STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 19 June 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 19 June 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 18 June 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 18 June 2015
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[font color=red]10 Year 2.33% +0.02 (0.87%)
30 Year 3.13% +0.02 (0.64%) [font color=black]


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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts







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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]

[Demeter]

1. As soon as I can get my heart off the floor and back to beating....

This is the 201th anniversary of the composition of The Star Spangled Banner.

It might make an interesting satirical study: of the formerly Land of the Free, Home of the Brave; for our Weekend theme.

Other than that, I have no ideas. Not sure how I'm going to get through it all...hope that the Tea Party wreaks vengeance upon the GOP.


It's been a stressful week, and the Kid has been behind most of it.

[Demeter]

2. How Obama's "Trade" Deals Are Designed To End Democracy

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-14/how-obamas-trade-deals-are-designed-end-democracy

by Eric Zuesse, author of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics

U.S. President Barack Obama has for years been negotiating with European and Asian nations — but excluding Russia and China, since he is aiming to defeat them in his war to extend the American empire (i.e, to extend the global control by America’s aristocracy) — three international ‘trade’ deals (TTP, TTIP, & TISA), each one of which contains a section (called ISDS) that would end important aspects of the sovereignty of each signatory nation, by setting up an international panel composed solely of corporate lawyers to serve as ‘arbitrators’ deciding cases brought before this panel to hear lawsuits by international corporations accusing a given signatory nation of violating that corporation’s ‘rights’ by its trying to legislate regulations that are prohibited under the ’trade’ agreement, such as by increasing the given nation’s penalties for fraud, or by lowering the amount of a given toxic substance that the nation allows in its foods, or by increasing the percentage of the nation’s energy that comes from renewable sources, or by penalizing corporations for hiring people to kill labor union organizers — i.e., by any regulatory change that benefits the public at the expense of the given corporations' profits. (No similar and countervailing power for nations to sue international corporations is included in this: the ‘rights’ of ‘investors’ — but really of only the top stockholders in international corporations — are placed higher than the rights of any signatory nation.) This provision, whose full name is “Investor State Dispute Resolution” grants a one-sided benefit to the controlling stockholders in international corporations, by enabling them to bring these lawsuits to this panel of lawyers, whose careers will consist of their serving international corporations, sometimes as ‘arbitrators’ in these panels, and sometimes as lawyers who more-overtly represent one or more of those corporations, but also serving these corporations in other capacities, such as via being appointed by them to head a tax-exempt foundation to which international corporations ‘donate’ and so to turn what would otherwise be PR expenses into corporate tax-deductions. In other words: to be an ‘arbitrator’ on these panels can produce an extremely lucrative career.

These are in no way democratic legal proceedings; they’re the exact opposite, an international conquest of democracy, by international corporations. This “ISDS” sounds deceptively non-partisan, but it's really a grant to the controlling international investors giving them a 'right' against the taxpayers in each of the signatory nations, a ‘right’ to sue, essentially, those taxpayers; and ISDS includes no countervailing ‘right’ to those taxpayers, to sue those international corporations; it’s an entirely one-sided provision, and it even removes the authority of the democratically elected national government to adjudicate the matter. It even removes the appeals-court system: once a decision is reached by the ‘arbitrating’ panel, it is final, it cannot be appealed. And no nation may present a challenge to the constitutionality of the ‘arbitrators’ decision. These treaties, if signed, will override the signatory nation’s constitution, on those matters. This idea started after World War II and the defeat of the fascist nations on the military battlefields, and it moved this great fascist-v.-democratic war to a different type of battlefield. It’s round 2 of WW II. Unlike many wars, WW II was an ideological war. On the one side stood the Allies; on the other, the fascist powers. The first fascist leader, Italy's Benito Mussolini, said in November 1933 that his ideal was “corporatism” or “corporationism,” in which the state, or the national government, serves its corporations lLINK AT OP:

"The corporation plays on the economic terrain just as the Grand Council and the militia play on the political terrain. Corporationism is disciplined economy, and from that comes control, because one cannot imagine a discipline without a director.

Corporationism is above socialism and above liberalism. A new synthesis is created. It is a symptomatic fact that the decadence of capitalism coincides with the decadence of socialism. All the Socialist parties of Europe are in fragments.

Evidently the two phenomena—I will not say conditions—present a point of view which is strictly logical: there is between them a historical parallel. Corporative economy arises at the historic moment when both the militant phenomena, capitalism and socialism, have already given all that they could give. From one and from the other we inherit what they have of vitality. …

There is no doubt that, given the general crisis of capitalism, corporative solutions can be applied anywhere."

