appropriation of, Palestinian lands. But fossil fuels only moved to center stage in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship in the 1990s, and that initially circumscribed conflict only spread to include Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey, and Russia after 2010.

The Poisonous History of Gazan Natural Gas

Back in 1993, when Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) signed the Oslo Accords that were supposed to end the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and create a sovereign state, nobody was thinking much about Gaza’s coastline. As a result, Israel agreed that the newly created PA would fully control its territorial waters, even though the Israeli navy was still patrolling the area. Rumored natural gas deposits there mattered little to anyone, because prices were then so low and supplies so plentiful. No wonder that the Palestinians took their time recruiting British Gas (BG) — a major player in the global natural gas sweepstakes — to find out what was actually there. Only in 2000 did the two parties even sign a modest contract to develop those by-then confirmed fields. BG promised to finance and manage their development, bear all the costs, and operate the resulting facilities in exchange for 90% of the revenues, an exploitative but typical “profit-sharing” agreement. With an already functioning natural gas industry, Egypt agreed to be the on-shore hub and transit point for the gas. The Palestinians were to receive 10% of the revenues (estimated at about a billion dollars in total) and were guaranteed access to enough gas to meet their needs.

Had this process moved a little faster, the contract might have been implemented as written. In 2000, however, with a rapidly expanding economy, meager fossil fuels, and terrible relations with its oil-rich neighbors, Israel found itself facing a chronic energy shortage. Instead of attempting to answer its problem with an aggressive but feasible effort to develop renewable sources of energy, Prime Minister Ehud Barak initiated the era of Eastern Mediterranean fossil fuel conflicts. He brought Israel’s naval control of Gazan coastal waters to bear and nixed the deal with BG. Instead, he demanded that Israel, not Egypt, receive the Gaza gas and that it also control all the revenues destined for the Palestinians — to prevent the money from being used to “fund terror.”

With this, the Oslo Accords were officially doomed. By declaring Palestinian control over gas revenues unacceptable, the Israeli government committed itself to not accepting even the most limited kind of Palestinian budgetary autonomy, let alone full sovereignty. Since no Palestinian government or organization would agree to this, a future filled with armed conflict was assured.

BEGGARING THY NEIGHBOR TO A FARETHEEWELL....MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

7. Ready for Nuclear War over Ukraine? by Robert Parry

NO OFFENSE TO OUR UKRAINIAN-BASED READERSHIP....BUT IS UKRAINE EVEN WORTH IT?

http://commondreams.org/views/2015/02/25/ready-nuclear-war-over-ukraine

A senior Ukrainian official is urging the West to risk a nuclear conflagration in support of a “full-scale war” with Russia that he says authorities in Kiev are now seeking, another sign of the extremism that pervades the year-old, U.S.-backed regime in Kiev.

In a recent interview with Canada’s CBC Radio, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said, “Everybody is afraid of fighting with a nuclear state. We are not anymore, in Ukraine — we’ve lost so many people of ours, we’ve lost so much of our territory.”

Prystaiko added, “However dangerous it sounds, we have to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin somehow. For the sake of the Russian nation as well, not just for the Ukrainians and Europe.” The deputy foreign minister announced that Kiev is preparing for “full-scale war” against Russia and wants the West to supply lethal weapons and training so the fight can be taken to Russia.

“What we expect from the world is that the world will stiffen up in the spine a little,” Prystaiko said.

Yet, what is perhaps most remarkable about Prystaiko’s “Dr. Strangelove” moment is that it produced almost no reaction in the West. You have a senior Ukrainian official saying that the world should risk nuclear war over a civil conflict in Ukraine between its west, which favors closer ties to Europe, and its east, which wants to maintain its historic relationship with Russia.

Why should such a pedestrian dispute justify the possibility of vaporizing millions of human beings and conceivably ending life on the planet? Yet, instead of working out a plan for a federalized structure in Ukraine or even allowing people in the east to vote on whether they want to remain under the control of the Kiev regime, the world is supposed to risk nuclear annihilation.

But therein lies one of the under-reported stories of the Ukraine crisis: There is a madness to the Kiev regime that the West doesn’t want to recognize because to do so would upend the dominant narrative of “our” good guys vs. Russia’s bad guys. If we begin to notice that the right-wing regime in Kiev is crazy and brutal, we might also start questioning the “Russian aggression” mantra...No European government, since Adolf Hitler’s Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet, across the West’s media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality, even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established...MORE

[Demeter]

22. The problem is, our regime is just as crazy, and brutal, and right-wing

maybe even moreso. After all, the Ukrainian coup was made in our image, at our orders.

[Demeter]

8. Used McMansions are selling briskly

https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/used-mcmansions-are-selling-briskly-2015-02-23?siteid=YAHOOB

?uuid=74014de8-bb71-11e4-9617-67c8601113a3

One way to look at the breakdown of home sales by price range: Used McMansions seem to be selling quickly.

While the rate of sales growth in January for existing-home sales was 3.2% from January 2014 levels, it was 13% in the $750,000–to–$1 million range, according to National Association of Realtors data released Monday. A “McMansion” is a pejorative term for relatively ostentatious and newer-construction homes targeting the upper middle class....

[Demeter]

9. Former AIG head Benmosche dies; led insurer after bailout

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/27/us-amer-intl-group-benmosche-death-idUSKBN0LV2AX20150227?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Robert Benmosche, who took the helm of insurer American International Group (AIG.N) after a massive government bailout at the height of the financial crisis, died on Friday at 70 after a battle with lung cancer.

Benmosche is credited with steering AIG through the turbulent period following its near collapse and rescue by the U.S. government. During his tenure, which started in August 2009, AIG fully repaid the $182.3 billion government bailout it received in 2008 to stave off bankruptcy.

Benmosche, who stepped down in September 2014, weathered intense scrutiny and was sharp-tongued at times, referring to federal officials as "those crazies down in Washington."

Critics often likened the former CEO, who also tangled with then-New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over bonuses paid to AIG staff after the bailout, to a bull in a china shop...MORE PRAISE AT LINK

[Demeter]

10. Why Companies Are Paying More Attention To Employee Well-Being In 2015

JUST SILLY FLUFF....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/27/employee-well-being_n_6763662.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

From the advent of the treadmill desk to the installation of ball pits for break time, companies around the world are keying into one the major needs of their employees: well-being in the workplace.

