Economy
Related: About this forumSTOCK MARKET WATCH - Wednesday, 14 March 2012
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, 14 March 2012[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 13 March 2012
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 13 March 2012
[center][font color=green]
Dow Jones 13,177.68 +217.97 (1.68%)
S&P 500 1,395.95 +24.86 (1.81%)
Nasdaq 3,039.88 +56.22 (1.88%
[font color=red]10 Year 2.12% +0.06 (2.91%)
30 Year 3.27% +0.07 (2.19%) [font color=black]
[center][/font]
[HR width=85%]
[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
[center]
[/center]
[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
[/center]
[/center]
[HR width=95%]
[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
[center]
Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
[/center]
[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
[center]
The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
[/center]
[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
[center]
LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
[center]
Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
[/center]
[div]
Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = [/font][font color=red]12[/font]
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
[HR width=95%]
[center]
[HR width=95%]
[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]
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I can hardly wait to see what comes next.
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)
Hotler
(11,428 posts)
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Hotler
(11,428 posts)That is a great song. Pulling out the old 45's was cool. Thank you for posting that.
Every day, in every way, I see no reason to hope, and no chance of a future worth waiting around for...but I WILL chronicle it all for any posterity that survives!
Hotler
(11,428 posts)Thank you for all your contributions to SMW and WEE. Like the Garth Brooks song The Dance, "I might have missed the pain , but I would have missed the dance." It's like a train wreck, you don't want to watch, but you can't turn away. I've thought many times about checking out, but I don't have the guts. I'm going to ride it out and see where it takes me. It's going to be a wild ride. Vent as much as you want here cause we're your friends. Peace.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)This one was decided to last no more than an hour...got a lot done and then went home to write it all up. One more meeting tomorrow, and then a party on Sunday in honor of St. Pat.
Our little condo association is really starting to shape up!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)As the Eurozone crisis continues, lending to the real economy has fallen significantly. But it is difficult to know if this is due to a drop in demand for loans or a drying up of supply. Using data for small- and medium-sized companies in 11 Eurozone countries, this column identifies the effects of the crisis on credit demand, supply, and conditions.
The post-2007 Eurozone economic crisis has taken on a number of forms. Real economic activity has declined, in certain cases significantly. Turmoil in sovereign and financial sectors has seen yields on government bonds and spreads on bank credit-default swaps (CDSs) increase dramatically. The vast credit expansion of the previous decade has led to large private sector debt overhang.
Concurrent with these crises, lending to the private sector has fallen substantially. An ongoing debate centres on whether this decrease has been driven by weak demand on the part of firms, or on the tightening of credit conditions (the often-heard ‘credit crunch’). A number of papers have identified distinct supply- and demand-side channels and shown that, since the onset of the crisis, supply-side problems have contributed to lower aggregate lending (see, for example, Jimenez et al 2012 and Puri et al 2011). A supply-side credit crunch poses a number of concerns for policy makers. Campello et al (2010), for example, show that credit-constrained firms are less likely to expand employment, invest in technology, or spend on marketing.
While the current crisis has been shown to be associated with an increase in supply-side credit problems, no paper up to now has identified the macroeconomic aspects of the crisis that have led to changes in the supply and demand for credit. Disentangling these different channels is the primary aim of our recent research (Holton et al 2012). This has been made possible by a comprehensive new survey by the European Central Bank known as the Survey of Access to Finance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SAFE). This provides data on 24,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across 11 countries in the four six-month time periods in 2009 and 2010. The time and country variation in the data allows us to delve beneath the surface of the crisis and identify the drivers of credit demand, supply, and conditions at the firm level. We focus in all instances on bank loans, as banks have been shown to be the key source of financing for SMEs (Beck et al 2008)...MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)http://www.alternet.org/story/154434/can_banks_withstand_another_financial_shake_they%27re_working_with_political_leaders_to_make_sure_you_don%27t_find_out_the_answer?page=entire
There is resistance from banks and certain members of Congress to releasing information that could keep us from the edge of yet another economic meltdown...Witness the resistance on the part of banking institutions and certain members of the congressional leadership, despite regulations demanding that they allow facts and figures to be reported, information that could keep us from the edge of yet another economic meltdown.
The March 5 Wall Street Journal reported that as the Federal Reserve prepares to release the results of the latest round of stress tests, evaluating how banks would respond in the event of another severe financial crisis, “Bankers are pressing the Fed to limit its release of information — expected as early as next week — to what was published after the first test of big banks in 2009.”
The banks cite competitive concerns but regulators “view full disclosure as critical to assuaging investor concerns about banks’ capacity to withstand a market shock or economic setback.” Add to the mix the banks’ fear of further government interference – when it’s of the non-bailout variety, that is – and continued resistance to the new rules imposed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In any case, they’re being assured by the Fed that it won’t release data “that rivals could mine for future acquisitions or other moves,” such as quarterly breakouts of projected losses.
Banks also are dragging their heels over a requirement that arose from last November’s G-20 meeting. Representatives of 19 of the biggest industrial and emerging nations, plus the European Union, decreed that the world’s largest banks – including eight from the United States – must create “living wills,” plans that lay out what they would do in the event of another crisis, including how banks could be stabilized or even shut down...MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)What’s worse: to be persecuted and indicted for trying to expose an act of wrongdoing -- or to be ignored for doing so?
Whistleblowers have been under intense scrutiny in Washington lately, at least when it comes to the national security state. In recent years, the Obama administration has set a record by accusing no fewer than six government employees, who allegedly leaked classified information to reporters, of violating the Espionage Act, a draconian law dating back to 1917. Yet when it comes to workers who have risked their careers to expose misconduct in the corporate and financial arena, a different pattern has long prevailed. Here, the problem hasn’t been an excess of attention from government officials eager to chill dissent, but a dearth of attention that has often left whistleblowers feeling no less isolated and discouraged.
Consider the case of Leyla Wydler, a broker who, back in 2003, sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about her former employer, the Stanford Financial Group. A year earlier, it had fired her for refusing to sell certificates of deposit that she rightly suspected were being misleadingly advertised to investors. The company, Wydler warned in her letter, “is the subject of a lingering corporate fraud scandal perpetrated as a ‘massive Ponzi scheme’ that will destroy the life savings of many, damage the reputation of all associated parties, ridicule securities and banking authorities, and shame the United States of America.”
It was a letter that should have woken the dead and, as it happened, couldn’t have been more on target. Wydler didn’t stop with the SEC either. She also sent copies to the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the trade group responsible for enforcing regulations throughout the industry, as well as various newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. No one responded. No one at all.
MORE
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)In an experiment a group of people bid on a 20 dollar bill. The winner pays the full price bid and gets the bill. But, the 2nd highest bidder also has to pay the full amount they bid with no reward.
The high bid was 28 dollars. The 2nd highest 27.
Stock Market anyone?
Link to Mind Over Money:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mind-over-money.html
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Pi, Greek letter, is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th. Pi = 3.1415926535…
http://www.piday.org/
edit: DU does not like the Greek letter for Pi
Demeter
(85,373 posts)How apropos! Today I'm scheduled to make lemon meringue pie for a client....from scratch! Wish me luck!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Alan Durning, the guiding force behind Seattle’s influential Sightline Institute, may be the most famous sustainability activist you’ve never heard of. The man who coined the phrase “green-collar jobs” has written at least a dozen books, including This Place On Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence, and How Much is Enough? The Consumer Society and the Future of Earth, that have shaped the way we think about green policy.
On the heels of The Year of Living Car-Lessly, Durning’s latest project is Making Sustainability Legal, an effort to find and eliminate old zombie laws that may have once made sense, but now forbid people from taking basic steps that can lower their environmental impact. Over the past 20 years, Durning's innovative ideas have found their way into state-level policy and legislation throughout the Pacific Northwest states and provinces, and many have since rolled out into the rest of the country as well.