After World War II, the ‘former’ Nazi, Prince Bernhard, took up the fascist (lower-case f, indicating the ideology, instead of Mussolini’s Fascist political party; Bernhard had belonged instead to Hitler’s Nazi Party) cudgel, when he created in 1954 his then-secret (and still secretive today) Bilderberg group, which brings together the leaders, and the advisers to the leaders, of international corporations, meeting annually or bi-annually, near the places where major national leaders or potential future leaders have pre-scheduled to congregate, such as this year’s G-7 meeting in Bavaria, so that even heads-of-state (and/or their aides) can quietly slip away unofficially to join nearby the Bilderbergs and communicate privately with them, to coordinate their collective international fascist endeavor (and decide which presidential candidates to fund), to institute a fascist world government that will possess a legal control higher than what’s possessed by any merely national government. Just as the anti-Russian, anti-Chinese, G-7 conference ended on 8 June 2015, the Bilderberg conference opened 15 miles away three days later (after a few days of vacation in the Bavarian Alps), and Britain’s Telegraph (as it does every year with extraordinary boldness for the Western press) issued the list of attendees, which included top advisors to many heads-of-state, plus major investors in ‘defense’ stocks, plus top propagandists against Russia (such as Anne Applebaum). Bilderbergers have always been opposed to the old ideal of an emerging global federalism of democracies to constitute an ultimate world government; they instead favor a dictatorial world government, imposed by (the controlling owners of) international corporations. The major international corporations are controlled by perhaps fewer than a hundred people around the world; and, the other billions of people, the mere citizens, will, in this plan, as realized under Obama’s ‘trade’ deals, be fined if a three-person panel of servants (the ‘arbitrators’) to that perhaps fewer than 100 people, rule to say that the given nation has violated the ‘rights’ of those ‘investors,’ and assesses the ‘fine’ against those taxpayers.

The first Bilderberg meeting was called together by Bernhard in a personal invitation which proposed that, “I think that a 'partnership for growth' is a fine idea. A good deal has been said but very little has been done about trade policy, and this would be a good place to start the partnership.” (Note the ‘Partnership’ in “Trans Pacific Partnership,” and in “Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership”; but TISA doesn’t use that term.) Among the leading Americans at the first (and perhaps each of the subsequent) Bilderberg meetings, were Wall Streeters David Rockefeller and George Ball, both of whom subsequently lobbied the U.S. Congress heavily to replace national standards with international standards, something that would be an improvement if done within a democratic framework (which would thus have electoral accountability to the public, and be appealable and amendable), but they didn’t even mention any proposed framework, and virtually everyone at that time was simply assuming that nobody in ’the West’ would have any dictatorial framework in mind; everybody assumed that, after the defeat of the fascist nations, any emerging world government could only be democratic. This isn’t what Bilderbergers actually had in mind, however.

Matt Stoller, on 20 February 2014, bannered, “NAFTA Origins, Part Two: The Architects of Free Trade Really Did Want a World Government of Corporations,” and he reported, from his study of the Congressional Record, that:

After the Kennedy round [international-trade talks] ended [in 1967], liberal internationalists, including people like Chase CEO David Rockefeller and former Undersecretary of State George Ball, began pressing for reductions in non-tariff barriers, which they perceived as the next set of trade impediments to pull down. Ball was an architect of 1960s U.S. trade policy — he helped write the Trade Act of 1962, which set the stage for what eventually became the World Trade Organization.

But Ball’s idea behind getting rid of these barriers wasn’t about free trade, it was about reorganizing the world so that corporations could manage resources for “the benefit of mankind”. It was a weird utopian vision that you can hear today in the current United States Trade Representative Michael Froman’s speeches. …

In the opening statement [by Ball to Congress in 1967], before a legion of impressive Senators and Congressmen, Ball attacks the very notion of sovereignty. He goes after the idea that “business decisions” could be “frustrated by a multiplicity of different restrictions by relatively small nation states that are based on parochial considerations,” and lauds the multinational corporation as the most perfect structure devised for the benefit of mankind.

As for David Rockefeller, he wrote in the 1 February 1999 Newsweek an essay “Looking for New Leadership,” in which he stated (p. 41) the widely quoted (though the rest of the article is ignored): “In recent years, there's been a trend toward democracy and market economies. That has lessened the role of government, which is something business people tend to be in favor of. But the other side of the coin is that somebody has to take governments' place, and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it.” He meant there that international corporations should have supreme sovereignty, above that of any nation. He always emphasized what he proudly called “internationalism.” To him, like to Ball, governments — that is, national governments — were the problem, and democracy is not the solution. The solution is, to exact the contrary: provide supreme sovereignty to international corporations, as an international authority higher than any democracy, or that any nation.

A two-minute video succinctly states the case for UK citizens against ISDS regarding Obama’s proposed TTIP or Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership with Europe, but the case equally applies for all citizens, regarding Obama’s TPP with Asia, and his TISA with all countries for “Services,” including financial services and the ‘rights' that international financial corporations such as banks have to transfer their billionaires’ gambling (‘investment’) losses onto the taxpayers (via megabank bailouts). Obama’s ‘trade’ deals will thus internationalize the system to bail out billionaires on their losses. Furthermore, (as that linked source on TISA explained): if TISA passes, then the United States, which is virtually the only industrialized country that hasn’t socialized the health-insurance function, would be prohibited from ever socializing it. (This, mind you, from the very same Barack Obama who, while he was running against Hillary Clinton in 2008 to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, told the AFL-CIO, “I happen to be a proponent of single-payer universal healthcare coverage.”