For their recent "State of the Industry: Engagement & Wellness in 2015" report, Virgin Pulse and Human Capital Media Advisory Group asked almost 1,400 human resource management professionals from a broad range of industries worldwide about how and why institutions of all sizes are choosing to budget, implement, measure and improve their employee engagement and wellness programs. And according to the their survey findings, both company executives and managers view well-being as a priority for 2015 -- they know how much healthy employees improve the bottom line...

[bread_and_roses]

46. OFFS ... how about MORE MONEY? WORKERS' RIGHTS?????

Fluff indeed.

[Demeter]

11. TEA TIME! Republican leaders defeated on shutdown

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c78ce5ea-bea9-11e4-8d9e-00144feab7de.html?ftcamp=published_links/rss/home_us/feed//product

Republican leaders suffered a surprise defeat as they struggled to avoid a partial government shutdown, after rank-and-file party members blocked a temporary fix to fund domestic security.

Hours before a midnight deadline, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives failed on Friday afternoon to pass a bill party leaders had backed, which would have extended funding for the Department of Homeland Security by three weeks.

The result was a blow to John Boehner, Speaker of the House, and left lawmakers scrambling into the evening to stop funding being cut to the department, which manages border and airport security and counter-terrorism activities.

It capped a week of turmoil that has highlighted policy splits in the Republican party and raised questions about its governing credentials....

[Demeter]

12. Biggest Global Banks Shrink Under Pressure From Regulators

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-27/biggest-global-banks-go-to-pieces-under-pressure-from-regulators?cmpid=yhoo

[Demeter]

13. SILVER SPOONS: Guess who turned 35 today?

Chelsea Victoria Clinton (born February 27, 1980) is the only child of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She was a special correspondent for NBC News (2011–14) and now works with the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative.

Clinton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, during her father's first term as Governor. She attended public schools there until he was elected President and the family moved to Washington, D.C., where she began attending the private Sidwell Friends School. She received an undergraduate degree at Stanford University and later earned master's degrees from Oxford University and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford in 2014.

Clinton has worked for McKinsey & Company, Avenue Capital Group, and New York University and serves on several boards, including those of the School of American Ballet, Clinton Foundation, Clinton Global Initiative, Common Sense Media, Weill Cornell Medical College and IAC/InterActiveCorp.

In 2007 and 2008, Clinton campaigned extensively on American college campuses for her mother's unsuccessful Democratic presidential nomination bid, introducing her at the August 2008 Democratic National Convention. In 2010, Clinton and investment banker Marc Mezvinsky were married in an interfaith ceremony in Rhinebeck, New York. She gave birth to their daughter, Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky, on September 26, 2014....wikipedia

While technically not born with the silver spoon, Chelsea had two ambitious parents who saw to it that their offspring got everything they ever wanted to give her....

[MattSh]

14. 5 Reasons Why Arab Spring States are Dumping Obama and Reaching for Russia

Obama has a Middle East problem. Almost all states which went through the Arab Spring revolutions are dumping the US and looking to Russia for help. Here are five reasons why.

As Obama's foreign policy falters, even former US allies are turning toward Russia for support. In February, high-profile visits to Moscow were made by Libya's prime minister and Yemen's ruling coalition. On February 10, Putin made a visit to Egypt which has been labelled as historic by analysts, and led to multiple high-level visits since.

However, the leaders are not only seeking access to Russia's historically strong military industry, but also its economic cooperation and political clout at the United Nations Security Council as they realize that dealing with the United States is a dead end. There are five main reasons why post-Arab Spring states are yearning for Russia's support.

1. The US Only Provides Weapons When it Serves Its Doctrine

Following the NATO intervention which led to the overthrow of Muammar Gadhafi during the 2011 Libyan Civil War, the country was discarded by the West. A conflict between secular and Islamist factions who came to power led to a second civil war in 2014. Now, the secular government is yearning for Russia' support as it battles the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Islamist faction as well as jihadists, including the Islamic State, is yearning for Russia's support.

"The United States and Britain have been supporting armed groups while at the same time denying weapons to the Libyan army," the country's internationally-recognized Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani told Sputnik on Tuesday.

Al-Thani, previously announced that Libya hopes for a military cooperation with Russia, in both weapons supplies and training, during a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya press center in Moscow on February 5.

2. Infrastructure Projects With the West Mean IMF Debt Traps

Having lost a considerable amount of infrastructure in the Civil War, Libya cannot afford expensive Western technologies other than through IMF and World Bank loans which have political strings attached, such as austerity policies. The other choice is Russia, which is willing to finance deals on much more generous terms and at a lower price.

Complete story at - http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150226/1018809121.html

[MattSh]

15. At the finish line of deindustrialization: how Ukraine loses its industry

By Ivan Lizan

Translated by Eugene

Ukraine’s refusal to cooperate with Russia in the military, scientific and technical fields has already begun to bear fruit. Naturally, this Kiev’s policy forced the citizens of Ukraine to eat only one (poisonous) kind of “fruit”: unemployment, poverty and deindustrialization.

Thanks to the West and Kiev for this

The goal of this break in cooperation, initiated by the Western curators of Kiev – while talking heads in the government only announced Washington’s decision, wrapped in the slogan “Not a single spare part for the occupier!” – was actually the disruption of the state defense order of the Russian Federation.

“Geniuses” of the Ukrainian political thought expressed the intention to force Moscow’s capitulation by refusing to cooperate and to export components. For example, the Ukrainian political “giant” Yuri Lutsenko suggested to use the Yuzhmash plant as a means to blackmail Russia. The argument was truly “deadly”, but, as turned out, not for Russia: “… all Russian nuclear missiles can be serviced only by our Yuzhmash. Without this service, the whole world will sing la-la-la-la” (reference to the obscene ditty “Putin huilo la-la-la-la” popular among anti-Russian Ukrs) – Lutsenko repeated in mid-July last year.

However, the negative effect of breaking the bonds is almost always mutual and is not immediate. Because, all of a sudden, it turned out that the mastodon of Ukrainian engineering – the backbone of Ukrainian rocket-building – Yuzhmash found itself between life and death. Yet, Russian companies still keep working, for reasons still unclear to Kiev.

How the flagship of rocket-building dies

The plant had problems before. They were not critical, but accumulated from year to year.