INTERVIEW FOLLOWS
Demeter
(85,373 posts)THE WAR TO INFLICT DOMESTIC TERROR, I EXPECT...DON'T WORRY, THEY WILL COME, WHEN PEOPLE GET DESPERATE ENOUGH IN SUFFICIENT QUANTITY. ALSO, MOST LARGE URBAN CENTERS HAVE BEEN HOLLOWED OUT AND ARE MERE SHADOWS OF THEIR FORMER GREATNESS.
Michael Katz's Why Don't American Cities Burn? is both a crushing reminder of seemingly intractable problems that still face American cities and an exploration of why things aren't worse. It is a slim book that serves as a general overview of the current state of the urban studies field, and although it went to the presses before Occupy Wall Street broke out, it provides some insight into the structural challenges facing the protesters who have recently flooded the streets of American metropolises...
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)I missed it back when it was published. thanks.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...In order to cut corporations down to size, the people must strip corporations of the special, artificial legal protections they have created for themselves...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...Groups from Chicago and around the country have been organizing for months to respond to the twin G8 and NATO summits–closed-door meetings of the global 1% to collaborate on economic and military policy–and both sides recognized the likelihood that this rare meeting of guns and cash would be confronted by the roar of an angry citizenry. The prospect of such a response, and the political context in which it will take place, was enough to force the Obama administration to reconsider bringing the G8 summit to the president’s hometown and the site of his re-election campaign headquarters....For undemocratic institutions such as NATO and G8, there is no place for public input—either in the conference rooms or in the streets—in which the interests of the 99 percent would be considered above the groups’ agendas of austerity and militarism. The G8’s retreat to the hills of rural Maryland dovetails with the stated solution of Emanuel and the City Council: the best way to keep you safe is to keep you out of the equation altogether.
Snipers and deputized police will still be flooding into Chicago for the NATO summit, not only to protect the delegates, but as much if not more to keep the nurses, school teachers and students from coming out into the streets against the financial crisis being paid for out of their paychecks. With a labor battle against the Chicago Teachers Union expected to escalate in the coming months, Chicago’s rulers are still intent on stifling dissent before and after the summit....Occupy Chicago has called for a “Chicago Spring” to reignite the movement in the warmer months just in time for the summit, and Adbusters, the magazine that coined Occupy Wall Street, has called for 50,000 people to come to Chicago in May. There will also be a People’s Summit the weekend before NATO comes to Chicago, and the festivities are planned to start on May 1, historically celebrated as an international workers’ holiday.
Mayor Emanuel has already laid the groundwork to attempt to shut these actions down. In January, the Chicago City Council almost unanimously passed a package of measures that critics have called the “Sit Down and Shut Up” ordinance. The bill creates a number of legal hurdles for protest organizers, including a requirement that groups take out insurance of $1 million for parades downtown, and a complicated permitting process that asks organizers to detail any sound system, sign, banner or other “attention-getting device” that will be carried by more than one person. Intimidation is also a key component of the strategy. The city plans to invite in thousands of out-of-town police officers, whom they have the authority to deputize here in Chicago. The City Council also granted the mayor authority to purchase equipment to handle the crowd, and officials are investing in $2,000 worth of face shields that “will fit easily over gas masks,” protective equipment for horses, and aerial surveillance equipment. Snipers are expected to be positioned on Loop rooftops. The costs of these elaborate “security” arrangements—to say nothing of the expense related to showing the distinguished visitors a grand time—will be between $40 million and $65 million, at least according to official claims. The 2010 G20 summit in Toronto cost nearly $1 billion.
Nonetheless, the outfit tasked with hosting the conferences, World Business Chicago (motto: “Think Business. Think Chicago”), is set to be the most well-fed nonprofit in the world. Placed in charge of fundraising for the summits by its chairman—none other than Rahm Emanuel—the nonprofit is likely to benefit handsomely from the no-bid contracts that the mayor’s office can now sign without approval of the City Council in the run-up to the NATO summit...The city has yet to receive any federal grant money to cover the costs of preparation and security for the summit, reported the Chicago Reader. That means this spending has come out of pocket for the city of Chicago, the same pocket that had only pennies to spare when it came to keeping libraries open, public workers employed and CTA routes running. Effectively, by pushing the living standard of working people ever lower, Emanuel has created a self-fulfilling prophecy. His austerity measures are forcing people out onto the street in anger. And an aggressive crackdown is only going to raise the stakes...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)- Centre for Economic Policy Research, VoxEU.org (January 2010)
Public-sector banking is a concept that is relatively unknown in the United States. Only one state - North Dakota - owns its own bank. North Dakota is also the only state to escape the credit crisis of 2008, and has sported a budget surplus every year since, but skeptics write this off to coincidence or other factors. The common perception is that government bureaucrats are bad business people. To determine whether government-owned banks are assets or liabilities, then, we need to look farther afield.
When we remove our myopic US blinders, it turns out that, globally, not only are publicly owned banks quite common, but countries with strong public banking sectors generally have strong, stable economies. According to an Inter-American Development Bank paper presented in 2005, the percentage of state ownership in the banking industry globally by the mid-nineties was over 40 percent. The BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - contain nearly 3 billion of the world's 7 billion people, or 40 percent of the global population. The BRICs all make heavy use of public-sector banks, which compose about 75 percent of the banks in India, 69 percent or more in China, 45 percent in Brazil and 60 percent in Russia...All the leading banks in the BRIC half of the globe are state-owned. In fact, the largest banks globally are state-owned, including:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...But what most of this week’s stories failed to mention was the large amount of his clients’ cash that was spent on campaign contributions, greasing the corrupt nexus of money and politics for personal gain. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to candidates, including Barack Obama, John McCain, John Boehner and Harry Reid; as well as national fundraising committees for the Republican and Democratic parties. The court-appointed receiver charged with returning money to Stanford’s investors is trying to get the contributions back. And the committees are resisting.
We first reported on Stanford’s political wheeling-and-dealing three years ago on Bill Moyers Journal:
Sir Allen also showered millions of dollars on political campaigns; much of it in the very year Congress was debating a bill to curb financial fraud. Two of the biggest recipients were Democratic Senator Bill Nelson and Republican John McCain, one of the original Keating Five. Three key Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee got checks from Stanford, too. Surprise, surprise --the reform bill never got out of the Senate.
The non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics elaborated on its Open Secrets blog:
The company gave the most during the 2002 election cycle, when Congress was debating the Financial Services Antifraud Network Act, a bill that would have created a computer network linking the databases of state and federal banking, securities and insurance regulators to curb financial fraud. Lobbying reports indicate that Stanford Financial Group lobbied on the bill, which the House passed but the Senate did not.
On February 13, Murray Waas of Reuters reported, “The court-appointed receiver charged with returning money to Stanford investors obtained a federal court order last June against five Democratic and Republican campaigns. But they haven’t returned the money. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee received $950,500; the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), $238,500; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, $200,000; the Republican National Committee $128,500, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) $83,345.”
House Speaker Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Reid, Senator McCain and some others already have returned their contributions, but Waas writes, “the roughly $154,000 recovered from elected officials is a fraction of the $1.8 million missing.” Others, including President Obama, turned money over to charity — $4,600 in Obama’s case, received directly from Allen Stanford in 2008. Nonetheless, the receivership has asked the Obama campaign to turn the same amount back to investors, and Waas adds, “The total may be as high [as] $31,000 when Stanford’s contributions to Obama’s other campaign committees are included, along with money from senior Stanford executives, and the Stanford Financial Group’s now-defunct PAC, according to campaign finance records and an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.”
Kevin Sadler, lead counsel for the receivership, told Reuters, “The money was never theirs to begin with,” and that taking Stanford’s campaign contributions was akin to someone being given cash by “a guy who goes into a Seven Eleven and robs the store.”
The national campaign committees are appealing to a higher court a federal judge’s order to return Stanford’s donations. We spoke with Kevin Sadler, who said that in the meantime, a federal district judge has just ordered the committees to pay the receivership $370,000 in legal fees, with another $120,000 in fees to come if their appeal is unsuccessful, and yet another $275,000 if the committees take the case to the Supreme Court and lose.