He didn’t just lie: he’s now fighting to make socialization of health insurance absolutely impossible in the United States. No wonder why as President, Obama’s White House argued to the Supreme Court that no state may limit lying in political campaigns — that lying in politics is Constitutionally protected ‘Free Speech.’ Obama sets the record for phoniness.)

The world is already almost completely fascistic. As I previously reported, it really, truly, is the case that the “World’s Richest 80 People Own Same Amount as World’s Bottom 50%.” And, furthermore, the only rigorous scientific study that has ever been done of the extent to which a recognized ‘democratic’ country actually is a democracy found that that nation definitely is not. The nation was the United States. The U.S. was discovered to be, and long to have been, a dictatorship, in which the people who are not in the richest 10% have no impact whatsoever on the nation’s policies. A brief video accurately summarized that study (by Gillens and Page) and explained why its findings are that way.

This 6-minute video is a crash course on political reality. That Gillens and Page study noted at the end, that, "Our findings also point toward the need to learn more about exactly which economic elites (the ‘merely affluent’? the top 1%? the top 0.01%?) have how much impact upon public policy.” However, the most detailed study of the flow of economic benefits and costs in the United States since 2000 has found that all of the economic benefits from ‘America’s economic recovery’ and ‘the end of the recession,’ etc., have gone only to the top 1%. (The ‘news’ media try to say it’s not ‘really’ so, but the finding is based on the most solid of all data, and that’s the most reliable way to calculate anything.) Another study, which I did, also based on the best available data, “The Top 1% of America’s Top 1%,” has shown that the reason for the immense power that’s within the top 10% is the soaring wealth-boost to only the top 0.01%, the very top end of the top end. Comparing the boost to incomes at America’s top 0.1% to that of the top 0.01%, one sees that most of the income of the top 0.1% is actually going to merely the top 0.01%, so that, as I summed it up, “the wealthiest of the billionaires are getting almost everything.” And, this is the situation even before the Bilderberg plan is fully in force. Obama’’s ‘trade’ deals wouldn’t just lock this in; they’d vastly increase the power, and also the wealth, of the perhaps 100 or fewer people who control the largest international corporations.

The fact that these ‘trade’ deals are being pushed right now, means that the people who are in power have concluded that, already, ‘the free world’ is so dictatorial, that the chances that their plan can now be imposed globally are about as good as is likely ever to be the case again. The time is ripe for them to establish a global corporate dictatorship. The political money this year will be flowing like never before.

[Demeter]

11. Bilderberg 2015: where criminals mingle with ministers Charlie Skelton

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/11/continual-police-checks-ruining-bilderberg-party



I had three Austrian policemen in my hotel room last night. They stood there all grim faced with their fluorescent bibs, torches and sidearms. It was like the worst ever fancy dress party. I offered them a pilsner. They declined. They were too busy checking my ID that had been carefully checked 10 minutes prior at a police checkpoint. And carefully checked two minutes prior to that, at another police checkpoint. This third check took so long, it was so late, and my patience was so thin, that eventually I took my shirt and trousers off in front of the officers. “I’m having a shower,” I explained, and went and had one. When I’d finished, I came out in my towel, thinking they might be gone. They weren’t. “Put your clothes on please and come to your car.” This party wasn’t getting any better.

Out at my car I couldn’t be bothered to get into the whole ‘probable cause’ thing so I flung open the doors and with as much good cheer as I could muster, said: “Help yourself”. They did. While one set of police searched my car with their torches, another lot clustered round me and asked me questions: “Where do you live? What are you doing here?” I’m a journalist and I live in a police state. What about you? In my trouser pocket I found a “Medienhandbuch” from the G7, which I was given in my goodie bag when I was accredited there. By the light of a police searchlight, which was trained on me like I was trying to escape Stalag 17, I read out passages to my guards to pass the time. “Experienced staff from the Federal Government will be happy to help you with your work …” An officer interrupted. “Your address please.” It was on my driving licence in his hand. This was getting silly.

A little while later, bored and a bit cold, I decided to point out to the officers that while they were treating a journalist like a criminal, there were actual criminals about to arrive at the hotel they were guarding. Convicted criminals. Such as disgraced former CIA boss, David Petraeus, who’s just been handed a $100,000 (£64,000) fine and two years’ probation for leaking classified information. Petraeus now works for the vulturous private equity firm KKR, run by Henry Kravis, who does arguably Bilderberg’s best impression of Gordon Gecko out of Wall Street. Which he cleverly combines with a pretty good impression of an actual gecko. “What is a gecko?” asked one of my captors. “I’ll tell you what a gecko is if you tell me where the press accreditation centre is. What, there isn’t one? That’s a shame, because it would be really useful. You wouldn’t have to harass me in the middle of the night like this. I could just show you my press pass.” The policeman scribbled on his notebook. “Great, are you getting this down?” No. He was writing down the number on my driving licence. Again. “Can I go now?” Another no. So I continued my list of criminals. I moved on to someone closer to home: René Benko, the Austrian real estate baron, who had a conviction for bribery upheld recently by the supreme court. Which didn’t stop him making the cut for this year’s conference. “You know Benko?” The cop nodded. It wasn’t easy to see in the glare of the searchlight, but he looked a little ashamed.