Americans were first to refuse cooperation with Yuzhmash because of the exploded Anthares rocket. Formally, the Americans are going to work for about a year on finalizing the technical solution for their rocket, so Yuzhmash will be left without US orders during this time. In reality, if Washington decides to renew the cooperation, they will not find anyone to talk with, as by that time the company will be reduced to just a pile of equipment.

The final nail in the plant’s coffin was the refusal of the Russian Federation to procure launch vehicles Zenit; they will be replaced with (Russian made) Angara.

Complete story at - http://thesaker.is/at-the-finish-line-of-deindustrialization-how-ukraine-loses-its-industry/

[MattSh]

16. Alarming Currency Devaluation Provokes Consumer Panic in Ukraine

My Note: We've been relatively unaffected in my portion of town, but we're not an island here. The tsunami is building and it's coming our way.

The rapid devaluation of Ukraine's currency has provoked a "consumer panic" in the country, adding fuel to the fire of the ongoing political and economic crisis.

Ekaterina Blinova – The rapid devaluation of the hryvnia has triggered a panic amongst Ukrainian consumers, prompting people to "storm" supermarkets and pharmacies.

The Ukrainian currency has already lost 70 percent of its value, triggering a "consumer panic" in the country. Ukrainians are stockpiling food and medicine, scouring the shelves for sugar, cooking oil, flour, canned products, cakes and frozen chickens. Most of these products have already disappeared from Ukrainian stores.

Local media outlets depict a gloomy picture of people standing in queues for hours, cursing and jostling each other. The panic has emerged in the last few days in Kiev and other cities of the country: cheap products such as coffee, tea and sunflower oil have vanished from the shelves due to consumer hysteria.

Ukrainian stores have already introduced rationing of basic products in order to reduce the negative impact caused by the nationwide panic. Restrictions have been introduced for goods like cooking oil, flour and sugar; with retailers allowed to sell only two bottles of oil and three to five kilograms of flour and sugar per person.

Complete story at - http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150226/1018805775.html

[Demeter]

17. Greece to stop privatisations as Syriza faces backlash on deal By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

in Athens. 25 Feb 2015


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11435649/Greece-to-stop-privatisations-as-Syriza-faces-backlash-on-deal.html

Greece's Left-wing Syriza government has vowed to block plans to privatise strategic assets and called for sweeping changes to past deals, risking a fresh clash with the eurozone's creditor powers just days after a tense deal in Brussels.

"We will cancel the privatisation of the Piraeus Port," said George Stathakis, the economy minister. "It will remain permanently under state majority holding. There is no good reason to turn it into a private monopoly, as we made clear from the first day.

"The deal for the sale of the Greek airports will have to be drastically revised. It all goes to one company. There is no way it will get through the Greek parliament."

The new energy minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, warned that Syriza will not sell the Greek state's 51pc holding of the electricity utility PPC, power grid ADMIE or state gas company DEPA. "There will be no energy privatisations," he said.

It is already becoming clear that Syriza's leadership does not accept a strict, minimalist reading of the Eurogroup text, and is relying on quiet assurances from Brussels and Paris that it has friends in the EU.

The defiant signals are making it harder for the German government to dampen criticism over the deal in the Bundestag before it votes on Friday. "Greece will not get a single penny until it complies with its obligations," said Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble.

Both the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank say the deal is too loose to pin down Syriza, allowing it to unpick elements of the EU-IMF Troika Memorandum. Mr Stathakis gave strong hints that this is indeed Syriza's intention. "The Eurogroup meetings went very well," he said, with a conspiratorial smile.

Yet the Syriza leadership risks falling between two stools as it tries chip away at the austerity regime without triggering Greece's ejection from the euro. A closed-door crisis meeting of the party at the Greek parliament erupted in an emotional storm, running for 12 hours as the group's Left Platform voiced their anger over the retreat in Brussels...

[Demeter]

18. "SHAPING THE DEEP MEMORIES OF RUSSIANS AND UKRAINIANS" WR Polk

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2014/12/shaping-the-deep-memories-of-russians-and-ukrainians-wr-polk.html

The medieval principality of Kiev was the origin of the Russian state, but from before it existed, the area we today call the Ukraine was as much a passageway as a destination: from the north, Vikings (who called themselves Rus) came down the rivers to trade and hunt for slaves; from the south, Byzantium sent missionaries and traders; and nomadic peoples from inner Asia, Scythians, various Turkish peoples, Tatars and Mongols periodically surged in from the East. Natives and descendants of previous invaders accommodated to these intrusions. They had to. Many, of course, died or were killed, but many more intermarried or converted to the customs, languages and religions of the most recent of the newcomers.

Historians often describe these accommodations in religious terms: in the vast steppe lands near the Sea of Azov, the Khazars, a Turkish people, converted to Judaism while the people living around Kiev, then a trading post on the Dnieper river, became Greek (Orthodox) Christians and most of the nomads converted to Islam. There was no single overarching political, religious or social Ukrainian authority, but the bosses, chief men or warlords of towns, districts and large estates constituted themselves a sort of primitive parliament, the veche, to negotiate with one another and with the titular rulers. For a brief period in the Twelfth century, under this arrangement and led by a major figure in early history, Vladimir II, Monomakh, "Kiev" dominated most of what today is the Russian Federation including what later became the Tsardom of Moscow, but it did not include all of what today is the Ukraine.

Kiev's sway was shattered within half a century, and in 1169 Kiev itself was sacked and burned by armies from northern Russian city-states. As the great Kievan-Russian historian Michael Florinsky wrote,[1] "The Kievan chapter of Russia's history was closed." The center of "Russian" power moved north to the city-state of Vladimir in what had been a mainly Finnish area. The district's later major city and capital, Moscow, was then just a small trading post crowding around a wooden stockade that, burned, demolished and rebuilt, came to be known as the Kremlin. Then in the Thirteenth century the Mongols of Chingis Khan arrived.[2]


The Mongols first entered the formerly Kievan area in 1223. They were to rule virtually all of Asia for most of the following two centuries. In 1238 they captured Moscow and in 1240, Kiev. One branch of Chingis Khan's descendants established became known as the Golden Horde (Zlataia Orda).[3] That subsidiary empire of the Mongols dominated what became Russia and the Ukraine...

