Weekend Economists Let's Get Away From It All Feb. 19-21, 2010

[Demeter]

In honor of various allergies among the readers/contributors of this weekend thread (you know who you are, and what you don't like) I've decided to go for the Chairman of the Board! What could be more appropriate for us than Old Blue Eyes Himself? That's right, it's Frank Sinatra, a man whose musical gifts never will compensate for his appalling personal behaviors. Kind of like capitalism, when you think about it.



Furthermore, Frankie was prolific. He recorded everything. So we should have plenty of musical time-outs to mitigate the horrors of the week. So Ladies, and Gents, without further ado:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q2oGanm8n8&feature=related

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998)<6> was an American singer and actor.

Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers." His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records (finding success with albums such as Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and presidents, including President John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".

Sinatra attempted to weather the changing tastes in popular music, but with sales of his music dwindling, and after appearing in several poorly received films, he retired in 1971. Coming out of retirement in 1973, he recorded several albums; scored a Top 40 hit with "(Theme From) New York, New York" in 1980; and toured both within the United States and internationally until a few years before his death in 1998.

For an updated version, here is Rockpella:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVKYe_i0CAs

[Tansy_Gold]

1. First Rec!

The BF prefers Dean Martin.

[Demeter]

3. does the BF read this column?

More importantly, is it better than Disney, oh future Great Leader of a Free Nation?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVm9q5ZRG1s&feature=related

[Tansy_Gold]

4. it was the only comment I could think to make! ;-)

I personally prefer Sinatra, so there. And I have no idea if the BF/ISO reads DU or not. I don't think so, because I have to keep forwarding things to him.

Yeah, it's better than Disney. :evilgrin:



Tansy Gold, who (seriously) went to high school with a girl named Elizabeth Taylor who married a guy named Dean Martin.

[AnneD]

48. On another interesting note.....

FS's time with Capitol Records was some of his best years most productive years. Capitol has a signature sound and is registered as a historical building.

The Capitol Records Building, also known as the Capitol Records Tower, is one of the most distinctive landmarks in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. The 13-story earthquake resistant tower, designed by Welton Becket, was the world's first circular office building. The construction of the building was ordered by British company EMI soon after its 1955 acquisition of Capitol Records. It was completed in April 1956, just north of the intersection of Hollywood and Vine as the consolidated West Coast operations of Capitol Records. It currently houses the operations of Capitol Records. It also is home to the Capitol Studios well-known recording studios and echo chambers. It is located in the Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District, which is on the List of Registered Historic Places in Los Angeles.

more......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records_Building

Now I have known about Capitol's sonic sound-don't ask me how, it was just one of those factoids I knew, But guess what....Little Bit, my progeny, is being actively recruited to work there in the recording studio. They want her full time but she told them she wants to finish her degree first. She will probably work this summer as an intern. As she put it "I'll be working on the boards-I won't be fetching :donut: for the director. " She said they are really hot to get her there and she comes highly recommended by one of her profs at Cal Arts. They have also told her that they will hook her up with the movie and video folks. I told her when she is working there-I am going to see her and get a tour. She is all excited and of course I am very happy for her. I hope she can sock away some money for next semester.

Anyway just had to give you the update, since it tied in....

[Demeter]

50. That's Wonderful, AnneD!

Thanks for the good news, a wonderful antidote to the general stupidity of the world of High Finance.

[AnneD]

64. The secret to a happy life is to find your joy.....

My daughter still wants to work with Pixar and I really think she can do it if she wants. She has an independent entrepreneurial spirit and I cannot see her working at one place until she retires.

We had a "Mark Twain" conversation last week ("When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." ) The prof that recommended her to the recording director is the best in the industry and as she said-he could go anywhere but he has a young family and loves the regular hours and security of academia. She was wanting to do her first resume to apply to Capitol and called for advice.

She told me that her prof 's good word was like a platinum credit card in the industry and that one of the older sound students had told her just do what he asked. She said she took it to heart. She says that some of the other students argue and buck the guy but she said the guy knows his stuff so when he ask them do do something, she turns it in on time-ahead if she can and exactly as he requested. I told her that I had always tried to instill a sense of work ethic and Independence. She was very personable and that one day I could see her receiving an Oscar for her work. She laugh but she doesn't know her mom has a touch of ESP.

In fact-I can thank Frank Sinatra. Once when she was just 4-we went to our fav. neighborhood Italian Pasta Bar . As we were eating-she said "that's Mrs. Doubtfire." I stopped and listened to the music-it was Frank singing Strangers in the Night. I thought of all the songs in Mrs.Doubfire-and quickly dismissed it "Honey-that song is not in Mrs.Doubtfire.. I no sooner got the words out of my mouth than the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I realized that a Frank Sinatra song, Luck be a Lady Tonight was in the movie-she had recognized the artist -AT FOUR. After that, I started looking very closely. She had a keen ear and picked up lyrics in a snap (Gilbert and Sullivan) and had a sophisticated sense of rhythm (I credit her Cuban grand parents). We have a very strong music gene in our family. The more I observed her, the more I knew it was her God given gift. I then did all I could to help her develop that gift.

Only time will tell if I did the right thing-some times the pop corn pops, some time it doesn't. But I am optimistic that I did right by her, and that is my joy.

Fly Me to the Moon.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnZNe-Xde3g&feature=fvw

[DemReadingDU]

86. Sounds like you have a wonderful daughter

With her head screwed on right, setting goals, and looking forward to a career, after college. You must be very proud of her!

[Demeter]

2. Our First Failed Bank of the Evening

Marco Community Bank, Marco Island, Florida, was closed today by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Mutual of Omaha Bank, Omaha, Nebraska, to assume all of the deposits of Marco Community Bank.

As of December 31, 2009, Marco Community Bank had approximately $119.6 million in total assets and $117.1 million in total deposits. Mutual of Omaha Bank will pay the FDIC a premium of 1.5 percent to assume all of the deposits of Marco Community Bank. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Mutual of Omaha Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

The FDIC and Mutual of Omaha Bank entered into a loss-share transaction on $104.8 million of Marco Community Bank's assets. Mutual of Omaha Bank will share in the losses on the asset pools covered under the loss-share agreement...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $38.1 million. Mutual of Omaha Bank's acquisition of all the deposits was the "least costly" resolution for the FDIC's DIF compared to all alternatives. Marco Community Bank is the 17th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the third in Florida. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Florida Community Bank, Immokalee, on January 29, 2010.

[Po_d Mainiac]

9. Another pocket change closure.....

rec #2 :hi:

[Demeter]

15. Just a Warmup, or an Hors d'oeuvre

I'm sure there are greater things to come

[Demeter]

20. Bank #2

The La Coste National Bank, La Coste, Texas, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Community National Bank, Hondo, Texas, to assume all of the deposits of The La Coste National Bank...

As of December 31, 2009, The La Coste National Bank had approximately $53.9 million in total assets and $49.3 million in total deposits. Community National Bank will pay the FDIC a premium of 0.51 percent to assume all of the deposits of The La Coste National Bank. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Community National Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets...

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $3.7 million. Community National Bank's acquisition of all the deposits was the "least costly" resolution for the FDIC's DIF compared to all alternatives. The La Coste National Bank is the 18th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Texas. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Madisonville State Bank, Madisonville, on October 30, 2009.

HMMM, ANOTHER GIVEAWAY TO A BIGGER BANK....

[burf]

25. Banks #3 and 4

On Friday, February 19, 2010, George Washington Savings Bank, Orland Park, IL was closed by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Division of Banking, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named Receiver. No advance notice is given to the public when a financial institution is closed.

On Friday, February 19, 2010, La Jolla Bank, FSB, La Jolla, CA was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named Receiver. No advance notice is given to the public when a financial institution is closed.

Source: FDIC.gov

It seems kinda strange the banked named for George Washington would be closed the Friday before his birthday.

[Po_d Mainiac]

33. The GW bank in the "Land of Lincoln!"

Who says bank regulators lack a sense of humor?

[Demeter]

34. Thank you, Burf! More Detail:

La Jolla Bank, FSB, La Jolla, California, was closed today by the Office of Thrift Supervision, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with OneWest Bank, FSB, Pasadena, California, to assume all of the deposits of La Jolla Bank, FSB.

As of December 31, 2009, The ten branches of La Jolla Bank, FSB had approximately $3.6 billion in total assets and $2.8 billion in total deposits. OneWest Bank, FSB did not pay the FDIC a premium for the deposits of La Jolla Bank, FSB. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, OneWest Bank, FSB agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

The FDIC and OneWest Bank, FSB entered into a loss-share transaction on $3.31 billion of La Jolla Bank, FSB's assets. OneWest Bank, FSB will share in the losses on the asset pools covered under the loss-share agreement...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $882.3 million. OneWest Bank, FSB's acquisition of all the deposits was the "least costly" resolution for the FDIC's DIF compared to all alternatives. La Jolla Bank, FSB is the 20th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the second in California. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was First Regional Bank, Los Angeles, on January 29, 2010.

George Washington Savings Bank, Orland Park, Illinois, was closed today by the Illinois Department of Financial Professional Regulation – Division of Banking, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with FirstMerit Bank, National Association, Akron, Ohio, to assume all of the deposits of George Washington Savings Bank...As of December 31, 2009,The four branches of George Washington Savings Bank had approximately $412.8 million in total assets and $397.0 million in total deposits. FirstMerit Bank, N.A. will pay the FDIC a premium of 0.31 percent to assume all of the deposits of George Washington Savings Bank. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, FirstMerit Bank, N.A. agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

The FDIC and FirstMerit Bank, N.A. entered into a loss-share transaction on $324.2 million of George Washington Savings Bank's assets. FirstMerit Bank, N.A. will share in the losses on the asset pools covered under the loss-share agreement...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $141.4 million. FirstMerit Bank, N.A.'s acquisition of all the deposits was the "least costly" resolution for the FDIC's DIF compared to all alternatives. George Washington Savings Bank is the 19th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the second in Illinois. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Town Community Bank and Trust, Antioch, on January 15, 2010.

[Demeter]

35. Total Hit on the FDIC for The Week: $1.0655 Billion

Hit it, Frankie!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP0jDMffWLg&feature=related

[Demeter]

5. As mentioned (I think) It's Been Like Spring Out Here

It's been above freezing and sunny, and not going below 20F at night, and I feel a decade younger and more willing to live. It's so much easier to move in only one layer. I could even wear corduroys without long johns, if I wasn't going to be ruining my clothing working...

In fact, I'm going to a coffeehouse tonight, to see Claudia Schmidt, and tomorrow the Kid and I will go to a dinner theater (Medieval Feast, no less) to see Once Upon a Mattress. Hibernation is over!

In commemoration/celebration, another Rockapella rendition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YIcEjcGe6A&NR=1

[Po_d Mainiac]

6. The sap sled/dredge does not fare well in mud

Prefer some cooler temps

[Demeter]

7. Walmart suffers first US sales decline

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c23fbdc-1c8d-11df-8456-00144feab49a.html

Walmart has suffered its first fall in quarterly sales at its US discount stores, underlining the challenges facing future growth in its home market as the economy recovers.

In the important holiday quarter ending on January 31, net sales at Walmart’s 3,400-plus US stores fell 0.5 per cent year-on-year to $71bn (€52bn). Comparable store sales declined 2 per cent. Customer traffic also fell.

The retailer blamed price deflation in food and electronics for lowering the overall value of its sales, as well as the impact of store refurbishment.

The decline contrasted with the strong sales and traffic growth during its first three quarters, as low prices attracted new budget-minded shoppers.

Tom Schoewe, chief financial officer, argued that the declines did not mean Walmart was losing some of the customers it had gained during the recession, saying the “modest decline” in traffic was “not in our mind an indication of trend”.

He highlighted the cautious mood of Walmart’s largely low-income shoppers, saying there was still a high level of anxiety over unemployment.

n contrast, retailers such as Whole Foods Market, the upmarket grocer, and Starbucks reported evidence of increased readiness to spend during the fourth quarter, suggesting that different consumer segments are responding differently in the early stages of recovery.

TEA LEAVES, ANYONE?

[Po_d Mainiac]

Walfart can't suffer enough n/t

[Tansy_Gold]

62. ITA n/t

[Demeter]

8. Daimler upbeat on luxury car sales

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b04104bc-1c73-11df-8456-00144feab49a.html

Daimler became the latest premium carmaker to forecast a swift return to growth this year, underscoring a growing split in the industry between buoyant luxury car sales and subdued demand for cheaper models.

The German group’s upbeat outlook came as it reported a full-year €2.6bn net loss , its first in nine years, and shocked markets by axing its dividend for the first time since 1995...

WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

[Demeter]

10. Dell’s margins feel the squeeze

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4b42e384-1cf8-11df-aef7-00144feab49a.html

Increased corporate technology spending helped lift Dell’s quarterly sales above projections but failed to assuage investor disappointment at thinner profit margins for the US computer company.

Dell has refused to enter a price war in low-end personal computers, ceding market share in the name of profit. But despite completing its purchase of Perot Systems towards the end of last year, the addition of the profitable services operation failed to keep overall margins from contracting.

Operating income fell to 3.4 per cent of sales, down from 4.5 per cent in the previous quarter and flat compared with a year earlier, during the depths of the US recession. Dell shares fell as much as 5 per cent in after-hours trading following the release of the fiscal fourth-quarter results.

Dell’s report came a day after that of market leader Hewlett-Packard, which has passed its fierce rival in both efficiency and scale. HP beat forecasts and raised its outlook for the year, citing the strengthening recovery in the Americas and Asia.

The signs of recovery were reflected in higher sales at Dell. Revenue increased 11 per cent to $14.9bn in the period to January 29, aided by $600m in services from the Perot addition, and a 7 per cent increase in product revenue.

“We didn’t anticipate demand would be as strong as it was,” said Michael Dell, the company’s chief executive.

Brian Gladden, chief financial officer, said the early indications for the new fiscal year were positive and that the company would continue to focus on a shift toward higher-margin storage, servers and services, the last of which now provides 13 per cent of company revenue....

[Demeter]

12. Recovery on course for US industry

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f4c4c4fe-1cd0-11df-8d8e-00144feab49a.html

The US’s manufacturing economy showed further signs of recovery on Thursday when Caterpillar, the world’s biggest maker of earth-moving equipment, said equipment sales turned positive in Asia last month for the first time in 14 months, while the pace of decline slowed elsewhere.

The disclosure came after the US Federal Reserve reported this week that industrial production rose in January at the fastest pace in five months.

John Deere, the world’s biggest maker of agricultural equipment, said that North American farmers had started buying big machinery such as combine harvesters and large tractors in much greater numbers than it had previously anticipated, prompting it to raise its profits forecast for the year.

Caterpillar said last month that it would depend on China and other emerging economies for growth this year, saying that the economies of North America, Europe and Japan “remain weak and have not rebounded as quickly as developing countries”.

In spite of its recent surge in the US and Canada, Deere is also depending on emerging economies for its growth – looking in particular to Brazil.

“This is encouraging for manufacturing,” said Adam Fleck at Morningstar in Chicago.

“Caterpillar and Deere have been talking about emerging economies for several quarters now and that now seems to be becoming reality.”

Jim Owens, Caterpillar chief executive, has praised China’s government for the speed with which it has funnelled economic stimulus spending into infrastructure projects.

In contrast, Owens has been scathing about the US’s stimulus efforts, saying that very little was devoted to helping boost infrastructure.

He also attacked the “Buy America” clause inserted into the proposal.

Mr Fleck said that the company’s renewed growth in Asia – while sales in the US remain sluggish – reflected that difference. “The infrastructure boom seems to be continuing,” he said. “This is the results of continued stimulus spending in China.”

Wall Street is increasingly looking to large companies in the manufacturing sector to help pull the US out of the downturn.

Morgan Stanley upgraded Caterpillar this month, while UBS had upgraded the group last month.

Caterpillar this week hired 100 workers at a plant in Indiana...

[CatholicEdHead]

23. Dells have a poor reliability rating compared to HP and Lenovo

in the Enterprise IT market. Of course they outsourced all their computer plants recently so Dell almost cannot be considered a US company anymore. Texas is hurting, and North Carolina took a hit when Lenovo bought IBM's PC division (Thinkpads/Thinkcentres).

[Tace]

11. Sammy Davis, Jr.

Samuel George "Sammy" Davis, Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer.

Primarily a dancer and singer, Davis was a childhood vaudevillian, and became internationally famous for his performances on Broadway and in Las Vegas, as a recording artist, television and film star, and the only black member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack".

At the age of three Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father and "uncle" as the Will Mastin Trio, toured nationally, and after military service, returned to the trio. Davis became an overnight sensation following a well received nightclub performance at Ciro's after the 1951 Academy Awards, with the trio, became a recording artist, and made his first film performances as an adult later that decade. Losing his left eye in a car accident in 1954, he converted to Judaism and appeared in the first Rat Pack movie, Ocean's Eleven, in 1960. After a starring role on Broadway in 1956's Mr Wonderful, Davis returned to the stage in 1964's Golden Boy, and in 1966 had his own TV variety show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. Davis's career slowed in the late sixties, but he scored a hit record with "The Candy Man", in 1972, and became a star attraction in Las Vegas.

As an African-American, Davis was the victim of racism throughout his life, and was a large financial supporter of various civil rights causes. Davis had a complex relationship with the black community, and attracted criticism after physically embracing Richard Nixon in 1970. One day on a golf course with Jack Benny, he was asked what his handicap was. "Handicap?" he asked. "Talk about handicap — I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew."<1><2> This was to become a signature comment, recounted in his autobiography, and in countless articles.<3>

After reuniting with Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1987, Davis toured with them and Liza Minnelli internationally, before dying of throat cancer in 1990. Davis died heavily in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, and his estate was the subject of complicated legal battles.

Davis was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award for his television performances. He was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1987, and in 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Davis,_Jr.

[Po_d Mainiac]

13. Shitibank customers in Texas alert....looking to verify

Seen on a recent Citibank (C) statement: "Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change."

http://market-ticker.org/authors/2-Karl-Denninger

[Demeter]

14. That's Incredible

I think a lot more people will be banking locally soon...voting with their feet.