I reassured him that Benko’s crimes were in the very best traditions of Bilderberg. Don’t forget, the first chairman of the group, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was the biggest fraudster of the lot; he was caught back in the 70s organising bribes from Lockheed and Northrop for the same arms contract. It was such a scandal that in 1976, Bilderberg had to skip a year out of sheer embarrassment. Maybe they should think about giving this year a miss as well. I wouldn’t mind. I’m not having any fun here. “Do you mind turning off that searchlight? I won’t run away, I promise.” A stern head shook. The policemen were careful to keep officers on all sides of me. Like they’ve been trained to when faced with a slightly damp journalist wielding a G7 media handbook. I decided to reward their vigilance with a chat about HSBC. The chairman of the troubled banking giant, Douglas Flint, is a regular attendee at Bilderberg, and he’s heading here again this year, along with a member of the bank’s board of directors, Rona Fairhead. Perhaps most tellingly, Flint is finding room in his Mercedes for the bank’s busiest employee: its chief legal officer, Stuart Levey. A Guardian editorial this week branded HSBC “a bank beyond shame” after it announced plans to cut 8,000 jobs in the UK, while at the same time threatening to shift its headquarters to Hong Kong. And having just been forced to pay £28m in fines to Swiss regulators investigating money-laundering claims. The big question, of course, is how will the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, respond to all this? Easy – he’ll go along to a luxury Austrian hotel and hole up with three senior members of HSBC in private. For three days.

High up on this year’s conference agenda is “current economic issues”, and without a doubt, one of the biggest economic issues for Osborne at the moment is the future and finances of Europe’s largest bank. Luckily, the chancellor will have plenty of time at Bilderberg to chat all this through through with Flint, Levey and Fairhead. And the senior Swiss financial affairs official, Pierre Maudet, a member of the Geneva state council in charge of the department of security and the economy. It’s all so incredibly convenient. Yet it doesn’t sit easily with Osborne’s intention, which he trumpeted five years ago, shortly after taking office, “to implement the most radical transparency agenda the country has ever seen”. What he’s doing this week in Bavaria is about as transparent as an alp. I’d got about as far as the 8,000 job cuts when I was finally allowed to go free. An utterly ridiculous 35-minute ID check. I would have been more furious but I was starting to get into the swing of my lecture. The searchlight was lowered and they waved me off into the night. “But wait, I haven’t even got as far as Henry Kissinger being questioned for war crimes …”

“Goodnight, sir.”

[Ghost Dog]

15. This is well put. In synthesis:

"...After World War II, the ‘former’ Nazi, Prince Bernhard, took up the fascist (lower-case f, indicating the ideology, instead of Mussolini’s Fascist political party; Bernhard had belonged instead to Hitler’s Nazi Party) cudgel, when he created in 1954 his then-secret (and still secretive today) Bilderberg group, which brings together the leaders, and the advisers to the leaders, of international corporations, meeting annually or bi-annually, near the places where major national leaders or potential future leaders have pre-scheduled to congregate, such as this year’s G-7 meeting in Bavaria, so that even heads-of-state (and/or their aides) can quietly slip away unofficially to join nearby the Bilderbergs and communicate privately with them, to coordinate their collective international fascist endeavor (and decide which presidential candidates to fund), to institute a fascist world government that will possess a legal control higher than what’s possessed by any merely national government. Just as the anti-Russian, anti-Chinese, G-7 conference ended on 8 June 2015, the Bilderberg conference opened 15 miles away three days later (after a few days of vacation in the Bavarian Alps), and Britain’s Telegraph (as it does every year with extraordinary boldness for the Western press) issued the list of attendees, which included top advisors to many heads-of-state, plus major investors in ‘defense’ stocks, plus top propagandists against Russia (such as Anne Applebaum). Bilderbergers have always been opposed to the old ideal of an emerging global federalism of democracies to constitute an ultimate world government; they instead favor a dictatorial world government, imposed by (the controlling owners of) international corporations. The major international corporations are controlled by perhaps fewer than a hundred people around the world; and, the other billions of people, the mere citizens, will, in this plan, as realized under Obama’s ‘trade’ deals, be fined if a three-person panel of servants (the ‘arbitrators’) to that perhaps fewer than 100 people, rule to say that the given nation has violated the ‘rights’ of those ‘investors,’ and assesses the ‘fine’ against those taxpayers. ..."

[Demeter]

3. Cartier boss with $7.5bn fortune says prospect of the poor rising up 'keeps him awake at night'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/cartier-boss-with-75bn-fortune-says-prospect-poor-rising-up-keeps-him-awake-at-night-10307485.html



The multi-billionaire owner of luxury jewellery company Cartier has revealed his greatest fear – robots replacing workers and the poor rising up to bring down the rich.

Speaking at the Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit in Monaco (obviously), the fashion tycoon told his fellow elite that he can’t sleep at the thought of the social upheaval he thinks is imminent.