“In light of this,” Sadler told us, “and the Stanford guilty verdict, it is a puzzling act of bi-partisanship that all the political committee defendants persist in their fight against the receiver.”
****************************************************************
is senior writer of the new weekly public affairs program, "Moyers & Company," airing on public television. Check local air times or comment at www.BillMoyers.com.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Most shipowners in Greece look set to emerge in a strong competitive position but many of Germany’s ship-owning funds face bankruptcy
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/BLH300/HYGE2O/YGZ3O/JEPGJA/FKHOWL/LE/t?a1=2012&a2=3&a3=14
COULD BE WORSE--COULD BE THE BRITISH-AMERICAN CARNIVAL CORPORATION...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Encyclopaedia Britannica, the librarian's classic fount of all knowledge, will stop publishing its 32-volume print edition after 244 years and instead focus on its digital efforts, a watershed moment that highlights the changing fortunes of content producers in the internet era
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/A1TNOO/II8QDP/GYN7Q/4CWQZQ/PFA5A6/GX/t?a1=2012&a2=3&a3=13
NOW THAT'S A MISTAKE
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)I own a set of the 1893 (I think) Encyclopaedia Britannica, the so-called "scholars" edition. It's wonderful, has all kinds of goodies, not just in terms of information but in terms of late Victorian attitiudes toward issues and toward scholarship itself. Unfortunately, I can't use it because I don't have room to shelve it so it's been in boxes the past six years.
Last spring, I downloaded the free Kindle for PC program from Amazon onto my laptop. I currently have 493 books downloaded to my laptop. I can take that virtual library with me anywhere.
I don't hear anyone lamenting the demise of the vinyl record or the 8-track tape or even the cassette tape. All of those physical storage media for sound recordings were replaced by the CD, the MP3, the iPod, the Cloud, etc. (I haven't advanced beyond the CD for audio myself. . . .)
A digital EB would be immediately searchable. It would oh so much more portable than all those boxes of big heavy books. And it would be no less durable. Books burn. Books rot. The pages of my 1893 EB are so fragile I have to be very careful turning them because the high-acid paper tears so easily. A digital version is easily updatable and added-to-able. Not to mention all the trees that will be saved.
I'm a book lover. In some ways I'm a book hoarder. But going digital allows me to have more books at lower cost with less impact on the environment.
(In the other hand, 105 E. 34th Street????? The UPS Store? 
It's an inside joke, folks.)
TG
Demeter
(85,373 posts)And the Encyclopedia Brittanica is one of them. I'd add the Bible, other religious works, philosophy and logic, art coffee table books, calculus and physics books...
Anything that requires considerable thought and study, I guess, and flipping back and forth between pages.
If you are reading for pleasure and/or surface information, any media will do. If you are trying for deep knowledge, more senses are needed.
I doubt that photographic memory works so well on line, due to the lack of context, the environment.
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)It takes some time to get used to, but e-reading is actually far more efficient. I used to think I would never switch from a manual typewriter to an electric. The feel was so bizarre with an electric. And then going from a little portable Smith Corona that had real type and type arms that broke and a manual carriage return to an electronic that had one of those type wheels? Wow! What an adjustment that was! I still never thought I could make the transition to a computer where there was no paper, no sound of something making a physical impression on that paper. And now I actually laugh at myself for clinging to this ancient keyboard!
I grew up in a public education system where we rented our books each year and were forbidden to write in them on pain of . . . . something. And in my home, books were sacred so it was very difficult for me as an adult to get used to actually writing in books. Even now, I much prefer post-its to actually putting ink or graphite on a printed page. So the highlight and note system on the Kindle for PC is a bit cumbersome and awkward but I'll get used to it.
And I think the technology will evolve so quickly that before much longer, we'll have e-books with all the illustrations of print books, plus embedded video and audio and interactive learning. A math textbook with problems you work out and solve, then get feedback on the answer, on where you went right or screwed up? Within a decade, if not sooner.
the dead tree book generation is going to die off eventually, and the digital generation will take over. Many kids today don't know what a record is, and their lives aren't any the less for it.
When I moved into this house in 2006, I had just about 100 boxes of books. Front porch pix below taken after we had moved most of the furniture inside More books were in bags because I simply couldn't afford to buy any more boxes. There were another 30 or so boxes in storage that were brought out a few weeks later. I have about 2400 titles cataloged on a nice neat searchable spreadsheet, and that's maybe half the total. I would happily see them all digitized.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)For that, you need a human, to screw with the database.
Books are the Gold Standard of human knowledge, just as gold is the gold standard for a medium of exchange in the labor and resource market.
&feature=related
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)"The Bell Curve"
It's not the medium the words are disseminated through, it's the words themselves that are importnat. We have people touting the judeo-christian bible as scientific fact, and the paper the book is printed on doesn't make it true.
Sorry, but saying the printed-on-paper-word is the gold standard is, pardon the expression, bullshit.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and when it's on paper, in your possession, and you have provenance, it IS gold standard.
Download anything off the web. 90% of it is BS. But then, 90% of everything is BS. And after the hacker gets at it, it's not even the same BS it was yesterday.
Sturgeon's Law
The Sturgeon's law is an adage, commonly cited as "ninety percent of everything is crap" or "ninety percent of everything is crud". Also known as Sturgeon's revelation, it was derived from quotations by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author, who observed that while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, it could be noted that the majority of examples of works in other fields could equally be seen to be of low quality and that science fiction was thus no different in that regard to other art.
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)I have my ebooks in my possession, and i have provenance on them, too. I have Terry Eagleton and Karl Marx and William Morris and John Nichols and Cecelia Holland and John Moreton Drax Plunkett. And in paper I have Erich von Daniken right next to Thor Heyerdahl. I have BF Skinner and JB Rhine and Robert Graves and Michael Moore. I have L. Sprague de Camp (autographed) and Fritz Leiber and Tolkein and Disraeli and Sabatini and Commoner. None of them are carved in stone; they are ephemeral and easily destroyed by fire, by water, by mice.
Not everyone has the ability to own paper and ink books. They cost money and they take up an enormous amount of space. If I had to give up my house and move in with one of my kids, my books would have to go. I would be able to take my 500 digital editions with me. And making knowledge so readily available to everyone should be a progressive goal.
Why do you think the US lags so far behind in high speed internet connectivity? Why do you think developing nations want it so desperately? Because it is the key to expanding knowledge to EVERYONE. And with that knowledge comes the power to discern what's true and what isn't. Of course the christofascists don't want kids to get their hands on Darwin and Hitchens and Sagan and Dawkins -- they only want kids reading the paper bible that has all the lies in it.
As a writer who has been screwed over by publishers who held the power of the printing press in their grubby, greedy, slimy little hands, I sing a thousand hallelujahs for the digital revolution that puts that power into the hands of the writers -- and into the hands of the readers.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)the same way doing an actual dissection on a real specimen, as opposed to watching a video, or doing a computer simulation, is a luxury...for a future surgeon, it is CRITICAL!
And what happens now, when 9th grade biology students in high school don't get an exposure to the reality of dissection?
It's a degradation, a dumbing down. So is never actually reading a physical book, climbing a real mountain, eating real food, etc.
I'm a very low-tech engineer. So that when the lights go out, I'm not left in the dark.
The preservation of humanity's knowledge cannot be left to one medium, nor can older technologies be forgotten. It's as fatal a mistake as an overbred genetic result...unsustainable in the face of catastrophe, dependent on the goood times continuing.
And THAT'S why not printing the Encyclopaedia Brittannica is such a colossal mistake. Printed matter is our insurance policy. Some things CANNOT go out of print.
And as for Santorum's little Christian soldiers--bet you a nickel for each one that HASN'T actually read the Bible (and supporting discussion) but just been fed a line....that's why the BIBLE has to stay in print, and all its supporting and detracting discussion and variations.