MORE

[Demeter]

33. Cuban Missile Crisis in Reverse? The Cold War and Ukraine by WILLIAM K. POLK

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/25/the-cold-war-and-ukraine/

...In the post mortem discussion of the Game I argued, and my military, intelligence and diplomatic colleagues on our war game team agreed with me, that the idea of limited nuclear war was nonsense. No government could accept a devastating attack and survive. If it did not retaliate with a “victory-denying response,”[ii] it would be overthrown and executed by its own military and security forces. And the original attacker would in turn have to avenge the retaliation or it would face a similar fate. Tit for tat would lead inevitably to “general war.” Twenty years later, in 1983, a second Department of Defense war game (code named “Proud Prophet”) in which I did not participate and which was heavily weighted to the military confirmed what I had argued in 1962: there was no such thing as a “limited” nuclear war if both sides were armed with nuclear weapons. Limited nuclear actions inevitably ended in all-out war.

So, to be realistic, forget “limited” war and consider general war.

Even the great advocate of thermonuclear weapons, Edward Teller, admitted that their use would “endanger the survival of man[kind].” The Russian nuclear scientist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Andrei Sakharov, laid out a view of the consequences in the Summer 1983 issue of Foreign Affairs as “a calamity of indescribable proportions.” More detail was assembled by a scientific study group convened by Carl Sagan and reviewed by 100 scientists, A graphic summary of their findings was published in the Winter 1983 issue of Foreign Affairs. Sagan pointed out that since both major nuclear powers had targeted cities, casualties could reasonably be estimated at between “several hundred million to 1.1 billion people” with an additional 1.1 billion people seriously injured. Those figures related to the 1980s. Today, the cities have grown so the numbers would be far larger. Massive fires set off by the bombs would carry soot into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to fall to a level that would freeze ground to a depth of about 3 feet. Planting crops would be impossible and such food as was stored would probably be contaminated so the few survivors would starve. The hundreds of millions of bodies of the dead could not be buried and would spread contagion. As the soot settled and the sun again became again visible, the destruction of the ozone layer would remove the protection from ultraviolet rays and so promote the mutation of pyrotoxins. Diseases against which there were no immunities would spread. These would overwhelm not only the human survivors but, in the opinion of the expert panel of 40 distinguished biologists, would cause “species extinction” among both plants and animals. Indeed, there was a distinct possibility that “there might be no human survivors in the Northern Hemisphere…and the possibility of the extinction of Homo sapiens…”

So to summarize:

1) it is almost certain that neither the American nor the Russian government could accept even a limited attack without responding;

2) there is no reason to believe that a Russian government, faced with defeat in conventional weapons, would be able to avoid using nuclear weapons;

3) whatever attempts are made to limit escalation are likely to fail and in failing lead to all out war; and

4) the predictable consequences of a nuclear war are indeed an unimaginable catastrophe.

These dangers, even if today they seem remote, clearly demand that we do every thing we possibly can to avoid the fate of the frog. We can see that the “water” is beginning to heat up. We should not sit and wait for it to boil. We did not do so in the Cuban Missile Crisis. We and the Russians worked out a solution. So what will we, what should we do now?

HIS GUESSES AND WISHES AT LINK

[xchrom]

19. china's central bank cuts rate to boost economy

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_INTEREST_RATES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-28-06-03-58


Rates were last cut on Nov. 22. The new rates take effect Sunday.

Last year, China's economic growth fell to 7.4 percent - the lowest since 1990. It is expected to decline further this year, and a steep economic decline can raise the risk of politically dangerous job losses.

The latest round of cuts follow a string of tax reductions and other measures aimed at propping up growth. The government cut business taxes last week and has announced a pay hike for civil servants.

[xchrom]

20. US economic growth revised down to 2.2 percent

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ECONOMY_GDP?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-27-09-36-10



Economists, however, remain optimistic that the deceleration was temporary. Many forecast that growth will rise above 3 percent in 2015, which would give the country the strongest economic growth in a decade. They say the job market has healed enough to generate strong consumer spending going forward.

The economy is "doing just fine," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, who noted that although GDP growth slowed in the fourth quarter, the U.S. added an average of 284,000 new jobs from October through December.

[Demeter]

23. " Economists, however, remain optimistic that the deceleration was temporary."

That's what they always say...and when they figure out how to inflate, fudge or redefine the number again, it will show improvement.

Fixed that one.

[xchrom]

21. yellen meets with conservative groups unhappy with fed

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_YELLEN_CONSERVATIVES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-27-19-19-06

The meeting, which was set up in early February, came two days after Yellen came under heavy criticism from Republican lawmakers during a House hearing. They said Yellen had politicized decision-making at the central bank by favoring policies pushed by President Barack Obama and other Democrats. Yellen rejected the GOP criticism as unfounded.

[Demeter]

24. 8:30 AM, 1.4F in Ann Arbor. How long will this go on? They can't say

And outside, the summer birds are singing their heads off, establishing territories and looking for mates. The only reason we don't find them all frozen to the ground is the kindness of the owners of bird feeders.

Otherwise, it is the dead of winter. Green is not even a memory any more.

The sun shines brightly, and it's very warm, but I'd love to walk around in one light layer, so my skin can breathe.

[Demeter]

25. As we always suspected

[kickysnana]

34. I liked the one about going into IT to avoid interaction with other people.

My tiara-d granddaughter celebrated her 6th birthday here today. (Who knew there was so much Hello Kitty stuff.).

We have accumulated in our family almost all of the oddball genes out there. As such we are a pretty tolerant bunch. A kindergarten friend came and her Mom was a little apprehensive because she has some of her own issues. She fit right in and had a blast despite being the only other little girl there, we have a surplus of 6-12 year old boys plus my sisters teenage girls,a their German exchange student and the rest of the motley crew of adults.

I hadn't seen the youngest girl in about a year and she is now a young lady.

[Demeter]

26. Foreign governments gave millions to Clinton foundation while Clinton was at State Dept.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/foreign-governments-gave-millions-to-foundation-while-clinton-was-at-state-dept/2015/02/25/31937c1e-bc3f-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html



The Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration, foundation officials disclosed Wednesday.

Most of the contributions were possible because of exceptions written into the foundation’s 2008 agreement, which included limits on foreign-government donations.

The agreement, reached before Clinton’s nomination amid concerns that countries could use foundation donations to gain favor with a Clinton-led State Department, allowed governments that had previously donated money to continue making contributions at similar levels.

The new disclosures, provided in response to questions from The Washington Post, make clear that the 2008 agreement did not prohibit foreign countries with interests before the U.S. government from giving money to the charity closely linked to the secretary of state...