According to Bloomberg, Johann Rupert told the conference to bear in mind that when the poor rise up, the middle classes won’t want to buy luxury goods for fear of exposing their wealth.

He said he had been reading about changes in labour technology, as well as recent Oxfam figures suggesting the top 1 per cent of the global population now owns more wealth than the other 99 per cent.

“How is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the envy, hatred and the social warfare?” he said. “We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us. It’s unfair. So that’s what keeps me awake at night.”

[Hotler]

14. " prospect of the poor rising up 'keeps him awake at night"

GOOD!

[Demeter]

4. The Slavery Economy: Trade Deals and the Quest for Global Dominance by ROB URIE

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/12/trade-deals-and-the-quest-for-global-dominance/

The Setup

“In the factory books, you see lots of turnover. But slaves couldn’t quit. While factories were worrying about filling positions and just keeping things going, plantation owners were focused on optimization. They could reallocate labor as they saw fit. I found real quantitative analysis in their records. They were literally looking at humans as capital.”

— Caitlin Rosenthal, Harvard Business Review

As this is being written U.S. President Barack Obama is pushing the House of Representatives to give him ‘fast-track’ authority for his trade agreement, the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), granting him the authority to cede political control to global capital at will. As has now been well commented on, the agreement isn’t about trade per se, but is a template for the consolidation of corporate power within an international framework. The current push for explicit ‘political’ control is only an anomaly to the historically illiterate— the growth of Western capitalism has come through use of state power in the service of predominant economic interests. Hopes that the defeat of ‘fast-track’ will represent a strategic victory against global capital have several centuries of history to overcome.

Given record corporate profits relative to U.S. economic production, the question of why granting corporations more control over the lives of hundreds of millions of people is a good idea is worth asking? The occasional frame of the American ‘political’ leadership provides context. Mr. Obama argues that ‘if we don’t write the rules, the Chinese will,’ a telling conflation of geopolitics and economics. Through the ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement) mechanism multinational corporations will ‘write the rules.’ And ISDS-like mechanisms of past trade deals assure that this will continue regardless of pending outcomes. The geopolitical frame is true by degree— U.S. based multinational corporations will represent their own interests through state power just as they always have.

From the ‘inside’ the political challenge of the last half century has been in explaining Western economic policies as a series of unfortunate, but nevertheless necessary, accidents. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) may not have turned out exactly as planned, but that is water over the dam. Bank deregulation may not have turned out exactly as planned, but that is water over the dam. The bailouts of Wall Street, including major European banks, may not have turned out exactly as planned, but that is water over the dam. The war for oil in Iraq may not have turned out exactly as planned, but…, . Left unsaid is that politically connected plutocrats have benefitted from each and every one of these policies while the toiling classes have seen their lots diminished. As with exit polling results, a persistent bias is evidence that the fix is in...

MORE DESPAIR AT LINK

[Demeter]

5. Sarao May Use Mental-Health Defense in U.S. Extradition Fight

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-18/sarao-may-use-mental-health-defense-in-u-s-extradition-fight



Navinder Singh Sarao, the British trader charged over his role in the 2010 U.S. flash crash, may cite mental-health issues to fight extradition to the U.S.

The claim is one of Sarao’s six defenses he may assert to remain in the U.K., according to documents at a London court Thursday. Lawyers may also argue that U.S. prosecutors’ “potentially misleading” statements that he contributed to the flash crash would prevent him from getting a fair trial.

Health concerns are one of the few arguments that have been successfully used by Britons to block extradition to the U.S. in recent years. Gary McKinnon, accused of hacking into American military computers, won his extradition fight in 2012 after a long battle with authorities after doctors he suffered from a form of autism.

The 36-year-old’s mental health may be a bar to his extradition depending on the outcome of an expert’s assessment of the defendant, his lawyers said in the court document.

Sarao was arrested in London in April after U.S. prosecutors filed fraud and market manipulation charges against him related to the 2010 flash crash. The U.S. alleges he was responsible for one in five sell orders during the trading frenzy that saw almost $1 trillion of value erased from U.S. stocks in just minutes.

Lawyers for Sarao also contend as a British citizen any prosecution should take place in his home country and vastly different prison sentences between the U.S. and U.K. violate his human rights.

Lawyers for the U.S Justice Department say there’s “no evidence in support” of any the defenses being considered by Sarao’s legal team.

Sarao has been in Wandsworth prison in London since his arrest. He failed to meet a 5 million-pound ($7.9 million) bail order because his assets have been frozen. His lawyers unsuccessfully tried to amend the order last month.


SOUNDS LIKE CATCH-22 TO ME---YOU'D HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO THINK YOU CAN WIN AGAINST THESE ODDS.