Good! What do you say, Mr. Sinatra?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIiUqfxFttM&feature=related

[Tansy_Gold]

24. I was thinking more along the lines of

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53sCut6XxZE

[Po_d Mainiac]

22. ROFLMAO second source, with a twist added!

"Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change," Citigroup said on statements received by customers all over the country.

What's going on? It seems that this is something of an error. The seven day notice policy only applies to customers in Texas, Ira Stoll reports at The Future of Capitalism. It was accidentally included on customer statements nationwide.

http://www.businessinsider.com/citigroup-warns-customers-it-may-refuse-to-allow-withdrawals-2010-2

[DemReadingDU]

27. What about withdrawals from ATMs?

Are people to get 7 days prior notice to withdraw from ATM?

How much money are they trying to prevent on a withdrawal that requires 7 day notice!

[Po_d Mainiac]

30. If they need the extra time for their bonus checks to clear..

One could assume the ATM would give an IOU and the "Title/Money Store" next door will front u 40 cents on the dollar in exchange.
:shrug:
What the Hell....worked for California

[Dr.Phool]

28. So, if you write a check, or use your debit card, that's a withdrawal?

Does your check or transaction bounce? Are you charged a fee then?

I'd get out of Shiti as fast as I could if I had an account with them.

What I should do, is start reading my Wachovia statements. I get them online, but never read them, since I'm already accessing my account info when I'm online anyway.

A little over a year ago, before I found the FTC opt out website, my wife and I were getting (no shit) well over 20 CC solicitations every week from Shiti alone. Since I opted out, I don't get anything anymore. They wore out 2 shredders.

[DemReadingDU]

26. Citi to charge $60 annual fee as of 4/1/10...looking to verify

2/12/10 Avoid Credit Card Annual Fees: Just Charge $2,400 Per Year

Jesse has a credit card that he doesn't use, but keeps open to help his credit score. Citibank has foiled his brilliant plan by adding a $60 annual fee. He can avoid the fee by charging at least $2,400 on the card each year.

more...
http://consumerist.com/2010/02/jesse-we-knew-banks-were.html

[Demeter]

16. Foreclosure troubles only hibernating

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/foreclosure-crisis-a-long-painful-exit-2010-02-19?siteid=YAHOOB

The Mortgage Bankers Association announced the results of its quarterly delinquency survey on Friday, which contained a glimmer of hope: While the percentage of mortgages somewhere in the foreclosure process grew, the percentage of home loans delinquent -- but not in foreclosure -- actually shrunk on a seasonally adjusted basis in the fourth quarter, compared with the third quarter.

Of particular interest: A significant drop in mortgages 30 days delinquent. Fewer new problem mortgages, as MBA chief economist Jay Brinkmann put it, could be a signal that it's the "beginning of the end" of the foreclosure crisis. If fewer problem loans are feeding into the pool of seriously delinquent loans and foreclosures, that may be a sign that the problem now is "about as bad as it will get," he said.

Most likely, we won't really know the turning point in this foreclosure nightmare until we're far past it. And, as a commentary on MarketWatch today points out, foreclosure troubles could simply be hibernating for now.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/home-foreclosure-troubles-only-hibernating-2010-02-19
Predictions aside, the foreclosure problem surely isn't fixed yet, and it won't be for a while. There are still a record percentage of mortgages somewhere in the foreclosure process, and heaps of severely delinquent loans that may or may not be in process of being modified. And the strength of the job market -- or lack thereof -- will greatly influence what ultimately happens in the months ahead; worsening unemployment could certainly tip the rate of those new delinquencies back in the other direction.

Maybe it is the beginning of the end. But it'll likely be a really lengthy third act.

[Demeter]

17. This Will Fix It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtKk8rdVWvk&feature=related

[Demeter]

18. A Bit OT: Casanova’s diary finds home in France

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bf06f570-1cb8-11df-8d8e-00144feab49a.html

His writings were banned by the Church, his life the story of one sexual adventure after another. On Thursday, France’s National Library was delighted to announce that it had acquired the handwritten memoirs of Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, often called the world’s greatest lover.

The manuscript, dating from around the time of the French Revolution, is believed to be the only one in existence, and details the life of an 18th-century libertine who frequented most of the great courts of Enlightenment Europe.

Written in French and covering 3,700 pages, The Story of My Life is the most expensive manuscript ever acquired by the National Library. An anonymous French donor stepped in after a two-year search to finance the €7m ($9.6m, £6m) purchase, hailed as a major cultural acquisition by the government.

Frédéric Mitterrand, the culture minister who has sparked controversy with published accounts of his own sexual adventures, acquired the manuscript for France in a formal ceremony on Thursday.



Giacomo Girolamo Casanova: famous for his accounts of the serial seductions he committed across Europe during his multi-faceted career as lawyer, priest, violinist, soldier and professional gambler

Bruno Racine, president of the National Library, said the manuscript was a “mythic” text that was both one of the best and worst known in literary history.

Though almost 500 versions have been published since the Venetian-born adventurer died in 1798, aged 73, only two had been based on the original text. The others had always been taken from versions that had been “censured or falsified ... for moral or political reasons,” Mr Racine said. The Library plans to make the uncensored manuscript available online “within months” and an international exhibition is planned for 2011.

Casanova is famous for his accounts of the serial seductions he committed across Europe during his multi-faceted career as lawyer, priest, violinist, soldier and professional gambler. By his own account his first sexual adventure came at the age of 11, after being fondled by his guardian’s sister.

“It was she who little by little kindled the first sparks of a feeling which later became my ruling passion,” he says.

In all, Casanova claimed to have seduced 122 women, including one nun, and perhaps even a few men.

The memoirs are as erotic as their reputation, says Mr Racine, and remain “shocking even today”. But Casanova’s real talent went beyond mere titillation, and included an acute observation of 18th-century social life.

The low-born Casanova became known in the courts of Venice, France, Spain and Britain, and he associated with some of the leading intellectuals of his day, including Rousseau and Voltaire. He may even have dared to give advice on Mozart’s librettos. “He was a real European,” says Mr Racine. “He travelled everywhere. He was curious about everything.”

The manuscript was sold to the National Library by the descendants of the Leipzig-based German publisher Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus who acquired the work in 1821. The family was determined to see the text stored in France, Mr Racine said, and waited two-and-a-half years for the Library to find the funds. “They were very very patient. I have to salute them,” he said.

After initial publication the manuscript was hidden away and only survived the second world war by the quick-thinking of a family member who stored it in a bank vault.

[Demeter]

19. Another Rat Pack Member Replies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS6-b7CONDI&NR=1&feature=fvwp


From left to right: Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin

The Rat Pack was a supergroup of actors and jazz musicians originally centered on Humphrey Bogart. In the mid-1960s it was the name used by the press and the general public to refer to a later variation of the group, after Bogart's death, that called itself "the summit" or "the clan," featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, who appeared together on stage and in films in the early-1960s, including the movie Ocean's Eleven.<1>

Despite its reputation as a masculine group, the Rat Pack did have female participants, including movie icons Shirley MacLaine, Lauren Bacall, Angie Dickinson, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Pack

[Dr.Phool]

60. The Sands

Vegas ain't what it used to be. The last time I was there was about 10 years ago for a wedding. Before that was about 3 years earlier, when I got married. Back in the mid '70s in my wilder, single days, I'd fly out 3-4 times a year. It was especially nice, because we were always comped. Free room, shows, and meals. Just jump on a flight and go.

Corporate America ruined it. It used to be, if you walked into The Sands, The Flamingo, or any most of the other joints out there, you knew exactly who was in charge. The Sands especially was a mobbed up joint. owned and operated by the Czechago Outfit. It was a lot more fun back then. Now, it's Disney with slots.

[Dr.Phool]

29. He's no Tiger Woods.

Woods could seduce 122 women in a week-end.

[Po_d Mainiac]

32. And drop his balls into 36 holes in between

:hide:

[AnneD]

49. And that was when...

he was just putting around.

[Demeter]

36. This Is Progress?

I don't think so. Speed dating---who needs it?

[Demeter]

21. AIG drops entire derivatives portfolio sale plan

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d38e7f9c-1c07-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html

AIG has shelved plans to sell the whole of its derivatives portfolio, which nearly destroyed the insurer in 2008. It believes that keeping up to $500bn worth of complex positions could help it to survive as an independent entity and repay US taxpayers....

Gerry Pasciucco, who joined AIG after it was rescued by the government in September 2008 to wind down AIG Financial Products, said the troubled unit would still be out of business by the end of this year. AIGFP caused a storm in Congress last year with plans to pay some of its 200-plus staff large bonuses.

The original plan, devised by then chief executive Edward Liddy and the government after the rescue, was to sell off all the positions and close down AIGFP as soon as possible. But Mr Pasciucco said that derivatives with a notional value of between $300bn and $500bn – or between 15 and 25 per cent of the derivatives portfolio’s original size – would not be sold. The assets could either be managed by AIG or outsourced to an external fund manager, he added.

AIG’s management, led by chief executive Robert Benmosche, believes that such a move reduce the need for fire sales and enable AIG to reap the benefits of rallying credit markets, Mr Pasciucco said. AIG recorded billions of dollars in paper profits on its derivatives in the third quarter of 2009.

AIG, which is majority-owned by the US authorities, has sold derivatives – and reduced the risk attached to them – since the bail-out. Its derivatives book, which had a notional value of $2,000bn in September 2008, stood at $940bn at the end of December 2009, the insurer is expected to announce with its fourth quarter results.

Mr Pasciucco said his team would continue to reduce the size and the risk of the portfolio until it reaches $300bn-$500bn. The number of derivatives positions has fallen from 44,000 in late 2008 to 16,100 at the end of December while the “gross vega” – a measure of risk – in the portfolio has gone from $1.3bn to $310m

AIG executives said the Treasury and the New York Federal Reserve, which took an 80 per cent stake in the insurer in return for more than $80bn in federal funds, had been consulted on the decision to keep the derivatives. Peter Hancock, the derivatives expert who has just been hired to oversee AIGFP, among other responsibilities, is also believed to back the move.

DOESN'T PASS THE SMELL TEST


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQAzOyUAquw&feature=fvw

[Demeter]

31. The Humor Corner

http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=8cd737b7b14db52ed5cc777a22b00b3b&w=750.0

I hope I can find more...maybe later?

Report from the coffeehouse, Claudia Schmidt performing:

"Things are so bad, they are planning on turning off the light at the end of the tunnel."

"The things that don't kill you---make you wish you were dead!" (Chorus to the "Strong woman having a bad day Polka")

[Hugin]

45. I could have sworn I coined that second one... Hmm, Schmidt, eh?

Nobody has taken up my favorite line yet, tho...

"Working with computers could make Gandhi slap his best friend."

[Demeter]

37. Other Banksters We Are Tracking:

Retirement perks voted down by BofA

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/588bcf60-1c26-11df-86cb-00144feab49a.html

Bank of America’s board voted on Wednesday against renewing a special retirement agreement that allowed director Chad Gifford to fly for free on the company’s aircraft, the bank said.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mr Gifford was paid an annual consulting fee of $50,000 and entitled to 120 hours per year of flying time on a corporate jet provided by BofA.

The bank also paid the taxes on the value of the perk, which added several hundred thousand dollars a year to the benefit. In a typical year, the benefit had a value of more than $1m, according to BofA filings.

In the past year, when BofA borrowed $45bn from the troubled asset relief programme (Tarp), Mr Gifford’s perk became a point of contention among shareholders and government officials. At BofA’s shareholder meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, last April, one investor objected to the arrangement.

As described in BofA’s annual proxy statements, the retirement agreement, struck in January 2005, was good for five years, after which it would have to be renewed annually.

BofA has granted the perpetual use of corporate aircraft to Hugh McColl, who retired as BofA’s chief executive in 2001, and Terry Murray, the former chairman and chief executive of Fleet Financial, which was acquired by BofA in 2004. Mr Murray was succeeded as Fleet chief executive by Mr Gifford, who headed Bank of Boston when it was acquired by Fleet in 1999.

The board’s compensation committee, consisting of William Boardman, Donald Powell, Thomas Ryan and Robert Scully, recommended against renewing the special deal and BofA’s board followed that recommendation on Wednesday.

Mr Gifford, who emerged as one of BofA’s most powerful directors in the past year and played a leading role in selecting Brian Moynihan as the bank’s chief executive, will continue to serve as a director.

Ken Lewis, the former BofA chief executive who stepped down in December, did not receive a retirement package involving access to the corporate jet. Mr Lewis also accepted a government recommendation that he decline all compensation for his final year at the bank, a decision that caused him to reimburse BofA for the base salary he received.

In a separate development, the judge overseeing a proposed settlement between BofA and the Securities and Exchange Commission on the issue of shareholder disclosures has asked Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney-general, to turn over testimony that might affect the SEC’s case.

The SEC did not charge any individuals with misbehaviour, but Mr Cuomo’s office has accused Mr Lewis and another executive, Joe Price, of misleading shareholders.

[Demeter]

40. Merkel hits out at banks over Greek deals

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8481e594-1c00-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html

...“It would be a disgrace if it turned out to be true that banks that already pushed us to the edge of the abyss were also party to falsifying Greek statistics,” Angela Merkel said during a speech in north-eastern Germany...

The European Commission has told Greece to provide details by the end of this month about derivative transactions it carried out with Goldman Sachs and other banks – so that Brussels can consider whether Athens broke any European Union budget rules...

[Demeter]

43. Government Sachs By Bill Bonner

http://dailyreckoning.com/government-sachs/


It's Goldman this. And Goldman that. And Goldman rhymes with greed. But it's "Thank you, Mr. Blankfein," when it's money that you need.

Last week, Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou slipped. He said not what he should have said, nor what he wanted to say. Unwittingly, he said something that was true: his country's budget was "out of control." He begged for more time to straighten it out. "We're trying to change the course of the Titanic," he said. The EU ministers gave him a month.

Mr. Papaconstantinou was speaking of Greece. But he described much of Europe, Britain, Japan and the US. And, in his fortunate metaphor, he prophesied. The big ships can't be turned around. They're going to sink.

Greece has been taking on water for many years. But this was the first time a finance minister of any country signaled to lenders that they should head for the lifeboats. Then, looking around, the press noticed that one of the lifeboats had already been launched. In it were no crying widows and no shivering orphans. Just one very satisfied Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs. He had sold the Greeks their debt, said the papers; now he has sold it short.

Der Spiegel was first to break the story. Then, it came out in The New York Times. And then Bloomberg was on Goldman's case. It wasn't the mess that the Greeks had gotten themselves into that attracted the press attention, it was who had helped them get into it. Greece has been in default to its creditors in one out of two years since it got independence in the early 19th century. It is almost the definition of a poor credit risk. By what crook and what hook did the slippery Hellenes manage to get themselves into the Euro Club?

Creativity in art makes for masterpieces. Innovation in industry may lead to success. But when the financial industry schemes and canoodles, it invariably leads to disaster. Goldman Sachs, the most cunning of Wall Street's financiers, is fundamentally a debt monger. Like a liquor store or a drug dealer, it earns money to the extent it is able to move its merchandise. The more the customer wants, the more Goldman earns. Whether the purchase is good for the customer or not is not Goldman's concern. But just look at where the moneylenders have been most creative and you will surely find something you should not own.

In the present example, Goldman earned a total of $300 million. Immediately, the pundits kvetched that its work was both criminal and noxious. As to the noxious charge, Goldman needs no defense. Greece has always been a notorious drunk. Goldman is merely a bartender. The money monger seeks neither the ruin of his customer, nor his reformation

As to the criminal charge, Goldman says it was perfectly legal to structure the deal with Greece the way it did. Moreover, the authorities in Brussels have been aware of it for years...and even seemed to approve of it. Member states were allowed to "use derivatives to adjust deficit ratios," The Financial Times revealed last Wednesday. Goldman arranged for Athens to swap cash for a stream of income coming from an airport and a lottery. Was it debt or equity? Had Goldman lent Greece money...or had it bought part of the national patrimony? It really makes no difference; whatever you call it, the Greeks had impaired their balance sheet. Goldman had merely made a buck helping them do it.

Goldman need not worry about persecution; it has friends in high places. Such as Mario Draghi. Mr. Draghi has a long and impressive résumé. Not only has he been a managing director of Goldman Sachs, in charge of business development in Europe, he's also served as director general of the Italian Treasury and lately, Italy's central bank governor. And now he's up for the post of head of the ECB, to replace Jean-Claude Trichet, who is scheduled to step down next year. He is Goldman incarnate - banker, servant of the people, one of the financial world's high priests from whose hands come unction, salvation...and cash.

In the US, Goldman is so tight with the feds it is known as "Government Sachs." But what's new? Governments always turn to rich, well-connected moneymen for finance. The Rothschilds largely financed Britain's continental allies in its war against Napoleon in the early 19th century. Then, in the early 20th century, JP Morgan financed the British in WWI. In both cases, the lenders found innovative and often complex ways to keep the money flowing. Now, we are in the early 21st century and Goldman is providing the money.

But this time it is different. Borrowers are not at war. Instead, they borrow to blow themselves up. There is no foreseeable end to their borrowing. The Greek affair is peanuts. America's ink is so red it looks as though it has cut an artery; this year's deficit alone is $1.6 trillion. Japan, the world's second largest economy, now borrows more than it raises in tax revenues. And while the Greeks run a deficit of 13% of GDP, in the UK the deficit is even higher at 14%.

Goldman is right; this is a good time to sell government debt. Better to get into the lifeboats too early than too late.