PRIMA-FACIE INFLUENCE PEDDLING, AND THE ADDED BENEFIT OF GIVING CHELSEA A JOB SHE CANNOT BE SUPERVISED OR FIRED FROM....SINCE SHE'S THE BOSS!

A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF AMBITION GETS ONE THROUGH LIFE---THIS MUCH GETS ONE REJECTED. oR IT SHOULD.

[Demeter]

27. The Finger-Wagging meat of the article

Rarely, if ever, has a potential commander in chief been so closely associated with an organization that has solicited financial support from foreign governments. Clinton formally joined the foundation in 2013 after leaving the State Department, and the organization was renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

[antigop]

51. but, but, but, the Clinton Foundation does such good work! nt

[Demeter]

28. NAFTA’s specter may haunt Keystone verdict

A free-trade complaint against the U.S. could be among TransCanada’s options.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/keystone-pipeline-nafta-115511.html?hp=lc2_4

President Barack Obama may decide to kill Keystone XL for good, but that could be no easy task — thanks in part to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The 21-year-old free-trade pact allows foreign companies or governments to haul the U.S. in front of an international tribunal to face accusations of putting their investments at risk through regulations or other decisions. The CEO of Keystone developer TransCanada has raised the prospect as a potential last resort if Obama rejects the $8 billion project, although for now the company is focused on getting him to say yes.

Administration officials involved in reviewing the proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline are aware of the potential for a NAFTA challenge and the importance of minimizing that risk in the event the president rejects Keystone. Others familiar with the trade pact’s origins agree it’s an avenue the company could take if the pipeline fails to survive the clash between industry and environmental groups over the project’s potential impact on the Earth’s climate.

Such a challenge would go before a tribunal of privately chosen arbiters who could award TransCanada damages paid by U.S. taxpayers, but it would not have the power to approve Keystone.

OH, WELL, THAT'S ALL RIGHT, THEN....BRING ON THE TPP AND TIPP!

THERE'S MORE RAMIFICATIONS AND THEY ARE WORSE...SEE LINK

[Demeter]

29. Why It's So Difficult to Repair Stuff: It's Made That Way

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb15/repair2-15.html

In Here's What's Wrong with Corporate America--and the U.S. Economy (December 17, 2014), I concluded that once Corporate America books the sale, they're done with customers. Customer service after the sale (when the upfront profits are booked) is a Kafkaesque tragicomedy of Orwellian narratives: Corporate America publicly worships customer service but delivers none of the real thing. Instead, customers are abandoned in a frustrating Circle of Intermediary Hell, where phone calls are shunted elsewhere and third-party repair crews show up weeks later with the wrong information and leave broken appliances disassembled. But this is only half the story: the other half of the story is products are now manufactured to be virtually impossible to repair at a cost lower than the price of a new replacement. U.K. technician Doly Garcia explains this half of the story in detail. As someone who has spent my adult life building, repairing and maintaining everything from major buildings to computers, I find her account matches my own experience.

Here is Doly's commentary:

"Your post about the problems with getting an appliance repaired was something I know a little about, since my main job is repairing electronic equipment. I live in the UK, not in the USA, but the situation is pretty much the same over here. And by the way, I'm female. Not that it makes any difference to what I have to say next, but just to mention I was pleased that you used the word 'repairperson'.

I think you have clearly realised there is a problem, but you haven't seen yet how big the problem is. As I see it, the crux of the issue is that the appliance was assembled in "Robotic factory #2" in China.

When something is assembled by robots, the appliance was designed to optimize assembly by robots. It was not designed to be easy to take apart by humans. Robots are cheaper than human labour, even in China (or they wouldn't have robotic factories in China). This means that the cost of assembly of a new item is peanuts compared with the cost of having a human take apart and put together again an old item, especially if that human is expecting to earn a decent American or European wage and also expects not to be overworked (a common enough situation in China). This automatically makes even rather simple repairs uneconomic.

Then, there is the issue of getting the parts. Some of the parts may be impossible to identify by a human because they don't have a part number on them, you can only figure out what they are by contacting the manufacturer, and the manufacturer usually won't be happy to give that information. And of course, if the appliance was made in China, most or all of the parts will be from China as well. So it may not be easy to source them.

Just about everything nowadays is made with the intention that only the manufacturer, or somebody who has a formal business relationship with the manufacturer, will be able to repair it. From the point of view of the manufacturer, every time that somebody repairs something without their help, that's money they are losing. Ideally, they want customers to buy a new gizmo, and if they can't be persuaded to that, they want at least to get a cut on the repair. So you have to become an official certified repair technician for some Big Manufacturer in order to get the business. But they'd much prefer that nothing be repaired, it's too much hassle and they make more money selling new stuff.

People that know how to do repairs are, quite literally, a dying breed. There's less and less of us all the time.

The status quo works beautifully for manufacturers right now, but it's based on a number of assumptions that may or may not hold in the future:

1. China won't have any major problems that affect its manufacturing capacity.

2. Relationships with China will continue to be smooth.

3. Transport to and from China and electricity in China (to run robots) will continue to be dirt-cheap.

4. People in Western countries will continue to be able to afford the next new thing.

If any of those stops being true, the whole current system would crumble. And I'm not quite sure of what plan B would look like.

It may look superficially straightforward: Hey, let's bring the factories back to the West. But that would require quite a lot of capital, and the sort of scenarios I mentioned above aren't the sort of scenarios where most companies would be flush with capital. And in many cases it would bring up the prices of stuff - after all, there was a reason why the factory was moved to China.

Alternatively, companies could start designing stuff so that it's reasonably easy to repair, which was the standard way of designing things not so long ago. But manufacturers are unlikely to go down that route unless they have to because people just aren't buying many new things. And I can tell you, after a few years of sluggish economy, manufacturers still haven't changed their ways. It's going to take quite a lot more.

In the meantime, people are already suffering the consequences, though most of them don't know it yet. To give you an example, here in the UK, cuts to the National Health Service means that most hospitals are having serious trouble to get their accounts to add up. One of the jobs I'm doing right now is repairing the handsets used to call nurses and switch on lights that go on hospital beds. It's an essential piece of equipment, because without it the bed can't be used. I've been doing it for a couple of years now, and unsurprisingly, it's getting to the point that some of the handsets really should be thrown away.