[Demeter]

6. Global Libor probe didn't examine yen rates until 2010, court hears

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/18/us-trial-libor-hayes-idUSKBN0OY1XR20150618


A U.S.-instigated investigation into alleged manipulation of benchmark Libor interest rates expanded from dollar rates to include yen rates only in late 2010, a London court heard on Thursday. Steven Sletten, a lawyer from Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, told the jury in the trial of former UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes that the Swiss-based bank received three subpoenas from the U.S. Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) regulator between April 2011 and July 2012. The CFTC initiated an investigation into dollar Libor rates in 2008 and it was two years before this was expanded to the area in which Hayes specialized. Hayes, a former yen derivatives trader based in Tokyo, is charged by Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) with eight counts of conspiracy to defraud between Aug 2006 and Sept 2010, a criminal offense that can carry a 10-year jail sentence. Hayes, 35, has pleaded not guilty and is due to lay out his defense later in the trial -- the first of an individual accused of Libor rigging -- which is scheduled to last into August.

Evidence and material was discovered that led authorities in other countries to start probing yen rates after the U.S. regulator investigated allegations of manipulation of the vast dollar Libor rate. Swiss regulator FINMA, the UK regulator, Department of Justice (DoJ) criminal division, the CFTC, Securities and Exchange Committee and Japanese regulator FSA were all investigating by 2010, prosecutor Mukul Chawla said. Sletten, called as a witness for the SFO, said his firm was appointed by UBS, which had previously instructed UK-based law firm Allen & Overy, to deal with the rapidly expanding global Libor investigation in December 2010. During the course of the internal UBS investigation, that focused on Jan 2005 to end-2010, Sletten said the law firm interviewed witnesses and collected 31 million documents globally in relation to 92 "custodians" including current and former UBS staff as part of an operation spanning the UK, United States, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. In the subpoenas sent by the CFTC, which were also addressed to Sletten and shown to the jury, UBS was ordered to produce targeted searches of communications as well as documents relating to members of UBS's board of directors and executive committee and group treasury reports.

Sletten said UBS was ordered to hand over around one million of the documents to the SFO. However, around eight million of the documents were created in or retained in Switzerland, where they had to be dealt with according to Swiss bank secrecy and privacy laws, he added.

The SFO alleges Hayes was a ringleader in a conspiracy with 25 staff from at least 10 banks and brokerages to rig Libor, the London interbank offered rate used to price an estimated $450 trillion of financial contracts and loans worldwide

[Demeter]

7. Trade turnaround: House backs new power for Obama

The plan still faces several procedural hurdles and Democratic resistance....President Barack Obama’s trade agenda was jolted back to life Thursday, as the House voted narrowly to grant him fast-track authority to finalize a sweeping accord with 11 other Pacific Rim nations. AND ANYTHING ELSE A PRESIDENT WANTS, FOR 6 LONG YEARS!

Now, in order to score a major victory on a centerpiece of his economic agenda, he has to convince a handful of key Senate Democrats to take a leap of faith ahead of a crucial procedural vote Tuesday. So far, several are holding back.

“This is of such importance because the pro-trade Democrats have been through a lot of hits now,” said Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee. “And I’ll tell you I’ve come to the conclusion that for many Democrats, not all but many, trade is now the toughest economic issue.”

For the second time in as many weeks, the House voted for Trade Promotion Authority, legislation that would empower the Obama administration to clinch the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation pact that would be the largest free trade agreement in history. The vote was 218-208. Backing the bill were 190 Republicans and 28 Democrats; 50 Republicans and 158 Democrats voted against it. Eight members did not vote. Only one lawmaker, Republican Ted Yoho of Florida, changed his position from last week, switching from no to yes.

...It’s the second time in two weeks that Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) chamber voted to approve the legislation. The legislation was halted last week by House Democrats, who voted against an aid package for workers in an attempt to scuttle the larger trade agenda. This time, Boehner and McConnell devised a complicated process that could deliver Obama his biggest legislative achievement in years.

The legislative maneuvering, on which Boehner and McConnell consulted with Obama during a conference call this week, could result in Obama approving the trade package before the July 4 recess — and eventually usher in a trade deal that would touch 40 percent of the global economy. The fast-track authority is essential, proponents say, because it would bar Congress from making any changes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership after a deal is reached between the U.S. and other negotiating countries. Lawmakers would get only an up-or-down vote on the pact.

Assuming Democrats are able to win the backing of at least 12 Senate Democrats necessary to overcome a filibuster, McConnell will begin the procedural process to amend another trade bill with Trade Adjustment Assistance, a program that funds job training for workers who lose their job due to trade agreements. That secondary bill, which includes language to strengthen trade ties with Africa and Haiti, will be subject to another vote in the House.

Separating the workers aid package from the trade promotion bill is a gamble because Senate Democrats have demanded that the two move simultaneously. But they ran into trouble last week when House Democrats concluded that if they blocked the aid package they have long supported, it would torpedo the entire trade agenda. Most Republicans have strongly opposed the so-called Trade Adjustment Assistance program for displaced workers, arguing it amounts to government waste. But to win Senate Democratic support for moving the fast-track bill without the workers aid, McConnell and Boehner have promised to send an extension of the TAA program, which expires at the end of September, to Obama’s desk. Next week, the 14 Senate Democrats who voted for the initial trade bill last month — that included both the workers aid and fast-track authority — will now need to take a leap of faith that the Republican leaders will follow through on that promise.

It’s uncertain they will....




Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/house-revive-trade-deal-obama-119162.html#ixzz3dVRdQAY1

[Demeter]

8. The final countdown for Greece- EU calls emergency summit

http://www.dw.de/the-final-countdown-for-greece-eu-calls-emergency-summit/a-18525783



Only 12 more days until potential bankruptcy (WELL, ELEVEN, NOW).

EU finance ministers are trying to find a solution in Luxembourg against long odds...Neither German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble nor his Greek colleague Yanis Varoufakis saw no realistic chance for the Greek debt crisis to be resolved at the Eurogroup meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday. Varoufakis admitted as much before arriving there.

"Now is the time for the political leaders to find a solution," he said in Paris on Wednesday.

One of the leaders Varoufakis implicitly addressed was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who warned the Greeks in a government statement in the Bundestag that it was actually their turn.

"Where there's a will, there's a way," Merkel said.

The urgency of the situation was reflected by comments after the eurogroup meeting ended with no result. Discussions on Greece are needed at the "highest political level", EU President Donald Tusk said, adding that he had called an emergency eurozone summit for Monday. Another round of negotiations between EU heads of state and government and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras next week at the EU summit in Brussels could be an option. The same goes for another special summit of the 19 countries in the euro zone. However, frustrated EU diplomats point out that there has been a number of such summits over the past four months - and there's still no solution. In any case, any formal decisions about the conclusion of the aid program and about the payment of the outstanding 7.2 billion euros (8.2 billion dollars) had to be agreed on by EU finance ministers. There is little time left to fulfill all the requirements and get approval from various national parliaments. The aid program that's been in contention ever since radically left Prime Minister Tsipras took office in January automatically ends on June 30.

SHEER MADNESS CONTINUES AT LINK

[Demeter]

9. IMF's Vinals says central banks may have to be "market makers"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/18/imf-markets-vinals-idUSL5N0Z43QT20150618

Central banks may need to become "market makers of last resort" if there is not enough liquidity during volatile sell-offs, a senior International Monetary Fund official said on Thursday.

Regulators worry that when interest rates begin rising from their prolonged low levels there will be a stampede for the exits by bond investors and that markets won't have the liquidity or capacity to deal with it smoothly.

The prospect that the Federal Reserve may start raising rates later this year has already prompted "taper tantrums" or severe volatility in global financial markets.

Jose Vinals, director of the IMF's capital markets department, said market liquidity has shrunk as capital requirements on banks have increased but that there was no simple relationship between the two. Central banks buying bonds to conduct unprecedented stimulus programmes over the last three years -- most recently the European Central Bank -- have also been blamed for sucking volume out of the market, making it less liquid. Vinals said it was unclear whether markets were simply more volatile or whether there were systemic consequences, but it would take time to find a solution,

"The time it takes for the global regulatory community and central banking world to find a solution this time may be longer than the time where one episode of big illiquidity happens," Vinals told a meeting of the International Organization of Securities Commission (IOSCO) in London.

"Then the question is what to do. In my view the only thing that can be done at that time is that central banks should become again market makers of last resort."

Ashley Alder, chief executive officer of Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission, said central banks acting as market markers of last resort was the "last thing" he wanted to see.

"If you react to that by piling more intervention on intervention, you encourage more untoward risk taking and you end up with even greater amount of mispriced risk," Alder told the conference.

"You end up with a never-ending cycle that is harder and harder to get out of," Alder added.

A BIT MORE DOUBT AND FEAR AT LINK

JUST REMEMBER, EVERYBODY--THIS TIME IT'S DIFFERENT!

[Demeter]

10. THE DIPSTICK--ALL ABOUT OIL

Oil Demand Weaker Than Many Expect

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Oil-Demand-Weaker-Than-Many-Expect.html

Although I disagree with the vast majority of the bear calls that have existed all year (all of which were documented as being false, by the way) one thing stands out as a red flag: demand.

The reliance on strong demand to justify increased supply, as is the case with OPEC, is one example. The other is US producers using stronger demand to draw down inventory while keeping production flat. I still expect production to decline in the second half of this year in the US, by the way. However, the sudden surge of US production in fall last year was, in part, due to prices remaining elevated but also the industry’s reliance on massaged economic data that showed a stronger US economy on the surface, but weaker underlying activity. The weaker activity finally surfaced in quarter one this year and in the current quarter, even though GDP is about to get massaged again through seasonally adjusting the data.

The point is that the oil industry believed the economic data and media hype about a strong economy and thus kept pumping. The broad weakness in commodities is a reflection of that false reality, with the stronger dollar helping to weaken things further. What should be cautioned against is continued reliance on demand pull as a means to balance the market in an economy built on bubbles and debt. It simply won’t last as, once again, the false reality will be exposed. I do think demand for gasoline in the US and Asia (remember that in winter, weak Asian demand was all the rage as the reason why oil must fall) is up strongly, but will it last is the question.