A Rosetta Stone will never get us anywhere near back to where we are now....neither the good stuff nor the bad.
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)The proliferation of ebooks will far outstrip the finite number of printed versions, and if the human race loses so much of its technology that even the most basic electrical and digital functions are lost, the catastrophe will be beyond recovery. That kind of catastrophe would wipe out most of the books, too. (Remember "The Day after Tomorrow" and how the librarian insisted on saving the Gutenberg bible? What good was that going to do in terms of practical knowledge?)
I'm not saying we need to go out and burn the books right now, but I think it's ludditism to insist on supporting an outmoded technology over a newer, less "luxurious" and less elitist one.
Fudd -- I don't know about the Nook, but the Kindle for PC has a great system for bookmarking and noting. Best of all, the note-making space isn't as limited in size as the margin of a physical book. It's all a matter of getting used to it.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Not at all. I am more like an Archivist--the preserver of the links of human knowledge that got us to this place, so that we can recover from catastrophe, to understand how we got here and what's wrong with it, and to work for the best practices.
If I didn't think recovery was possible, I'd research methods of painless suicide.
It's a question of Use it or Lose it. That's not Elitism. That's Humanity's Blessing, or Curse, depending on how democratic/despotic one is regarding learning, progress, wealth distribution.
And this doesn't look much like a thriving civilization, if you don't mind my pointing it out. This looks like fish in an aquarium dying for a change of water.
Without knowledge (and the Founding Fathers were the best-educated leaders we've ever had, outside of FDR, perhaps) you end up with only bloody Revolution, French style. If that knowledge evaporates when the batteries run out, it's not knowledge, and it's not preserved.
When I was in grade school we took field trips to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, where people showed how to make soap and horse shoes, and the first primitive electrical technology was on display.
When I went back there a few years ago, I KNEW what that stuff was, how to make it work, and I still have the texts.
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)*I* am an archivist.
*You* are a collector.
*He* is a fucking pack-rat.
(it's a joke. As in, *I* am determined, *you* are stubborn, *she* is a pig-headed mule.)
Anyway --
No, you're not a Luddite.
And of course there's nothing wrong with preserving knowledge, but by the same token, if there is no way to share that knowledge, it doesn't do the one person who has it much good. So if you have the only remaining printed copy of "Raising Small Livestock" in Ann Arbor and the guy with the rabbits and goats is in Akron, what good is it going to do him? If the power grid is functional enough to permit reprinting of the book, then it's functional enough to retrieve digital copies. But you also have to have the technology and equipment and materials to resuscitate a moribund printing industry, as well as some way to physically distribute the copies. All of that presupposes at least some survival of the technology, and that means survival of at least some digital copies.
And even if the destruction is so cataclysmic that the only means of duplication is manual copying by hand, how are you going to reproduce all that knowledge and then get it out to the remaining population? It's much better for the survival of the species if that information is distributed WIDELY -- which it can be via digital transmission, storage, and retrieval -- so more of the species is educated. The more educated they are, the less likely they are to engage in species suicide.
Think of all the knowledge that was lost when the library at Alexandria was burned and those were the only copies of the texts. We now have the technology to make and preserve millions of digital copies of millions of texts. We have the technology to transmit all that knowledge, all that wisdom, anywhere and everywhere instantly -- for pennies. it's not enough to "preserve" knowledge in the form of the printed word so it's available in the event of some disaster in the unforeseen future -- it has to be shared in the here and now, making sure that others know and can pass it along to another generation, and another, and another. That's the true use it or lose it.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)I have a Nook, and I love it. But some books you want to have in paper, so you can highlight certain passages, and flip back to certain pages for reference. I have a few that I downloaded on the nook, that I later bought hard copies for, just for that reason.
I have the Wi-Fi - 3G model, and the best thing about it is, if I want a book, I type it in, and 10 seconds later, I have it. Less time than it takes to find my car keys.
Now, if they could just invent a bartender like that.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)My daughter loves books, she also probably has hundreds/thousands.
I have hundreds of books for my grandkids too.
A book is real, you can feel it.
With an e-book, the letters and words are in the electronic 'cloud'. What happens if your wi-fi, 3G/4G, electricity goes down and there is no power to the e-book?
Or worse, what if one becomes homeless living under a bridge, and has no electricity?
Real books would still be available via the library.
dmallind
(10,437 posts)E-readers access the web to get documents, not to access them for reading. The only way they are lost (temporarily of course) is if there is no electricity to recharge the reader, and that after days/weeks of use. If we lose electricity for a significant period of time, carting around a four-figure library like I have on my nook is going to be impractical with paper too.
Far more likely to damage paper than electronic data.
Ebooks are also available from the library. And from any filesharing site.
An ereader is real. You can feel it. Feel it weighing less than a book, being easier to hold and to turn pages in any position; see it being able to adjust text size, save your place in multiple books read concurrently, and look up unfamiliar words
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)If one is homeless and living under a bridge, one may not have the means to get to the library. If one checks the book out and it is lost or damaged under the bridge, the homeless borrower may not be able to pay the fine and may lose borrowing privileges.
Look, I'm not saying anyone has to give up their books or that there's anything wrong with liking physical ink and paper books. But there are too many reasons why books as we know them today are going to disappear. So will libraries -- as we know them today. Imagine going into a library and seeing no books at all on the shelves, just row after row of e-reader stations, each with instant access to every book in the library. Want to borrow a book to read at home? Connect your personal e-reading device, download the title you want, take it home. When your borrowing period is over, the device deletes the item.
Writing a research paper for school and need to quote from a reference source? Just highlight, copy, and paste, and select the style of citation you want -- footnote, endnote, in-text, MLA, APA, Chicago -- and it's done automatically for you.
Of course there are risks to "owning" an electronic library -- if the device is lost or stolen or gets dropped in the bathtub. But if a library of dead tree books is lost in a tornado, a hurricane, a fire, how easy is it going to be to replace those? Will your insurance policy cover it? Can you send an email to Amazon or B&N and get your library replaced in the time it takes to download 500 e-books?
I have some books I dearly love and treasure. I have a complete set of Harvard Classics in mint condition. I have first edition paperbacks of most of the early 1970s "bodice-ripper" historical romances. The last time I checked, I had almost 100 autographed copies, including that commemorative 10th Anniversary limited edition of Atlas Shrugged. If a book is sitting on the shelf not being read, is it any more a real book than the words on a Kindle or Nook or iPad screen?
And what about the other aspect of ebooks -- the ability of virtually anyone to publish what they've written? Publishing is no longer reserved for the elite, those who have been pronounced good enough writers (meaning, good enough to make money because that's all that counts) to justify someone else spending the money to put them in print. And while I'll be one of the first to say that Sturgeon's estimate of 90% is way way too generous when it comes to self-e-published fiction (should be more like 99.99% is dreck), i'm delighted to see the greedy, grasping corporate parasite publishers falling by the wayside. Today, Dorchester; tomorrow. . . . ?????
dmallind
(10,437 posts)And are easily accessed and changed without damaging the original.
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)In fact, there are record companies spend a lot of money (and probably pass some of that along to you) that strive to make digital sound like analogue.
Similar to the books/paper people.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I'm keeping mine. Some day I'll even get my audio system hooked up. (I only moved 14 years ago. Sigh. Life happens while you're making plans)
The library in town sells used records donated by patrons to raise funds for new acquisitions.
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)I'm one of them.
But they are relics of a bygone era and technology, objects of beauty and fascination, and they are EXPENSIVE. And elitist. 
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Citigroup and three other US banks have failed Federal Reserve “stress tests” to assess whether they were healthy enough to return more capital to shareholders, the central bank said.
Tuesday’s decision by the Fed is a disappointment to Citi, which had pledged to increase its dividend above a notional 1 cent a share for the first time since its near collapse during the financial crisis. “We intend to move forward with some force in 2012,” Dick Parsons, Citi’s chairman, had told the Financial Times on Friday.
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/CTBPCC/ZGY81H/NRHD3/YBAXOW/FKH6TB/6C/t?a1=2012&a2=3&a3=13
NOW THAT'S A SURPRISE
NO DIVIDENDS FOR YOU! WE NEED A DIVIDEND NAZI!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Tuesday’s release by the Federal Reserve of the results of its annual round of “stress tests” of the 19 largest American banks was yet another confirmation of the deftness with which the US government has handled the financial crisis. In stark contrast to the feeling of ennui that has often accompanied Europe’s initiatives to shore up its own financial system, the latest news from Washington was greeted with enthusiasm
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/BLH300/NJVPU9/B49CK/TUOQCS/FKH04B/AZ/t?a1=2012&a2=3&a3=14
EVEN MORE SURPRISING...THAT THEY LET ANY INFORMATION OUT AT ALL....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...The individual results are likely to intensify questions about a bank’s health. In the stress tests, the Fed projected that a crucial measure of Citigroup’s capital cushion would drop to a low of 4.9 percent of its assets.
Only Ally Financial and SunTrust Banks fared worse. A spokeswoman for Ally Financial said that the Fed’s stress test “dramatically overstates potential contingent mortgage risk.” SunTrust did not return calls for comment...
THOSE LITTLE NUGGETS OF HARD INFORMATION WERE BURIED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE COLUMN, OF COURSE...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Most of the nation's major banks are found to be healthy enough to withstand another economic shock. (AS LONG AS THEY HAVE UNCLE SUGAR IN THEIR BACK POCKETS--ISN'T CITI STILL OWNED BY US GOVT IN PART?)
More than three years after getting lifesaving injections of federal cash, the nation's major banks are generally healthy enough to withstand another economic shock.
That's the assessment from the latest round of stress tests on the 19 biggest banks by the Federal Reserve. But there are still some signs the industry hasn't fully healed from Wall Street's huge meltdown.
Four banking firms, including giant Citigroup Inc., failed one or more tests on whether they would survive a worst-case scenario. The Fed's stress test gave passing grades to 15 of the nation's top banks that have improved their finances.
Citigroup, however, didn't fail by much; it said it would revise its capital plan to meet the requirements.
Other banks that did not pass the central bank's examination were Ally Financial Inc. and SunTrust Banks Inc.; MetLife Inc., which didn't take any bailout money, also failed....MORE DETAIL THAN ANY OTHER ARTICLE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)I just finished reading Ron Suskind's "Confidence Men", and he reported that Obama ordered Timmeh to break up Citi 3 years ago, and Timmeh just ignored him. A couple of months later, Obama asked, at a economic advisers meeting that Geithner didn't bother to attend, how the plan was coming to break up Citi. Christine Romer said "There is no plan". Obama supposedly went ballistic, and said "There had better be".
After the meeting, Rahm chewed Romer a new ass for saying that without poor Timmeh being there to defend himself. That's the last it was mentioned.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It will all come crashing down by itself. It should be an interesting election.
It does make one wonder WHY Obama didn't accept Timmy's resignation, though.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The UK chancellor is aiming to launch an “Osborne bond” – a 100-year debt issue or even a perpetual gilt that never matures – to take advantage of the country’s historically low interest rates.
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/A1TNOO/HYGIZ0/IEP5S/5VX97E/KQO28L/7V/t?a1=2012&a2=3&a3=13
IMAGINE A 100-YEAR T BILL....AND HOW MANY WARS IT COULD PAY FOR....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Treasury is planning to take advantage of Britain's historically low interest rates by taking out loans which will not be repaid for 100 years or more. Chancellor George Osborne will use next week's Budget to launch a consultation on plans to issue "super-long" gilts which do not have to be paid off for many decades - or even perpetual gilts, on which the capital is never repaid, but interest continues to be charged for ever. The move would mean that children not yet born will continue to pay interest throughout their lives on debts racked up during the financial crisis of 2008/09.
But the Chancellor believes it will benefit future generations by "locking in" low interest rates on a proportion of the UK's national debt, reducing refinancing costs and insulating Britain from some of the risk of future market instability.
Britain last issued perpetual gilts at the end of the First World War, rolling over some of the war debt incurred during hostilities. These debts - as well as some issued to pay for the 18th century South Sea Bubble - are still held by the Treasury, but inflation has reduced them to negligible significance over the decades. The UK already issues long-term bonds of up to 50 years - double the length of those of many other European states. The option of loans with an even longer maturity is attractive to the Treasury because Britain's "safe haven" status during the current financial turmoil has brought gilt yields down as low as 2%, making borrowing cheaper than it has been for more than a century...The independent Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to release figures next week indicating that a rise of just 1% in gilt yields would increase the burden on the taxpayer of financing the UK's debt by a total of £20 billion over the years to 2016/17.
The super-long gilt plan is an unexpected feature of a March 21 Budget whose final details are still being thrashed out by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat sides of the coalition...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Fitch ratings agency on Tuesday upgraded Greece out of "restricted default" after Athens carried out the biggest debt writedown in history in a bond swap with private creditors. International debt inspectors, however, warned the country's recovery will be slower and harder than expected.
The new B- rating, which applies to the new bonds issued under Greek law, is still junk status, meaning they are not investment grade despite the huge cut to Greece's debt pile.
Along with the upgrade, which had been widely expected after Monday's bond swap, Fitch assigned a "stable outlook." MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)BACK TO THE PLUNDERING AND LOOTING
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/13/eurozone-france-germany-idUSL5E8EDB5820120313
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and his French counterpart Francois Baroin said on Tuesday that the worst of the euro zone crisis appeared to be over, but warned member states that was no excuse to skimp on difficult reforms.
"We can say that the worst is behind us, but we cannot relax our efforts," Schaeuble told conference in Paris. "I think we can say with a 50 percent probability that the worst is behind us."
With some in Germany voicing concern about the European Central Bank's recent injection of 1 trillion euros of liquidity into the euro zone banking system, Schaeuble said he was not concerned about the ECB's monetary policy. The ECB had demonstrated its independence and had a track record of good decision making, Schaeuble said. Its decisions "do not entail an inflationary risk," he said, suggesting that reports of a disagreement between ECB President Mario Draghi and Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann had been exaggerated.
Baroin echoed his German colleague's comments, stressing the need for euro zone countries to press ahead with economic and fiscal reforms: "If the question is whether the worst of the crisis is behind us, one can say yes ... If we do not deviate from our path, the worst is behind us."
With the Socialist frontrunner in France's presidential elections threatening to renegotiate a budgetary pact signed by 25 European leaders this month, Schaeuble said that bailout agreements such as those signed by Ireland, Portugal and Greece were being kept irrespective of changes of government.
"I would not plead in favour of a revision, because I think we have taken the right decisions," he said.
Schaeuble said it was too early to speculate whether a further programme would be necessary for Greece, but he noted that its debt sustainability target was for 2020 and the average IMF programme only lasted for 3 or 4 years.
"2020 is more than 3 or 4 years from now," he said.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Central banks have been net buyers for three straight years, the longest stretch since 1973. Gold is poised for a 21 percent gain in 2012, extending its bull market to 12 consecutive years, as investors hoard record amounts and central banks expand reserves for the first time in a generation. Bullion may rise to $1,897 an ounce in New York by Dec. 31 from $1,566.80 at the end of 2011, based on the average of 14 respondents in a survey at the Bloomberg Link Precious Metals Conference yesterday in New York. The rally that began in 2001 is the longest since at least 1920 in London, including a 10 percent gain last year.
Demand has strengthened as Europe seeks to contain its debt crisis, China’s economic expansion slows, and governments from the U.S. to the U.K. keep interest rates at all-time lows to shore up growth. Central banks have been net buyers for three straight years, the longest stretch since 1973, World Gold Council data show. Holdings (.GLDTONS) in exchange-traded funds backed by the metal reached a record 2,410.2 metric tons yesterday, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“There are significant shifts going on in the world,” said Martin Murenbeeld, the 67-year-old chief economist at Toronto-based DundeeWealth Inc., which manages about $100 billion in the Dynamic Mutual Funds. “Gold has become an investment, an asset class, and over time, we are only going to be building it up. The central banks are holding gold because they are not sure if the euro will remain five years later.”
Gold futures already rallied 6.5 percent this year to $1,669.10 on the Comex in New York. That compares with a 9.5 percent jump in the Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index of 24 commodities, and an 11 percent appreciation in the MSCI All- Country World Index of equities. Treasuries lost 0.9 percent, a Bank of America Corp. index shows.
THAT'S BECAUSE THE WORST IS OVER, DONCHA KNOW?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)HERE'S THAT INFAMOUS QUOTE:
Consumers are “unfazed by higher gas prices,” said Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York, who correctly forecast the increase in spending. “This is a pleasant surprise on the overall picture for the economy. For the Fed, it’s steady as she goes. They will be encouraged, but there is still a long way to go.”
NOW, WHERE IS THAT PHASER? I KNOW I HAD IT HERE SOMEWHERE...I DON'T KNOW WHAT PLANET THESE BOZOS COME FROM, BUT WE BETTER SEE THAT THEY RETREAT
xchrom
(108,903 posts)
2 more days til the weekend...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)another day, another meeting tonight. Then 4 days of midnight paper throwing (I'm subbing on NYT for a friend). I'll sleep Sunday, no, there's the party....Monday, then.
Somebody stop me, before I do it again.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)i hope you get some down time after the weekend -- if just a little.
i hope the committee isn't making you too meshuganah.
here's to you! we'll all be thinking about you.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Is there a 12 step program for volunteers?
I only get crazy when thwarted for no good reason. There are people who will do that, even when they are screwing themselves in the process of trying to keep someone else down. That's when my head hurts....
xchrom
(108,903 posts)because my condo was so small -- some projects that we undertook -- needed special assessments -- well, you would think that it was the end of the world!
nobody would consider that keeping the whole building up and keeping new and fresh things added to the value of their units.
i swear -- people would have let that building fall into disrepair rather than spend 1 dime.
i.e. the foyer of the building was originally carpeted -- a terrible idea for such a heavy traffic area -- it took a year and a half to get enough votes to put down stone tiling in the foyer.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.
But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied. I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.
MUCH MORE KISS-AND-TELL... MUST READ! I WONDER IF HE'LL GET SUED FOR DEFAMATION?
******************************************************************
Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)FRIEDMAN IS SUCH AN INTELLECTUAL LIGHTWEIGHT
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/friedman-capitalism-version-2012.html
David Rothkopf, the chief executive and editor-at-large of Foreign Policy magazine, has a smart new book out, entitled “Power, Inc.,” about the epic rivalry between big business and government that captures, in many ways, what the 2012 election should be about — and it’s not “contraception,” although the word does begin with a “C.” It’s the future of “capitalism” and whether it will be shaped in America or somewhere else.
Rothkopf argues that while for much of the 20th century the great struggle on the world stage was between capitalism and communism, which capitalism won, the great struggle in the 21st century will be about which version of capitalism will win, which one will prove the most effective at generating growth and become the most emulated...Rothkopf’s view, which I share, is that the thing others have most admired and tried to emulate about American capitalism is precisely what we’ve been ignoring: America’s success for over 200 years was largely due to its healthy, balanced public-private partnership — where government provided the institutions, rules, safety nets, education, research and infrastructure to empower the private sector to innovate, invest and take the risks that promote growth and jobs. When the private sector overwhelms the public, you get the 2008 subprime crisis. When the public overwhelms the private, you get choking regulations. You need a balance, which is why we have to get past this cartoonish “argument that the choice is either all government or all the market,” argues Rothkopf. The lesson of history, he adds, is that capitalism thrives best when you have this balance, and “when you lose the balance, you get in trouble.”
FRIEDMAN THEN ESPOUSES A SERIES OF POLICIES THAT ARE SO ANTIQUATED AND ONLY PUT BANDAIDS OVER THE GAPING WOUNDS OF OUR SOCIETY
Capitalism and political systems — like companies — must constantly evolve to stay vital. People are watching how we evolve and whether our version of democratic capitalism can continue to thrive. A lot is at stake here. But if “we continue to treat politics as a reality show played for cheap theatrics,” argues Rothkopf, “we increase the likelihood that the next chapter in the ongoing story of capitalism is going to be written somewhere else.”
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)From ZeroHedge:
3/14/12 Goldman Responds To Greg Smith, Darth Vader Is Leaving The Empire, And More...
Because every former employee confession has an equal and opposite reaction from "toxic and destructive" firms. And what a better way to test the PR disaster damage control skills of the firm's new global head of corporate communications: former Treasury aide and Geithner lackey Jake Siewert. In other news, Goldman is now promptly adding perpetual non-disparagement clauses to all employee contracts. Retroactively, if possible.
see link below for Darth Vader's leaving the Empire
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/goldman-responds-greg-smith
From Bloomberg:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) said it disagreed with comments made by Greg Smith, a departing employee who attacked the firm’s “toxic and destructive” culture in an opinion piece in today’s New York Times.
“In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful,” the New York-based firm said in a statement today. “This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves.”
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-14/goldman-sachs-says-it-disagrees-with-smith-s-criticism-of-firm
edit to add
3/13/12 Goldman Sachs Hires Ex-Treasury Aide Siewert for Communications
more...
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-13/goldman-sachs-hires-ex-treasury-aide-siewert-for-communications
and another edit...
3/14/12 Why I am leaving the Empire, by Darth Vader
TODAY is my last day at the Empire.
After almost 12 years, first as a summer intern, then in the Death Star and now in London, I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its massive, genocidal space machines. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
more...
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5007&Itemid=81
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Although I don't think it will help GS any, not when Boomberg spills the beans like this:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-13/goldman-sachs-hires-ex-treasury-aide-siewert-for-communications
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)So on the mark! (or I suppose I should say "money"
. As I was reading the opening paragraphs of "why I left Goldman's" my jaw was agape at the mournful paean to the "once-upon-a-time culture." Longing for a kindlier, gentler vampire.
Darth was a great refreshment!
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)edit to delete Greg Smith's Op-ed, because Demeter just posted it!
3/14/12 Nelson Schwartz: A Stinging, Very Public Exit from Goldman Sachs
Wall Street traders come and go all the time, but few have quit with the flair of Greg Smith. The way he resigned from Goldman Sachs, and what he had to say, could reignite a debate over how much Wall Street has changed in the wake of the financial crisis.
more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/business/a-public-exit-from-goldman-sachs-hits-a-wounded-wall-street.html?hp
and from ZeroHedge
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ex-goldman-exec-comes-clean-how-toxic-and-destructive-goldman-rips-its-clients
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)NICE, REASONED, BALANCED AND VERY TECHNICAL WONKY ARTICLE
MY SNARKY INTERPRETATION
Tansy_Gold
(17,862 posts)all day and all night.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)
Protesters at a rally against the government's controversial health reforms. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
George Osborne's deficit-cutting austerity measures led to 270,000 job cuts in the public sector in 2011, official figures reveal.
The Office for National Statistics published its official assessment of employment in the public sector alongside Wednesday's unemployment figures, which showed that Britain's youth unemployment crisis has worsened.
In total, 270,000 public sector jobs were lost in 2011, reducing the total workforce to 5.94 million.
The civil service payroll shrank by almost 7% over the year, while 71,000 roles disappeared in education, and 31,000 in the National Health Service, the ONS said.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Britain has slipped behind Brazil in the global economic league table. The Bank of England has now kept the official cost of borrowing at 0.5% for three years and is part way through a third dose of electronic money creation. Living standards are on course to fall for a third year in a row, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that poor households and families with children will bear the brunt of government austerity over the coming year. Pressure is mounting on George Osborne to scrap the 50% income tax band, while Vince Cable expresses frustration about the government's lack of a "compelling vision" – an accurate assessment, if a cheeky one given that the business secretary is part of the team responsible for this mess.
In short, the last seven days offered little reason to be optimistic about the UK economic recovery. Only Nissan bucked the gloom by announcing it will build a new small car at its plant in Sunderland, welcome news for a manufacturing sector where output, despite a 25% depreciation of sterling, is flat-lining.
The Economist recently published its "Proust index'', a measure of how much time had been lost by the recession. In Britain the clock has been turned back to 2004, and the hands are moving forward at a painfully slow pace. Despite a monetary and fiscal boost unprecedented in peacetime, there is no recovery to speak of. The recovery here has been weaker than in the US, Germany, France and Canada, and was slower than in Japan until the tsunami of a year ago.
Explanations trotted out for this woeful performance include the likelihood that the official figures are wrong, that the UK has been hit harder than other leading industrialised countries due to the importance to the economy of the City, and that cuts to public spending have derailed the recovery. As Capital Economics has noted, however, official data is as likely to be revised down as up, Britain's financial services sector is no bigger as a share of the economy than that in the US, and most public spending cuts are still to come. None of the standard explanations, therefore, is convincing.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)They prosecuted, they jailed, they nationalized, they wrote regulations, they fined....so their bubble isn't inflating like all the rest of us....
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)The rest of the economy was hollowed out over the years since the ascendency of Maggie Thatcher. The UK became dependent on the City of London and on the North Sea oil business.
The City is locked in battle with the Eurozone, and the North Sea oil field that belong to the UK are now in decline.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)3/14/12 Morning Roundup: Watch Out
a few snippets...
The squeeze is starting folks, although you certainly wouldn't know it from the move in the stock market yesterday. That move was all driven by the financials, with JP Morgan leading when they "broke embargo" with their mid-afternoon announcement that preempted The Fed. Incidentally, doesn't anyone think that's a bit odd?
Now, however, the fun begins. See, the TNX moved up strongly -- the 10 year yield. This in turn will force The Fed to sit on its bond holdings to maturity, lest they take a market loss (and given their thin capitalization that would bankrupt The Fed instantly!), which in turn ties Bernanke's hands to a large degree. I know many will argue that The Fed can always "print more", but that's not how it works. This is a negative feedback situation and triggering a run out of the long end of the bond curve isn't so much a problem for The Fed as it is for the Federal Government's financing and deficit numbers.
Take a look at the FVX (5yr Treasury Yield) and you see a materially-more-frightening thing. Yields have backed up from 0.7% to 0.97%. Sounds trivial. It's not -- it's a huge move, close to 40% on yield since the end of January! This matters because the Federal Government's deficit spending in February is what has been driving the "improving" economic numbers, just as it has been for the last three years. This is a pincer move; while yields have to normalize if and when they start to move in this direction that move will also choke off federal deficit spending capacity.
Anyone remember Mozilo in his gaudy suits and ties on CNBC just before it all went to crap in the mortgage market? I sure do, and yet a large number of people bought into his BS and wound up broke when Countrywide detonated shortly thereafter.
Finally, last night the Shanghai index collapsed in the last bit of trade when China said it was not going to back off on halting property speculation. The move was huge -- about 4% straight down right at the end of the session, and it drew almost no notice in the media here and no reaction came through in our markets either.
This may look like a beautiful dawn but that thing over on the horizon is in fact a rolling wall cloud.
more...
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=203352
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and over here, he's preaching to the choir. Sigh. The banksters think they pulled it off. Now they are going to find that all they pulled was the pin in the grenade....
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit
The latest batch of labour market data point to stubbornly high unemployment, with hiring remaining subdued. Pay pressures were meanwhile again extremely muted, providing good news on the inflation front but bad news for hopes of a further revival in consumer spending.
***snip
Nida Ali, economic adviser to the Ernst & Young Item Club
The labour market is starting to show some signs of stabilisation. Once again unemployment has increased on both measures which is discouraging. However, the rate of increase has slowed markedly when compared to recent months and provides some comfort.
***snip
Blerina Uruci, UK economist at Barclays Capital
The labour market has been in poor health for most of the past year and we expect this to continue in 2012. This weakness has been characterised by a fall in public sector employment, which was more pronounced than expected as local government shed jobs particularly aggressively. Its effects have been amplified by the slow pace at which private sector jobs were created. We currently forecast a weak recovery, which means that private sector job creation is likely to remain slow throughout this year.
*** more at link
xchrom
(108,903 posts)China's Premier Wen Jiabao has delivered a strong warning about the ''urgent'' need for reforms, without which, he said, tragedies such as the Cultural Revolution could still happen.
He was speaking after his last National People's Congress news conference.
He added that China's decision to cut its economic growth target to 7.5% for 2012 was essential to sustain growth.
He also spoke on US-China trade links, relations with Taiwan and said that China would step up currency reform.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Not from the grassroots....
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution (Chinese: 文化大革命; pinyin: Wénhuà Dàgémìng), was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976. Set into motion by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, its stated goal was to enforce socialism in the country by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society, and to impose Maoist orthodoxy within the Party. The revolution marked the return of Mao Zedong to a position of absolute power after the failed Great Leap Forward. The movement politically paralyzed the country and significantly affected the country economically and socially.
The Revolution was launched in May 1966. Mao alleged that bourgeois elements were entering the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. He insisted that these "revisionists" be removed through violent class struggle. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of deviating from the socialist path, most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. During the same period Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
Unless there's another megalomaniac like Mao in the power lineup, I wouldn't worry about that. He gave the gangs license, just like Hitler's Brownshirts.
I think China's Premier Wen Jiabao is more worried about a populist revolt spreading from that coastal village that faced down Beijing...and Tienanmen Square....
xchrom
(108,903 posts)i think the chinese people are aware they aren't getting what they should be getting out of the race to growth.
and -- what was it yesterday -- somebody posted an article about pollution in china -- and it popped into my head -- if it continues to get worse -- migration could become a problem.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Consumer prices in India rose more than expected in February, driven by a jump in fuel and power costs.
The wholesale price index (WPI), a key measure of consumer price inflation in the country, rose by 6.95% from a year earlier.
Fuel prices have been rising globally amid fears over supply disruptions due to tensions in the Middle East.
Analysts said fears of oil prices rising further may prompt the central bank to keep interest rates on hold.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)World TV shipments slipped last year - for the first time since 2004, said market watcher NPD DisplaySearch - presenting a picture of a business that's stalling.
The number of sets shipped during the year totalled some 247.7m units. That represents an overall decline of just a third of a percentage point on 2010's total - only 740,000-odd sets, in other words.
While the decline of CRT continued - down 34 per cent year on year - and shipments of sets based on niche flat-panel technologies, including plasma, OLED and reverse-projection, also slipped, LCD shipments continued to grow: up seven per cent to just over 205m units. However, past years have seen double-digit LCD growth.
...
TV shipments in the developed regions - North America, Japan and Western Europe - declined 21 per cent year on year in Q4 2011, compared to a 12 per cent increase in other markets.
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/03/14/rising_lcd_shipments_fail_to_halt_tv_market_slide/
Demeter
(85,373 posts)AFTER years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless. But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: “What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn’t we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?”
The woman was Susan Burton, who knows a lot about being processed through the criminal justice system.
Her odyssey began when a Los Angeles police cruiser ran over and killed her 5-year-old son. Consumed with grief and without access to therapy or antidepressant medications, Susan became addicted to crack cocaine. She lived in an impoverished black community under siege in the “war on drugs,” and it was but a matter of time before she was arrested and offered the first of many plea deals that left her behind bars for a series of drug-related offenses. Every time she was released, she found herself trapped in an under-caste, subject to legal discrimination in employment and housing...Fifteen years after her first arrest, Susan was finally admitted to a private drug treatment facility and given a job. After she was clean she dedicated her life to making sure no other woman would suffer what she had been through. Susan now runs five safe homes for formerly incarcerated women in Los Angeles. Her organization, A New Way of Life, supplies a lifeline for women released from prison. But it does much more: it is also helping to start a movement. With groups like All of Us or None, it is organizing formerly incarcerated people and encouraging them to demand restoration of their basic civil and human rights.