But the hospital maintenance people always beg not to throw any away, because they can't afford to buy new ones. Unfortunately, some of the problems can't be repaired satisfactorily. Plastic bits get broken and, though I can glue them again, the fix isn't too good and it doesn't last as long as I would like. It's of course impossible to get the plastic case I need from the manufacturer, and these things are made with industrial moulds. There is no small-scale way of making a plastic piece of the required quality.

(I only know of one story of an individual working at small scale that dared to pay for an industrial-scale plastic mould, that ended happily for the individual concerned: it was Alan Sugar, asking for a particularly popular TV casing. That's how he started his fortune, but it nearly bankrupted him in the process.)

You may have heard about 3D printers and think it's the solution, but often it isn't. The surface of a 3D printed object is not smooth, which is often a problem. And anyway, in this case the part has an additional laminated cover attached to it that, again, is the sort of thing that can only be done industrially at a large scale."

Thank you, Doly, for this comprehensive overview. There are a number of critical issues raised in Doly's commentary: the wasteful processes of manufacturing products that cannot be repaired and must be dumped in the landfill (or recycled, a non-trivial and costly process itself), and the decline of generalists--people with the skills and experience to do more than one narrow slice of work. Ironically, modern manufacturing processes lower the value of generalists; since it's almost impossible to repair products for a low cost, there's no demand for people who can fix a wide variety of things. These skills have atrophied to the point that many young people have no idea how anything is made or how it works. Few people can even change the oil in their car or adjust the brakes on a bicycle, much less replace a sensor on a modern auto engine, repair an appliance or swap components in a PC.

But this loss of repair skills may be changing, thanks to YouTube University: a phenomenal range of repairs can now be learned online via YouTube videos.

As for unrepairable products: one choice is to buy used products from a earlier age that are repairable...No matter what the brand, the product is only as reliable and durable as its lowest-quality part/component. That's the core problem with products that are difficult/costly to repair: everything made with cheap, unreliable parts/components will break down long before the entire assembly has lost its utility.

[DemReadingDU]

50. to buy used products from a earlier age

Yeh!

I found a sturdy egg slicer, made in America, at Goodwill. Those new egg slicers from china are cheap and break after slicing a few eggs. What a rip-off.

[Demeter]

30. POST-SNOWDEN It’s official—China is blacklisting Apple, Cisco, and other US tech companies

http://qz.com/351256/its-official-china-is-blacklisting-apple-cisco-and-other-us-tech-companies/

A new report from Reuters removes any lingering doubts that China is making life very difficult for US technology companies.

The news agency obtained a list of the Chinese central government’s approved technology vendors, and found that major US companies including Apple and Cisco have been removed entirely since Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA routinely accessed US company data and hardware to spy on adversaries.

The number of China’s approved foreign tech companies fell by a third between 2012 and 2014, and those with security-related products fell by two-thirds. It’s not just hardware—last year, Beijing banned government offices from buying the latest version of Microsoft Windows, as well as security software from Symantec and Kaspersky Lab. Reuters reports Intel’s McAfee unit and software maker Citrix Systems have also been dropped from the approved list.

Cisco’s struggles in China were already well known—the network equipment manufacturer blamed the Snowden scandal for decimating its business there starting in 2013. According to Snowden, the NSA routinely intercepted Cisco routers and inserted surveillance devices to target adversaries, apparently without the company’s knowledge.

Huawei, the world’s biggest network equipment maker, is Cisco’s biggest competitor, and thus benefits from the company’s absence from the approved vendor list. But it’s also notable that Huawei is barred from government contracts in the United States due to officials’ concerns that its products might enable Chinese spying....


WHAT GOES AROUND COMES BACK TO BITE YOU IN THE END....

[Demeter]

31. ‘Occupy made it possible’: JPMorgan whistleblower Fleischmann to Max Keiser

[Demeter]

32. Russia signed a deal with EU's Cyprus; gives its military ships access to Mediterranean ports

http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-russia-cyprus-sign-military-deal-on-use-of-mediterranean-ports-2015-2

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades signed an agreement on Wednesday to give Russian military ships access to Cypriot ports.

"We signed a number of documents regarding our military cooperation. For example regarding the entrance of our ships to Cypriot ports," Putin told journalists.

Ties between Russia and the West have plummeted in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, but Putin said the ships allowed to dock at Cypriot ports would mostly be used in international anti-terrorism and piracy efforts.

"I don't think this should worry anyone," he said.

Cyprus, which is heavily dependent on Russian investment, played down Wednesday's deal, saying Russian ships had always had access to its ports. A government source said it was simply the first time access had been spelled out in a separate accord...Earlier this week Russia restructured a 2.5 billion euro ($2.8 billion) loan to Cyprus it signed in 2011, cutting the annual interest rate to 2.5 percent from 4.5 percent and the redemption period to 2018-2021...Long a destination for cash from Russia, Cyprus saw capital outflows of a record $151 billion last year. U.S.-based non-profit organization Global Financial Integrity said in 2013 that illicit money flows from Russia to Cyprus amounted to at least $211.5 billion between 1994-2011.

Russia has sought to forge stronger ties with individual members of the European Union, including Cyprus, Hungary and Greece, after the 28-nation bloc, along with the United States, imposed cumulative sanctions on Moscow for its role in Ukraine. Officials in Brussels fear this policy is aimed at weakening EU resolve and preventing a further tightening of sanctions...Russia has sought Mediterranean ports for its navy to visit since Moscow lost a military maintenance base on Syria's coast during fighting between anti-government rebels and troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, whom Putin has supported in the nearly four-year conflict. Russian agency TASS said Wednesday's deal included the possibility of Russian ships and warplanes using airports and seaports in humanitarian crises.

[xchrom]

35. CHINA'S MANUFACTURING MEASURE SHOWS CONTRACTION FOR FEBRUARY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_MANUFACTURING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-28-22-58-28

The latest monthly purchasing managers' index up to 49.9 from January's 9.8, China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing reported. The index uses a 100-point scale on which numbers below 50 show activity contracting. February's reading meant activity contracted from the previous month.