The most likely scenario is that it will wane at some point in 2015 and as the economic false realities get “popped” as the equity bubble bursts, demand will eventually fall. In the US, by that time, supply will likely be falling tied to depletion. Many E&P companies can’t support capital spending through cash flow, that is why major consolidation will likely take place over the coming months as it seems to be the only recourse for smaller producers to survive. They simply won’t be able to grow production to support higher cash flow nor will they have access to capital markets as they have in past. They will soon realize that production isn’t going up anytime soon and prices are not likely to rise much above $70 either.
Could this be the reason for Saudi Arabia's stance on oil supplies? OPEC’s loose quota of 30 million barrels a day (MBD) (their production remains consistently over this to retake market share) seems equally flawed as they too are relying on a false sense of demand to justify these levels.

The claims of global markets being 2 MBD barrels a day oversupplied are completely false too, no doubt as the IEA recently revised demand figures pre 2014 and will do so post 2014, further demonstrating the data massaging going on. Markets are much tighter than perceived, and probably should be, given what I believe is a waning demand picture coming in 2016. Both OPEC and U.S. producers alike should heed the warning by anticipating this and better managing supply as opposed to relying on massaged economic numbers from governments who seem content doing it. If they don’t, they may find themselves sand bagged again.

By Leonard Brecken of Oilprice.com

GEE, I WONDER WHY? COULD IT BE LACK OF PURCHASING POWER, COMBINED WITH AN INVOLUNTARY END TO THE DAILY COMMUTE TO WORK, NOW THAT JOBS ARE GONE?

The Oil Glut is Not Real

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Oil-Glut-is-Not-Real.html

As it appears GDP will be seasonally adjusted again, I find myself wondering just one thing: why? Earlier GDP figures showed the US economy on the brink of recession for the first two quarters of this year. Now, with more fudging going on, who knows what it will show. The government appears to be following the Hollywood mantra: if you can bend perception enough, it will become reality. Look no further than the Federal Reserve, which continues to raise expectations of higher interest rates in the second half of this year, in hopes of inducing faster growth.

Of course, the age of propaganda is now upon us; where perception trumps the truth, until that is, the house of cards burns and falls, which it always does. The US consumer responded to lower gas prices not by spending but by saving, despite predictions from investment banks and the Fed. They saw through the ruse and continue to feel the effects of 6 years of Keynesian money printing where the standard of living is falling. Inflation, while abated short term, won’t stay low forever. Nor will gas prices.

Goldman Sachs (GS) continued its streak of bearish calls on oil right at a time when the dollar took off (just by coincidence), based on the notion that $60 oil was good enough to increase drilling activity. That too will prove to be dead wrong just like every other piece of propaganda spewed from that bank. After hearing most of the major E&P earnings calls, I did not come away with any impression that the magic price to increase capital expenditures was $60 per barrel, or even $70 for that matter. I could be wrong, and may have missed something, but what I heard was merely that one or two firms, when asked at what price they would start adding rigs, responded by saying roughly around $70 per barrel. But they did not say that the spigot would be turned on by a huge amount. The market appears to buy into the perception that supply greatly exceeds demand. But I disagree with that analysis completely.

Capital spending was, lo and behold, also dramatically revised higher in previous months, fully consistent with the pending “revised” quarterly GDP data for the first half of this year. With such blatant data manipulation going on, why shouldn’t we question the extent of stated “glut” in oil? After all, as stated here before almost every cry for this “glut,” – from Cushing overflowing to production increasing by 900,000 barrels per day in the US – turned out to be wrong. This is why prices have recovered from lows, as the end of the world for oil never came. Production has flattened, and is now poised to fall, while inventories are declining. This is the opposite of what was perceived months ago.

The longer perception is distorted to create a false reality, the worse things will get in the end. We saw this before in 1999/2000 with the internet bubble and in 2008/2009 with the housing bubble, and it will not end well. In equity bubbles, false realities can last for longer, which we are seeing now in other assets. In commodities it’s harder because they are physical, are consumed and, eventually, will be measured correctly. I have maintained that the supply/demand imbalance won’t be nearly as great as portrayed as numbers get revised. Even the US consumer sees through this. According to Goldman Sachs’ own retail sales statistics for the week ending on May 23 sales growth remained subdued at 1.8% pace. The rig count has not increased even with oil at the $60 level. It won’t increase for some time and when that reality sets in, the numbers will no longer be fudged as the supply of oil here in the US will dry up as existing wells deplete. What will result is a snap back to prices above the normalized price of $70 and that won’t be pretty for the US consumer.

If producers are dumb enough to get roped in to turning the spigot on when oil does rise then, once again, prices won’t hold. By 2016, I fully expect that low cost oil will be depleted and prices will need to rise to spur more activity as costs rise. In the short term, expect producers to consolidate assets through M&A activity, which will accelerate as we move through 2015.

By Leonard Brecken of Oilprice.com

[Demeter]

12. More later--I gotta go. See you around WEE.

[DemReadingDU]

13. Jon Stewart

Not really economic, but a poignant introduction by Jon Stewart about Charleston.
Following that, is the inspiring interview with Malala Yousafzai, particularly about education.

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/full-episodes/rilcea/june-18--2015---malala-yousafzai

[Demeter]

16. I have concluded that EVERYTHING is economic

With the exception of the study of economics, which should be slotted in the Religion/Propaganda section of the library.