[Demeter]

53. Economic Velociraptors Pounce on Greece, Each Other By Rocky Vega

http://dailyreckoning.com/economic-velociraptors-pounce-on-greece-each-other/

[Demeter]

54. Greece to Make All Large Cash Transactions Illegal By Rocky Vega

http://dailyreckoning.com/greece-to-make-all-large-cash-transactions-illegal/

[Demeter]

41. Darling overrode RBS toxic loan fears

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c870aa16-1c09-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html

Alistair Darling overrode a warning from the Treasury’s top civil servant that a government-funded plan to insure Royal Bank of Scotland’s survival by underwriting £282bn of toxic loans could cover legally tainted assets...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP0jDMffWLg&feature=related

[Demeter]

47. IMF Sends Gold to the Woodshed

http://dailyreckoning.com/imf-sends-gold-to-the-woodshed/


Well, there was a very suspicious comment made by the IMF yesterday that sent gold to the woodshed, saying “On-Market Sales Of Gold To Start Shortly”. Hmmm…

Well, we all have to put our thinking caps on here to recall that the IMF had a total of 400 tonnes of gold that they wanted to sell so they could have cash to help out poor countries… And that they indeed sold 200 tonnes of gold to India last year, which leaves them 200 tonnes to sell now. Hmmm… This is where either India or China or even Russia, steps to the plate and points their bat to the center field stands, and gets ready to hit the ball so hard that it goes into orbit, and doesn’t come back to earth until clearing that centerfield wall. Yes… India, China or Russia, need to hit a home run here, folks, and take that gold off the IMF’s hands… If the IMF is that mentally incompetent to see that they need gold, then who is to say that it would be wrong for India, China or Russia to take it off their hands!

But, just the thought of 200 tonnes of gold hitting the streets, without any buyer, at this point, is more than enough to put pressure on the price of gold, folks… Just another opportunity to buy it cheaper in my book!

You know… All this talk going around that the Fed is about to raise interest rates, should have collateral damage to bonds… But, I’m not seeing it… Yes, the 10-year Treasury has gone from 2% to 3.74% in a year’s time… But, most of that move came last year… We’re just not seeing bond traders buying into the raising of interest rates like the currency guys do.

The collateral damage to bonds will come when bond traders believe that interest rates are going higher here in the US or… If the Fed were to pull a rabbit out of their hat, Bullwinkle style, and hike rates in the next couple of months, then the damage to bonds will be even greater, for there will be a sense of “fear by the Fed” of inflation… And inflation is to bond values like kryptonite is to Superman!

I was watching the news yesterday evening while doing some reading, and I heard something that just ticked me off… You see, the word came from the White House, on the 1-year anniversary of the $787 billion stimulus package, that the stimulus package was “working”… When pressed to explain how unemployment was still very high, the President responded by saying that no government program could spur an economy and that the job creation was in the second part of the stimulus… Hmmm… I distinctly recall hearing that the government’s stimulus was the only thing that would spur the economy, and that the stimulus would keep unemployment from going to 10% (it was around 8% then)… BUZZZZZZZZ! I’m sorry, but that’s the wrong answer, we’re going to have to say good-bye to you now, but we have a nice parting gift for you at the door!

It’s just another case of – and this was done in the previous administration too, folks – the government putting “spin” on their deficit spending, and no one calling them on the spin… But, in the end, what does it all mean? It means simply that our national debt has gone from what was once considered to be “unsustainable” to what is now simply immoral!

Hey! Why me worry? About this national debt? Yes… I do… And you should too! Not that I’m telling you what to do… I’m merely suggesting it!

I was reading a great article written by Congressman, Ron Paul, whom I believe is the only person in DC who understands what we’re doing to our country and currency with all this deficit spending. Ron Paul thinks the Fed is in the midst of bailing out Greece with US taxpayer funding… Let’s listen in to Ron Paul…

“Is it possible that our Federal Reserve has had some hand in bailing out Greece? The fact is, we don’t know, and current laws exempt agreements between the Fed and foreign central banks from disclosure or audit.

“Greece is only the latest in a series of countries that have faced this type of crisis in recent memory. Not too long ago the same types of fears were mounting about Dubai, and before that, Iceland. Several other countries (Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Latvia) are approaching crisis levels with public debt as well. Many have strong ties to Goldman Sachs and the case could easily be made that default could have serious implications for big US banking cartels. Considering the ties between the Fed and these big banks, it is not outlandish to wonder if the US taxpayer is secretly bailing out the entire world, country by country, even as our real unemployment tops 20 percent. Unless laws are changed to allow a complete and meaningful audit of the Federal Reserve, including its agreements with foreign central banks, we might never know if this is occurring or not.”

Ron Paul not only gets to slam the Fed’s cozying up to Goldman Sachs, but gets to point out that the Fed needs to be audited, which is the bill he sponsored that keeps getting put on the back burner in DC.

[Demeter]

38. News for Tansy: Disney’s film faces boycott in Europe

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bf14b5f0-1c06-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html

Walt Disney has clashed in Europe with several large cinema chains threatening to boycott Alice in Wonderland, a forthcoming release, after Disney said it would bring forward the DVD release of the film.

Disney wants to accelerate the release by a month, from 17 weeks after the theatrical release to 13 weeks.

The aim is to bolster DVD sales, which have been in decline , by allowing the studio to take advantage of the cinema marketing for the film.

But cinema chains are concerned the early DVD release will eat into ticket sales for Alice in Wonderland, a 3D fantasy directed by Tim Burton...(4 months between is customary).

FROM WHAT I'VE SEEN OF THE TRAILERS, IT IS NOT ALICE IN WONDERLAND, BUT SOME HALLUCINOGENIC FANFICTION LOOSELY BASED ON THE STORY B REV. DODSON. SHOULD BE FASCINATING IN A WEIRD WAY, AND OF COURSE THERE'S JOHNNY DEPP...

[Demeter]

39. IMF urges ‘orderly’ deal on Dubai debt

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b40ac924-1be3-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday urged Dubai to improve its handling of the debt restructuring of a major conglomerate and advised the emirate to reorganise the rest of its state-linked companies.

Dubai World, a troubled state-owned holding company, is restructuring $22bn of loans and bonds to local and international banks. But it has been criticised by bankers and investors for its lack of communication and transparency.

In a so-called public information notice, the IMF “stressed the importance of a speedy, orderly, co-operative and predictable approach to debt restructuring... The process should seek to enhance transparency and information disclosure and ensure comparability of treatment among creditors.”

Financial markets were alarmed this week by rumours that the conglomerate could impose severe “haircuts”, or losses, on its creditors by repaying considerably less than the outstanding loans. Dubai World has denied the rumours, but Lord Mandelson, the UK business secretary, and a US treasury official recently urged the emirate to reach a fair deal with creditors.

Dubai World is still trying to secure a formal standstill agreement, but as the de facto standstill remains in place, the focus is now on finalising a restructuring offer...

IT'S NOT EXACTLY ALGERIA, BUT...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP0jDMffWLg&feature=related

[Demeter]

42. Sinatra In the Movies So Sue Me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra

Sinatra also forged a career as a dramatic actor, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity, and he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Man with the Golden Arm. He also starred in such musicals as High Society, Pal Joey, Guys and Dolls and On the Town. Sinatra was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9sp3vGTm5k

[Demeter]

44. Investing in Gold is a Move Toward Real Wealth By Bill Bonner

http://dailyreckoning.com/investing-in-gold-is-a-move-toward-real-wealth/


...What do investors see that we don't? A mirage...the shimmering of hot money...money that comes from the feds. And they can't believe it's not real.

But that's the problem. No one can tell the difference between real money and the counterfeit stuff. Nor can they tell the difference between real prosperity and the phony variety. And who can really know whether the feds are doing some good...or just up to their usual tricks?

Oh my...it's Friday...and we're too tired to dig very deeply into these issues. We're going to keep it simple...even superficial...

Yesterday, gold rose $4. Is it too expensive...or too late... to buy in now?

What we're looking at is a huge, systemic failure. Instead of 'keeping it real,' the financial system has been so phonied up that you can't tell what's what.

And then, when prices move...you have to figure out what's really moving. Is the world spinning? Or just you?

We've been following the gold market for years. Gold has gone up about 300% over the last 10 years. But what does that mean? Does it mean gold has gone up? Or that the dollar has gone down?

We raise the question because we're wondering how to keep score... Richard Russell suggests that you should keep score in ounces of gold, not in dollars. He's right. Gold is not a perfect way of measuring wealth...it's just the best way.

Over the long pull of history, gold is more reliable a measure of wealth than just about anything else. Whether you had 100 ounces of gold at the time of Caesar or 100 ounces at the time of Charlemagne...or 100 ounces during the Jimmy Carter years - you were well off.

Note that we said gold is a 'measure of wealth' not means to wealth. Gold is inert. Lifeless. Incorruptible. But inherently shiftless. It never gets out of bed in the morning. It has never earned a penny in its entire life.

Gold won't make you rich. It toils not; neither does it spin. Since it doesn't hustle, it won't increase your wealth. That's why, in the Bible, the slave who kept his master's wealth safe in gold got beaten. Gold won't earn a profit. It won't pay you a salary or give you a company car. All it will do is help keep you from getting poor. We've never heard of a man who had 100 ounces of gold who was poor. On the other hand, we've read about millions of people with stacks of paper money who couldn't afford a cup of coffee. In our wallet, for example, is a 10 Trillion Dollar bill from Zimbabwe. A dear reader gave it to us. You could have a stack of those a foot high. You still wouldn't be able to buy a latte at Starbucks. On the other hand, imagine you had a stack of Krugerrands or maple leafs. Well, you still couldn't buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Because the dumb clerk wouldn't know what it was. And if he did take the gold coin in exchange for coffee, he'd probably rush over to the mall where some sharp dealer offered to take it off his hands in exchange for PAPER MONEY!

[AnneD]

65. True funny story....

Many months ago, I had bought several oz. of gold. After I finished I decided to stop and get a burger before I went home. I realized I was a little bit short and had to dig change out of my bag. There I was, 2 oz. of gold in my purse-scrounging for change to get a burger. I still laugh at that (I am easily amused I know).

What is that saying-gold helps you retain wealth, investing helps you grow wealth. Recently our gold has both maintained and grew this families wealth. While not being a major part of ones wealth, it does have a place in any well rounded portfolio-IMHO (my disclaimer) When the economy collapses a certain amount of gold can be useful, but make sure you have food and water.

[Demeter]

46. Ponzi Scheme By Puru Saxena

http://dailyreckoning.com/government-bond-market-just-a-ponzi-scheme/


Let's face it, the government-bond market in the West is a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Most governments in the 'developed' world are drowning in debt, they are running mind-boggling budget deficits and printing money like there is no tomorrow. Furthermore, under the guise of quantitative easing, their central banks are buying their own newly issued debt!

It is our contention that similar to Mr. Madoff's hedge fund, the sovereign debt markets in the West have now become gigantic scams. Only this time around, the players have changed and the sums involved are significantly larger.

Figure 1 highlights the incredible expansion in America's national debt. It is noteworthy that at the turn of the millennium, America's national debt was less than half of its current value. Put simply, American policymakers have taken on more debt over the past decade than they have over the last one hundred years!

What is more astonishing is the fact that America is funding a large portion of its newly issued debt by direct purchases from the Federal Reserve. In other words, as private-sector demand for US Treasuries wanes, Mr. Bernanke is creating new money so that Mr. Obama's government can bail out insolvent financial institutions. Strangely, the American establishment is quite content to pledge the economic fate of its future generations in order to protect the bondholders of dubious 'too big to fail' corporations. Hmm, talk about change...

US Public an Private Debt

Apart from the world's largest economy, various other nations in the 'developed' world are also following such misguided policies. For instance, UK's national debt is exploding and is forecast to reach GBP1.1 trillion by 2011. At present, its national debt is worth GBP891 billion and this equates to GBP14,304 for every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom!

Elsewhere in Europe, the situation is equally dire in nations such as Ireland, Spain, Greece and Italy. Furthermore, various countries in Eastern Europe are on the verge of economic doom.

Given the precarious state of so many economies in the West, we are amazed that the respective government bond markets have not fallen apart at the seams. Perhaps, they are all heading down Japan's route, where national debt is now above 170% of GDP, yet the yield on Japanese government debt is pathetic. But then again, perhaps they are not...

In our view, in the not too distant future, the interest payments on the outstanding national debts in the overstretched 'developed' nations will become so large that their central banks will need to create money just to keep the Ponzi schemes going. When that happens, the game will be up and we will probably experience a total breakdown of the fiat- money experiment. At this stage, we do not know when the day of reckoning will arrive but we do know that all Ponzi schemes ultimately collapse under their own weight and this one will be no different.

Given the shocking debt overhang in the West and the threat of surging inflation later this decade, we cannot understand why anybody would want to lend money to bankrupt governments!? In the worst case scenario, these naïve bondholders risk losing their entire capital and the best outcome involves a significant loss of purchasing power due to inflation. Accordingly, we are not investing in sovereign debt and we suggest that you refrain from lending money to dubious governments.

Finally, although we are pessimistic about the long-term prospects of government debt, we are aware of the possibility of a near-term rally; especially if there is another round of risk aversion in the financial markets. So, if we do get another deflationary scare and bond prices rally, holders of government debt are best advised to liquidate their positions.

Furthermore, if our world-view is correct, extremely high inflation is now inevitable. As long as the monetary velocity in the US is weak, inflationary expectations will remain subdued, but once the economic activity picks up, the world will experience spiraling inflation. When that occurs, hard assets will protect the purchasing power of your savings. Accordingly, we have allocated a large portion of our clients' capital to energy (upstream companies, oil services plays and alternative energy plays), precious metals miners and diversified base metals miners.

At the time of writing, precious metals are at a critical juncture and the price of gold is trading above an important support level.

Figure 2 shows that the price of gold peaked at US$1,075 in October 2009 and that level is now acting as important support. Now, if the bull-market's trend consistency is intact, then the price of gold must rally immediately and challenge its December high. At the very least, the price of gold must hold above US$1,075 per ounce. So, will gold manage to stay above this critical support level?

Before we attempt to answer this question, we must confess that short- term forecasting is extremely difficult and we really do not know what will happen over the following days. However, what we do know is that the macro-economic environment has never been better for the yellow metal. After all, mined supply is in decline, investment demand is rising, the public sector has become a net buyer of gold and hatred towards paper currencies is on the rise. Under these circumstances, we expect gold to perform very well. However, you must remember that the American currency is in rally mode and this is exerting downward pressure on all metals.

Now, if we were forced to take a stand at gunpoint, we would say that the odds of a rally in gold are 65/35. Accordingly, we are holding on to our positions in precious metals mining stocks and may consider lightening up during spring (which is when precious metals usually make an intermediate-term peak).

Gold Price

Now, if gold does the unexpected and breaks below US$1,075 per ounce, then we envisage a deeper correction to the US$1,000 per ounce level. Even if that happens, we will continue to hold on to our positions in gold mining companies, which have already depreciated in the ongoing stock-market correction.

Short-term setbacks notwithstanding, we continue to believe that hard assets are in a secular bull-market, which will probably end in a gigantic mania. According to our guesstimate, the bull-market will end in the latter half of this decade; at a time, when inflationary expectations are spiraling out of control.

Make no mistake, the policy actions of the past 18 months are extremely inflationary and once the American economy stabilises, we will experience a significant increase in the general price level. And before this is all over, government bonds will (once again) be recognised as 'certificates of confiscation'.

[Demeter]

51. Sinatra's Early life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra

Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, the only child of Italian immigrants Natalie Della (née Garaventa) and Antonio Martino Sinatra. He left high school without graduating, having attended only 47 days before being expelled due to his rowdy conduct. His mother, known as Dolly, was influential in the neighborhood and in local Democratic Party circles, but also ran an illegal abortion business from her home; she was arrested several times and convicted twice for this offense. Frank was arrested for carrying on with a married woman, a criminal offense at the time. Frank's father Tony served with the Hoboken Fire Department. During the tough years of the 1930s, when the Great Depression hit North America very hard, Dolly nevertheless provided ready pocket money to Frank, the family's only child, for outings with friends and fancy clothes. Frank then worked for some time as a delivery boy at the Jersey Observer newspaper, and as a riveter at the Tietjan and Lang shipyard. It was in the early 1930s that Sinatra began singing in public.

1935–40: Start of career, work with James and Dorsey

Sinatra got his first break in 1935 when his mother persuaded a local singing group, The Three Flashes, to let him join. With Sinatra, the group became known as the Hoboken Four and they sufficiently impressed Edward Bowes. After appearing on his show, Major Bowes Amateur Hour, they attracted 40,000 votes and won the first prize — a six month contract to perform on stage and radio across the United States.

Sinatra left the Hoboken 4 and returned home in late 1935. His mother secured him a job as a singing waiter and MC at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, for which he was paid $15 a week.

On March 18, 1939, Sinatra made a demo recording of a song called "Our Love", with the Frank Mane band. The record has "Frank Sinatra" signed on the front. The bandleader kept the original record in a safe for nearly 60 years. In June, Harry James hired Sinatra on a one year contract of $75 a week. It was with the James band that Sinatra released his first commercial record "From the Bottom of My Heart" in July, 1939 - US Brunswick #8443 and UK Columbia #DB2150.

Fewer than 8,000 copies of "From the Bottom of My Heart" (Brunswick #8443) were sold, making the record a very rare find that is sought after by record collectors worldwide. Sinatra released ten commercial tracks with James through 1939, including "All or Nothing At All" which had weak sales on its initial release but then sold millions of copies when re-released by Columbia at the height of Sinatra's popularity a few years later.

In November 1939, in a meeting at the Palmer House in Chicago, Sinatra was asked by bandleader Tommy Dorsey to join his band as a replacement for Jack Leonard, who had recently left to launch a solo career. This meeting was a turning point in Sinatra's career, since by signing with Dorsey's band, one of the hottest bands at the time, he got greatly increased visibility with the American public. Though Sinatra was still under contract with James, James recognized the opportunity Dorsey offered and graciously released Sinatra from his contract. Sinatra recognized his debt to James throughout his life and upon hearing of James' death in 1983, stated: "he is the one that made it all possible."

On January 26, 1940, Sinatra made his first public appearance with the Dorsey band at the Coronado Theater in Rockford, IL. In his first year with Dorsey, Sinatra released more than forty songs, with "I'll Never Smile Again" topping the charts for twelve weeks beginning in mid-July.