[xchrom]

36. BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY'S 4Q PROFIT DECLINES 17 PERCENT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EARNS_BERKSHIRE_HATHAWAY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-28-13-31-50

[Demeter]

37. Can we call it a Depression, now?

[Demeter]

38. Do Not Use TurboTax This Tax Season

http://newsfeed.gawker.com/do-not-use-turbotax-this-tax-season-1688222595

If you haven't already filed your taxes, you're probably considering TurboTax, the widely used software that makes filing a return easy for our nation of babies and dimwits. Consider an alternative: according to two former high-ranking employees, the company ignored rampant refund theft because it could take a cut.

Intuit, the corporation that owns TurboTax, is an unequivocally evil firm that's spent millions of dollars lobbying the IRS to make sure filing your taxes is enough of a pain in the ass that you'll continue using TurboTax. The company also took some heat after widespread fraud and identity theft was discovered inside the system—so much heat, in fact, that TurboTax had to briefly stop processing state returns. Now, two Intuit insiders say the existence of mass fraud wasn't just an oversight, but intentional negligence from the top: TurboTax was able to rake in revenue from faked filings.

Robert Lee and Shane MacDougall, both former security executives at Intuit, spoke with KrebsOnSecurity.com about the company's dubious practices: Identity thieves have been creating fake accounts in droves to cash in on strangers' legitimate refunds. It's a simple maneuver: plug in someone else's Social Security number and other tax identification, then go through the same TurboTax steps as normal—only they bank the refund deposit, not you:

Lee said he was mystified when Intuit repeatedly refused to adopt some basic policies that would make it more costly and complicated for fraudsters to abuse the company's service for tax refund fraud, such as blocking the re-use of the same Social Security number across a certain number of TurboTax accounts, or preventing the same account from filing more than a small number of tax returns.

"If I sign up for an account and file tax refund requests on 100 people who are not me, it's obviously fraud," Lee said in an interview with KrebsOnSecurity. "We found literally millions of accounts that were 100 percent used only for fraud. But management explicitly forbade us from either flagging the accounts as fraudulent, or turning off those accounts."

It's a near perfect online scam: with hacked social security numbers and other personally identifying fragments flooding the web, fraudsters need only create a free TurboTax account to siphon away someone else's refund. And because TurboTax allows filers to pay for the price of the software with their refund before they actually receive it, there's no need to submit or falsify a credit card number—it's free money for both Intuit and crooks.

Even more disturbingly, MacDougall says he was brushed off by management when he told them their company was providing an extremely easy and effective way to steal from the very people it purports to help:

"Complainant repeatedly raised issues with managers, directors, and even [a senior vice president] of the company to try to rectify ongoing fraud, but was repeatedly rebuffed and told Intuit couldn't do anything that would 'hurt the numbers'," MacDougall wrote in his SEC filing. "Complainant repeatedly offered solutions to help stop the fraud, but was ignored."

Intuit denies that it has a large fraud problem, or that it deliberately allowed fraud to take place because it was good for its bottom line. Which, of course, because that's the response from every thoroughly evil corporation when they're caught with their pants down. I suggest using a certified accountant, because there's a statistically much lower chance that you'll be letting a sociopathic entity handle your taxes.

[Demeter]

39. How Much Crude Oil Do You Consume On A Daily Basis?

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Much-Crude-Oil-Do-You-Consume-On-A-Daily-Basis.html

...If you’re in the United States, that figure is approximately 2.5 gallons of crude oil per day; roughly one barrel every seventeen days; or nearly 22 barrels per year. That’s just your share of US total consumption of course; the true number is harder to discern – minus industrial and non-residential uses, daily consumption drops to about 1.5 gallons per person per day. Subtract the percentage of the population aged 14 and below and the daily consumption climbs back above 2 gallons. This is big picture, and it’s quite variable, so let’s go further....

[Demeter]

40. IRS will allow people to keep extra money from ObamaCare tax error

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/233715-irs-will-let-people-keep-extra-money-in-obamacare-tax-error

People who received incorrect tax information from ObamaCare will be allowed to keep the extra money in their refunds and will not have to refile their taxes, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.

The Obama administration announced last week that 800,000 people signed up for ObamaCare had received incorrect tax information. Most of those people will be receiving a corrected form in the mail early next month, and are being asked to delay filing their taxes until then.
But about 50,000 had already filed their taxes, and it had been unclear whether they would be forced to do so again.

Treasury said people who did not pay enough in taxes because of the glitch will be allowed to keep the money. If they paid too much, then they have the option of filing an amended return to get their money back.

The administration has not provided a breakdown of how many people paid too little and how many paid too much....

[Demeter]

41. Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index

http://bloomberg.econoday.com/byshoweventfull.asp?fid=466923&cust=bloomberg-us&year=2015&lid=0&prev=/byweek.asp#top

As with the Conference Board's consumer confidence report earlier this week, Bloomberg's index showed some slippage in the latest report. Consumer sentiment retreated last week to the lowest level of the year as Americans' views of the economy and their finances dimmed. The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index fell to 42.7 in the period ended February 22 from 44.6 a week earlier. The 1.9-point decline was the biggest since May 2014. A gauge of the current state of the economy slumped by the most in almost four years.

According to Bloomberg, confidence has deteriorated in three of the last four weeks as gasoline prices started climbing from the lowest level since 2009. Sentiment is also being restrained by what Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen this week called "sluggish" wage growth, even as the labor market continues to improve.

The measure of Americans' views of the economy dropped 3.2 points, the most since March 2011, to an eight-week low of 35.7. The gauge of personal finances fell to 53.8, also the weakest reading this year, from 56.6. It was the fourth straight decline. A gauge of the buying climate, which shows whether now is a good time to make purchases, was little changed. Sentiment declined last week within five of seven income brackets. Confidence among those making less than $50,000 declined to an eight-week low and for Americans making more, sentiment dropped to the weakest since November. Comfort fell in all four U.S. regions last week. For those in the Midwest, confidence declined more than in any other region and reached the lowest level since November. In the West, sentiment decreased by the most in 12 weeks.


Definition
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index is a weekly, random-sample survey tracking Americans' views on the condition of the U.S. economy, their personal finances and the buying climate. The survey was formerly sponsored by ABC News since 1985. Beginning in April 2014, immediate details of the report are available by subscription through Langer Research Associates which conducts the survey for Bloomberg. Publicly released details are available only after a significant delay after release of the headline number. In May 2014, Bloomberg changed the series range to zero to 100 versus earlier reports with a range of minus 100 to plus 100

Jobless Claims

http://bloomberg.econoday.com/byshoweventfull.asp?fid=466607&cust=bloomberg-us&year=2015&lid=0&prev=/byweek.asp#top

Initial jobless claims surged unexpectedly in the February 21 week, up 31,000 to a 313,000 level that is far outside the Econoday consensus (279,000 to 300,000). The 4-week average is up 11,500 to 294,500 but is still more than 10,000 below a month ago in a comparison that, despite the latest week's surge, still points to improvement for the labor market.