I was stunned by Susan’s question about plea bargains because she — of all people — knows the risks involved in forcing prosecutors to make cases against people who have been charged with crimes. Could she be serious about organizing people, on a large scale, to refuse to plea-bargain when charged with a crime?
“Yes, I’m serious,” she flatly replied.
I launched, predictably, into a lecture about what prosecutors would do to people if they actually tried to stand up for their rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees the accused basic safeguards, including the right to be informed of charges against them, to an impartial, fair and speedy jury trial, to cross-examine witnesses and to the assistance of counsel. But in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury. Most people charged with crimes forfeit their constitutional rights and plead guilty. “The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,” said Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. In other words: the system is rigged.
....The answer is yes. The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation. Not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact; as the legal scholar Angela J. Davis noted, “if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos.”
MORE
********************************************************************
Michelle Alexander is the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)A few years back, I was having dinner and a few cocktails with the former Assistant Safety Director in Cleveland.
The Prosecutors office was throwing a hissy fit about something, I don't remember exactly what, but they were threatening to stop all plea bargaining in the system. My friend just laughed. he said "Do you realize that there are about 20,000 felonies committed in this county alone, every month? They have 90 days to get that person to a trial. They couldn't get 5% of the cases through the docket in that time frame."
Another thing, cops and prosecutors love to over-indict. Charge you with everything under the sun, that might be somehow remotely connected or misconstrued as part of the crime. A defendant who stole a newspaper could theoretically be looking at 9 felonies, carrying a total of 110 years, or more if convicted on all counts. But, they'll offer you a deal. Plead guilty and get a year. Do you take the bullshit year or gamble with life?
And the lawyers are in on it too. I knew a guy, who was probably the poster boy for All-American Family Guy and father. He was about 30 years old. I don't think he ever had a parking ticket. He worked in Dayton, in management at a dairy. He used to stop for coffee and donuts at the same shop every morning on the way to work. And, a lot of truck drivers stopped there too. There was one driver who was always looking for speed or weed. Mr Family Guy didn't use any of that , but he had an overweight brother who too diet pills. Over a period of several months, he tossed the guy a pill or two. Didn't sell them, just did the truck driver a favor.
After he left the shop one morning he got surrounded by a half-dozen squad cars and a swat team. They charged him with 7 counts of trafficking in drugs, and he was looking at something like 70 years. But, they offered him a deal. Plead guilty, and you'll only get a year. He took the deal, and was promptly sentenced to 7, one year terms, to be served CONSECUTIVELY. A one year deal turned into 7.
Hey, Governor Voinovich's brother had the contracts to build all those new prisons in Ohio. They had to find a way to keep them filled.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)All the stuff I have lined up to post is very depressing, and reality calls. See you later, inshaa'Allah.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Here’s some good news about America’s public-pension system. Contrary to many reports, the country can afford it.
Social Security faces much less fiscal pressure over the coming decades than pension systems in other advanced economies. It will need patching, but the repairs aren’t that difficult.
But there’s bad news as well. When it comes to incomes in retirement, fixing Social Security is the smaller part of what needs to be done. The real challenge is to increase saving.
The narrow fiscal problem is manageable because the U.S. will have plenty of taxpayers. Americans retire later than most Europeans, and they have more children, too, so the aging of the U.S. population is less pronounced. Between now and 2050, the U.S. working age population will expand, whereas Europe’s will shrink. The fundamental variable is the ratio of U.S. pensioners to workers: This will rise as the baby boomers retire, but more slowly than elsewhere.
*** i'm confused -- how can we get people to save more in light of our falling and stagnating wages?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)The current-account deficit in the U.S. widened more than forecast in the fourth quarter to $124.1 billion, the biggest in three years.
The gap, the broadest measure of international trade because it includes income payments and government transfers, grew 15 percent from a revised $107.6 billion shortfall in the prior quarter that was smaller than initially estimated, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg News survey called for a $115 billion fourth-quarter deficit.
Imports (USTBIMP) of goods may keep rising as an improving job market underpins consumer spending, and businesses replace outdated equipment. The overall balance of payments deficit is also a reminder of U.S. dependence on foreign investors for funding.
“A widening of the balance just tells you about the relative growth rate of the U.S. compared with other economies,” said Jeremy Lawson, a senior U.S. economist at BNP Paribas in New York. “There’s a fairly good chance that the deficit will widen again because imports are on track to outpace exports.”
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Bring the profits home, and you'll be surprised how that deficit shrinks.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)More Americans are stretching out on new sofas as they settle into recently purchased homes, amid an improving outlook for employment.
Furniture sales grew 8.3 percent last month from a year earlier, following the largest increase since July 2000 in January, according to Census Bureau data. Meanwhile, existing single-family homes sold at an annual rate of 4.1 million in January, the most in almost two years, based on data from the National Association of Realtors.
Demand “appears to be rebounding” as Americans regain confidence in the economy, said Ken Smith, managing partner of accounting firm SmithLeonard PLLC. “If consumers are more comfortable with their job security, it makes them a little more willing to spend.”
The unemployment rate held at 8.3 percent in February, a three-year low, while the economy added 227,000 jobs, the third consecutive month of gains more than 200,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said March 9.
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/14/notes031412.DTL#ixzz1p6PLuKKp
I don't really have time to excerpt - good read
- whoops - forgot title in header
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Last paragraph in Morford's article...
"Here is the question of our day: Does it take a cataclysm? It takes a wake up call so massive and deadly there is nothing else to be done but make ferocious and painful change? Or can it be induced by something more calm and deeply felt, a flip and turn in the soul, an intimate spiritual awakening writ large? What's it going to take? I don't know, either, but whatever it is, it really might require some intense sacrifice on the part of -- whoa, wait a second. Is that the new iPad? Wow. Pretty."
For those who read and pay attention, we already have been woken up. We know we don't need any more shiny pretty objects.
But for the other people around the world, their wake up call is not going to be calm, it will be earth-shattering and epic.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)(How much is a brazillion? --George W Bush (punchline to a joke))
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)
tclambert
(11,087 posts)Sometimes I feel too lazy to do three clicks and a little scrolling.
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)
Roland99
(53,342 posts)Although the periodic MBS MID-DAY and RECAP posts that go out to the MBS Commentary channel do a good job of conveying market movements and community activity, I personally, am not able to conjure up much by way of charts or analysis on days like today. Reason being: I'm first and foremost engaged in interacting with the MBS Live community in the live chat window as well as manning the reprice alarms for the live updates that MBS Live sends out via text message and email to our users.
Bottom line, I just wanted to offer a quick apology that I haven't been able to publish any content earlier than now, but also wanted to take the opportunity to let anyone who didn't already know, that there's live analysis, live prices, live interaction with me and 100's of other mortgage professionals every day on the MBS Live Dashboard. Volatile markets like this make for good opportunities to do a 2-week trial if you haven't already.
...
Bond markets had been so tediously flat and uninspired for so long that by the time the notion that this could be THE big break out caught hold, the snowball of selling had already begun and didn't let up until until some major technical support levels were tested. MBS Live contributor and a good friend Victor Burek asked in the Live Chat this morning where the next support levels were for 10's after we began the morning in the high 2.1's.
Anyone know what was going on in mid-September?
I was trying to refi my mortgage and take advantage of getting PAID a credit (the opposite of paying points). That all fell to hell with the Treasury prices crapping and yields shooting up.
Well, a week ago, I restarted the process and look what happens....AGAIN!
I freakin' give up!
:-P