Sinatra's relationship with Tommy Dorsey was troubled, due to their contract, which awarded Dorsey 1/3 of Sinatra's lifetime earnings in the entertainment industry. In January 1942, Sinatra recorded his first solo sessions without the Dorsey band (but with Dorsey's arranger Axel Stordahl and with Dorsey's approval). These sessions were released commercially on the Bluebird label. Sinatra left the Dorsey band late in 1942 in an incident that started rumors of Sinatra's involvement with the Mafia. A story appeared in the Hearst newspapers that mobster Sam Giancana coerced Dorsey to let Sinatra out of his contract for a few thousand dollars. This story was famously fictionalized in the movie The Godfather. According to Nancy Sinatra's biography, the Hearst rumors were started because of Frank's Democratic politics. In fact, the contract was bought out by MCA founder Jules Stein for $75,000.

[Tansy_Gold]

85. The Palmer House

I have many very fond memories of this wonderful, elegant, romantic hotel. In 2006, when I was in Chicago for a class reunion, I took a stroll through it.







But I never knew there was a connection to Sinatra, though it doesn't surprise me.



Tansy Gold, in cold, rainy central AZ

[Demeter]

52. The Expanding Industry of US Government By Bill Bonner

http://dailyreckoning.com/the-expanding-industry-of-us-government/

...Go to Jonestown, Pennsylvania. They've got an airport there that is the envy of travelers everywhere. Lots of airport, in other words...few passengers. That's because John Murtha - when he was still among the quick - used his power in Congress to build an airport that would be convenient for him...and reward local contractors and unions who had supported him over the years.

Few politicians dug more deeply into the pork barrel than John Murtha. But almost all stick their hands in it. Why else would you bother with the trials and tribulations of 'public service?' There's got to be a payoff that makes it worthwhile, right? Of course, there are a few - like our friend Ron Paul - who are just trying to do the right thing. But for every Ron Paul there must be dozens of Congressmen and federal employees who are in it for the power, the money - or both. (Neither Stalin nor Hitler squeezed much personal wealth from the taxpayer tube. Mao Tse-tung, on the other hand, knew how to live - with plenty of palaces and young women. Most government employees are probably more like Mao than Adolph. That is, they are motivated by money as well as power.)

Have you wondered why the costs of running for public office have soared? That's obvious too - because the stakes are higher. As the federal budget grows so does the pork that each member of congress can pull out of the barrel.

The number of congressmen is more or less constant (though it grows with population...after a 10-year lag for the census). But the amount of money given out increases...making each congressional seat more lucrative. You can do the math yourself, but the point is - crime pays. At least, for a while...

The trouble with crime is that it only makes the criminals rich. Everyone else gets poorer. That's the problem in places such as Nigeria and Haiti. Crime pays. Nothing else does. Economists have done studies of this...and, of course, they've discovered the obvious. In "high trust" societies, people are wealthier. No wonder; when people know they won't be ripped off, they accumulate more money.

A high trust society is one where property rights are respected...and where the rules of the game are known...and change very slowly. A change in tax rates, for example, discourages wealth - especially if it comes unexpectedly. So does a change in monetary policy. When people don't know what to expect from the currency they become reluctant to invest for a long-term payoff. Instead, they invest in lobbying.

For the most part, tax rates haven't gone up. Instead of taxes, government gets its money from borrowing. The immediate effect is much the same; resources are absorbed out of other sectors of the economy and into the public sector. Once in government service, they are used inefficiently or completely squandered. Result: John Murtha gets an airport...a kid in Brooklyn doesn't get a bicycle... The long-term effect is unknown...but will almost certainly be unwelcome. The government will eventually be unable to borrow at low rates...and unable to finance its deficits. This will result in default...or hyperinflation...or both. In anticipation, trust in the future will go down...and so will America's wealth.

That's why the shift to politics is the FINAL stage of an economy... It is inherently wealth-destroying. In politics the rewards are distributed according to who you know or who you are. What you know and what you can do scarcely matters. Trust declines...because the rules change as wealth is taken away from some and given to others. The incentive to produce new wealth declines. Investments in new capital, new businesses, new innovations and so forth go down. Investments in lobbying go up. The insiders get rich. The rest get poor. And the nation's wealth declines...along with its economy and its power. This will continue until the political sector blows itself up - either in default, bankruptcy, hyperinflation, revolution or defeat by a foreign power. Then, the cycle can begin again.

BETTER THAN AVERAGE RANT FROM BILL BONNER


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ya7ZRlrEo&annotation_id=annotation_657105&feature=iv

[Demeter]

55. What the Past Tells Us By David Walker

http://dailyreckoning.com/what-the-past-tells-us/

JUST BECAUSE HE'S A PETERSON FOUNDATION STOOGE DOESN'T MEAN HIS RECOUNTING OF HISTORY ISN'T USEFUL. IT'S THE FUTURE THESE PEOPLE WANT TO FORCE UPON US THAT IS THE PROBLEM!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoSbnAFvqfA&feature=related

[Demeter]

56. Henry Kaufman Interview Videos "Doctor Doom"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPvoPCOoezE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmOK-7Pw0Xw&feature=related

[Demeter]

57. Another Sign of the Futility of the 2005 Bankruptcy Law posted by Bob Lawless

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2009/08/another-sign-of-the-futility-of-the-2005-bankruptcy-law.html

http://www.creditslips.org/.a/6a00d8341cf9b753ef0120a5738dc1970c-400wi

A big feature of the 2005 changes to the U.S. bankruptcy law was supposed to be a means test that would get people into chapter 13 instead of chapter 7. Because a chapter 13 requires a 3- or 5-year repayment plan, the law's advocates pitched it as an attempt to force "can pay" debtors to repay a portion of their debts. Initially, chapter 13 rates did go up, but that was a statistical artifact of the huge surge in filings just before the 2005 law. As I have noted previously, the chapter 13 rate has been declining ever since.

I am now officially going to call it ....

Anyway you measure it, chapter 13s have returned to their historical level. In fact, one could even interpret the data to show that chapter 13s are slightly below their historical norms. As a percentage of all filings, the chapter 13 rate for July 2009 was 28.1%, and the chapter 13 rate for the first seven months of 2009 was even less--27.6%. In 2004, chapter 13s were 28.1% (the red line in the graph) and from 1999 - 004 they were 29.0%. The 2005 bankruptcy law accomplished nothing about chapter choice.

This is just another sign of the futility of the 2005 bankruptcy law. As I've said on numerous occasions, it did nothing to change the underlying economic reality for consumers in deep financial distress. It's not a surprise that the supposedly central goal of the law--more chapter 13s--has not come to pass. Of course, the unstated goal of the 2005 bankruptcy law was to raise the cost of filing and lower the benefit of doing so that consumers would wait longer to file bankruptcy while paying huge default interest rates and penalty fees. In a paper that my colleagues and I published out of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project data, we found the effect was exactly that--consumers are waiting longer to file bankruptcy.

A GOLDEN OLDIE FROM AUGUST==ANYBODY WILLING TO LOOK FOR MORE RECENT DATA?

Comments

I don't think you can successfully make the argument that BAPCPA caused more people to file Chapter 7 instead of Chapter 13.

Plenty of people who would otherwise have filed a Chapter 7 are filing Chapter 13s because of the Means Test.

What has changed is the economic landscape. Chapter 13 requires that debtors have regular income. There's a lot less of 'regular income' stuff going around these days.

Just as important, Chapter 13 has been used primarily by debtors trying to save their homes. As more and more homes have gone underwater, and as more adjustable rate mortgages and option ARMs have ratched up, there has been a sea change in the attitudes of Americans about the importance of saving their homes. Saving the home used to be the brass ring that was worth any sacrifice. Today, not so much.

Plus, Chapter 13's major flaw - the inability to cram down mortgages in the same way that other debts are crammed down - didn't used to be a big deal, because far fewer homes were underwater. Now, stripping second and third mortgages is more common than ever before, but the first mortgages that are underwater simply can't be fixed in Chapter 13.

If you were going to point to one area where BAPCPA made Chapter 13 less attractive than Chapter 7, it would be the change in the ability to cram down motor vehicle loans. You can reduce the interest rate, but you can't reduced the secured claim to the value of the vehicle if the car or truck was purchased within 910 days of filing.

But I don't see that as "the" factor in Chapter 13's decline in popularity. I think the terrible job market and the crash in home values are the main reasons that Chapter 13 filings are below even their historical pre-BAPCPA levels on a percentage-of-all-filings basis.

---------------------------------------------------

And let's not forget how one can no longer discharge private student loan debt...I went back to school after 20 years of work, graduated and, ironically, lost my job and now I've been unemployed for six months, been dutifully paying my federal and private student loans. Finally, I look at my budget and I'm reaching the point where it's going to be loans or housing, so I call the federal lenders, at a 0.84% interest rate: No problem, six month extension. Private lenders, at a 7.15% interest rate: The best they can do is grant a two-month forbearance but only if I was working! If I was working, I wouldn't need the forbearance!

My community has a free law clinic so I go talk to them to see what my options are, until 2005 I could've petitioned the Bankruptcy Court to dismiss or rework the private loans.

So the private lenders who are charging what amounts to usury interest rates benefit from the law changes but don't change their way of business at all.

I should've gone back to school to become a banker!

[Demeter]

58. A New Website for Econ Geeks: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

http://www.levy.org/vtype.aspx?doctype=9

SAMPLE ARTICLES

http://www.levy.org/pubs/ppb_98.pdf

http://www.levy.org/pubs/ppb_98.pdf

Check it out! Anyplace that Galbraith posts is worthy of examination.

[Demeter]

59. The troubling side of Ben Bernanke

ARE THERE ANY UN-TROUBLING SIDES TO HELICOPTER BEN? ANOTHER GOLDEN OLDIE FROM AUGUST

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6089383/The-troubling-side-of-Ben-Bernanke.html

Ben Bernanke has proved himself a heroic fire-fighter, saving world from a calamitous spiral into debt deflation by showering markets with liquidity.

A good thing too. He helped cause the raging fire of 2007-2009 in the first place. As a Princeton professor and then a junior Federal Reserve governor, Mr Bernanke was the intellectual architect of his predecessor Alan Greenspan's policies that so distorted global finance and pushed debt to historic extremes.

Indeed, he was picked to join the Fed because he provided academic cover for Greenspan's view that asset bubbles do not matter. He blamed credit excesses on Asia's "saving glut", arguing that reserve accumulation by export nations suppressed global bond yields. That let the Fed off the hook for its own role in driving the US savings rate to zero – and consumption through the roof – by holding interest rates below "Wicksell's Natural Rate".

It is this twin-sided nature of Bernanke that raises nagging questions about his reappointment as chairman of the Fed. He has admitted errors: it was wrong to think the sub-prime crisis could be contained. But he has yet to acknowledge that his economic ideology is deeply flawed.

Bill White, former chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, said the error of the central banking fraternity over past 20 years has been to cut real interest rates ever lower to keep the game going. This has lured the world into a debt trap. The effect is to keep drawing prosperity from the future – until the future arrives.

"It does the job for a while but moves in interest rates have to be ever more violent to achieve the same effect. My worry is that we may have reached the point where the policy ceases to work altogether.

"These imbalances come back to haunt you, and that is where the world now is. People have been induced to bring forward purchases by taking on debt and there has been a massive expansion in corporate investment," he said.

Economists call this critique "intertemporal misallocation". It is a favourite of the Austrian School. It plays almost no role in the "New Keynesian" thinking of Bernanke.

His reflex is to see any fall in demand as an outside shock to be corrected by extra stimulus. What he does not accept is that the adrenal glands of the economic system have been depleted by perpetual credit stimulus, giving the world a form of Addison's Disease.

Bernanke made his name studying the "credit channel" causes of depressions, chiefly drawing on the 1930s. He was quick to see the danger when the financial system had its heart attack on August 20, 2007, the day yields on three-month Treasuries collapsed on flight to safety.

He dusted off his manual for fighting slumps – his 2002 speech, Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn't Happen Here – and coolly embarked on monetary revolution. Rates were slashed to zero. The Fed stepped into to prop up the banks, commercial paper, mortgage securities, and finally Treasuries. Nothing like this had been tried before. He did so against fierce resistance from Fed hawks. Only a man so convinced of his mission could have pulled it off.

Given his calmness under fire, and his grasp of credit mechanics, it makes sense for President Barack Obama to give him a second term. We are not out of danger. The markets might have taken fright at a political appointee.

Yet Bernanke's certainty is troubling. The thrust of his academic writings is that the Depression was a "financial event" that could have been avoided if the Fed had flooded the economy with money (by bond purchases) to prevent a banking crash.

This theory – half-Friedmanite – has merits. The Fed made horrible mistakes. But it neglects other causes of the slump: industrial over-capacity created by the 1920s bubble, so like today.

It also led to the Greenspan doctrine that central banks can let stock market and housing booms run their course, stepping in to "clean up afterwards".

Bernanke spelled out the policy bluntly in his 2002 speech. "The US Government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost," he said.

The "no cost" flippancy grates now. Washington says the damage will lift the US federal debt by $9 trillion (£5.5 trillion) over the next decade, pushing the total towards 100pc of GDP. In any case, the Fed cannot use this machinery so easily after all. Foreigners own 40pc of US Treasury debt and have a partial veto on the policy. Overt attempts to "monetise" US debt will cause the policy to short-circuit. Investors will dump US bonds.

Bernanke's theoretical model is clearly wrong – since he was blind-sided two years ago – and must lead him into fresh error. The risk is that he will mismanage the Fed's "exit strategy" by tightening policy too soon on the false assumption that recovery is secure. He knows this was the Fed blunder of 1936-1937, but also seems to think he has basically licked our Great Recession of 2008-2009. Has he really?

As Mark Twain put it: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

[bread_and_roses]

61. Well, I loathe Frankie and Dean and all those crooners - but I love WE

and I don't make that as a complaint - I read WE whatever the theme, which I consider the thread-originator's prerogative.

I've been busy and likely to be the rest of the weekend as well, so have not much to contribute, but thought I'd post this little piece for it's apt title and for the telling juxtapositions.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/18-3

Casino Time by Linh Dinh

Just look around you. I live in Philadelphia, a broke metropolis gutted of almost all industries, like almost all of our towns and cities. Every so often, bored and angry youths rampage through The Gallery, our downtown shopping mall. They fight security guards, sending some to the hospital. Roaming sidewalks, they knock down random strangers. Just this week, more than a hundred students staged a mini riot inside Macy's, causing nearly a thousand dollars' worth of damage. One was hospitalized after being kicked in the head. Fifteen were arrested.

Across the river is Camden, once the home of Campbell Soup and RCA Victors. Last year, it was ranked as the most dangerous American city. The year before, merely the second most deadly. Etched onto City Hall, a line from Walt Whiman, "IN A DREAM, I SEE A CITY INVINCIBLE." Beneath it, two boarded up windows. Downtown is mostly deserted. On its main drag, people strut about aimlessly, past Chinese and fried chicken joints with their bulletproof plexiglasses. Just outside downtown is a tent city.

An hour from Philly is Bethlehem, home of Bethlehem Steel, now a hulking ruins...

Whatever possessed so many of our fellow citizens to believe the lies of our leaders that "high-tech," "information sector" (or whatever they spouted) jobs could replace making things?

Now, those jobs were often brutally hard and dangerous. My father operated a giant crane in a mill - and not infrequently worked "doubles" - sixteen hours in a row, swinging a lethal machine around a mill floor high above workers scurrying below. And his was a "good" job - higher paid. Those jobs could and should have been made more human-scaled, safer, healthier, far more worker-centered, and divested of the rampant race and gender divisions . There should have been half-again as many workers on shorter shifts (with no wage loss, and I'm talking union wages - family supporting jobs). Our retirement age should have been lowered long ago. (One reason I could never get behind DR Dean was his support of raising the eligible age for SS - did the good DR ever do any manual work? Ever break pavement on a road crew? Ever stand behind a counter all day in high heels and consider what that's like when you're sixty? Or even fifty-five? Much less sixty-five??????????)

But aside from the obvious economic ramifications of outsourcing all our production, humans seem to LIKE TO MAKE THINGS. They LIKE TO WORK TOGETHER in a PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY. Witness workers crying when their plants are shut down, and listen to what they say - it's not just the loss of wages they mourn.

Nothing like concentrating millions of people in cities with no jobs, no possibility of jobs, no way to be productive contributors to their communities or support families, and then wondering at the consequent violence and eventual collapse.

[Dr.Phool]

63. I look at my old town.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35449611/ns/business-us_business/

Cleveland tops list of most miserable U.S. cities

By Kurt Badenhausen
updated 12:34 p.m. ET, Thurs., Feb. 18, 2010

The city of Cleveland has had a colorful history.

The Cuyahoga River, which runs through the city, famously caught fire in 1969 thanks to rampant pollution, and it wasn't the first time.

In 1978 it became the first U.S. city to default on its debts since the Great Depression

Cleveland sports fans have had to endure more anguish than those in any other city.

The city has been dubbed with a less than endearing nickname: the Mistake by the Lake.

This year Cleveland takes the top spot in our third annual ranking of America's Most Miserable Cities.

Cleveland secured the position thanks to its high unemployment, high taxes, lousy weather, corruption by public officials and crummy sports teams (Cavaliers of the NBA excepted).

Misery was on the rise around the country last year. Sure the stock market was up big, but so were unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy filings. Meanwhile housing prices, the U.S. dollar and approval ratings for Congress continued their downward spiral.
(snip)
--------------------------------------------------------------

I remember when I was a kid, it was called "The best location in the nation". Around 1960, the city's population was near 1,000,000. Now I believe it's just over 300,000. There used to be over 15,000 people working in the valley at the mills. Now, it's just over 1,000. And with people laid off, they're working a mandatory 6 and 7 day week.

[AnneD]

66. I cannot think of steel mills without thinking on this.....

My Hometown Bruce Springsteen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77gKSp8WoRg

[Demeter]

67. Sinatra Was a Performer, and For That, I Respect Him

but the rest of his life was a nightmare.

And as for our once great and productive cities:

http://www.paulhallart.com/Economics/pages/articles/thematrixofeconomicengines.htm


http://www.makingcitieswork.org/urbanThemes/Localecongrowth


http://www.physorg.com/news96002930.html

And from Time Magazine, 1951, Detroit at its Peak:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,815133,00.html

There's something about greed that doesn't like other people to have any income at all, not even enough to live a humble life...greed is a sickness that maintains itself. There's only one cure for it--FRSP

[Tansy_Gold]

89. The joy of making things

Someone, somewhere, must make the things we use. Grow the tomatoes and the cabbages, milk the cows, collect the eggs, saw the lumber, forge the nails, spin and weave and cut and sew.

Somewhere along the line, we -- and I'm not even sure who "we" is at this point -- lost our pride in our work.

I come from a long line of do-it-yourselfers, and I always took pride in the hand-made gifts that came my way for birthdays and holidays.

How do we resurrect that? Not in the workers themselves, because so many of them DO have pride in their work, but in the culture, in the politics, in the policies?

Is it a legacy of Calvinistic belief that blessings are bestowed by God, and not earned by humankind? Did such a belief lead to exalting unearned wealth/success/riches as more blessed and therefore better than any accomplishments of human labor? Have we totally internalized the lilies of the field?

I remember the first and only time I saw that movie, on TV 40 or more years ago. I found it disturbing even then that Homer Smith worked so hard for so little return. The nuns could afford to be the lazy lilies, worrying about nothing, because they had Homer Smith to do it all. And when he had done it, he just discreetly slipped away, unpaid, leaving behind a "miracle."

Bullshit.




Tansy Gold, who thinks she will go out to her studio and make something

[DemReadingDU]

90. Pride in making things will be back as a necessity

As the economy continues to worsen, people are not going to have much money nor credit cards. They will not be able to buy much of anything and will need to make things, barter, or do without.

Edit: The things a person enjoys doing can be traded for things you don't like to do or can't do. A person's skills are going to become very important.

[Demeter]

68. WEE Post of Shame--From 2000

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/24/opinion/why-decry-the-wealth-gap.html?pagewanted=1


January 24, 2000
Why Decry the Wealth Gap?
By W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm

DALLAS— The economic expansion that began in 1991 will soon become the longest in our history, yet last week Americans may have been distracted by two reports reminding them of a widening gap between the rich and poor.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, two liberal research groups, put out a state-by-state breakdown of Census Bureau data, which found nine states (led by New York) in which the richest 20 percent of households now earn at least 11 times the income of the poorest 20 percent. This indicated a much sharper disparity between the top and bottom than existed two decades ago.

Then the Federal Reserve Bank released its latest survey of consumer finances. It showed that the average net worth of families earning less than $10,000 a year had fallen by $6,600 over the past three years, while households earning more than $100,000 a year had seen their wealth jump by more than $300,000.

Our response is: So what?

Few of us should be surprised -- or threatened -- by statistics on inequality. Some Americans believe the more equality the better, but the fact is that the distribution of income and wealth isn't arbitrary. It emerges from broad trends in the economy and is a byproduct of a decade that created 17 million jobs and added 20 percent to median household net worth.

The unstated implication of the state-by-state report was that the states where income disparities are lower are somehow ''fairer'' than the states with high disparities. But the truth is that among communities, states and regions, income and wealth will vary for many reasons, several of them unavoidable and laudable.

Consider, for example, that income varies with education. According to census data, high school dropouts in the work force earn an average of $26,207, while workers with a professional degree average $127,499. Census figures show that many of the states with the widest income gaps have greater diversity in education levels than states with smaller income gaps. Twenty-six percent of those over the age of 24 in New York -- the state with the greatest income disparity -- have at least a bachelor's degree, whereas in Indiana, which was among the seven states with the lowest income disparity, only 16 percent do. Should we be lamenting that so many New Yorkers went to college?

Another non-nefarious cause of increasing income disparity may be our ever-higher immigration rates. Immigrants tend to cluster in low- and high-income groups. Thus it is no surprise that in the seven most unequal states -- New York, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, California, Rhode Island and Texas -- about 13 percent of the population is foreign-born (in California, it's 25 percent). Among the seven states with the smallest income disparities, the immigrant population is only 3.8 percent.

The shift away from manufacturing is also a factor. Service workers span the gamut from hotel maids to brain surgeons, while the pay range is generally narrower in the manufacturing sector. States that are industrial tend to have more equal distributions of income. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that about 10 percent of workers in Arizona, Louisiana and New York have manufacturing jobs, whereas in more equal states like Indiana and Wisconsin the figure is 23 percent.

Also, in the seven states with the greatest income inequality, more than 80 percent of the population lives in or near metropolitan areas. In states with the most equality, only about half does. If we were to turn back the clock 100 years and again become a largely rural nation, we might not see such large income disparities, but that's because America's cities are our engines of wealth and offer greater prospects for those who succeed.

And what of the poorest Americans' loss of ground compared to the richest, as reported by the Fed? The apostles of equality consider the rising inequality kindling for social unrest. But while that would be true if most workers on the bottom rungs were trapped there for generations, America isn't a caste society, and studies that track individuals' incomes over time show that Americans have a remarkable ability to propel themselves upward.

A 17-year study of lifetime earnings by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that only 5 percent of people in the economy's lowest 20 percent failed to move to a higher income group. In a similar study by the Treasury Department covering 1979 to 1988, 86 percent of Americans in the bottom fifth of income earners improved their status.

Inequality is not inequity. Artificial efforts to try to curb wealth gaps invariably do more harm than good. Heavier taxation might narrow the division between rich and poor, but it would be a hollow triumph if it stifled the economy. What Americans ought to care most about is maintaining our growth, not the red herring of gaps in income and wealth.

MAY THEY FIND OUT FIRST-HAND WHY INEQUALITY IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH A FREE PEOPLE AND A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY, THE HARD WAY.

[Joe Chi Minh]

75. It is given to few people to hold forth with such confident eloquence on a subject

which, it transpires (were it ever in doubt), they completely misunderstand at every point. A remarkable opus by any standard. Michael Cox and Richard Alm. Names to conjure with.

[Demeter]

69. Good News! Dutch government collapses over Afghan mission

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100220/ap_on_re_eu/eu_netherlands_afghanistan

The Dutch coalition government collapsed Saturday over whether to extend the country's military mission in Afghanistan, leaving the future of its 1,600 soldiers fighting there uncertain. An early election is now expected.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende announced that the second largest party in his three-party alliance is quitting, ending an uneasy partnership.

"Where there is no trust, it is difficult to work together. There is no road along which this cabinet can go further," Balkenende said.

The Dutch debate comes as opinion polls in many troop-providing European countries indicate growing public opposition to sending more soldiers to Afghanistan amid a global financial crisis and shrinking defense budgets.

Any Dutch withdrawal would be a worrying sign for NATO, which has struggled to raise the 10,000 additional troops that its top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has demanded to accompany the 30,000 American reinforcements being deployed there.

In another sign of the weakening commitment to the war, Canada is planning to withdraw its entire 2,800-strong unit from Afghanistan by the end of 2011. The Canadian contingent, the third-largest after the U.S. and Britain, serves with the Dutch in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan.

Balkenende made no mention of elections as he spoke to reporters after a marathon 16-hour Cabinet meeting that ended close to dawn. However, the resignation of the Labor Party — which has demanded the country stick to a scheduled withdrawal from southern Afghanistan — leaves his government with just 47 seats in the 150-member parliament.

With no viable prospects for other coalitions, an early election is expected. By law it must be held within 83 days and by custom it is on a Wednesday, so the vote is likely May 11.

Balkenende, 53, said his center-right Christian Democratic Alliance would continue in office with the small Christian Union. His minority cabinet would continue as a caretaker government until a new coalition is formed, which could take months of political bargaining following an election.

Dutch soldiers have been deployed since 2006 in Uruzgan on a two-year stint that was extended until next August, and 21 Dutch soldiers have lost their lives there. Balkenende's party wanted to keep a trimmed-down military presence in the restive province but Labor was adamant that they leave Uruzgan as scheduled.

"A plan was agreed to when our soldiers went to Afghanistan," said Labor Party leader Wouter Bos. "Our partners in the government didn't want to stick to that plan, and on the basis of their refusal, we have decided to resign."

The Dutch government split came after weeks of tension between Balkenende and Bos, the finance minister, mainly over Afghanistan.

Balkenende's allies argued that a pullout from Afghanistan would damage the Netherlands' reputation as a nation that carries more than its weight in international peacekeeping missions, and could encourage other wavering countries to also withdraw.

"The future of the mission of our soldiers in Afghanistan will now be in the hands of the new Cabinet," said Deputy Defense Minister Jack de Vries.

NATO recently sent a letter to the Dutch government asking if it would consider staying longer.

In Brussels, alliance spokesman James Appathurai said NATO would not specifically comment on the internal political debates in member countries.

"(But) Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen continues to believe that the best way forward would be a new smaller Dutch mission, including a provincial reconstruction team in Uruzgan to consolidate the success that the Dutch have had and to transition to Afghan lead," Appathurai said.

He said whatever happened, the Afghan people should know that NATO will "continue to provide support to them as long as necessary."

Andre Rouvoet, leader of Christian Union party, said Queen Beatrix, Holland's ceremonial head of state, will formally accept the resignations of the Labor ministers and "ask the remaining ministers to prepare for elections." First, however, she must return from her skiing holiday in Austria.

Opinion polls suggest the Afghan war is deeply unpopular in the Netherlands. Labor, which has been dropping in the polls, appeared determined to take a stand with next month's local elections in mind.

An election in the next few months could see a further boost for extreme anti-immigrant populist Geert Wilders, whose ranking in the polls rivals Balkenende's.

[Demeter]

70. Suicide Letter Of Man who Crashed Into IRS Building In Austin Texas

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24783.htm

[Demeter]

73. Frustrated Owner Bulldozes Home Ahead Of Foreclosure By Cincinnati News

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24804.htm

[DemReadingDU]

87. My daughter lives in Clermont County

but said she hadn't heard this story until I sent her a video

[Demeter]

71. New underground economy: Key indicator: Avoidance of bank accounts

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/09/new-underground-economy/

The underground or "black" economy is rapidly rising, and the fault is mainly due to government policies.

Here is the evidence. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) released a report last week concluding that 7.7 percent of U.S. households, containing at least 17 million adults, are unbanked (i.e. those who do not have bank accounts), and an "estimated 17.9 percent of U.S. households, roughly 21 million, are underbanked" (i.e., those who rely heavily on nonbank institutions, such as check cashing and money transmitting services). As an economy becomes richer and incomes rise, the normal expectation is that the proportion of the unbanked population falls and does not rise as is now happening in the United States.

Tax revenues are falling far more rapidly at the federal, state and local level than would be expected by the small drop in real gross domestic product (GDP) and changes in tax law that have occurred since the recession began. The currency in circulation outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve banks and the vaults of depository institutions - that is, the currency held by individuals and businesses - has grown by 13.3 percent in the last two years, while real nominal (not inflation-adjusted) GDP has not grown at all, and real (inflation-adjusted) GDP incomes have fallen by more than 3 percent. With the growth of electronic means of payment and financial service providers, it would be expected that the currency component of GDP would fall, not rise.

The underground economy refers to both legal activities, such as often found in construction and services industries where taxes are not withheld and paid, and illegal activities, such as drug dealing and prostitution.

Countries such as the United States, Switzerland and Japan historically have had relatively small, nonreporting and/or illegal sectors, a typical estimate being 13 percent of GDP.

Most European countries have had somewhat larger underground sectors (typically 20 percent or so) in part because of the desire to escape higher tax rates. Italy and some of the other Southern European countries are believed to have underground sectors that account for 30 percent or more of all economic activity.

I recall an Italian finance minister telling a few of us at a meeting a couple of decades ago that, for policy purposes, he assumed that "the economy was 40 percent larger than what was reported." In some developing countries and/or highly corrupt countries, underground or "off the books" activities are estimated to be as high as 70 percent of all economic activity.

The FDIC report about the size of the unbanked or underbanked sector in the U.S. should be of concern because those who do not use the banking system often have to pay higher fees to cash checks, pay bills (e.g., money orders, etc.), or transmit funds.

People who keep their savings in cash at home rather than in banks make themselves easier prey for criminals and are more likely to lose their money to fire, flood, or just neglect. Not surprisingly, a majority (71 percent) of the unbanked have household incomes of less than $30,000 per year.

There are many reasons people do not have bank accounts. Banks, because of the "know your customer" and other anti-money laundering regulations, make it difficult for nonestablished people, such as the young and transient, as well as legal and illegal immigrants, to open bank accounts.

Also, many of these same regulations are responsible for the rise in bank fees, which are a particular burden for low-income people. You can be sure that every time Congress passes some new law or the IRS implements some new regulation to "get tax cheats," much of the real burden of these compliance costs will fall on those least able to afford it, while those intent on finding their way around it will do so.

People also avoid having bank accounts because they are vulnerable to asset seizure, judgments, levies, etc. Increasingly, bankers and others who provide financial services are forced by governments to spy and snitch on their own customers, and this is a real turnoff for many people, which causes them to find other ways of maintaining financial privacy.

Many studies have shown that when people believe the taxes they are required to pay are reasonable and the political leaders tend to spend their tax dollars wisely, tax compliance rises, and vice versa. In the United States, there is increased evidence that many tax dollars are not being spent wisely and are often used to pay off political cronies.

Over the past year in particular, the public has become aware that many in Washington who advocate higher taxes and argue that everyone has a responsibility to pay taxes are themselves not complying with the tax laws and regulations.

When you have a secretary of the Treasury and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (the tax writing committee) accused of cheating on their taxes, it greatly undermines the moral authority of the tax collectors, making the common citizens feel like chumps and, hence, much more willing to try to legally avoid or illegally evade taxes themselves.

The evidence is unambiguous; governments cannot increase tax compliance and decrease the size of the underground economy by ever increasing and more onerous regulations.

It is no accident that those governments that allow their citizens a high degree of personal and financial liberty, including financial privacy, and spend taxpayer dollars wisely, honestly and competently, have much smaller underground sectors than corrupt and oppressive governments. Washington, take note.

Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.

[Demeter]

72. The Warning Must Watch - By Frontline - PBS

Brooksley Born documentary.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24794.htm

[Demeter]

74. Dropping Like Flies By Danny Schechter

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24805.htm

They seem to be dropping like flies, as the old saying goes. Now, New Jersey Senator Lautenberg has been diagnosed with Cancer. Earlier in the week, Senator Bayh said Sayonara to the Senate and, a week ago, Jack Murtha of Pennslvania died somewhat mysteriously on the operating table with the Navy now investigating.

In a sense, this growing body count is a metaphor for a larger die-off—a death of democracy itself with the Supreme Court giving corporations the status of persons while the political system has been paralyzed by self-serving partisanship in a poisonous cloud of ideological extremism calling itself conservatism (while conserving nothing!)

The follow–up to the sad spectacle of that wannabe software entrepreneur who flew a plane into an IRA office based on a legitimate grievance with a tax code provision inserted initially to benefit IBM and other big companies that was legitimate.

Sadder still was the disclosures that, despite attempts over decades to eliminate the rule by Presidents and members of both parties, nothing was done.

Nothing ever seems to get done.

So this angry Texan went beserk, borrowing a tactic from the al Qaeda playbook.

Perhaps that’s a symptom of why the public is so disgusted, regardless of party, Disillusion is turning into despair with a system that goes on almost robotically with increasingly no connection with the public. Happily, despite the breakdown of government, there is growing anger with a private sector which is, if anything, much worse, and less accountable to the extent that the legislative branch is accountable at all....MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

76. Only 21% Say U.S. Government Has Consent of the Governed By Rasmussen Reports

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24798.htm

The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% disagree and say the government does not have the necessary consent. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters are not sure.

However, 63% of the Political Class think the government has the consent of the governed, but only six percent (6%) of those with Mainstream views agree.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

That helps explain why 75% of voters are angry at the policies of the federal government, and 63% say it would be better for the country if most members of Congress are defeated this November. Just 27% believe their own representative in Congress is the best person for the job.,,,MORE AT LINK


NOW THAT LAST STATISTIC IS A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE!


HERE'S ANOTHER SINATRA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX4yWce47AY

[Demeter]

78. America: Land of Unlimited Anger By Christoph von Marschall

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24747.htm

[Demeter]

81. Wall Street’s War against Main Street America By Prof. Michael Hudson

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24743.htm

[Demeter]

82. Grounds for Hope and Despair By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24745.htm

[bread_and_roses]

98. Wow - that last stat IS a change - and one that ought to have

our congress-critters quaking in their boots. There is so much anger out here - and thanks to "the daily chaos" of news reporting (phrase as coined in one of the other links I read - can't remember which) - people are going to lash out at whomever they can - and the easiest target is the current office-holder.

[bread_and_roses]

96. "Nothing ever seems to get done."

Exactly. Even when we all work like demons to elect a candidate who presents as a transformational change-agent, and Congress-critters who know full well what must be done if we are to survive, nothing gets done.

Nor is it surprising that the law was enacted to benefit IBM and give it a tax break on its "overseas business." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19tax.html

Just as right now nothing is being done about IBM outsourcing on its gov't contracts or bringing in workers from other countries when unemployment here is in double-digits. Just like nothing is done about Blackwater, about corruption and waste in military contracts, about about about....

"They" - our elected so-called representatives - know what should be done. They don't do it because we are actually a Kleptocracy/Oligarchy.

[Demeter]

77. Social Security Will Fall To Obama Before The Taliban Do By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24793.htm

Hank Paulson, the Gold Sacks bankster/US Treasury Secretary who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new US debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives.

Wall Street’s approach to the poor has always been to drive them deeper into the ground.

As there is no money to be made from the poor, Wall Street fleeces them by yanking away their entitlements. It has always been thus. During the Reagan administration, Wall Street decided to boost the values of its bond and stock portfolios by using Social Security revenues to lower budget deficits. Wall Street figured that lower deficits would mean lower interest rates and higher bond and stock prices.

Two Wall Street henchmen, Alan Greenspan and David Stockman, set up the Social Security raid in this way: The Carter administration had put Social Security in the black for the foreseeable future by establishing a schedule for future Social Security payroll tax increases. Greenspan and Stockman conspired to phase in the payroll tax increases earlier than was needed in order to gain surplus Social Security revenues that could be used to finance other government spending, thus reducing the budget deficit. They sold it to President Reagan as “putting Social Security on a sound basis.”

Along the way Americans were told that the surplus revenues were going into a special Social Security trust fund at the U.S. Treasury. But what is in the fund is Treasury IOUs for the spent revenues. When the “trust funds” are needed to pay Social Security benefits, the Treasury will have to sell more debt in order to redeem the IOUs.

Social Security was mugged again during the Clinton administration when the Boskin Commission jimmied the Consumer Price Index in order to reduce the inflation adjustments that Social Security recipients receive, thus diverting money from Social Security retirees to other uses.

We constantly hear from Wall Street gangsters and from Republicans and an occasional Democrat that Social Security and Medicare are a form of welfare that we can’t afford, an “unfunded liability.” This is a lie. Social Security is funded with an earmarked tax. People pay for Social Security and Medicare all their working lives. It is a pay-as-you-go system in which the taxes paid by those working fund those who are retired.

Currently these systems are not in deficit. The problem is that government is using earmarked revenues for other purposes. Indeed, since the 1980s Social Security revenues have been used to fund general government. Today Social Security revenues are being used to fund trillion dollar bailouts for Wall Street and to fund the Bush/Obama wars of aggression against Muslims.

Having diverted Social Security revenues to war and Wall Street, Paulson says there is no alternative but to take the promised benefits away from those who have paid for them.

Republicans have extraordinary animosity toward the poor. In an effort to talk retirees out of their support systems, Republicans frequently describe Social Security as a Ponzi scheme and “unsustainable.” They ought to know. The phony trust fund, which they set up to hide the fact that Wall Street and the Pentagon are running off with Social Security revenues, is a Ponzi scheme. Social Security itself has been with us since the 1930s and has yet to wreck our lives and budget. But it only took Hank Paulson’s derivative Ponzi scheme and its bailout a few years to inflict irreparable damage on our lives and budget.

Years ago with stagflation defeated and a rising stock market, I favored privatizing Social Security as a way of creating a funded retirement system and producing greater savings and larger incomes for retirees. At that time Wall Street was interested, not for my reasons, but in order to collect the fees from managing the funds.

Had Social Security been privatized, I doubt that Wall Street would have been permitted to deregulate the financial system. Too much would have been at stake.

After the latest crisis brought on by Wall Street’s dishonesty and greed, trusting Wall Street to manage anyone’s old age pension requires a leap of faith that no intelligent person can make.

Wall Street has got away with its raid on the public treasury. Now, pockets full, it wants to pay for the heist by curtailing Social Security and Medicare. Having deprived the working population of homes, jobs, and health care, Wall Street is now after the elderly’s old age security.

Social Security, formerly an untouchable “third rail of politics,” is now “unsustainable,” while the real unsustainables--a pre-1929 unregulated financial system and open-ended multi-trillion dollar Global War Against Terror--are the new untouchables. This transformation signals the complete capture of American democracy by an oligarchy of special interests.

[Demeter]

79. The Richest 1% Have Captured America's Wealth What's It Going to Take to Get It Back?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24738.htm




PART ONE:The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup,
Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24692.htm

[Demeter]

80. Real, Uglier American Unemployment By Joel S. Hirschhorn

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24741.htm

[DemReadingDU]

88. Thanks for Part 2

[Demeter]

83. £45 shops ‘bribe’ for cervical cancer jab for teenage girls

Teenage girls are being rewarded with shopping vouchers for having the cervical cancer jab.

Girls aged 16 to 18 are being given £45 of vouchers if they complete an inoculation course against the HPV virus, the sexually transmitted infection that causes 70 per cent of cervical tumours.

A national campaign to vaccinate girls aged 12 to 18 has been criticised over fears it may encourage promiscuity and raise pregnancy rates, and uptake has been low among girls aged 16 to 18.

Now, the £22,500 pilot scheme gives young women Love2shop vouchers if they have three injections. No parental consent is needed.

Bosses at NHS Birmingham East and North, which is carrying out the pilot, said it has ‘real benefits for health’. The project could be rolled out across the country. But campaigners claim the scheme amounts to bribery.

Norman Wells, director of Family And Youth Concern, said the project was ‘a serious misuse of taxpayers’ money’.

One mother, who did not want to be named, said she was ‘appalled’ when her daughter, 17, was offered the ‘unethical’ vouchers.

IF IT'S SUCH A GREAT IDEA, WHY IS IT SO UNPOPULAR? MAYBE BECAUSE OF THE TOTAL LACK A CREDIBILITY IN MEDICINE AND GOVERNMENT?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250905/45-shops-bribe-cervical-cancer-jab.html#ixzz0g6IvSB7C

[Demeter]

84. Well, Time to Put My Rage Back in the Bottle

I'll be back in the morning. Talk amongst yourselves, and please find some more Diversions to liven up this Polemical Weekend.

[Demeter]

91. 1940–50: Sinatramania and decline of career

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra

In May 1941, Sinatra was at the top of the male singer polls in the Billboard and Downbeat magazines.

His appeal to bobby soxers, as teenage girls of that time were called, revealed a whole new audience for popular music, which had been recorded mainly for adults up to that time.

On December 31, 1942, Sinatra opened at the Paramount Theater in New York.
Sinatra being interviewed for American Forces Network during World War II.

During the musicians' strike of 1942–44, Columbia re-released Harry James and Sinatra's version of "All or Nothing at All" (music by Arthur Altman and lyrics by Jack Lawrence), recorded in August 1939 and released before Sinatra had made a name for himself. The original release didn’t even mention the vocalist’s name. When the recording was re–released in 1943 with Sinatra’s name prominently displayed, the record was on the best–selling list for 18 weeks and reached number 2 on June 2, 1943.

Sinatra signed with Columbia on June 1, 1943 as a solo artist, and he had initially great success, particularly during the 1942-43 musicians' strike. And while no new records had been issued during the strike, he had been performing on the radio (on Your Hit Parade), and on stage. Columbia wanted to get new recordings of their growing star as fast as possible, so Sinatra convinced them to hire Alec Wilder as arranger and conductor for several sessions with a vocal group called the Bobby Tucker Singers. These first sessions were on June 7, June 22, August 5, and November 10, 1943. Of the nine songs recorded during these sessions, seven charted on the best–selling list.

Sinatra did not serve in the military during World War II. On December 11, 1943, he was classified 4-F ("Registrant not acceptable for military service") for a perforated eardrum by his draft board. Additionally, an FBI report on Sinatra, released in 1998, showed that the doctors had also written that he was a "neurotic" and "not acceptable material from a psychiatric standpoint." This was omitted from his record to avoid "undue unpleasantness for both the selectee and the induction service." Active-duty servicemen, like William Manchester, said of Sinatra, "I think Frank Sinatra was the most hated man of World War II, much more than Hitler," because Sinatra was back home making all of that money and being shown in photographs surrounded by beautiful women. His deferment would resurface throughout his life and cause him grief when he had to defend himself. There were accusations, including some from noted columnist Walter Winchell, that Sinatra paid $40,000 to avoid the service — but the FBI could find no evidence of this.

When Sinatra returned to the Paramount Theater in October 1944, 35,000 fans caused a near riot outside the venue because they were not allowed in.

In 1945, Sinatra co-starred with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh. That same year, he was loaned out to RKO to star in a short film titled The House I Live In. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, this film on tolerance and racial equality earned a special Academy Award shared among Sinatra and those who brought the film to the screen, along with a special Golden Globe for "Promoting Good Will." 1946 saw the release of his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, and the debut of his own weekly radio show.

By the end of 1948, Sinatra felt that his career was stalling, something that was confirmed when he slipped to No. 4 on Down Beat's annual poll of most popular singers (following Billy Eckstine, Frankie Laine, and Bing Crosby).

The year 1949 saw an upswing, as Frank co-starred with Gene Kelly in Take Me Out to the Ball Game. It was well received critically and became a major commercial success. That same year, Sinatra teamed up with Kelly for a third time in On the Town.

[Demeter]

92. US banks facing $1.4tn crisis over commercial property loans

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/11/banks-crisis-commercial-property-loans



• Commercial property set to lose $300bn on $1.4bn of loans
• Nearly 3,000 banks face dangerous exposure as loans mature

America's fragile high street banks are bracing themselves for a fresh financial crunch as a wave of commercial property mortgages go sour on offices, shops and factories, causing losses of up to $300bn (£192bn) hitting nearly 3,000 small- and medium-sized financial institutions.

A congressional oversight panel charged with scrutinising the Obama administration's bailout efforts has warned that $1.4tn of loans covering commercial premises will reach maturity between 2011 and 2014. After a plunge in property prices, nearly half of these loans are underwater, with borrowers owing more than their underlying property is worth.

An analysis by the panel found that 2,988 of America's 8,100 banks have potentially dangerous exposure to commercial property loans. The impact could damage hopes of a US economic recovery and could cause a further squeeze in the availability of credit to consumers and businesses.

"Are we arguing that this is a serious problem that we need to get in front of? The answer is yes," said Elizabeth Warren, chairman of the oversight panel. "It's like throwing a handful of sand into the economic recovery."

She said that if banks see that their commercial property liabilities are mounting, they will hold back on lending elsewhere: "They'll tend to husband their money so that it's not available for small business loans."
.........

Many of the problematic commercial mortgages were written at the peak of the property boom. Since then, the economic downturn has caused small businesses to fail, with shops and offices falling vacant. A rising unemployment rate reflects less need for space by companies.

"You have declining values, rising vacancy rates and a decline in renewals on leases," said Bert Ely, an independent US banking analyst. "In some markets, new commercial real estate is still coming on line as construction projects finish up."

He said the issue was particularly acute for regional banks that specialise in lending to local businesses: "Relatively speaking, it's a bigger problem for smaller banks than larger ones. The larger banks tend to be a little bit more diversified in their loans."

Aware of the problems facing smaller financial institutions, President Barack Obama last week announced a plan to use $30bn of the remaining funds in the Treasury's $700bn-bailout fund to provide cheap credit for banks funding small businesses. The money would be available to banks with assets of up to $10bn.

Critics have expressed concern about the principle behind using government funds to prop up weak banks. But the former treasury secretary Henry Paulson, who was the architect of the Treasury's bailout programme in 2008, insisted this week that the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program would eventually turn an overall profit for US taxpayers: "We will get every penny we put into the banks back."

[Demeter]

93. Commercial Real Estate Losses Could Hit $300 Billion: TARP Panel

http://www.dsnews.com/articles/tarp-watchdog-says-small-banks-cre-losses-could-hit-300-billion-2010-02-12

Losses from defaults on commercial real estate loans maturing in the next few years could go as high as $300 billion, threatening to topple nearly 3,000 community banks nationwide, a federal watchdog group has concluded.

Market analysis by the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), charged with keeping tabs on the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), shows that $1.4 trillion in loans made over the last decade for retail properties, office space, industrial facilities, hotels, and apartments will reach the end of their terms and require refinancing between 2011 and 2014....

As the panel notes, “Even borrowers who own profitable properties may be unable to refinance their loans as they face tightened underwriting standards, increased demands for additional investment by borrowers, and restricted credit.”

The COP says community banks, rather than large Wall Street institutions, face the greatest risk of insolvency due to mounting commercial real estate (CRE) loan losses. According to federal guidelines, 2,988 banks nationwide are classified as having a “CRE Concentration.”

None of these banks are among the 19 largest bank holding companies, but are rather the smaller regional lenders who stepped up to extend credit within their local neighborhoods. Forecasts project that banks will suffer their worst losses well after 2010, and well after Treasury’s bailout authority expires under TARP, the panel said....

The COP’s findings come on the heels of a field hearing the committee held last month in Georgia. Deterioration of the commercial real estate market there has contributed to the failures of 30 Georgia banks since August of 2008 – more than in any other state in the nation.

[Demeter]

94. Goldman Sachs: the Greek connection

http://www.independent.ie/business/european/goldman-sachs-the-greek-connection-2064092.html

...Goldman Sachs has been the most important of more than a dozen banks used by the Greek government to manage its national debt using derivatives.

The bank's traders created a number of financial deals that allowed the country to raise money to cut its budget deficit now, in return for repayments over time or at a later date.

In one deal, Goldman channelled $1bn of funding to the government in 2002, in a transaction called a cross-currency swap.

There is no suggestion of any wrong-doing by Goldman Sachs. Such deals are an expensive way of raising money, but they have the advantage of not having to be accounted for as debt.

The eurozone rules dictate that governments must keep a country's deficit below 3pc of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and must take on total debt of no more than 60pc of GDP – rules that Greece did not keep to, even during the economic boom.

Goldman Sachs, the world's most powerful investment bank, is already under intense scrutiny in the ongoing controversy over banking practices, pay and profits.

President Barack Obama last month launched an assault on Wall Street, proposing to cap the size of the biggest US banks and clamp down on their trading activities.

On the same day, Goldman began distributing nearly €11.5bn in pay and bonuses to its staff for their 2009 performance, just a year after the financial system was bailed out by governments.

Reflecting the importance of the Greek government as a client, and the scale of the fees to be generated from derivatives deals, Goldman sent Gary Cohn, who as chief operating officer is second-in-command of the global group, to Athens last November to pitch for new business with the debt management office.

According to a report yesterday, Goldman suggested a way that Greece could push healthcare liabilities further out into the future.

The bank has refused to comment. Other eurozone countries have been discovered using cross-currency swaps similar to one causing concern in Greece, including Italy, which did a controversial transaction with JP Morgan before it joined the euro.

The size and scale of the use of derivatives is not fully understood, even by Eurostat, the European Union's official statistics body, which has complained that member nations' finances are opaque and that the information it is given about derivatives deals is incomplete.

Gustavo Piga, an economics professor at the University of Rome, whose 2001 paper on the topic sparked furious debate within the EU, questioned the wisdom of using Wall Street banks to invent ways to skirt debt rules.

"What kind of relationships start to arise between these governments and these banks once they are in this mortal embrace of reciprocal blackmail potential? How does this change the dynamics on other issues, such as the regulation of banks?

"We have no idea – maybe nothing, but certainly there is a conflict of interest here," he told Risk magazine this week.

EU leaders promised last Thursday to make sure that Greece could meet its debt repayments, but sketched no mechanism for doing so, and pledged no specific sums of money. They reiterated their demands for Greece to redouble efforts to impose the swingeing public spending cuts that have prompted widespread labour unrest.

Finance ministers are continuing to work on contingency plans for a bailout this week, amid signs of disagreement over the scale of austerity measures to be demanded of Greece.

The European Central Bank is seeking tougher measures than the politicians are willing to demand.

[Demeter]

95. Republicans at Highest Levels Really Want to Do Away with Democracy for All

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24690.htm

One reason you don't hear much about this is because most of them zipped up their mouths by the middle of 2008, when there was a real fear of a populist uprising and a new New Deal. But the Republican right-wing elite wasn't always so shy; right up through the financial collapse, many boasted as publicly as possible about their dream of overthrowing the democracy and replacing it with a free-market dictatorship.

Take one recent example: Republican ideologue Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to Bush and McCain and who heads the right-wing American Enterprise Institute's economic policy department where so many brilliant free-market ideas are incubated. In 2007, Hassett boldly questioned whether democracy is really the best way to preserve America's free-market preeminence, in a Bloomberg column headlined, "Does Economic Success Require Democracy?":

"Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state. ...The unfree nations will grow so quickly that they will overwhelm free nations with their economic might. ... Meanwhile, democracies may copy many of the market-friendly policies of the dictatorships, but it seems unlikely that free citizens will choose to reduce their own political freedoms."

This is a constant meme among libertarian free-market ideologues: Americans have too much freedom to decide their own freedom. Hassett worries that time is running out for the Republican free-market elites, who are locked in a suicide pact with the boneheaded majority of American voters, a mass of idiots too short-sighted to grasp how unregulated capitalism is the best thing for them. Instead of acting in their own interests and voluntarily voting to hand power over to a Chinese-style Politburo, we idiots keep on grunting for socialist policies like Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment insurance when we're too weak to face unemployment on our own.

You'd think Hassett would have been driven into a cave after that column, but then again, this is the same guy who co-wrote one of the biggest embarrassments in finance literature: Dow 36,000, a book released 10 years ago predicting the Dow would soar to 36,000 in no time. We're dealing with a professional huckster here, but that's sort of the point--selling the gullible fools one kind of snake oil in 2000, pitching them another kind of libertarian snake oil today.

From the Republican elite's perspective, abolishing democracy is a matter of self-defense for the rightwing billionaire class, which they expect everyone to sacrifice their lives for.

Bill Archer, an old free-market colleague of Tancredo's, let loose the Republican elite's loathing for democracy in a Wall Street Journal article back in 2001, bleating over the fate of his billionaire sponsors: "Politicians may find it easier and easier to raise tax rates that apply only to a minority of middle- and upper-income earners in order to finance new government spending primarily benefiting lower-income individuals. The result will be class warfare at its worst and a sort of tyranny of the majority."

You got that? Freedom is when an elite minority pushes the tax burden down the class ladder; tyranny is when the struggling majority votes to put a cramp in the super-rich's Marie Antoinette lifestyle. Which is pretty much what another major inspiration in the Tea Party movement, Grover Norquist, once said. A few years ago, the notorious tax-slashing Republican lobbyist who heads Americans For Tax Reform told a Republican Log Cabin conference:

"Democracies are dangerous. Look what happens in California where they pick on the richest ten percent." Yup, that's dangerous all right. Norquist, who helped shape Gingrich's 1994 Republican Revolution and who practically owned Washington during Bush's first term, has always pitched himself as a radical libertarian whose goal is to "shrink the government until it's small enough to drown in a bathtub." Why does he want to shrink and murder government? Because government technically can be used by us -- the majority -- to one day threaten Grover's rightwing billionaire circle's monopoly on power and wealth. Kill off the American government, and the American people are left naked and powerless against the super-rich elites.

Bryan Caplan, a George Mason professor, and one of the last up-and-coming libertarian ideologues before the 2008 crash, is one of the newest and most degenerate models in the libertarian cadet system. A graduate of the familiar Milton Friedman School of Hucksternomics, Caplan laid out this increasingly shrill hatred of American democracy back in 2007 in a book titled The Myth of the Rational Voter. Here's how Caplan described his book:


The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational -- and they vote accordingly. Despite their lack of knowledge, voters are not humble agnostics; instead, they confidently embrace a long list of misconceptions. Economic policy is the primary activity of the modern state. And if there is one thing that the public deeply misunderstands, it is economics. ... So what remedies for voter irrationality would I propose? Above all, relying less on democracy and more on private choice and free markets... Another way to deal with voter irrationality is institutional reform. Imagine, for example, if the Council of Economic Advisers, in the spirit of the Supreme Court, had the power to invalidate legislation as "uneconomical." Similarly, since the data show that well-educated voters hold more sensible policy views, we could emulate pre-1949 Great Britain by giving college graduates an extra vote.

But Professor Caplan also tsk-tsks his billionaire sponsors for their misguided soft-heartedness in their dealings with the rest of us: "As long as elites persist in unmerited deference to and flattery of the majority, containing the dangers of voter irrationality will be very hard. Someone has to tell the emperor when he is naked. He may not listen, but if no one speaks up, he will almost surely continue embarrassing himself and traumatizing spectators." And just in case you're wondering if there's some nuance you've missed, Caplan drops the high theoretical mumbo-jumbo and lays it in terms any lughead could understand, during a Q&A at the Cato Institute:

Turning to Caplan, asked, "Bryan, is low turnout even a bad thing?" "No," he replied to some laughter. "Low voter turnout is actually a blessing in disguise. One of the two key things that predicts turnout is actually higher education, and more educated people generally have more sensible views about policy."

As to whether people should perhaps just be more properly informed, Caplan said, "If you can either encourage people who don't know what they're doing to not vote or at least not encourage them to vote, or you could have massive public education to raise the level of awareness in everyone up to the level of a Ph.D. -- if there are even such resources in the universe -- I think it's better to just encourage people to be lazy. Say, 'You know, if you don't really know what's going on, it would actually be the more responsible thing not to participate.'" That latter option, he said, is "much cheaper."

And here's what's frightening: His ideas are celebrated as sheer genius by establishment outlets.Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times praised Caplan's book in 2007, calling his blueprint for a Pinochet-like dictatorship, "the best political book of the year"; while the Harvard Political Review wrote, "While one may quibble with his specifics, the overall argument is convincing and applicable across a variety of fields ... Forces the reader to take a second look at our nation's unshakable faith in the wisdom of the electorate."

Caplan is the one whom I quoted at the beginning of the article, sneering at the 300 million Americans whom he'd like to disenfranchise and would if his Republican billionaire sponsors decided to pull the trigger.....

What about the $23 trillion Republican bailouts? Well, again, we're too stupid to understand. The thing is, those bailouts had to be done their way in order to save us from the Road to Serfdom. It's hard to explain, but basically, the anti-government conservatives in the Bush Machine saved us from that Road to Serfdom by turning us into serfs. You see, all along it was the Road that they warned us about, not serfdom -- that road is really treacherous, and government funded, and just a bad place to be. We weren't rational or strong enough to wean ourselves off of big government. So they saved us with their tough love, and stole the $23 trillion bailout for themselves before we could get our hands on it -- which no doubt we would have done. In their hands, that $23 trillion debt makes us serfs, which is not as bad as the other alternative: we take the $23 trillion ourselves, leading us down the road to serfdom. Confused? If we were capable of studying economics, we'd understand the scientific logic of this reasoning.

Just as it took years for Milton Friedman's ideas to go from the circus freakshow to respected state religion, so this budding libertarian idea of abolishing democracy to save America, given the stakes and the forces behind it, shouldn't be dismissed. They're thinking about it. So should the rest of us.

[Demeter]

97. Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24692.htm

...t has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99 percent of the U.S. population no longer has political representation. The U.S. economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us.

Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for 99 percent of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep...and make no mistake, they have launched a war to eliminate the U.S. middle class....

America is the richest nation in history, yet we now have the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world with an unprecedented amount of Americans living in dire straights and over 50 million citizens already living in poverty.

The government has come up with clever ways to downplay all of these numbers, but we have over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50 percent of U.S. children will use food stamps to eat at some point in their childhoods. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every day. In 2009, one out of five U.S. households didn't have enough money to buy food. In households with children, this number rose to 24 percent, as the hunger rate among U.S. citizens has now reached an all-time high.

We also currently have over 50 million U.S. citizens without health care. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60 percent of them, and over 75 percent of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health care insurance. We have the most expensive health care system in the world, we are forced to pay twice as much as other countries and the overall care we get in return ranks 37th in the world.

In total, Americans have lost $5 trillion from their pensions and savings since the economic crisis began and $13 trillion in the value of their homes. During the first full year of the crisis, workers between the age of 55 - 60, who have worked for 20 - 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. "Personal debt has risen from 65 percent of income in 1980 to 125 percent today." Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S. families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25 percent of current mortgages underwater. Deutsche Bank has an even grimmer prediction: "The percentage of 'underwater' loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes." Every day 10,000 U.S. homes enter foreclosure. Statistics show that an increasing number of these people are not finding shelter elsewhere, there are now over 3 million homeless Americans, the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is single parents with children.

One place more and more Americans are finding a home is in prison. With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world -- the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled "Incarceration Nation" revealed that "a new prison opens every week somewhere in America.".....

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

99. You Think Greece Has Problems? Latvia's Road to Serfdom

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24688.htm

By MICHAEL HUDSON and JEFF SOMMERS

February 15, 2010 "Counterpunch" -- While most of the world’s press focuses on Greece (and also Spain, Ireland and Portugal) as the most troubled euro-areas, the much more severe, more devastating and downright deadly crisis in the post-Soviet economies scheduled to join the Eurozone somehow has escaped widespread notice.

No doubt that is because their experience is an indictment of the destructive horror of neoliberalism – and of Europe’s policy of treating these countries not as promised, not as helping them develop along Western European lines, but as areas to be colonized as export markets and bank markets, stripped of their economic surpluses, their skilled labor and indeed, working-age labor generally, their real estate and buildings, and whatever was inherited from the Soviet era.

Latvia has experienced one of the world’s worst economic crises. It is not only economic, but demographic. Its 25.5 per cent plunge in GDP over just the past two years (almost 20 per cent in this past year alone) is already the worst two-year drop on record. The IMF’s own rosy forecasts anticipate a further drop of 4 per cent, which would place the Latvian economic collapse ahead of the United States’ Great Depression The bad news does not end there, however. The IMF projects that 2009 will see a total capital and financial account deficit of 4.2 billion euros, with an additional 1.5 billion euros, or 9 per cent of GDP, leaving the country in 2010.

Moreover, the Latvian government is rapidly accumulating debt. From just 7.9 per cent of GDP in 2007, Latvia’s debt is projected to be 74 per cent of GDP for this year, supposedly stabilizing at 89 per cent in 2014 in the best-case IMF scenario. This would place it far outside the debt Maastricht debt limits for adopting the euro. Yet achieving entry into the eurozone has been the chief pretext of the Latvia’s Central Bank for the painful austerity measures necessary to keep its currency peg. Maintaining that peg has burned through mountains of currency reserves that otherwise could have been invested in its domestic economy.

Yet nobody in the West is asking why Latvia has suffered this fate, so typical of the Baltics and other post-Soviet economies but only slightly more extreme. Nearly twenty years since these countries achieved freedom from the old USSR in 1991, the Soviet system hardly can be blamed as the sole cause of their problems. Not even corruption alone can be blamed – a legacy of the late Soviet period’s dissolution, to be sure, but magnified, intensified and even encouraged in the kleptocratic form that has provided such rich pickings for Western bankers and investors. It was Western neoliberals who financialized these economies with the “business friendly reforms” so loudly applauded by the World Bank, Washington and Brussels.

Far lower levels of corruption obviously are to be desired (but whom else would the West trust?), but dramatically reducing it would perhaps only improve matters up to the level of Estonia’s road into euro-debt peonage. These neighboring Baltic counties likewise have suffered dramatic unemployment, reduced growth, declining health standards and emigration, in sharp contrast to Scandinavia and Finland.

Joseph Stiglitz, James Tobin and other economists in the West’s public eye have begun to explain that there is something radically wrong with the financialized order imported by Western ideological salesmen in the wake of the Soviet collapse. Neoliberal economics certainly was not the road that Western Europe took after World War II. It was a new experiment, whose dress rehearsal was imposed initially at gunpoint by the Chicago Boys in Chile. In Latvia, the advisors were from Georgetown, but the ideology was the same: dismantle the government and turn it over to political insiders.
For the post-Soviet application of this cruel experiment, the idea was to give Western banks, financial investors, and ostensibly “free market” economists (so-called because they gave away public property freely, untaxed it, and gave new meaning to the term “free lunch”) a free hand in much of the Soviet bloc to design entire economies. And as matters turned out, every design was the same. The names of individuals were different, but most were linked to and financed by Washington, the World Bank and European Union. And since the West’s financial institutions were the sponsors, one hardly should be surprised that they came up with a design in their own financial interest.

It was a plan that no democratic government in the West could have passed. Public enterprises were doled out to individuals trusted to sell out quickly to Western investors and local oligarchs who would move their money safely offshore into Western havens. To cap matters, local tax systems were created that left the traditional two major Western bank customers – real estate and natural infrastructure monopolies – nearly tax free. This left their rents and monopoly pricing “free” to be paid to Western banks as interest rather than used as the domestic tax base to help reconstruct these economies.

There were almost no commercial banks in the Soviet Union. Rather than helping these countries create banks of their own, Western Europe encouraged its own banks to create credit and load down these economies with interest charges – in euros and other hard currencies for the banks’ protection. This violated a prime axiom of finance: never denominate your debts in hard currency when your revenue is denominated in a softer one.

But as in the case of Iceland, Europe promised to help these countries join the Euro by suitably helpful policies. The “reforms” consisted in showing them how to shift taxes off business and real estate (the prime bank customers) onto labor, not only as a flat income tax but a flat “social service” tax, so as to pay Social Security and health care as a user fee by labor rather than funded out of the general budget largely by the higher tax brackets.

Unlike the West, there was no significant property tax. This obliged governments to tax labor and industry. But unlike the West, there was no progressive income or wealth tax. Latvia had the equivalent of a 59 per cent flat tax on labor in many cases. (American Congressional committee heads and their lobbyists can only dream of so punitive a tax on labor, so free a lunch for their main campaign contributors!) With a tax like this, European countries had nothing to fear from economies that emerged tax free with no property charges to burden their labor with taxes, low housing costs, low debt costs. These economies were poisoned from the outset. That is what made them so “free market” and “business friendly” from the vantage point of today’s Western economic orthodoxy.

Lacking the power to tax real estate and other property – or even to impose progressive taxation on the higher income brackets, governments were obliged to tax labor and industry. This trickle-down fiscal philosophy sharply increased the price of labor and capital, making industry and agriculture in neoliberalized economies so high-cost as to be uncompetitive with “Old Europe.” In effect the post-Soviet economies were turned into export zones for Old Europe’s industry and banking services.

Western Europe had developed by protecting its industry and labor, and taxing away the land rent and other revenue that had no counterpart in a necessary cost of production. The post-Soviet economies “freed” this revenue to be paid to Western European banks. These economies – debt-free in 1991 – were loaded down with debt, denominated in hard currencies, not their own. Western bank loans were not used to upgrade their capital investment, public investment and living standards. The great bulk of these loans were extended mainly against assets already in place, inherited from the Soviet period. New real estate construction did indeed take off, but the great bulk of it has now sunk into negative equity. And the Western banks are demanding that Latvia and the Baltics pay by squeezing out even more of an economic surplus with even more neoliberal “reforms” that threaten to drive even more of their labor abroad as their economies shrink and poverty spreads.

The pattern of a ruling kleptocracy at the top and an indebted work force – non- or weakly unionized, with few workplace protections – was applauded as a business-friendly model for the rest of the world to emulate. The post-Soviet economies were thoroughly “underdeveloped,” rendered hopelessly high-cost and generally unable to compete on anywhere near equal terms with their Western neighbors.

The result has been an economic experiment seemingly gone mad, a dystopia whose victims are now being blamed. Neoliberal trickle-down ideology – apparently being prepared for application to Europe and North America with an equally optimistic rhetoric – was so economically destructive that it is almost as if these nations were invaded militarily. So it is indeed time to start worrying about whether the Baltics may be a dress rehearsal for what we are about to see in the United States.

The word “reform” is now taking on a negative connotation in the Baltics, as it has in Russia. It has come to signify retrogression back to feudal dependency. But whereas feudal lords from Sweden and Germany ruled their Latvian manors by the power of landownership, they now control the Baltics by their foreign-currency mortgage loans against the region’s real estate.

Debt peonage has replaced outright serfdom. Mortgages far in excess of actual market values, which have plunged by 50-70 per cent in the past year (depending on housing type), also are far in excess of the ability of Latvian homeowners to pay. The volume of foreign-currency debt is far beyond what these countries can earn by exporting the products of their labor, industry and agriculture to Europe (which hardly wants any imports) or other regions of the world in which democratic governments are pledged to protect their labor force, not sell it out and subject it to unprecedented austerity programs – all in the name of “free markets.”

Two decades have passed since the neoliberal order was introduced, and the results are disastrous, if not almost a crime against humanity. Economic growth has not occurred. Soviet-era assets have simply been loaded down with debt. This is not how Western Europe developed after World War II, or earlier for the matter – or China most recently. These countries pursued the classical path of protection of domestic industry, public infrastructure spending, progressive taxation, legal prohibitions against insider dealing and looting – all anathema to neoliberal free-market ideology.

What is starkly at issue are the underlying assumptions of the world’s economic order. At the core of today’s crisis of economic theory and policy are the all but forgotten premises and guiding concepts of classical political economy. George Soros, Stiglitz and others describe a global casino economy (which Soros certainly enriched himself by playing) in which finance has become detached from the process of wealth creation. The financial sector makes increasingly steep, even unpayably high claims on the real economy of goods and services.

This was the concern of the classical economists when they focused on the problem of rentiers, owners of property and special privilege whose revenues (with no counterpart in any necessary cost of production) led to a de facto tax on the economy – in this case, by imposing debt on it. Classical economists recognized the need to subordinate finance to the needs of the real economy. This was the philosophy that guided U.S. banking regulation in the 1930’s, and which West Europe and Japan followed from the 1950s through the 1970s to promote investment in manufacturing. Instead of checking the financial sector’s ability to engage in speculative excess, the United States overturned these regulations in the 1980s. From a bit below 5 per cent of total U.S. profits in 1982, the financial sector’s after-tax profits rose to an unprecedented 41 per cent in 2007. In effect this zero-sum activity was an overhead “tax” on the economy.

Along with financial restructuring, the main item in the classical tool-kit was tax policy. The aim was to reward work and wealth creation, and to collect the “free lunch” resulting from “external” social economies as the natural tax base. This tax policy had the virtue of reducing the burden on earned income (wages and profits). Land was seen as supplied by nature without a labor-cost of production (and hence without cost value). But instead of making it the natural tax base, governments have permitted banks to load it down with debt, turning the rise in land’s rental value into interest charges. The result, in classical terminology, is a financial tax on society – revenue that society was supposed to collect as the tax base to invest in economic and social infrastructure to make society richer. The alternative has been to tax land and industrial capital. And what tax collectors have relinquished, banks now collect in the form of a rising price for land sites – a price for which buyers pay mortgage interest.

Classical economics could have predicted Latvia’s problems. With no curbs on finance or regulation of monopoly pricing, no industrial protection, privatization of the public domain to create “tollbooth economies,” and a tax policy that impoverishes labor and even industrial capital while rewarding speculators, Latvia’s economy has seen little economic development. What it has achieved – and what has won it such loud applause from the West – has been its willingness to rack up huge debts to subsidize its economic disaster. Latvia has too little industry, too little agricultural modernization, but over 9 billion lati in private debt – now at risk of being shifted onto the government’s balance sheet, just as has occurred with the U.S. bank bailouts.

If this credit had been extended productively to build Latvia’s economy, it would have been acceptable. But it was mostly unproductive, extended to fuel land-price inflation and luxury consumption, reducing Latvia to a state of near debt serfdom. In what Sarah Palin would call a “hopey-change thing,” the Bank of Latvia suggests that the bottom of the crisis has been reached. Exports finally have begun to pick up, but the economy is still in desperate straits. If current trends continue there will be no more Latvians left to inherit any economic revival. Unemployment still stands at more than 22 per cent. Tens of thousands have left the country, and tens of thousands more have decided not to have children. This is a natural response to saddling the country with billions of lati in public and private debt. Latvia is not on a trajectory toward Western levels of affluence, and there is no way out of its current regressive tax policy and anti-labor, anti-industry and anti-agriculture neoliberalism being imposed so coercively by Brussels as a condition for bailing Latvia’s central bank out so that it can pay Swedish banks that have made such unproductive and parasitic loans.

Albert Einstein stated that “insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Latvia has employed the same self-destructive anti-government, anti-labor, anti-industrial, anti-agricultural “pro-Western” Washington Consensus for almost 20 years, and the results have become worse and worse. The task at hand now is to liberate the economy Latvia from its neoliberal road to neo-serfdom. One would think that the path selected would be the one charted by the classical 19th-century economists that guided the prosperity we see in the West and now also in East Asia. But this will require a change of economic philosophy – and that will require a change of government.

The question is, how will Europe and the West respond. Will it admit its error? Or will it brazen it out? Signs today are not promising. The West says that labor has not been impoverished enough, industry has not been starved enough, and economic the patient has not been bled enough.

If this is what Washington and Brussels are saying to the Baltics, imagine what they are about to do to their own domestic populations!

Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist and now a Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), and president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET). He is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) and Trade, Development and Foreign Debt: A History of Theories of Polarization v. Convergence in the World Economy. He can be reached via his website, [e-mail]

Jeffrey Sommers is co-director of the Baltic Research Group at ISLET, and visiting faculty at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. He can be reached at [e-mail]

TWO SETS OF RULES--AND THE OLD GUARD THRIVED UNDER THE OLD RULES, WHILE THE NEW RULES PROMISE TO KILL US ALL.

[Demeter]

100. 1950–60: Rebirth of career, Capitol concept albums

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra

After two years' absence, Sinatra returned to the concert stage on January 12, 1950, in Hartford, Connecticut. Sinatra's voice suffered and he experienced hemorrhaging of his vocal cords on stage at the Copacabana on April 26, 1950.<11> Sinatra's career and appeal to new teen audiences declined as he moved into his mid-30s.

In September 1951, Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut at the Desert Inn. A month later, a second series of the Frank Sinatra Show aired on CBS.

Columbia and MCA dropped Sinatra in 1952.

The rebirth of Sinatra's career began with the eve-of-Pearl Harbor drama From Here to Eternity (1953), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This role and performance marked a turnaround in Sinatra's career: after a critical and commercial decline for several years, he became an Oscar-winning actor and, once again, one of the top recording artists in the world.

Also in 1953, Sinatra starred in the NBC radio program Rocky Fortune. His character, Rocko Fortunato (aka Rocky Fortune) was a private eye who was placed in a variety of odd jobs by the Gridley Employment Agency to solve crimes. The series aired on NBC radio Tuesday nights from October 1953 to March 1954. During the final months of the show, just before the 1954 Oscars, it became a running gag that Sinatra would manage to work the phrase "from here to eternity" into each episode, a reference to his Oscar-nominated performance.

In 1953, Sinatra signed with Capitol Records, where he worked with many of the finest musical arrangers of the era, most notably Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, and Billy May. Sinatra reinvented himself with a series of albums featuring darker emotional material, including In the Wee Small Hours (1955) -- Sinatra's first 12" LP and his second collaboration with Nelson Riddle -- Where Are You? (1957) and Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely (1958). He also incorporated a hipper, "swinging" persona, as heard on Swing Easy! (1954), Songs For Swingin' Lovers (1956), and Come Fly With Me (1957).

By the end of the year, Billboard named "Young at Heart" Song of the Year, Swing Easy! with Nelson Riddle at the helm, (his second album for Capitol) was named Album of the Year and Sinatra was named "Top Male Vocalist" by Billboard, Down Beat and Metronome.

Frank Sinatra starred in the movie adaptation of Frank Loesser's stage musical "Guys and Dolls" in 1955.

A third collaboration with Nelson Riddle, Songs For Swingin' Lovers, was a success, featuring a recording of "I've Got You Under My Skin".

Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, a stark collection of introspective saloon songs and blues-tinged ballads, was a mammoth commercial success, peaking at #1 on Billboard's album chart during a 120-week stay. Cuts from this LP, such as "Angel Eyes" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)," would remain staples of Sinatra's concerts throughout his life.

Through the late fifties, Sinatra frequently criticized rock music, much of it being his reaction to rhythms and attitudes he found alien. In 1958 he lambasted it as "sung, played, and written for the most part by cretinous goons. It manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptm_ZtGPOxo&feature=related

[Demeter]

101. Banks Sitting on Bad Mortgages, And They Aren’t Getting Any Better

ANOTHER GOLDEN OLDIE FROM AUGUST--BETCHA NO ONE EVEN JOKES ABOUT MORTGAGES GETTING "CURED" ANYMORE!

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/08/banks-sitting-on-bad-mortgages-and-they.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29


Fitch released an analysis that shows that mortgage cure rates, meaning the proportion of borrowers who manage to get current once they fall behind, have tanked. From the Wall Street Journal:

The report from Fitch Ratings Ltd., a credit-rating firm, focuses on a plunge in the “cure rate” for mortgages that were packaged into securities. The study excludes loans guaranteed by government-backed agencies as well as those that weren’t bundled into securities. The cure rate is the portion of delinquent loans that return to current payment status each month.

Fitch found that the cure rate for prime loans dropped to 6.6% as of July from an average of 45% for the years 2000 through 2006. For so-called Alt-A loans — a category between prime and subprime that typically involves borrowers who don’t fully document their income or assets — the cure rate has fallen to 4.3% from 30.2%. In the subprime category, the rate has declined to 5.3% from 19.4%.

“The cure rates have really collapsed,” said Roelof Slump, a managing director at Fitch.

Because borrowers are less willing or able to catch up on payments, foreclosures are likely to remain a big problem. Barclays Capital projects the number of foreclosed homes for sale will peak at 1.15 million in mid-2010, up from an estimated 688,000 as of July 1.

Ouch.

On top of that, Greg Weston looked at the underlying New York Fed data for Fitch’s comment, and found another sobering factiod, namely that banks are not foreclosing. The reason most often given is that the bank doesn’t want to write the mortgage down even further (we’ve heard it bandied about for loss severities is 60% and Weston had a chart that shows it is worse for subprime, at 70% with Alt-As not as bad at 50%), so 60% is a representative level) but another reason is that if the bank does not take possession, the taxes are still the owner’s responsibility.

From Weston: I RECOMMEND GOING TO READ THE WHOLE THING--IT'S SCARY AND INFORMATIVE
http://gweston.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/proof-banks-are-sitting-on-bad-loans/

You’d expect, with this trend, for banks to then be more aggressive about foreclosing on seriously delinquent mortgagers. Yet we see the opposite: The next set shows what banks do for loans than are 90+ days delinquent.





So banks have gone from foreclosing on about 45% of their severely delinquent Alt-A loans each month to 20%.

So if you own a house that’s underwater, in practice you can probably keep living there (or collecting rent payments) for a year or so without making payments to the bank. You have 3 months before the loan is bad enough for the bank to foreclose, around 3 more months before the bank starts the foreclosure process and who knows how much longer before the bank actually moves to take possession of your home.

[Demeter]

102. A Depression Era Ballad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rectLMhmkz8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

[Demeter]

103. Volcker Wants to Regulate Money Market Funds Like Banks

ANOTHER AUGUST CLIPPING--NOW THAT VOLCKER'S ECLIPSE IS OVER, IT MAY BECOME A REAL POSSIBILITY

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/08/volcker-wants-to-regulate-money-market.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29


Paul Volcker clearly wasn’t kidding when he said the most important banking innovation in the last 30 years was the ATM. Although money market funds go back further than that, to the early 1970s, Tall Paul is not so keen about them either. This isn’t the first time he had gone after money funds, and he is not dropping the topic. But it does not appear that Team Obama is backing this idea.

I wonder if his antipathy goes back to his days as Fed chair. Volcker used money supply targets to rein in inflation, but found in 1982 that they were becoming unreliable due to….money market funds.

The logic behind going after money market funds is the blow up of Reserve Fund as a result of the Lehman failure. But of all the areas of finance, money market funds have not exactly been high on the list of problems. Not that my opinion counts for much, but money market funds does not make my top ten list of banking reform areas. By contrast, CDOs blew up in the 1990s and then made an even more impressive reprise this century. Because they have extraordinary leverage, the damage they do is well out of proportion to the size of the market. . Repos are a form of banking, played a big role in cross market transmission during the crisis (haircuts rose sharply) and is much bigger in aggregate than money market funds ($10 trillionish). From Bloomberg:

Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who is an adviser to President Barack Obama, said money-market mutual funds undermine the strength of the U.S. financial system and should be regulated more like banks.

“Banks remain the functioning heart of the financial system, and they are protected and regulated,” Volcker said in a telephone interview last week from his New York office. “To the extent they have competitors that have different ground rules, kind of free-riders in my view, weakens the financial system.”

Money-market mutual funds, which first appeared in 1971, have developed into a $3.5 trillion pool of cash outside of the regulated banking industry that provides short-term funding to thousands of companies and financial institutions at rates below conventional loans. Their pivotal role in the economy was highlighted in September when the collapse of the $62.5 billion Reserve Primary Fund sparked a run by investors that in turn froze the commercial-paper market and threatened to cut off thousands of borrowers.

Needless to say, the industry does not like the sound of this:

His proposals “would eliminate money funds as we know them,” Paul Schott Stevens, head of the Investment Company Institute, a mutual-fund industry trade group in Washington.

[Demeter]

104. MORE THOUGHTFUL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMOL0aQpdXE&NR=1

[Demeter]

105. Hester to decline RBS bonus

Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, is to decline any bonus payment for 2009, as the pressure mounts on the loss-making state-owned bank to show humility amid the continuing populist backlash against bankers.

http://link.ft.com/r/TWK799/M9J8ZW/Q38E1/EWE5DV/5CCY7F/MQ/t

[Demeter]

106. Freddie Mac to Purchase Substantial Number of Seriously Delinquent Loans From PC Securities

http://www.freddiemac.com/news/archives/mbs/2010/20100210_pc_securities.html

Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) announced today that it will purchase substantially all 120 days or more delinquent mortgage loans from the company's related fixed-rate and adjustable-rate (ARM) mortgage Participation Certificate (PC) securities.

The company's purchases of these loans from related PCs should be reflected in the PC factor report published after the close of business on March 4, 2010, and the corresponding principal payments would be passed through to fixed-rate and ARM PC holders on March 15 and April 15, respectively. The decision to effect these purchases stems from the fact that the cost of guarantee payments to security holders, including advances of interest at the security coupon rate, exceeds the cost of holding the nonperforming loans in the company's mortgage-related investments portfolio as a result of the required adoption of new accounting standards and changing economics. In addition, the delinquent loan purchases will help Freddie Mac preserve capital and reduce the amount of any additional draws from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The purchases would not affect Freddie Mac's activities under the Making Home Affordable Program.

In December 2007, Freddie Mac announced operational changes for purchasing delinquent loans from PCs. The company stated that, among other conditions, it will purchase mortgages that are 120 days or more delinquent from PCs when the cost of guarantee payments to security holders, including advances of interest at the security coupon rate, exceeds the cost of holding the nonperforming loans in its portfolio.

On January 1, 2010, Freddie Mac adopted new accounting standards for transfers of financial assets and the consolidation of variable interest entities – SFAS 166 and SFAS 167. As a result, the cost of purchasing most delinquent loans from PCs and holding them in portfolio will be less than the cost of continued guarantee payments to security holders. Freddie Mac will continue to review the economics of purchasing loans 120 days or more delinquent in the future and may reevaluate its delinquent loans purchase practices and alter them if circumstances warrant.

For more information as of December 31, 2009, on applicable Freddie Mac single-family mortgage loans that are 120 days or more delinquent and related PCs (including PCs owned by the company's mortgage-related investments portfolio), see the table, Delinquency Rates – Loans in PC Pools, By Loan Origination Year, available on the company's Web site at www.FreddieMac.com/mbs/docs/delinquencyrates 021010.pdf . Freddie Mac's contemplated purchases of loans that are 120 days or more delinquent will reflect borrower activity through January 31, 2010, on applicable loans.

By April 2010, in order to provide better visibility to PC holders, Freddie Mac expects to disclose in its Monthly Volume Summary the number of loans that are 90 days or more delinquent in related fixed-rate 30-year and 15-year PCs and in ARM PCs.

OPENING UP A BIG TOXIC WASTE DUMP IN THEIR INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO....HMMM

[Demeter]

107. 1960–70: Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Reprise records, Basie, Jobim, "My Way"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7E5uT4z0DU&feature=related

Sinatra started the 1960s as he ended the 1950s. His first album of the decade, Nice 'n' Easy, topped Billboard's album chart and won critical plaudits. Sinatra grew discontented at Capitol and decided to form his own label, Reprise Records. His first album on the label, Ring-A-Ding-Ding (1961), was a major success peaking at #4 on Billboard and #8 in the UK.

His fourth and final Timex special was broadcast in March 1960 and secured massive viewing figures. Titled It's Nice to Go Travelling, the show is more commonly known as Welcome Home Elvis. Elvis Presley's appearance after his army discharge was somewhat ironic; Sinatra had been scathing about him in the mid fifties, saying: "His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac. It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people."<36> Presley had responded: "... is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it... is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago." Later, in efforts to maintain his commercial viability, Sinatra recorded Presley's hit "Love Me Tender" as well as works by Paul Simon ("Mrs. Robinson"), The Beatles ("Something," "Yesterday"), and Joni Mitchell ("Both Sides Now").

Following on the heels of the film Can Can was Ocean's 11, the movie that became the definitive on-screen outing for "The Rat Pack".

On January 27, 1961, Sinatra played a benefit show at Carnegie Hall for Martin Luther King, Jr.. He played a major role in the desegregation of Nevada hotels and casinos in the 1960s. Sinatra led his fellow members of the Rat Pack and label-mates on Reprise in refusing to patronize hotels and casinos that wouldn't allow black singers to play or wouldn't allow black patrons entry. He would often speak from the stage on desegregation. He played more benefits for King. According to Frank Sinatra, Jr., at one point during a show in 1963 sat weeping as Sinatra sang Ol' Man River, the song from the musical Show Boat that, in the show, is sung by an African-American stevedore.

Over September 11 and 12, 1961, Sinatra recorded his final songs for Capitol.

In 1962, along with Janet Leigh and Laurence Harvey, he starred in the political thriller The Manchurian Candidate as Bennett Marco. That same year, Sinatra and Count Basie collaborated for the album Sinatra-Basie. This popular and successful release prompted them to rejoin two years later for a follow-up It Might as Well Be Swing, which was arranged by Quincy Jones. One of Sinatra's more ambitious albums from the mid-1960s, The Concert Sinatra, was recorded with a 73-piece symphony orchestra on 35mm tape.

Sinatra's first live album, Sinatra at the Sands, was recorded during January and February 1966 at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

In June 1965, Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr.. and Dean Martin played live in Saint Louis to benefit Dismas House. The concert was broadcast live via satellite to numerous movie theaters across America. Released in August 1965 was the Grammy Award–winning album of the year September of My Years, with a career anthology A Man and His Music followed in November, itself winning Album of the Year at the Grammys in 1966. The TV special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music garnered both an Emmy award and a Peabody Award.

In the spring, That's Life appeared, with both the single and album becoming Top Ten hits in the US on Billboard's pop charts. Strangers in the Night went on to top the Billboard and UK pop singles charts, winning the award for Record of the Year at the Grammys. The album of the same name also topped the Billboard chart and reached number 4 in the UK.

Sinatra started 1967 with a series of recording sessions with Antônio Carlos Jobim. Later in the year, a duet with daughter Nancy, "Somethin' Stupid", topped the Billboard pop and UK singles charts. In December, Sinatra collaborated with Duke Ellington on the album Francis A. & Edward K..

During the late 1960s, press agent Lee Solters would invite columnists with their spouses into Sinatra's dressing room just before he was about to go on stage. The New Yorker recounted that "The first columnist they tried this on was Larry Fields of the Philadelphia Daily News, whose wife fainted when Sinatra kissed her cheek. 'Take care of it, Lee,' Sinatra said, and he was off."<39>

Back on the small-screen, Sinatra once again worked with Jobim and Ella Fitzgerald on the TV special A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim.

Watertown (1970) was one of Sinatra's most acclaimed concept albums,<40> but was all but ignored by the public. Selling a mere 30,000 copies, and reaching a peak chart position of 101, its failure put an end to plans of a television special based on the album.

With Sinatra in mind, singer-songwriter Paul Anka wrote the song "My Way" inspired from the French "Comme d'habitude" ("As Usual"), composed by Claude François and Jacques Revaux. (The song had been previously commissioned to David Bowie, whose lyrics did not please the involved agents.) "My Way" would, perhaps, become more identified with him than any other over his seven decades as a singer.

[Zenlitened]

110. This is a first step in a process that will allow mortgage principal reductions...

... and as such it's actually encouraging news, IMO.

And principal reduction, like it or not, is the only way the foreclosure crisis is going to be brought under some sort of control, now that runaway, infinite-regression CDS have made letting MBS investors take the pain a matter of MAD. Neat trick, huh?

(credit default swaps... mortgage-backed securities... mutual assured destruction)

[Demeter]

111. While I Admit that Your Analysis Is Feasible and Desirable

I'm not holding my breath. This is the Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight. Not that they seem to want to: outside of Elizabeth Warren and a couple of Democrats in House and Senate, I am spectacularly underwhelmed by the moral fiber content.

And thank you for reading this far down in the thread....sometimes I do wonder if I'm just talking to myself here!

[Zenlitened]

112. LOL :) I read this far down the thread looking specifically...

... for this story, hoping you'd post it.

I really do think this is a milestone, and principal reductions will be this financial clusterfuck's version of the Resolution Trust Corporation of the 1990's.

Instead of taking possession of actual properties and selling them (eventually) on the cheap, the guv will now buy up the paperwork and rework principal now that tranche-ified MBS stakeholders are being/have been bought off.

The deal may or may not include a guv claim on eventual profit from sale by rescued owners/borrowers.

But in the short-term, at least, we the taxpayers WILL be left holding the bag.

So for that reason, you can be certain Washington will get it done!

[DemReadingDU]

108. Michael Panzner: Until It's Too Late

2/20/10 Until It's Too Late
Michael Panzner

Throughout the financial crisis, policymakers have focused on keeping things afloat until the storm passes. They've spent vast sums of taxpayer funds trying to jumpstart growth until the economy is back on track. They've encouraged people to keep the faith until businesses start hiring again.

But what happens if all those "untils" turn out to be wide of the mark? What if the carnage we've experienced so far is structural, not cyclical? If that's the case, then Americans are going to find that instead of experiencing better times ahead, they are going to be much worse off than they were -- or are.

Why? Because they've not been adjusting lifestyles and spending habits to take account of a step-change decline in living standards. And, they've not been reorienting the way they manage household finances and investments to take account of a much riskier economic and financial outlook.

In addition, many people have not been focusing strongly enough on acquiring new skills and seeking alternative careers that take account of big changes in the job market. As the following collection of articles suggests, not only is the overall employment situation likely to remain problematic for years to come, prior work experience may no longer be relevant.

includes links to more articles...
http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2010/02/until-its-too-late.html

[Demeter]

109. And of Course, the Govgt. Has Looted the Treasury to Pay Blackmail to the Too Big to Fails

leaving nothing for rebuilding America.