Data on continuing claims, which are reported with a 1-week lag, are mixed. Continuing claims for the February 14 week fell 21,000 to 2.401 million but the 4-week average rose 2,000 to 2.399 million. The unemployment rate for insured workers is unchanged at a recovery low of 1.8 percent.

The impact of the disappointment for initial claims is likely to be mitigated by a couple of factors: the February 21 week was a week shortened by Presidents' Day, a factor that makes for outsized adjustments to the data, and the prior week, the February 14 week, not the latest week, was the sample week for the monthly employment report.

Recent History Of This Indicator

Initial jobless claims fell a sizable 21,000 in the February 14 week to a slightly lower-than-expected 283,000, nearly reversing a 25,000 spike in the prior week. Volatility in weekly data puts importance on the 4-week average which was down for a 4th straight week, 6,500 lower to 283,250 for the lowest level since early November. Importantly, the February 14th week was the sample week for the monthly employment report and comparisons with the January sample week show significant improvement, down 26,000 for the level itself and down a very sizable 23,750 for the 4-week average.

Definition
New unemployment claims are compiled weekly to show the number of individuals who filed for unemployment insurance for the first time. An increasing (decreasing) trend suggests a deteriorating (improving) labor market. The four-week moving average of new claims smoothes out weekly volatility.

[Demeter]

42. In Midst of War, Ukraine Becomes Gateway for Jihad By Marcin Mamon

THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES AT WORK

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/midst-war-ukraine-becomes-gateway-europe-jihad/

“OUR BROTHERS ARE there,” Khalid said when he heard I was going to Ukraine. “Buy a local SIM card when you get there, send me the number and then wait for someone to call you.”

Khalid, who uses a pseudonym, leads the Islamic State’s underground branch in Istanbul. He came from Syria to help control the flood of volunteers arriving in Turkey from all over the world, wanting to join the global jihad. Now, he wanted to put me in touch with Rizvan, a “brother” fighting with Muslims in Ukraine.

The “brothers” are members of ISIS and other underground Islamic organizations, men who have abandoned their own countries and cities. Often using pseudonyms and fake identities, they are working and fighting in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus, slipping across borders without visas. Some are fighting to create a new Caliphate — heaven on earth. Others — like Chechens, Kurds and Dagestanis — say they are fighting for freedom, independence and self-determination. They are on every continent, and in almost every country, and now they are in Ukraine, too.

In the West, most look at the war in Ukraine as simply a battle between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government. But the truth on the ground is now far more complex, particularly when it comes to the volunteer battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine. Ostensibly state-sanctioned, but not necessarily state-controlled, some have been supported by Ukrainian oligarchs, and others by private citizens. Less talked about, however, is the Dudayev battalion, named after the first president of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev, and founded by Isa Munayev, a Chechen commander who fought in two wars against Russia.

Ukraine is now becoming an important stop-off point for the brothers, like Rizvan. In Ukraine, you can buy a passport and a new identity. For $15,000, a fighter receives a new name and a legal document attesting to Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine doesn’t belong to the European Union, but it’s an easy pathway for immigration to the West. Ukrainians have few difficulties obtaining visas to neighboring Poland, where they can work on construction sites and in restaurants, filling the gap left by the millions of Poles who have left in search of work in the United Kingdom and Germany...


THERE'S MUCH MORE, AND NONE OF IT GOOD NEWS FOR ANYONE

[Demeter]

43. SONG AND DANCE FROM SILK STOCKINGS

&list=PL0U7vzDDl4XqzvOapCP28bMWnIMqgeyrM&index=6

ASTAIRE CORRUPTING THE PROLETARIAT IN PARIS

&list=PL0U7vzDDl4XqzvOapCP28bMWnIMqgeyrM&index=15

PART OF THE SCHTICK OF "SILK STOCKINGS" WAS THE ROMAN-A-CLEF ASPECT OF THE CHARACTER "JANICE DAYTON", A THINLY DISGUISED ESTHER WILLIAMS, WHO STOLE FANNY BRICE'S SECOND HUSBAND....

USSR LOVE THEORY

FRED ASTAIRE ROMANCES

THE CINDERELLA TRANSFORMATION OF A USSR BUREAUCRAT

THE AMERICAN PRINCE FLUSHES OUT HIS CINDERELLA BACK IN MOSCOW

FRED ASTAIRE'S SWAN SONG

CYD CHARISSE INTERVIEW

[Demeter]

44. One Piece of "good news"

It's up to 24F! MUCH warmer than yesterday....sigh.

There's lots more news, must of it not good or not any better than that, so I'm wrapping it up. See you on SMW! Stay warm!

[Demeter]

47. Reforming the Fed: Who’s Right; Who’s Wrong? By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 26, 2015

http://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/02/reforming-the-fed-whos-right-whos-wrong/

The Republicans are making good on their campaign pledge to turn up the heat on the Federal Reserve. Sparks flew in the House Financial Services Committee hearing room yesterday as Fed Chair Janet Yellen appeared to present her semi-annual testimony. At times, the exchanges between Yellen and Republican members of the Committee were sharp and tense.

In his opening statement to the Committee, Jeb Hensarling (R-Tx), who chairs the Committee, blamed the “anemic” recovery on Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and regulatory costs. He went on to say that “Then there’s the doubt, uncertainty and regulatory burden that grows as more and more unbridled, discretionary authority is given to unaccountable government agencies. Although monetary policy cannot remedy this, it can help.”

Republicans are locked in some kind of mind warp where the remedy for every problem is to deregulate. Despite six years of books, academic studies, investigative findings, and a 600-page report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission proving that deregulation was responsible for the financial crash of 2008 – the greatest financial implosion since the Great Depression – Republicans refuse to let facts get in the way of pushing for more deregulation.

Democrats on the other hand, despite overwhelming proof that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has actually allowed Wall Street to grow systemically more dangerous and more corrupt since its passage, is irrationally wedded to this legislation.

[Demeter]

48. John Oliver--now, there's a man who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize