Weekend Economists Eat, Drink, and Be Merry June 3-5, 2011

[Demeter]

Insomnia has struck again. Rather than just lie there, or rereading Harry Potter, I've decided to start plowing through an obscene amount of email, looking for nuggets of news, opinion, and outrage.

Our topic is Food; our goal, to share the best and worst of the culinary arts. Maybe we could produce a cookbook, if there's nothing better to do?

Our Trust Wikipedia reports:

Food is any substance<1> consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells in an effort to produce energy, maintain life, and/or stimulate growth.

Historically, people secured food through two methods: hunting and gathering, and agriculture. Today, most of the food energy consumed by the world population is supplied by the food industry, which is operated by multinational corporations that use intensive farming and industrial agriculture to maximize system output.

Food safety and food security are monitored by agencies like the International Association for Food Protection, World Resources Institute, World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Food Information Council. They address issues such as sustainability, biological diversity, climate change, nutritional economics, population growth, water supply, and access to food.

The right to food is a human right derived from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), recognizing the "right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food", as well as the "fundamental right to be free from hunger".

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

Food sources

Almost all foods are of plant or animal origin. Cereal grain is a staple food that provides more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop. Maize, wheat, and rice - in all of their varieties - account for 87% of all grain production worldwide.

Other foods not from animal or plant sources include various edible fungi, especially mushrooms. Fungi and ambient bacteria are used in the preparation of fermented and pickled foods like leavened bread, alcoholic drinks, cheese, pickles, kombucha, and yogurt. Another example is blue-green algae such as Spirulina. Inorganic substances such as baking soda and cream of tartar are also used to chemically alter an ingredient. AND SALT!

Plants

Many plants or plant parts are eaten as food. There are around 2,000 plant species which are cultivated for food, and many have several distinct cultivars.

Seeds of plants are a good source of food for animals, including humans, because they contain the nutrients necessary for the plant's initial growth, including many healthy fats, such as Omega fats. In fact, the majority of food consumed by human beings are seed-based foods. Edible seeds include cereals (maize, wheat, rice, et cetera), legumes (beans, peas, lentils, et cetera), and nuts. Oilseeds are often pressed to produce rich oils - sunflower, flaxseed, rapeseed (including canola oil), sesame, et cetera.

Seeds are typically high in unsaturated fats and, in moderation, are considered a health food, although not all seeds are edible. Large seeds, such as those from a lemon, pose a choking hazard, while seeds from apples and cherries contain a poison (cyanide).

Fruits are the ripened ovaries of plants, including the seeds within. Many plants have evolved fruits that are attractive as a food source to animals, so that animals will eat the fruits and excrete the seeds some distance away. Fruits, therefore, make up a significant part of the diets of most cultures. Some botanical fruits, such as tomatoes, pumpkins, and eggplants, are eaten as vegetables.

Vegetables are a second type of plant matter that is commonly eaten as food. These include root vegetables (potatoes and carrots), leaf vegetables (spinach and lettuce), stem vegetables (bamboo shoots and asparagus), and inflorescence vegetables FLOWERS (globe artichokes and broccoli AND CAULIFLOWER!).

See also: Herbs and spices.

Animals

Animals are used as food either directly or indirectly by the products they produce. Meat is an example of a direct product taken from an animal, which comes from muscle systems or from organs. Food products produced by animals include milk produced by mammary glands, which in many cultures is drunk or processed into dairy products (cheese, butter, et cetera). In addition, birds and other animals lay eggs, which are often eaten, and bees produce honey, a reduced nectar from flowers, which is a popular sweetener in many cultures. Some cultures consume blood, sometimes in the form of blood sausage, as a thickener for sauces, or in a cured, salted form for times of food scarcity, and others use blood in stews such as civet.<8>

Some cultures and people do not consume meat or animal food products for cultural, dietary, health, ethical, ECONOMIC or ideological reasons. Vegetarians do not consume meat. Vegans do not consume any foods that are or contain ingredients from an animal source.



TAKING AS MY COGNOMEN THE NAME DEMETER, I HAVE AN AFFINITY FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE, SO THIS TOPIC GIVES A SPECIAL OUTLET FOR GODDESS-GIVEN GIFTS!

AND OUR THEME SONG TODAY IS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEQDllvuy1I

[Demeter]

1. 10 Steps to Defeat the Corporatocracy

http://www.alternet.org/story/151018/10_steps_to_defeat_the_corporatocracy?page=entire




Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.

Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by Americans' ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues of our day - from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs - the majority of Americans are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And American history is replete with organizational examples - from the Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago - of successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.

The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity. When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select from - and implement - time-honored strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we regain our guts and solidarity?

The only way to overcome the power of money is regain our courage and solidarity. Here's how to do that:

1. Create the Cultural and Psychological "Building Blocks" for Democratic Movements
2. Confront and Transform ALL Institutions that Have Destroyed Individual Self-Respect and Collective Self-Confidence
3. Side Each Day in Every Way With Anti-Authoritarians
4. Regain Morale by Thinking More Critically About Our Critical Thinking
5. Restore Courage in Young People
6. Focus on Democracy Battlefields Where the Corporate Elite Don't Have Such a Large Financial Advantage
7. Heal from "Corporatocracy Abuse" and "Battered People's Syndrome" to Gain Strength
8. Unite Populists by Rejecting Corporate Media's Political Divisions
9. Unite "Comfortable Anti-Authoritarians" and "Afflicted Anti-Authoritarians
10. Do Not Let Debate Divide Anti-Authoritarians

DETAILS AT LINK

[Demeter]

2. One of the Biggest Issues in Food Is the Corporate Production of Foodstuffs

In the beginning, incorporation meant that a small group of workers and a small amount of capital investment could produce much more food working together than as individuals, because of the economies of scale:

"Economies of scale, in microeconomics, refers to the cost advantages that a business obtains due to expansion. There are factors that cause a producer’s average cost per unit to fall as the scale of output is increased. "Economies of scale" is a long run concept and refers to reductions in unit cost as the size of a facility and the usage levels of other inputs increase. Diseconomies of scale are the opposite. The common sources of economies of scale are purchasing (bulk buying of materials through long-term contracts), managerial (increasing the specialization of managers), financial (obtaining lower-interest charges when borrowing from banks and having access to a greater range of financial instruments), marketing (spreading the cost of advertising over a greater range of output in media markets), and technological (taking advantage of returns to scale in the production function). Each of these factors reduces the long run average costs (LRAC) of production by shifting the short-run average total cost (SRATC) curve down and to the right. Economies of scale are also derived partially from learning by doing.



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

OR, MORE COLLOQUIALLY:

n., pl., economies of scale.
The decrease in unit cost of a product or service resulting from large-scale operations, as in mass production.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/economies-of-scale#ixzz1OCBwlj39

But with the increasing emphasis on profit, to the exclusion of all other values, such as quality of their products, food-producing corporations have produced pollution, malnutrition, sickness, even death. For some corporations, such as Monsanto, that damage to the environment and to the buyers of their products seems to be one of their desired outcomes...

[Demeter]

3. wiki on Food Production

Traditionally, food was obtained through agriculture. With increasing concern in agribusiness over multinational corporations owning the world food supply through patents on genetically modified food, there has been a growing trend toward sustainable agricultural practices. This approach, partly fueled by consumer demand, encourages biodiversity, local self-reliance and organic farming methods. Major influences on food production include international organizations (e.g. the World Trade Organization and Common Agricultural Policy), national government policy (or law), and war.

In popular culture, the mass production of food, specifically meats such as chicken and beef, has come under fire from various documentaries, most recently Food, Inc, documenting the mass slaughter and poor treatment of animals, often for easier revenues from large corporations. Along with a current trend towards environmentalism, people in Western culture have had an increasing trend towards the use of herbal supplements, foods for a specific group of person (such as dieters, women, or athletes), functional foods (fortified foods, such as omega-3 eggs), and a more ethnically diverse diet.

[Demeter]

12. Shameful Kowtowing to the Meat Industry: 147 Congressmen Diss Family Farmers

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/595335/shameful_kowtowing_to_the_meat_industry%3A_147_congressmen_diss_family_farmers/#paragraph2

Last Wednesday, 147 Members of Congress proved once again that the meat industry can buy public policy. The trade associations for big meat, which are major campaign contributors, have been pitching a hissy fit that they won’t be able to squeeze every penny out of livestock producers. They wrote to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack asking him to conduct “a more thorough economic analysis” of the proposed fair farm rules (GIPSA) that would give livestock producers a fighting chance when they contract or sell to the consolidated meat industry. This action by the Members is nothing more than yet another obstruction to implementing a rule first proposed in the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act because of the abusive practices of the meat industry that have continued and worsened through the decades. This rule would eliminate “undue” preference in livestock marketing to the biggest producers.

In other words, these 147 Congressmen and women are protecting the interests of big factory farms, preventing rules that would make farming fair and help reverse the stranglehold Big Ag has on the food system. The letter, led by Representative Jim Costa (D-Calif.), is exactly the kind of sabotage that kept consumers from seeing a country-of-origin label on some of their meat, fruits and vegetables for eight years after the 2002 farm bill.

What’s the GIPSA rule, and what does this mean for farmers? The rule would make it easier for small livestock farmers to get their products to market by giving them a fair price that would let them stay in business. The rule stops preferential contracts granted to factory farms, allows competitive bidding on livestock, and prohibits retaliation against poultry growers who speak out about abuses...The 2008 Farm Bill required the USDA to finally enforce the law, yet the power of the handful of meatpackers that slaughter almost all of the meat in the U.S. has successfully held implementation of the rule at bay. Now, 147 Congressmen are lobbying the USDA on behalf of this highly concentrated industry that wants to force small-and medium-sized farmers to get out of farming and leave the business to the biggest players. Rep. Costa’s letter even says that Congress voted against the proposed rule during the 2008 farm bill, but this is a flagrant untruth. No part of Congress—committee or floor, House or Senate—ever voted against any of the proposed livestock reforms.

What can you do? Find out if your representative has signed the letter, and if they have, let them know that by doing so, they are enabling the growth of factory farms. Check out our Factory Farm Map, which shows how agricultural policy, at the behest of the biggest players in the meat industry, has led to consolidation of livestock production—meaning that there are fewer and fewer farms with more and more animals that cause a host of environmental, public health, economic, food safety and animal welfare problems. MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

4. Letter Urging Warren Recess Appointment Gets 250,000 Signatures as House Dems Ramp Up Efforts

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/604743/letter_urging_warren_recess_appointment_gets_250%2C000_signatures_as_house_dems_ramp_up_efforts/#paragraph6

[plumbob]

71. Excellent! More like this, please!

We must have Warren.

[Demeter]

5. With No Middle Class Left, Ad Age Says Top 10% Dominates Purchasing Power

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/604932/with_no_middle_class_left%2C_ad_age_says_top_10_dominates_purchasing_power/#paragraph5

...Taking inflation into account, Ad Age explains, the “incomes of most American workers have remained more or less static since the 1970s,” while “the income of the rich (and the very rich) has grown exponentially.”

The top 10 percent of American households, the trade journal adds, now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, and a disproportionate share of that spending comes from the top 10’s upper reaches.

“Simply put,” sums up Ad Age’s David Hirschman, “a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending and has outsize purchasing influence — particularly in categories such as technology, financial services, travel, automotive, apparel, and personal care.”

The story goes on to note that most Americans aren't aware of this growing inequality and still believe in an ideal that remains "egalitarian," a society in which everyone has a shot at attaining a level of luxury and spending power to respond to those ads. But in reality, statistically speaking, we remain very much locked into our stark class divide.

BUT THERE'S A LIMIT AS TO HOW MUCH SUCH A SMALL AMOUNT OF CONSUMERS CAN UTILIZE...WHICH IS WHY OUR ECONOMY IS DEAD IN THE WATER. DEMAND DESTRUCTION, RESULTING IN MASS UNEMPLOYMENT OF THE NATION'S PEOPLE, AND THE HOARDING OF MONEY BY THOSE UNTAXED THROUGH PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT, HAS BROUGHT THE AMERICAN ECONOMY TO A HALT AND DESTROYED DEMOCRACY.

[Demeter]

6. GE, Exxon, 10 Other Major Corporations Paid Negative Tax Rate

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/06/ge-exxon-10-other-major-corporations-paid-negative-tax-rate?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+|+MoJoBlog%29

... Between 2008 and 2010, a dozen major US corporations—including General Electric, ExxonMobil, and Verizon—paid a negative tax rate, despite collectively recording $171 billion in pretax US profits, according to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice. Taken together, these companies' tax burden was -$2.5 billion, and ten of the companies recorded at least one no-tax year between 2008 and 2010... Not a single one of the companies paid anything close to the 35 percent statutory tax rate. In fact, the "highest tax" company on our list, Exxon Mobil, paid an effective three-year tax rate of only 14.2 percent. That’s 60 percent below the 35 percent rate that companies are supposed to pay. And over the past two years, Exxon Mobil’s net tax on its $9.9 billion in U.S. pretax profits was a minuscule $39 million, an effective tax rate of only 0.4 percent.

Had these 12 companies paid the full 35 percent corporate tax, their federal income taxes over the three years would have totaled $59.9 billion. Instead, they enjoyed so many tax subsidies that they paid $62.4 billion less than that.

If just these 12 companies had paid at a 35 percent tax rate over the past three years, total federal revenues from corporate taxes would have been 12 percent higher than they actually were.

AND THE DEFICIT CORRESPONDINGLY LOWER

[Demeter]

7. If Americans Don't Want Services Cut, Then Raise Taxes on the Rich and End the Wars

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12738

OF COURSE, THAT WOULD MEAN ONE MAN, ONE VOTE AND MAJORITY RULE...NOT CORPORATOCRACY.....

[plumbob]

72. Precisely why the corporate form of ownership must be abolished and made

illegal. Corporations have used the twin tools of lenient taxation and no personal liability for its operators to push their operations into dis-economies of scale. It is an inevitable outcome, cannot be controlled, and so the corporate structure must be killed.

I'll stand with Adam Smith, the father of economics, on this. He didn't think corporations were legitimate, either, because they do not lead to maximum production, the actual source of wealth for any country.

[Demeter]

10. US Has Fourth-Highest Income Inequality Rate in the World

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/599266/us_has_fourth-highest_income_inequality_rate_in_the_world/#paragraph2

A recent report issued by Paris' Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development analyzes the countries around the world with the highest income inequality rate, per capita. And guess where the United States sits? At number four -- right after Chile, Mexico and Turkey. Given our country's unemployment rate -- noted today to have jumped unexpectedly last week --compared to our proportion of billionaires (of the richest people on the planet, the US claims four of the top ten), this doesn't come as a huge surprise. But it does underscore what happens to a country in which the wealthy live on the backs of the poor -- for evidence, check these Mother Jones charts that illustrate why Congress is friendlier to Wall Street than Main Street.

List below; read more at the Huffington Post. SEE LINKS AT ORIGIN

Highest Income inequality Rates in the World

1. Chile

2. Mexico

3. Turkey

4. United States

5. Israel

6. Portugal

7. United Kingdom

8. Italy

9. Australia

10. New Zealand

[Demeter]

8. Seven states still struggle with double-digit unemployment

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/news_from_epi_seven_states_still_struggle_with_double-digit_unemployment/?utm_source=Budget+Campaign&utm_campaign=d36464abfe-Balance_Sheet5_11_2011&utm_medium=email

THIS IS FROM APRIL DATA, BUT I DOUBT THAT ANY STATE HAS DROPPED BELOW SINCE THEN...

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/interactive_map_state_unemployment_april_2001

[Demeter]

9. Do You Live in a Food Desert? Search Your Area

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/do_you_live_in_a_food_desert.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racewireblog+%28ColorLines%29

The USDA introduced a mapping tool this month that tracks food deserts across the country, and includes demographic information about those living in areas without access to healthy and affordable food...The Food Desert Locator highlights areas that are low-income and where a substantial portion of residents (at least 500 people and/or a third of the population) have low access to a supermarket or large grocery store. To qualify as a low access community, residents in urban settings must reside more than one mile away from a supermarket or grocery story that contains all major food departments and makes at least $2 million in sales, or 10 miles away from one in rural settings.

Users can search the map by address, county, or zip code. It can be viewed with a topographic background where city locations, county and state boundaries are visible, or with a satellite background to see an aerial view of physical locations like housing developments, roads, malls, lakes, or rivers. Furthermore, one can view statistics on the people in each food desert - information like the number and percentage of low income residents, number and percentage of those with low access, amounts of children and senior citizens with low access, and the amount of low access housing units that do not have a vehicle.

The population characteristics come from 2000 Census data, and the map was developed by the Economic Research Service, the USDA’s economic research department. ERS used the definition of “food desert” devised by the Health Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), a partnership between the Treasury Department, Health and Human Services, and the USDA that emerged as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative. This definition will be used in determining eligibility for HFFI funds to go towards expanding the availability of nutritious food and developing retail sites in food deserts. The Food Desert Locator was also designed to help policy makers, community planners, researchers, and developers to identify neighborhoods with low access to healthy and affordable food.

Using HFFI’s definition, 10 percent of census tracts in the United States qualify as a food desert, containing 13.5 million people. Eighty-two percent of these people live in urban areas. While the map does not include statistics on the race of populations in food deserts, Juell Stewart previously reported on a 2010 PolicyLink and The Food Trust report that found that African Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to live in a food desert. The report also said that eight percent of African Americans live in a tract with a supermarket, compared to 31 percent of whites...

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/fooddesert.html

[Demeter]

11. GOP to Hungry Americans: You Can Starve

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/596136/gop_to_hungry_americans%3A_you_can_starve/#paragraph4

Hunger and starvation is no excuse to welch off the Federal Government. That's the Republican response, in any event, to how to deal with the budget deficit. While Republicans defend billions of dollars in subsidies for Big Oil and propose further tax cuts for the wealthy, they see food aid for hungry people here and around the world as a bad idea. Bug Guvmint should get out of the business of keeping people from starving. Now isn't that special:

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are targeting domestic nutrition programs and international food assistance as they try to control spending in next year's budget.

In a bill released Monday, Republicans proposed cutting $832 million - 11 percent from this year's budget for the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides food for low-income mothers and children. The 2012 budget proposal for food and farm programs also includes a decrease of almost $457 million, or 23 percent, from international food assistance.

The legislation would cut $2 billion from food stamps, or about 2 percent of the feeding program's giant $67 billion budget.

Of course, Republicans claim that this is all wasted money and that cutting it would have "no effect" on the actual delivery of services for poor, underfed, malnourished people. Please excuse me if I don't trust the word of the same folks who:

* Apologized to the Chairman of BP for the way the Obama administration acted to obtain compensation for all the billions of dollars of damage that was caused by B P's (at best) negligence after its Deepwater Horizon Well dumped unimaginable amounts of oil and gas into the Gulf.
* Believes Global Warming and Climate Change are a hoax concocted by Al Gore and scientists who are conspiring to kill our economy.
* Screamed to high heaven about "Obamacare's Death Panels"
* Claims killing Medicare is the only way to save it.
* Told us the Bush Tax cuts would create jobs and increase government revenues.

What can I say? I'm a bit paranoid when Republicans claim that cutting essential services like -- oh say, like funds for the National Weather Service and FEMA -- wouldn't put people at risk.

[Demeter]

13. The Debt Ceiling as a Bargaining Chip by: Paul Krugman

http://www.truthout.org/debt-ceiling-bargaining-chip/1306862238

How bad will it be if we don’t manage to raise the debt ceiling in the United States? And what should President Obama’s negotiating strategy be? A few thoughts...The direct effects of hitting the ceiling would be bad enough — sharp cutbacks in spending, which would undermine essential services, not to mention derail the economy. It’s not clear to me whether there would be some wiggle room through the accumulation of arrears — say, not actually paying workers and contractors, but promising to make it up when sanity returns. But it would be ugly indeed. What might make it even worse would be indirect effects, of two kinds:

First, government debt plays a special role in the American financial system: Treasury bills are the universal safe asset, the ultimate collateral. That’s why, during moments of financial stress, the interest rate on T-bills has actually gone negative. Make that safe asset suddenly unsafe, and it might cause vast disruption.

Second — and I don’t think this is getting enough attention — failure to raise the debt limit could act as a terrible signal about the American political system...When you look at the United States’ fiscal position in terms of what we’re capable of as a nation, it’s not a big problem. Never mind those big numbers you hear about implicit liabilities; we have a big economy, too. So modest tax increases and reasonable efforts to limit health-care costs could bring our long-run finances into line. But all this depends on our having the political will and cohesion to do what’s necessary.

What if it turns out that we’re a banana republic, with crazy extremists having so much blocking power that we can’t get our house in order?... failing to raise the debt limit could be widely read as a signal that we are, in fact, a banana republic. In that case, however, what should Mr. Obama do? My answer is that he must not let himself be blackmailed. Partly that’s because once he gives in the first time, the blackmail will never stop. Once the crazies know that they can get whatever they want by threatening to blow up the economy, they’ll just keep demanding more and more. Mr. Obama can’t let that dynamic get started without setting up an even worse crash down the road...This is going to be very ugly. But I don’t think there’s any way to avoid taking it all the way to the edge, and possibly over it.

[Demeter]

16. Moody’s warns of US default

The ratings agency warned of a ‘small but rising risk’ the US could default on its debt, adding pressure on Congress and the White House to strike a deal on fiscal policy

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/19JYUU/ZBTQ31/Q38E1/D42GZK/8A06OT/RF/t?a1=2011&a2=6&a3=3

[Demeter]

14. If Joblessness and Hopelessness Undermine Democracy in the Middle East, What About Here at Home?

WELL, I'D DEBATE WHETHER DEMOCRACY EXISTS AT ALL IN THE MIDDLE EAST==BUT HUNGER AND UNEMPLOYMENT CERTAINLY ARE SEEKING TO OVERTURN THE STATUS QUO GOVERNMENTS THERE, AND PUT AN END TO THE PLUTOCRACY....

http://www.truthout.org/jarring-disconnect-if-joblessness-and-hopelessness-undermine-democracy-middle-east-what-about-here-h

Unemployment in Egypt among young men and women is about 30%. In Tunisia, it is over 40%. The White House claims that with figures like that, the future for democracy in those countries is tenuous.

But wait a minute. What about the US? Unemployment and underemployment here is still up around 20% overall, and it is much higher among young people. Black youth unemployment fell so far in 2011 to an official rate of 44% from 50% last year (because so many young workers just gave up trying to find work!) Among Latino youth, the official unemployment rate is stuck at around 30%. Overall, youth unemployment, according to the official Labor Department figures, is 20%, but remember, the official rate does not count those who are working part time who want full-time work, and does not count those who have given up looking for work. Among young people, it may be that many who work part-time (those who live at home or who are in school or college) actually are not looking for full-time work, so that upward adjustment may not be as great as for older workers, but at the same time, there are certainly more young people who give up looking for jobs than is the case with older workers who have families to support. In any event, it is clear that all these youth unemployment figures are actually too low by a significant amount.

If the official rate of unemployment for all Americans of 9% is actually less than half of the actual rate of 20%, then even if we took a conservative estimate, simply eliminating the adjustment of those working part-time who want full-time work from the youth unemployment figure, and just keeping the adjustment for those who have dropped out of the labor force (stopped looking for work) because it is fruitless, we would still see actual unemployment figures for young people in the US at staggering Egypt-like levels: 30% for all young people, 45% for young Latinos, and as high as 66% for black youth!

So why is the president so concerned about providing economic support to boost jobs in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, in order to "support democracy," while in here in the US, he has basically thrown in the towel on job creation efforts, and is just talking about cutting the deficit--a Republican theme?

[AnneD]

102. Lots of people on the streets....

Even in Houston Texas are starting to ask the same questions, ESP after he made his middle east policy speech. The natives, even here are starting to rumble. Look for Obamas numbers to start droping like a rock. But the scary thing will be that GOP's won't go up either. This is the end game for these politicians. And this Depression won't be as peaceful as the last one.

[Demeter]

15. Russia bans EU vegetables in E.coli scare

A trade spat has erupted between the European Union and Russia after Moscow banned imports of EU vegetables amid growing alarm over a deadly E. coli outbreak

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/19JYUU/ZBTQ31/Q38E1/D42GZK/OJEYEQ/RF/t?a1=2011&a2=6&a3=3

[Demeter]

17. US job relocation activity picks up sharply

US companies are more willing to relocate employees to fill job vacancies, according to people who handle such moves for large corporations, in a sign that the sharp slowdown in migration triggered by the recession may be easing as the economy gains steam.

Companies that specialise in corporate relocations said they were seeing double-digit increases in their businesses compared with the same period a year ago. They added that corporate relocations, of which half are typically new hires, are far outpacing more modest gains in other types of moves such as those by members of the military or government employees.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/S4XZQQ/18B92X/3CWTA/HDMH3X/JIX4UQ/UP/t?a1=2011&a2=6&a3=2

[xchrom]

18. morning, Miss Demeter!

:donut:

[Demeter]

31. Good Afternoon, xchrom

I was dragged off to breakfast at 7 AM...now I'm too tired to eat lunch!

Miss Demeter....is that anything like Miss Demeanor?

[Fuddnik]

19. Bill Moyers interviews Andrew Bacevich.

http://www.truthout.org/bill-moyers-interviews-andrew-bacevich/1306971684

Long, but good.

[DemReadingDU]

20. Good morning!

Food!
Time for breakfast!

[DemReadingDU]

21. For 'National Doughnut Day,' The Salvation Army's Original Recipe

Perfect timing Demeter!


We must note that today is the 73rd National Doughnut Day — a celebration of tasty goodness that honors the work done by the Salvation Army and the "lassies" who made doughnuts for soldiers in World War I and World War II.

If you hit a Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme and some local stores, there could be a free doughnut for you (Dunkin Donuts requires a beverage purchase; Krispy Kreme does not). And Salvation Army workers may be on hand to take donations.

Meanwhile, the Salvation Army also offers this little bit of doughnut history — the "Salvation Army Lassies' Doughnut Recipe":

Yield: 4 doz. doughnuts

5 C flour
2 C sugar
5 tsp. baking powder
1 'saltspoon' salt
2 eggs
1 3/4 C milk
1 T lard

DIRECTIONS

— Combine all ingredients (except for lard) to make dough.
— Thoroughly knead dough, roll smooth, and cut into rings that are less than 1/4 inch thick. (When finding items to cut out doughnut circles, be creative! Salvation Army doughnut girls used whatever they could find, from baking powder cans to coffee percolator tubes.)
— Drop the rings into the lard, making sure the fat is hot enough to brown the doughnuts gradually. Turn the doughnuts slowly several times.
— When browned, remove doughnuts and allow excess fat to drip off.
— Dust with powdered sugar. Let cool and enjoy.

Note: The Salvation Army says a "saltspoon" is 1/4 tsp of salt.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/06/03/136916410/for-national-doughnut-day-the-salvation-armys-original-recipe


edit to add link for the recipe
http://l.wbx.me/l/?p=1&instId=dc177ada-3ab9-4916-81c4-222554219524&token=6b08f9f002c47dba0848f9d396d61bcf7bed33060000013050fe2a99&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.salvationarmyusa.org%2F%3Fp%3D6672


and now I'm really really hungry!
:donut:

[Pale Blue Dot]

22. The Stock Market is set to plunge at the opening today.

Are people finally facing reality? Are we at the breaking point? Or are we being set up for QE3?

[Fuddnik]

23. Mussels Diablo. I made a version of this twice in the last couple of months.

If you have any money left, this is a tasty splurge for at home.

Ingredients:

40 Prince Edward Island mussels or other high-quality mussels
1 cup olive oil
1/4 baguette, sliced on the diagonal into eight ¼-inch-thick pieces
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
2 cups canned tomatoes with their juice, crushed
1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
Kosher salt
1 cup dry white wine
½ bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, stems removed and leaves slivered, plus more for garnish
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, for garnish

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Clean the mussels by scrubbing well under cold running water and removing any beards. Drain well, transfer to a large bowl, and refrigerate.
Pour 1/2 cup of the olive oil into a shallow baking dish. Lay the bread slices in the oil and turn once to coat both sides. Toast the bread for 10 to 15 minutes, turning once or twice, or until golden brown and crisp. Transfer the croutons to a plate to cool.
Pour the remaining 1/2 cup of olive oil into a large sauté pan and heat over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until lightly browned. Add the mussels, tomatoes, and pepper flakes and season with salt to taste. Stir well and cook for about 15 minutes.
Add the wine and parsley, cover, and cook for about 3 minutes, or until all the mussels open. (Discard any that do not open.)
Pour the mussels and the sauce into a large serving bowl. Garnish with parsley and drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil. Stud the bowl with the croutons and serve.

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

In my version for eight adults, I turned it into Seafood Diablo.

I used a Pinot Grigio for cooking. It's also good with dinner.
4 pounds of mussels
100 cleaned top-neck clams
2 pounds of about 40 count, peeled and deveined shrimp. (If frozen, thaw first)
Sprinkle seafood lightly with grated cheese.

Start with a HEAD of garlic, and double the amount in the saute pan. Peel the other cloves.
Double the amount of bread and olive oil.
After the croutons are browned, and crispy, rub the bread heavily with the garlic cloves.
Dip it in the sauce during the meal.

The next day, remove the clams and mussels from the shells and serve leftovers over pasta!

Had leftovers last night

[xchrom]

24. US heading for depression, eurozone seen as a failure

http://www.firstpost.com/world/alarm-bells-19768.html

The alarm bells are ringing loud and clear, signalling a global economic slowdown, but equity markets appear to be marching to the beat of their own drum.

Economies in the US and Europe are in dire straits, and it appears that growth in emerging markets, still robust but slowing down, may not compensate for the resounding crash that is imminent in the other half of the world.

Overnight, rating agency Moody’s warned that the US would lose its AAA sovereign rating — a measure of its creditworthiness — if US politicians don’t get their act together to address the debt burden issue. Policymakers are increasingly flirting with the idea of a “technical default” of US debt obligations, which has debt markets unnerved.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has warned of a “financial catastrophe” if an agreement is not reached to increase the current $14.3 trillion borrowing cap by 2 August.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

25. and a kick to +5

I'll post my recipe for my 'gruel' when I get time... it's actually really yummy, healthy and cheap.

[femrap]

26. Please do.....I've

always wanted a good one.

K and R, as well.

[Demeter]

32. Welcome to the Weekend!

Stay and post a while...

[femrap]

34. OK....I read this

earlier today. Seems that the Chinese leaders have a similar lack of respect for Mother Nature as our leaders:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/asia/02water.html?_r=1

Too many people...and not enough caring.

I loved the picture of all that food! I wish our culture was more like that of France where a meal is an EVENT to be savored instead of gulped.

[Demeter]

35. That's Awful

Nobody better expect the Chinese to rescue them....

And as for our culture--if our food was French, we might savor it. It's called fast food because if you don't eat it fast, you won't eat it at all...

I prefer French cuisine myself although some Central European dishes are delightful (otherwise, I make a very poor Polack).

[Viva_La_Revolution]

123. Recipe..

finally. I had a busy weekend :) I buy the bulk grains and cereals at Winco, none more than $2 a pound, and most are far less.

Crockpot Porridge
(you can do this on the stove too, I just love being able to dump it in the pot and leave it to cook)

7-8 cups water
(start with 7 and add a little near the end if it's too thick. It'll vary with the grains you use. I like it to retain a little texture when it's done, that's why I use this mix, it's nice and thick. Gram however likes it like gruel, so she adds tons of milk.)

1 c. 5 grain cereal mix
1 c. 10 grain cereal mix
1/2 c. steel cut oats
1 c. rolled oats
1 t. salt
1 cup dried fruit, I prefer golden raisins and blueberries or cranberries

don't add milk or sugar yet, they will burn to the pot while it cooks :(
Cook on high for about 3 hours, stir once or twice.
after it's done, and it cools a bit, stir in

2 t. cinnamon
1 t. Vanilla

this makes about 8-10 servings
add raw honey and milk to taste


super yummy and super healthy. :) I divide it into servings and freeze them, they thaw and reheat just fine. You can adjust the grains any way you like, I'm playing with variations to get the nutrients up a bit.
And I guarantee umm, shall we say.. regularity if you eat this at least 5 days a week. :evilgrin:

[femrap]

124. Thanks....

I love things that go in a Crockpot and then can be frozen! Thanks so much!!!

[xchrom]

27. Global food crisis: the speculators playing with our daily bread

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/02/global-food-cricis-commodities-speculation

With food prices reaching record highs again this year, what goes on inside a 650ft Chicago skyscraper topped by a statue of the goddess Ceres is coming under intense scrutiny.

It is here that the world's oldest futures and options exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), was established in 1848 to serve the great grain belt that had opened up in the American midwest. And it is here that the international price of agricultural commodities is set to this day.

"There's a lot of weather in the market, the northern growing season has been traumatic, with drought in Europe and China and tornadoes and floods in the US. No one is panicked yet, but any additional crop loss, say in Russia, will quickly bring new worry to the market and that could quickly turn to panic. We may be one more event away from panic," Dan Basse, president of AgResource, one of Chicago's most respected commodity analyst companies, warned as we watched the opening of a day's trading last month.

G20 agriculture ministers will meet in Paris on 22 June to discuss food security and prices. Speculative activity and how to contain it is high on their agenda.

[DemReadingDU]

28. What's really going on? So many diversions...

John Edwards
Anthony Weiner
Casey Anthony trial
E. coli outbreak
Greek bailout #2
Bloodshed in Yemen, Syria, Libya
'Unexpected' poor job news

So many things are swirling around trying to stay afloat. It just seems like something is getting ready to sink.

[Demeter]

29. Our Goose is Cooked By Mike Whitney

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28229.htm

This must be what it was like in Russia before the Soviet Union collapsed. The government's so crooked that nothing works right, the infrastructure's in a shambles, millions of people are scraping by on government handouts, and everyone's on a permanent downer. Welcome to the Soviet States of America 2011. I mean, seriously, things are really looking bad. Apart from killing people, we really don't do anything anymore. We have a humongous, over-bloated military that lumbers from one war to the next spreading misery wherever it goes, and meanwhile, back at home, things continue to go to the dogs. How long can that go on?

You can't get a job anymore, because all the jobs have been shipped off to Guandong Province or someplace South of the border. The best you can hope for is some part-time gig jerking double-tall-mochas or steering folks towards the red-dot special on Aisle 9. So, how can you sustain a middle class on a measly $9.50 per hour? It can't be done. And just look at Washington. What a joke. The White House is just a protection racket for big business. And Congress, well, what can you say about congress? We'd be better off if they just packed their bags and went home for all the good they do. Then at least we could turn the House of Representatives into a homeless shelter or something that had some practical value for people. At any rate, we wouldn't have to listen to the bloviating of numbskulls like Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid anymore. That's got to be worth something.

You know our goose is cooked, don't you? You know we're not going to get out of this, right? The country is disintegrating. It's obvious. It isn't even America anymore; it's like we're on some kind of movie set where everything looks real, but it's all just props. Everything is perfectly placed to make you feel like you still live in a free country, but you know you don't. You know the government spying on you and going through your mail. You know if you stand in front of the state-house with a peace sign you'll get rousted or pepper-sprayed or something. You know if your name turns up on the wrong list, you'll either get bounced off your plane or dragged off to some far-flung blacksite where they keep you in a 6 ft. box until they want to waterboard for the millionth time. Yeah, everything still looks the same, but it's all changed. Everything's different now.

You watch news, right? It's all propaganda, every bit of it. In fact, they all read from same script. Maybe you went to some toffeenose college so you prefer PBS's Jim Lehrer News Hour, because you're smart and you want more "in depth" coverage. So, you get two brainy experts on each segment. But, there's one little problem, isn't there? Both experts are from corporate-funded think tanks, and both of them have exactly the same views on every single issue. But you think, "Hey, at least public TV airs different opinions." Right. It's all George Orwell. It's all 1984. You know that. That's why we're all so frustrated. It's bad enough that the country's going to Hell in a handbasket, but it's even worse that they have to lie to you about it 24-7. That just reinforces the feeling that we're all goners; that the whole society is just propped up on one big freaking lie.

MORE

[Fuddnik]

30. "Temporary" Patriot Act extended with Double Secret Probation.

I imagine stuff so heinous, that Senators can't even discuss it.

About a month ago, we decided to book a cruise in November. It's for the BIL &SIL's 45th Anniversary. After I booked, I received an e-mail from the booking agent, that next month, when they finalize everything, and we pay the balance, we'll be e-mailed some documents to fill out and turn in to Homeland Security prior to departure. :wtf:

It was highly recommended that we file these well before the departure, because if we waited it "could cause us unnecessary delay at the ship, or we could possibly miss departure". When did this shit start?

Free country? Not by any stretch of my imagination.

I've heard of DHS confiscating laptops, for no apparent reason, when people try to re-enter the country. I wonder if they'll confiscate my Nook after they read the titles on there.

[snot]

73. I'd back back up whatever you've got on it.

[Demeter]

33. The Mistake of 2010 By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/opinion/03krugman.html

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a blog post about the “mistake of 1937,” the premature fiscal and monetary pullback that aborted an ongoing economic recovery and prolonged the Great Depression. As Gauti Eggertsson, the post’s author (with whom I have done research) points out, economic conditions today — with output growing, some prices rising, but unemployment still very high — bear a strong resemblance to those in 1936-37. So are modern policy makers going to make the same mistake?

Mr. Eggertsson says no, that economists now know better. But I disagree. In fact, in important ways we have already repeated the mistake of 1937. Call it the mistake of 2010: a “pivot” away from jobs to other concerns, whose wrongheadedness has been highlighted by recent economic data.(WHEN WAS THIS ADMINISTRATION EVER FOCUSING ON JOBS?--DEMETER) To be sure, things could be worse — and there’s a strong chance that they will, indeed, get worse.

Back when the original 2009 Obama stimulus was enacted, some of us warned that it was both too small and too short-lived. In particular, the effects of the stimulus would start fading out in 2010 — and given the fact that financial crises are usually followed by prolonged slumps, it was unlikely that the economy would have a vigorous self-sustaining recovery under way by then...But never mind. Somehow it became conventional wisdom that the deficit, not unemployment, was Public Enemy No. 1 — a conventional wisdom both reflected in and reinforced by a dramatic shift in news coverage away from unemployment and toward deficit concerns. Job creation effectively dropped off the agenda.

So, here we are, in the middle of 2011. How are things going? SEE LINK
So the mistake of 2010 may yet be followed by an even bigger mistake. Even if that doesn’t happen, however, the fact is that the policy response to the crisis was and remains vastly inadequate....Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it; we did, and we are. What we’re experiencing may not be a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s little consolation for the millions of American families suffering from a slump that just goes on and on.

[Hotler]

36. Homemade pastrami.

I got a small corned beef brisket that I'm going rub with coriander, black pepper, garlic, mustard seed, salt , brown sugar, paprika and ginger then put it in the smoker for about day. I may use my Weber grill since the roast is small and this is a test run.

[Demeter]

37. About Our Title Eat, Drink and Be Merry (for Tomorrow We Die)

In fact, these words come by combining several different quotes from the Bible.

"A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and be merry." (Ecclesiastes 8: 15)

"Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die." (Isaiah 22: 13)

"If the dead are not raised, `Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.''
(I Corinthians 15: 32)

The Book of Ecclesiastes (literally "Book of the Preacher"; Hebrew: קֹהֶלֶת‎‎, Qoheleth), commonly referred to simply as Ecclesiastes (abbreviated "Ecc."), is a book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name derives from the Greek translation of the Hebrew title.

The main speaker in the book, identified by the name or title Qoheleth (usually translated as "teacher" or "preacher"), introduces himself as "son of David, king in Jerusalem." The work consists of personal or autobiographic matter, at times expressed in aphorisms and maxims illuminated in terse paragraphs with reflections on the meaning of life and the best way of life. The work emphatically proclaims all the actions of man to be inherently "vain", "futile", "empty", "meaningless", "temporary", "transitory", "fleeting, or "mere breath", depending on translation, as the lives of both wise and foolish men end in death. While Qoheleth clearly endorses wisdom as a means for a well-lived earthly life, he is unable to ascribe eternal meaning to it. In light of this perceived senselessness, he suggests that one should enjoy the simple pleasures of daily life, such as eating, drinking, and taking enjoyment in one's work, which are gifts from the hand of God.

According to the Talmud, however, the point of Qoheleth is to state that all is futile under the Sun. One should therefore put all one's efforts towards that which is above the Sun. This is summed up in the second to last verse: "The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep His commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone" (12:13).

The book is particularly notable for its iconic phrases, "the sun also rises," " nothing new under the sun" ('nihil novi sub sole' in the Latin Vulgate) and "he who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow."

[Hotler]

40. Wow! That is way cool. n/t

[xchrom]

41. well done -- i love Ecclesiastes. nt

[Fuddnik]

42. Merry? Oh, I thought you said "Mary".

I got drunk and put on a dress.

Ooops.

[Demeter]

38. Chocolate Waffles

This was our weekly Sunday breakfast treat, served with either bacon or sausage. the recipe came with the waffle iron, 56+ years ago:

Cream until fluffy:

1 c. shortening
1 c. sugar

Add:

3 oz melted baking chocolate (melt over water in double boiler)

6 eggs

Beat until thick and smooth, like melting ice cream.

Add:

2 Tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Fold in, in this order:

1 1/2 c. flour

2 1/2 c. milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 c. flour

Mix thoroughly. Pour by 1/3 c. into waffle iron (your size may vary), cook until the chocolate smell just disappears and remove before it starts to smell scorched.

Dust lightly with sifted powdered sugar and serve.

Naked waffles can be frozen and warmed in a toaster. Powdered sugar really isn't necessary, but...

[Hotler]

39. Cucumber & yogurt salads.

Lebanese style (Leben)
2-3 cucumbers peeled, seeded and cut/sliced up.
2 C plain yogurt
10-12 fresh mint leaves chopped up
2-3 cloves of garlic minced or crushed
salt to taste
If you have mortar/pestle grind the mint and garlic together.

Greek style (Tzatziki)
2-3 cucumbers unpeeled, seeded and grated, squeeze the water out or drain.
2 C plain yogurt
2-3 cloves garlic crushed
1/2 C olive oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon
salt to taste

[Demeter]

48. I've made tzatziki differently

cucumber, sour cream, lemon juice. Used it on gyros....

[Demeter]

77. Forgot to add ground black pepper!

[Fuddnik]

43. Kick and Rec!

[DemReadingDU]

44. Michael Hudson: Europe's New Road to Serfdom

6/3/11 Europe's New Road to Serfdom
Michael Hudson
.
.
At issue is whether Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and the rest of Europe will roll back democratic reform and move toward financial oligarchy. The financial objective is to bypass parliament by demanding a “consensus” to put foreign creditors first, above the economy at large. Parliaments are being asked to relinquish their policy-making power. The very definition of a “free market” has now become centralized planning – in the hands of central bankers. This is the new road to serfdom that financialized “free markets” are leading to: markets free for privatizers to charge monopoly prices for basic services “free” of price regulation and anti-trust regulation, “free” of limits on credit to protect debtors, and above all free of interference from elected parliaments. Prising natural monopolies in transportation, communications, lotteries and the land itself away from the public domain is called the alternative to serfdom, not the road to debt peonage and a financialized neofeudalism that looms as the new future reality. Such is the upside-down economic philosophy of our age.

Concentration of financial power in non-democratic hands is inherent in the way that Europe’s centralized planning in financial hands was achieved in the first place. The European Central Bank has no elected government behind it that can levy taxes. The EU constitution prevents the ECB from bailing out governments. Indeed, the IMF Articles of Agreement also block it from giving domestic fiscal support for budget deficits. “A member state may obtain IMF credits only on the condition that it has ‘a need to make the purchase because of its balance of payments or its reserve position or developments in its reserves.’ Greece, Ireland, and Portugal are certainly not short of foreign exchange reserves … The IMF is lending because of budgetary problems, and that is not what it is supposed to do. The Deutsche Bundesbank made this point very clear in its monthly report of March 2010: ‘Any financial contribution by the IMF to solve problems that do not imply a need for foreign currency – such as the direct financing of budget deficits – would be incompatible with its monetary mandate.’ IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn and chief economist Olivier Blanchard are leading the IMF into forbidden territory, and there is no court which can stop them.” (Roland Vaubel, “Europe’s Bailout Politics,” The International Economy, Spring 2011, p. 40.)

The moral is that when it comes to bailing out bankers, rules are ignored – in order to serve the “higher justice” of saving banks and their high-finance counterparties from taking a loss. This is quite a contrast compared to IMF policy toward labor and “taxpayers.” The class war is back in business – with a vengeance, and bankers are the winners this time around.
.
.

lots more...
http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson06032011.html

[DemReadingDU]

45. More Americans Think Economy Will Never Recover

6/3/11 More Americans Think Economy Will Never Recover

The mixed signals regarding the economy's health are taking a toll. Americans are growing increasingly doubtful about direction of the US economy, according to the latest survey from business-advisory firm AlixPartners.

In fact, an increasing number, some 61 percent, say they don't expect to return to their respective pre-recession lifestyles until the spring of 2014, if ever. What's worse, a full 10 percent said they expect they will never return to pre-recession spending.

That's a more pessimistic view than last year, when those surveyed expected that they could be back to pre-recession spending levels by the middle of 2013.

"Americans continue to push their expectations for return to a pre-recession 'normal' further and further into the future-close enough for comfort, but far enough away to seem realistic," said Fred Crawford, CEO of AlixPartners. "But as that happens, more and more it seems normal is actually where we are right now."

The latest employment report, which showed that U.S. employers hired far few workers than expected in May, only serves to reinforce these attitudes.

more...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/More-Americans-Think-Economy-cnbc-3492482385.html?

[Demeter]

49. As long as these lickspitttle Politicans are in charge, it won't

[DemReadingDU]

46. First Financial Bank buying 16 Liberty Bank branches, including 12 in Dayton

6/3/11 First Financial Bank buying 16 Liberty Bank branches, including 12 in Dayton

First Financial Bank is paying $22.2 million to acquire all 16 retail banking branches of Liberty Savings Bank FSB in Ohio, dramatically expanding First Financial’s presence in the Dayton market and adding to its portfolio of revenue-generating loans.

First Financial Bancorp, which owns First Financial Bank, said Friday that the deal includes purchase of $143.3 million of Liberty Savings Bank’s Ohio loans that are generating revenue from commercial and residential customers, including mortgages, home equity loans and real estate loans. That leaves Liberty Savings with $51 million of non-performing loans, including past-due accounts, and $29 million of repossessed houses and cars, said Bryce Rowe, a banking analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co.

Liberty is stuck with bad loans across its four-state operation and needed the $22.2 million cash infusion to strengthen its balance sheet, Rowe said. The privately held Wilmington-based company, founded in Highland County, Ohio in 1889, will have no Ohio retail banking offices after the transaction closes, but will retain back-office operations in Dayton and Wilmington to support its 18 remaining retail banking offices in Florida, South Carolina and Colorado.

The transaction allows First Financial to strengthen its presence in the Cincinnati-Dayton market more quickly than it could have done otherwise, said Claude Davis, president and chief executive officer. The company, founded in Hamilton in 1863, also has operations in northwest Ohio, northern Kentucky and in Indiana, including Indianapolis, Columbus, Ind., and suburbs near Chicago. First Financial chose to buy only Liberty’s Ohio offices to focus on Ohio as a core market, Davis said.

more...
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/first-financial-bank-buying-16-liberty-bank-branches-including-12-in-dayton-1176190.html

[burf]

47. The Friday bank closings have started

On Friday, June 3, 2011, Atlantic Bank and Trust, Charleston, SC was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named Receiver

[Demeter]

50. So They Have

Atlantic Bank and Trust, Charleston, South Carolina, 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 First Citizens Bank and Trust Company, Inc., Columbia, South Carolina, to assume all of the deposits of Atlantic Bank and Trust.

The three branches of Atlantic Bank and Trust will reopen on Monday as branches of First Citizens Bank and Trust Company, Inc...As of March 31, 2011, Atlantic Bank and Trust had approximately $208.2 million in total assets and $191.6 million in total deposits. First Citizens Bank and Trust Company, Inc. will pay the FDIC a premium of 0.75 percent to assume all of the deposits of Atlantic Bank and Trust. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, First Citizens Bank and Trust Company, Inc. agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

The FDIC and First Citizens Bank and Trust Company, Inc. entered into a loss-share transaction on $141.8 million of Atlantic Bank and Trust's assets...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $36.4 million. Compared to other alternatives, First Citizens Bank and Trust Company, Inc.'s acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Atlantic Bank and Trust is the 45th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the second in South Carolina. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was CommunitySouth Bank and Trust, Easley, on January 21, 2011.

[bread_and_roses]

51. Wonderful theme! Apt AND entertaining!

For now, I'll just post a soup suitable for poverty recipe, but can't wait to read all the posts/links, and - I hope (goddess and the g'dtr willing) to post some other stuff myself. (I, too, have an affinity for food and growing things...)

A true potato lover like myself, on whatever income, would like this, but is also cheap, comforting, and filling.

Very Plain Potato Soup (I made this up myself, and make it only for myself, so measurements are approx - I do it by eye and instinct)

For 2 servings

1/4 - 1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 stalk celery, stringed and sliced transparently thin
2 T. butter (if you have it - see note)
2 largish IDAHO potatoes cubed (I love the cheaper eastern whites too, but they don't disintegrate as well, which is essential to the soup)
chopped fresh parsley to taste (important for the vitamins but obviously not essential)
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onion and celerty in the butter till limp - do NOT scorch
add cubed potato
add about three cups of water
dash of salt
bring to boil and then lower to slow simmer
simmer until potatoes start to disintegrate and broth looks cloudy - break up the cubes coarsely with a fork and let simmer a bit more
add parsley
serve very hot; add more salt, pepper to taste

(if you have no butter, simmer the onion and celery in water just to cover until soft - don't use oil, it doesn't taste good in this)

Of course, one can play with this - add some frozen corn or peas at the end if you like them, or crumbled bacon if you have it, or or or. I like it just as it is, very hot, all by myself, on a cold winter night, with cornbread - or better yet, biscuits - on the side.

My enjoyment of this soup is no doubt a lingering genetic marker - there's actually a website called "Potato Soup Recipe" and it tells me:

http://www.potatosouprecipe.com/

One particular recipe is potato soup. Originally, potato soup consisted of only water and potatoes boiled over an open fire. Considered a poor man's meal long ago, this soup recipe no longer resembles its primitive ancestor.

I simply disagree that the plain soup - as I prepare it - is "tasteless." It tastes like potato.

Now, if one is flush and wants cream of potato soup (which I also love) consult any good cookbook - but keep a few things in mind: don't try to skimp on the fats; use whole milk, or if you must, I suppose, 2% but then at least add some 1/2 & 1/2 at the end - it'll look a lot better and taste better too. Never thicken with flour or cornstarch: remove about half the cubed potatoes and mash till creamy, then add the soup slowly to the mashed potatoes, stirring well the whole time till incorporated. They will settle to the bottom and you'll have to stir for every serving, no help for it, but it will taste much better and have a better texture on the tongue as well as a better appearance.

And yes, I am quite fanatic about my potatoes, and how to cook them. I consider them a highly under-rated food.

An "R" as soon as I post this

edit for typo on the onion

[Viva_La_Revolution]

125. Too much tater soup growing up poor

but you made me want to try it again. :9

[Demeter]

52. Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves By Robert Scheer

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/geithner_and_goldman_thick_as_thieves_20110531/

What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, my bad: It wasn’t an interest-free loan; make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages were being slapped with interest rates of more than 25 percent....One wonders if Barack Obama was fully aware of Geithner’s deceitful performance at the New York Fed when he appointed him treasury secretary in the incoming administration. The president was probably ignorant of this particular giveaway, as were key members of Congress. “I wasn’t aware of this program until now,” Barney Frank, D-Mass., who at the time chaired the House Financial Services Committee, admitted in referring to Geithner’s “single-tranche open-market operations” program. And there was no language in the Dodd-Frank law supposedly reining in the banks that compelled the Fed to reveal the existence of this program.

It was merely one small part of that reckless policy of throwing mad money at the banks while ignoring the plight of homeowners whom the banks had swindled, a plan pursued by both the Bush and the Obama administrations that set the stage for the current slide into a double-dip recession. On Tuesday it was reported that home values have continued an eight-month decline back to their lowest point since the recession began. With housing in deep trouble there can be no rebound of consumer confidence or job creation, and the first-quarter growth rate was an anemic 1.8 percent even as Wall Street profits and bonuses flourished. Wages are stagnant, unemployment claims have recently risen and, as The Wall Street Journal headlined on Tuesday, “Economists Downgrade Prospects for Growth.” That same edition of the Journal reported that 44.6 million Americans now survive on food stamps, an 11 percent increase in that misery index over the past year, while Geithner’s friends at Goldman are doing quite well.

Actually, Goldman wasn’t even a bank and was therefore ineligible for those massive government handouts until Geithner helped gain approval for the instant conversion of Goldman from an investment house to a commercial bank. Goldman was granted that status, and with it access to the Fed’s lending, soon after the privilege had been denied to the fellow investment bank Lehman Brothers (the $30 billion mentioned above was in addition to the $43.5 billion Goldman borrowed from other Fed programs). Although Lehman was allowed to go belly up, Geithner engineered the massive bailout of AIG, a move that turned out to be a cover for passing money to AIG’s clients, including the aforementioned Goldman Sachs. The man’s intentions were clear, even if all the secret details were not, when Obama picked him to be his point man in salvaging an economy that Geithner had done much to wreck...Geithner’s priorities were all too obvious from his days in the Clinton administration’s Treasury Department when he worked first under former Goldman honcho Robert Rubin and then Lawrence Summers, who took six-figure speaking fees from Goldman and other banks while he was an adviser to candidate Obama. It was the recommendation of Rubin and Summers that landed Geithner the job as president of the New York Fed, where he faithfully followed the policy lead of Goldman-CEO-turned-Treasury-Secretary Henry Paulson.

...the company was nothing short of a massive wrecking ball in the international economy. Oh yes, what did Goldman do with that taxpayer money it borrowed back in 2008? It needed the money to cover the lousy bets of its Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities trading unit, which had lost $320 million. Typical of the Goldman dealings in that arena was the $1.3 billion solicited from Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya sovereign wealth fund, which according to a report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal lost 98 percent of its value and almost cost some Goldman executives doing business in Tripoli their lives. But they survived, as the guys from Goldman always do. With the general “no banker left behind” program pursued by Geithner under both George W. Bush and Obama, the theory was that saving the banks would save the country. The first part worked out brilliantly, but the second act never occurred.

[Demeter]

53. The (UGLY) Truth About The Middle Class

http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2011/06/the-truth-about-the-middle-class.html

The central tenet of this blog is that America is an Empire in decline. I date the beginning of the fall to the early 1980's. Despite an enormous amount of economic data supporting this view, and the existence in plain sight of "intangibles" or other conditions supporting this view—dysfunctional political theater, crumbling infrastructure, gambling as economic activity, news as entertainment, music as corporate marketing, the cult of personality & celebrity, Hollywood superhero FX movies geared to adolescents in world where adults are stuck in adolescence, cage-fighting on TV, anything on TV, astonishing ignorance about the world and the abject failure of our public education—most Americans refuse to acknowledge the gradual decline in our standards & quality of life.

This is not surprising. One must study the data or actually remember the way things used to be to sense the change. If you went to college when getting a degree was affordable, and didn't require you to take on a boatload of debt, and now have kids of your own for whom college is a risky proposition, it is easy to see the problem. As I've written before, people adapt to gradually deteriorating conditions in such a way that what is "normal" now is worse than what was "normal" last year. This goes on year after year. Few notice the race to the bottom.

Robert Reich, who served as Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration, is one of the few observers who understands, at least as far as working Americans are concerned, that things have gradually gotten worse over time. His recent post The Truth About The American Economy outlines some of the big picture view of our decline....

http://robertreich.org/post/5993482080

Think for a moment. What's missing in Reich's explanation? Why was the government so mean-spirited? Why would the government sacrifice the Middle Class at the altar of the rich? And of course the answer is political corruption, which resulted in the financialization of the American economy. Corruption is built right into the long, expensive election process (campaign contributons, aka bribes) and the law-making process (armies of lobbyists writing legislation in the Congress). During Ben Bernanke's "Great Moderation" (1984-2007), the economy got bigger and bigger with only two brief interruptions. And almost all of that newly created wealth went to the wealthiest 10% of Americans. For workers in the middle and bottom, the share of the pie shrank and shrank. Though never explicitly stated for reasons that are all too obvious, government policy during the "squeeze" aided and abetted the takeover of America by wealthy corporate interests. And it worked. And it is still working.

[Demeter]

54. Americans still avoiding doctors, insurers say

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/02/us-healthinsurers-idUSTRE7515XP20110602

Americans' use of medical services has not yet rebounded during the weak economy, health insurers say, in a trend that keeps the companies' costs down and could bolster their profits further this year.

Low healthcare utilization was a major reason behind the health insurers posting first-quarter profits well above analyst forecasts earlier this year.

The companies have been factoring increases into their pricing for their plans, but executives at an investor conference this week said utilization continued to stay low...

Hemsley, whose company is the largest U.S. health insurer by market value, said UnitedHealth continued to believe that medical cost trends will return "to more normal levels...But to date whether it's driven by economic trends or whatever, the medical costs continue to trend to be more moderate," Hemsley said. "The utilization is still relatively softer than we would have expected, no one knows when and if it is going to come back," McCallister said. "We're basically assuming that it's coming back because we're not going to miss that uptick."

[Demeter]

55. Federal Workers, Feeling Threatened, Unionize

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/02/federal-workers-unionize_n_870412.html

Conventional wisdom says American unions are wheezing. But at the largest union representing federal workers, there has been nothing but steady growth during recent years and months.

From 2007 through 2010, the American Federation of Government Employees saw its number of active, dues-paying members swell from 216,000 to more than 268,000, according to figures provided by the union. What's more, officials there say they've witnessed a significant spike in workers' interest in unionizing over the last few months as the salaries and benefits of public-sector employees have come under heavy fire from the right.

AFGE president John Gage says the union added 1,300 dues-paying members in April alone and has typically been seeing gains of about 600 per month recently. The AFGE doesn't have the full collective-bargaining rights of most private-sector unions -- federal workers cannot strike or bargain directly over pay -- but in its limited capacity the union represents workers throughout the federal sector.

Many of the union members added in April, Gage points out, came from the Department of Defense, a workforce whose conservative leanings traditionally don't jibe with the more liberal politics of labor unions.

[Demeter]

56. Humpty Obumpty and the Arab Spring TODAY'S MUST READ

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MF01Ak01.html

I've been warning for months that Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab oil-importing countries face a total economic meltdown (see Food and failed Arab states, Feb 2, and The hunger to come in Egypt, May 10). Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed my warnings...The leaders of the industrial nations waited until last weekend's Group of Eight (G-8) summit to respond, and at the initiative of United States President Barack Obama proposed what sounds like a massive aid program but probably consists mainly of refurbishing old programs. The egg has splattered, and all of Obumpty's horses and men can't mend it. Even the G-8's announcement was fumbled; Canada's Prime Minister Steven Harper refused to commit new money, a dissonant note that routine diplomatic preparation would have pre-empted.

The numbers thrown out by the IMF are stupefying. "In the current baseline scenario," wrote the IMF on May 27, "the external financing needs of the region's oil importers is projected to exceed $160 billion during 2011-13." That's almost three years' worth of Egypt's total annual imports as of 2010. As of 2010, the combined current account deficit (that is, external financing needs) of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia was about $15 billion a year.

What the IMF says, in effect, is that the oil-poor Arab economies - especially Egypt - are not only broke, but dysfunctional, incapable of earning more than a small fraction of their import bill. The disappearance of tourism is an important part of the problem, but shortages of fuel and other essentials have had cascading effects throughout these economies. "In the next 18 months," the IMF added, "a greater part of these financing needs will need to be met from the international community because of more cautious market sentiments during the uncertain transition."

Translation: private investors aren't stupid enough to throw money down a Middle Eastern rat-hole, and now that the revolutionary government has decided to make a horrible example of deposed president Hosni Mubarak, anyone who made any money under his regime is cutting and running. At its May 29 auction of treasury bills, Egypt paid about 12% for short-term money, to its own captive banking system. Its budget deficit in the next fiscal year, the government says, will exceed $30 billion....And the IMF's $160 billion number is only "external financing"; that is, maintaining imports into a busted economy. It doesn't do a thing to repair busted economies that import half their caloric intake, as do the oil-poor Arab nations...

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

57. Goldman Subpoenaed Over Levin Committee Hearing Findings

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/goldman-subpoenaed-over-levin-committee-hearing-findings.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

On the one hand, this is just a subpoena of Goldman from the Manhattan DA’s office, but on the other, after all the crisis investigations, we finally have a prosecutor somewhere deciding to take some abuses during the crisis seriously enough to see if they add up to a legal case. (Yes, the SEC did file a suit against Goldman on one synthetic CDO, one transaction out of 25 in its Abacus program, which Goldman settled for $550 million, but this was litigation on one deal, not on broader patterns of misconduct).

And it came not out of the splashy but designed not to accomplish much FCIC, but the quieter and more tenacious Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. I hardly ever do media briefings, but I was on the blogger call for both reports, and the contrast was night and day. The FCIC briefing was softball PR, with Phil Angelides and Brooksley Born (who by definition had not done the work and therefore were not big on detail) leading the call. The Senate call was led by staffers who demonstrated impressive command of the products and industry economics and transmitted information at a very high bit rate.

Not surprisingly, the information request comes from a local prosecutor. The DoJ continues to be missing in action...

[Demeter]

58. Even BP-Funded Scientists Find that the Use of Corexit Dispersant in the Gulf Made Things Worse

… but BP Still Tries to Blame Others for Destruction

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/guest-post-even-bp-funded-scientists-find-that-the-use-of-corexit-dispersant-in-the-gulf-made-things-worse-but-bp-still-tries-to-blame-others-for-destruction.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

[Demeter]

59. Congressional Research Service Confirms Big Banks Borrowed Cash For Next To Nothing,

Then Lent It Back to the Federal Government at Much Higher Rates

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/guest-post-congressional-research-service-confirms-big-banks-borrowed-cash-for-next-to-nothing-then-lent-it-back-to-the-federal-government-at-much-higher-rates.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29


As I’ve noted for years, the government has been guaranteeing that the big banks make money at taxpayer expense by loaning money at very low interest rates, and then letting the banks loan the money back to the government at much higher interest rates...Indeed, the big banks are still insolvent. Moody’s – a mere 3 years too late – just put Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo on a downgrade watch. And see this.

The country has been plundered to throw money at the big banks to allow their CEOs to rake in bonuses by playing an extend-and-pretend game (pretending they are solvent). This has driven us from the “wealth of nations” to the “debt of nations”.

[Demeter]

60. 10 Year Real Wage Gains Lower Than During Depression

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/10-year-real-wage-gains-lower-than-during-depression.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

The New York Times yesterday made the an observation that seems to be lost on Team Obama, that high unemployment levels and second Presidential terms do not go together. We’ve predicted that the Osama bin Laden bounce won’t last long. Bush I, after all, had 91% approval ratings right after the invasion of Iraq and he still lost the reelection thanks to the state of the economy.

Another factor weighing on the collective psyche, and thus voter attitudes, is the inability of most people to get ahead in real economic terms. Reader Francois T pointed out an article in Investors Business Daily that highlighted that real wage gains in the last ten years are even worse than during the Great Depression:



...There is a curious failure to mention why wage gains were higher in the Depression despite even higher unemployment. Funny how it does not occur them to mentions unions as helping give workers some bargaining power...

[Demeter]

67. NYT: Employment Data May Be the Key to the President’s Job

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/business/economy/02jobs.html?hp

No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.
(AND OBAMA IS NO FDR!--DEMETER)

Seventeen months before the next election, it is increasingly clear that President Obama must defy that trend to keep his job. Roughly 9 percent of Americans who want to go to work cannot find an employer. Companies are firing fewer people, but hiring remains anemic. And the vast majority of economic forecasters, including the president’s own advisers, predict only modest progress by November 2012. The latest job numbers, due Friday (AND THEY SUCKED, BIG TIME--DEMETER), are expected to provide new cause for concern. Other indicators suggest the pace of growth is flagging. Weak manufacturing data, a gloomy reading on jobs in advance of Friday’s report and a drop in auto sales led the markets to their worst close since August, and those declines carried over into Asia Thursday.

But the grim reality of widespread unemployment is drawing little response from Washington. The Federal Reserve says it is all but tapped out. There is even less reason to expect Congressional action. Both Democrats and Republicans see clear steps to create jobs, but they are trying to walk in opposite directions and are making little progress.

Republicans have set the terms of debate by pressing for large cuts in federal spending, which they say will encourage private investment. Democrats have found themselves battling to minimize and postpone such cuts, which they fear will cause new job losses...House Republicans told the president that they would not support new spending to spur growth during a meeting at the White House on Wednesday. “The discussion really focused on the philosophical difference on whether Washington should continue to pump money into the economy or should we provide an incentive for entrepreneurs and small businesses to grow,” said Eric Cantor, the majority leader. “The president talked about a need for us to continue to quote-unquote invest from Washington’s standpoint, and for a lot of us that’s code for more Washington spending, something that we can’t afford right now.”

NEVER MIND THAT SPENDING IS WHAT WILL MAKE ENTREPRENEURS AND BUSINESSES GROW...YOU CAN LEAD A GOP TO REALITY, BUT HIS TEFLON-COATED MIND WILL REPEL HIM EVERY TIME.

[Demeter]

68. The Dismal Political Economist Interviews John Maynard Keynes

http://dismalpoliticaleconomist.blogspot.com/2011/05/dismal-political-economist-interviews.html

Editor’s Note: This interview was difficult to obtain because Mr. Keynes is a very private person who does not like to speak on the record about his work or current economic events. Also, he has been dead for over 60 years...

Because of the severe nature of the current economic crisis and its implication for the entire globe going forward, The Dismal Political Economist felt that the most helpful thing he could do would be to obtain the views of John Maynard Keynes on the subject. Mr. Keynes is probably the most important economist of the past 100 years.

This interview is presented as a public service.

17. Welcome Mr. Keynes, to start off how would you characterize the difference between the Great Recession of 2008 and the Great Depression?


Mr. Keynes: Well the Great Depression was caused by an asset bubble in the stock market and the collapse of the financial services and banking sectors brought on by mismanagement and lack of sufficient regulation. The Great Recession of 2008 was caused by an asset bubble in real estate and real estate financing and the collapse of the financial services and banking sectors brought on by mismanagement and lack of sufficient regulation.

17. Your home country, England, has adopted a policy of recovery from the economic slump by raising taxes and cutting government spending. Is this the right thing to do.


Mr. Keynes: Well yes, if you want to continue to economic conditions of low growth and high unemployment. I assume Conservatives have taken over the Government.

17. Well yes, but they say this will restore business confidence and they say that will lead to investment, hiring and economic growth.


Mr. Keynes: Increases in Aggregate Demand lead to higher economic growth. Didn’t they read the book? Business doesn’t invest and hire because they feel good, they invest and hire because they think someone will buy what they are making and selling.

17. By book I assume you mean The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Is that material still relevant.


Mr. Keynes: Yes, you people do still read don’t you? For example, it warns against a liquidity trap where monetary policy essentially becomes useless as an expansion tool. I don’t suppose you avoided that, did you.

17. Well no, we didn’t. In fact some economists and policy makers are trapped as we speak. How do we get out of the Liquidity Trap?


Mr. Keynes: You use fiscal policy to increase Aggregate Demand. Increasing government spending is the best way to do this, since you can target specific areas, specific industries and specific pockets of unemployment. Once you get the economy jump started, investment and growth will start to take the economy to full employment. Just make sure you do it long enough and strong enough.

17. Well Conservatives in the U. S. Congress want to cut government spending and decrease taxes on the very wealthy. Will that work.


Mr. Keynes: Well, not on this planet, maybe in some other solar system. How exactly does firing government employees and firing employees in the private sector who provide service and goods to government return an economy to full employment? And you need tax cuts directed at people who need the money and who will spend it on consumer goods to stimulate, you know, that Aggregate Demand thing again.

Why would you let people like that into government?

17. Well, they were voted in because voters disliked Democratic plans to provide universal health care for everyone at an affordable price.


Mr. Keynes:

Why would you let people like that vote?

17. Greece’s economy collapsed and it has had to be bailed out with loans from the IMF and ECB. They have also imposed austerity on Greece. Is this the right policy?


Mr. Keynes: Didn’t they read the book? Sounds like they are trying to create a post World War I Germany in Greece. I assume the Greek economy is continuing to decline.

17. By book I assume you mean The Economic Consequences of the Peace


Mr. Keynes: Yes, so I assume they didn’t and things are not going all that well.

17. Well, the Greek economy is experiencing recession, high unemployment civil unrest, an intense dislike of its own government and other ones and a lot of misery. Is that what you would have expected?


Mr. Keynes: How could anyone expected anything else?

17. What would be your final comment to those economic policy advisors and creators in 2011?


Mr. Keynes: Haven’t you people learned anything in 75 years?

[Demeter]

61. Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/bribes-work-peterson-institute-donations-turning-nominally-liberal-foundations-to-the-right.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

...And so it is that the arch-enemy of Social Security, Pete Peterson, rented out the good name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the reputation of the Center for American Progress, and EPI. All three groups submitted budget proposals to close the deficit and had their teams share the stage with Republican con artist du jour Paul Ryan. The goal of Peterson’s conference was to legitimize the fiscal crisis narrative, and to make sure that “all sides” were represented.

Now this tidy fact is not obvious if you check the Peterson Foundation publicity for its “Fiscal Summit:”

On Wednesday, May 25, 2011, senior Administration officials, policy experts and Democratic and Republican elected leaders will come together in Washington to discuss solutions to the nation’s fiscal challenges at the 2011 Fiscal Summit: Solutions for America’s Future, convened by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation…..The American Enterprise Institute, Bipartisan Policy Center, Center for American Progress, Economic Policy Institute, Heritage Foundation and Roosevelt Institute Campus Network will present and discuss their own proposed packages of solutions for achieving long-term fiscal sustainability at the Summit. These leading policy organizations, representing diverse perspectives, received grants from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to develop comprehensive plans to address the nation’s projected long-term debt and deficits.

Why, after spending considerable resources, such as a website called New Deal 2.0, with virtually daily posts by Roosevelt fellows debunking deficit terrorism, and more formal work, such as a well-researched and argued paper by Tom Ferguson and Rob Johnson debunking deficit cutting in general and assaults on entitlements in particular, has the Roosevelt Institute cast its lot with a sworn enemy? Make no mistake, not only did the Institute undermine its raison d’etre by attaching its name to the Peterson anti-entitlements campaign, but as we’ll discuss later, the end product, as would be expected, bolstered particular initiatives that are contrary to FDR’s legacy, the Institute’s more general “progressive” objectives, and sound economics...The Roosevelt Institute is far from the only example of left-wing institutions having their missions undermined and eventually controlled by conservative patrons. We’ve complained before about the cluelessness of left-leaning organizations in the US. One of the big reasons that what is now the center of the political spectrum here is extreme right pretty much everywhere else is that there has been an orchestrated, forty-year campaign to make American values consistent with the needs and interests of large corporations...

[Demeter]

62. Hail Caesar By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28228.htm

Although the financial press speculates about a downgrade of the US government’s credit rating and default if political impasse prevents the debt ceiling from being raised in time, I doubt anyone really believes that the debt ceiling will not be raised...However, regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the US government is not going to go out of business. Why does anyone think that the President, who does not obey the War Powers Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, US and international laws against torture, or any of the laws and procedures that guard civil liberty, is going to feel compelled to obey the debt ceiling?...If the President can declare on his own authority, without statutory basis and in defiance of the US Constitution, that he can assassinate US citizens who he considers to be a threat to national security, he certainly can declare that default is a threat to national security and that it is within his powers as commander-in-chief to ignore the debt ceiling. Indeed, the executive branch would jump at the chance. Then it could reshape the budget to its own pleasing without having to consult Congress on spending any more than the executive branch consults Congress on war...


As long as the US is at war, the American President is a Caesar. He is above the law. The US Justice (sic) Department has ruled this, and Congress and the Courts have accepted it.

Moreover, the Federal Reserve is independent of the government. In its approach to regulatory matters and bailouts, the Fed has ceased to follow its own rules. Regardless of the debt ceiling, the Fed will continue to purchase the Treasury’s bond issues, and the Treasury will continue to fund the federal deficit with the proceeds. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, certainly the US government is.

As Congress has abandoned its powers over war, how can Congress hold on to its powers over spending? It cannot. Indeed, an impasse between the political parties over the debt ceiling would be welcomed by the executive branch as more proof that Congress is incapable of doing its part in governing and, therefore, the task has of necessity passed to the executive branch, which already does most of it...The Bush/Cheney regime brought democracy and accountable government to an end. If Obama doesn’t finish the process, the next in line will.

[Demeter]

63. Policymakers have made another Depression Unavoidable By Mike Whitney

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28244.htm

...Remember, the economy is not a sentient being. It does not consider whether a policy is good or bad. Like any system it merely responds to input. If spending increases, incomes will increase, demand will increase, employment will increase and the economy will grow.

Conversely, contractionary policies are contractionary. This is something the deficit hawks don't seem to grasp. If you slash government spending, lay off workers, and trim the deficits, then spending will slow, incomes will shrivel, GDP will wither, and the economy will slip back into recession. In other words, if you take steps to shrink the economy, then the economy will shrink. This is why the economy has lost momentum, because congress and the White House have cut the blood flow of stimulus to the patient, so now we are headed back into ICU...The Republican mantra, "job killing stimulus" is an oxymoron like "military intelligence" or "jumbo shrimp". It is idiocy squared. The economy needs stimulus because stimulus IS spending...government spending. And, as we noted earlier, the economy does not care "who spends"; it merely responds to input. And the input that's needed now is more spending. Government spending will do just fine.

Consumers are still deleveraging from the losses they sustained during the financial crisis, so they've cut back on their borrowing and spending. This creates a problem, because consumer spending represents 70% of GDP. So if consumers don't load up on debt again, there will be no recovery. (Every recovery since WW2 has been the result of a credit expansion.) This is why Fed chairman Bernanke has tried to induce more borrowing by lowering rates to zero and buying US Treasuries from the banks (which, in effect, creates negative interest rates) But it hasn't worked. Negative rates have not sparked another credit expansion because there are times when people will not borrow regardless of the rates or the inducements. John Maynard Keynes figured this out more than 80 years ago, but Bernanke has "unlearned" the lessons of the past. As a result, we are headed for another slump.

Consumers aren't spending, businesses aren't investing, and credit is not expanding. At the same time, state and federal governments are trimming budgets and laying off workers. So, all the main players are cutting, cutting, cutting. Naturally, the economy has responded in kind; housing prices are falling, unemployment is rising, manufacturing is stalling and consumer confidence is dropping...There's nothing here that should surprise us. We are headed into a Depression because policymakers have made another Depression unavoidable. A policy-driven Depression is different than a financial crisis. It is a matter of choice. It means that the objectives of the people who control the system are different than our own. There are those who will benefit from another severe downturn, but most of us will only needlessly suffer.

[Jefferson23]

64. Demeter, I thought I would leave you 19 silly cakes..great thread btw.

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Food-Recipes/19-Spectacular-Silly-Cakes.html

[Demeter]

66. Thank you!

[Demeter]

65. “We Are on the Verge of a Great, Great Depression”

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/guest-post-yastrow-%E2%80%9Cwe-are-on-the-verge-of-a-great-great-depression%E2%80%9D.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

[AnneD]

99. Thisis the perfect spot for this....

Let me introduce you to my fav you tube grandmother/cook.

Clara's Kitchen

http://www.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=3OPQqH3YlHA

[AnneD]

100. Sorry guys.....

Trouble with my cut and paste. Go to you tube and look at the poor mans dinner video. Classic Clara. Again sorry. Great thread Demeter.

[AnneD]

101. And a double post to boot..

I'll just stick to reading for now.Where is that cross dressing Fudd?

[Demeter]

69. Is the IMF an New Form of Colonialism ? - Joseph Stiglitz says "Yes"

http://www.politicalworld.org/showthread.php?t=8152



Stiglitz, in "Globalism and its Discontents",..says "The IMF is not particularly interested in hearing the thoughts of its "Client countries" on such topics as development strategy or fiscal austerity. All too often, the Fund's approach to developing countries has the feel of a colonial ruler. A picture can be worth a thousand words, and a single picture snapped in 1998, shown throughout the world, has engraved itself in the minds of millions, particularly in those former colonies.



The IMF's managing director, Michel Camdessus (the head of the IMF is referred to as its "Managing Director"), a short, neatly dressed former French Treasury bureaucrat, who once claimed to be a Socialist, is standing with a stern face and crossed arms over the seated and humiliated president of Indonesia. The hapless president was being forced, in effect, to turn over economic sovereignty of his country to the IMF in return for the aid his country needed. In the end, ironically, much of the money went not to help Indonesia but to bail out the "colonial powers" private sector creditors. (Officially, the "ceremony" was the signing of a letter of agreement, an agreement effectively dictated by the IMF, though it often still keeps up the pretense that the letter of intent comes from the country's government).

Defenders of Camdessus claim the photograph was unfair, that he did not realize that it was being taken and that it was viewed out of context. But that it the point - in day to day interactions, away from cameras and reporters, this is precisely the stance that the IMF bureaucrats take, from the leader of the organisation down. To those in developing countries, the picture raised a very disturbing question: had things really changed since the "official" ending of colonialism a half century ago ? When I saw the picture, images of other signings of "agreements" came to mind. I wondered how similar this scene was to those marking the "opening up of Japan" with Admiral Perry's gunboat diplomacy or the end of the Opium Wars or the surrender of the maharajas in India."

Stiglitz, with insider knowledge, says that the IMF has consistently indulged in "mission creep" and moved from macroeconomics into privatisation, labour markets, pensions, and so on and into development strategies. The outcome for IMF'd countries is generally favourable to international corporations and private creditors, and devastating contraction of incomes and of indigenous production for the recipients.

[burf]

79. I first saw that picture in a film

about the IMF. Quite a racket those fellows have there.

The film showed the economic collapse in Argentina, Indonesia, and South Korea. with the ensuing "austerity measures", and the riots those measures caused. One segment showed the armored cars taking running through town just prior to the crash in Argentina. The big wigs were getting their ass(et)s out of town before the proles could get theirs.

I wonder sometimes what it will look like when the fall finally occurs in this country. My guess is it will not be pretty.

Sorry, but I do not have a title or link to the said film. I guess old age is advancing faster than I realize.

[DemReadingDU]

83. sounds like the book Shock Doctrine

but I don't think it has been made into a movie

[Fuddnik]

89. Anybody seen the Wikileaks threads floating around about Haiti?

Disgusting. Makes me ashamed to be an American.

More change we can make believe in.

[bread_and_roses]

90. Yeah. And then, there's Honduras. Not to mention Columbia...

and South Korea .... and yet, we still have people here proclaiming that Obama is "the bestest Prez ever..."

I heard - I think it was on a Democracy Now interview - someone saying that this WH is the most insulated ever... have to go look it up.

[burf]

96. That was the Seymour Hersch

interview.

And I’ll tell you the biggest problem he has, as awful as those things are, as counterproductive, and as much as he’s following, oh, yes, Bush and Cheney in those policies—and I think the President—I’ll be writing about this—I think he was really sandbagged by the Pentagon after he got into office, when he was new and innocent. And I still think—I think right now—I would almost use the word "cult" to describe what’s going on in the White House. Everything is political. He’s isolated. Very good people say they’ve never seen a president this isolated, in terms of being unable to get to him with different opinions, etc. So here’s really captive of a few people there. I know this may sound strange, but I know what I’m talking about. You can’t get to the guy—and even, for example, Pickering, as competent as he is. And Pickering has done some wonderful stuff for the United States intelligence community undercover, and so he’s known as a trusted guy. Those guys who have been involved in talking to Iran off the record, Track II policy talks, for years can’t get to the President. He may not even know they’re looking for him. I just don’t know.

Interview is at http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/3/seymour_hersh_on_the_arab_spring

[bread_and_roses]

98. thanks, Burf (n/t)

[Demeter]

70. SEE YOU ALL SATURDAY!

Sweet chocolate dreams, everyone!

[hamerfan]

74. Tuna Noodle Casserole recipe

A good one!


Tuna Noodle Casserole


5-6 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 can cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
3 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (note below the cheese needed for topping)
1 cup plain nonfat yogurt (can substitute 1 cup sour cream instead)
2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
½ cup sliced green onions
¼ cup sliced celery
½ teaspoon black pepper
8 ounces pasta, cooked, rinsed and drained
3 cans (6 ounces each) tuna, drained and flaked
4 ounces frozen peas
1 large can sliced olives, drained


For the topping:
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil or spray with Pam a 13x9x2 pan. In a deep 12-inch nonstick skillet, melt the butter over moderately high heat. Add the mushrooms and sauté for 5 minutes or until soft, then remove from heat.
In the skillet, stir in the soup, yogurt, onions, celery, pepper, olives, and peas and toss until well blended. Fold in the tuna, then the cooked pasta. Stir in the cheese until well blended.
Transfer the mixture to the prepared 13x9x2 pan. Top with cheeses.
Bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until bubbly.
Serve with slices of ripe tomatoes.
Makes 4 to 6 main-dish servings.

[Demeter]

75. Banker Derangement Syndrome TWO PARTS

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/banker-derangement-syndrome-i-lawyers-offer-to-get-rid-of-their-profession-to-save-the-tarp-banks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/banker-derangement-syndrome-ii-william-cohan-can-give-no-reason-for-not-appointing-warren-except-some-people-dont-like-her.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

HIGHLIGHTS:

PART 1:

Banker Derangement Syndrome occurs when someone who might once have been sensible is acting as a mindless mouthpiecs of particularly rancid banking industry propaganda. Note that financial services industry employees by definition do not qualify; they are simply engaging in the time-honored industry practice known as “talking your book” when they say something that is patently ridiculous and self serving. No, Banker Derangement Syndrome occurs when an independent party say something so blatantly and embarrassingly wrong in support of the banking industry, whether to curry favor or via having taken an overdose of its Kool Aid, so as to do severe damage to their credibility. In other words, if the questionable behavior could be explained as an over-zealous effort to win points with our new financial overlords, it backfired big time...

This relatively short statement in the WSJournal article is so mind-numbingly awful as to serve as the gold standard for Banker Derangement Syndrome:

Laurence E. Platt, a banking-industry lawyer at K&L Gates in Washington, concedes that banks may have been sloppy. But he says “the real assault on the legal system” are efforts by judges and local officials to strip lenders of their rightful ownership and make foreclosures impossible.

PART TWO:

William Cohan wrote a particularly wretched piece for Bloomberg on why Elizabeth Warren should do everyone a favor and put herself on the next train out of DC. There is a decent case to be made against having Warren head the CFPB, but that’s not what Cohan provided. He instead made a weak argument (if you can even call it that) and got screechy to cover for it. Felix Salmon already kneecapped it on substantive grounds. Cohan perversely says that Warren would not be approved and then ‘fesses up that those nasty Republicans won’t permit anyone to head the CFPB. 44 Republican Senators wrote a letter saying they won’t approve of any nominee from either party unless the CFPB is gutted reformed.

So as much as Cohan huffed and puffed about Warren, this isn’t about Warren at all, it’s about the CFPB and the elephant in the room, how this country is to be run. The Republicans have turned the page back to the Richard Nixon playbook, in which he has Kissinger promoted the view that the president was unstable and therefore needed to be treated with kid gloves. Now of course, the kabuki goes several layers deeper here. Obama has been quite willing to fight for what he wants (he whipped aggressively for the TARP and lobbied personally to assure a rocky-looking Bernanke reappointment went through) but it suits him to uses those wacky Republicans as protective cover for doing what he wants to do anyhow, which is move further to the right so as to ease his 2012 fundraising. And among still-in-denial Democratics, the weird belief is that Obama lacks the will to be tough tactically and do roll calls to break a Republican pro-forma Senate session which is intended to block a recess appointment of Warren, when he never had any intention of giving her the job.

Folks, the only way Warren could have gotten the nod from Team Obama is if she acceded to the banking industry view of what the CFPB should do, which is a smidge of cosmetic change to placate unhappy consumers and nothing more. In fact, some readers have argued that even taking the interim role dignified the effort more than she should have...

[Demeter]

76. Concentration, Manipulation and Margin Calls WHAT REALLY WENT DOWN IN 2008

http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2011/05/concentration-manipulation-and-margin.html

...Four global banks are intermediaries in 85 percent of OTC derivatives transactions. The same banks dominate prime brokerage. The same banks own large equity interests in the now demutualised exchanges, clearinghouses and even warehouses of the global markets. Naturally, the same banks dominated underwriting of securitised assets. The implications have scarcely been grasped of what this portends in terms of the information asymmetries and the opportunity to manipulate markets without risk.

Each of these roles gives these few banks a view into the positions of market investors. They know who owns what, using what leverage, under what terms, and trading in which markets. Knowing that, the manipulation of prices to impoverish investors and enrich the ruling banks is child's play with a bit of ill-transparent HFT through proprietary dealing desks and connected hedge funds aligned with the firms...These banks will protest that there are Chinese walls between their trading desks and the market infrastructure they own. The problem with Chinese walls is that they have chinks in them. (Apologies to PC crowd, but it is an old Wall Street joke I'm quoting.) We have seen from what is now reported about securitisations, that these banks structured products to trade against their clients, often colluding with hedge funds to share the profits. Is it likely that when they balance the public interest in market integrity against next year's bonus they become much more altruistic?

In October 2008 the global financial markets crashed. The story in the media is that it was a panic caused by the insolvency of Lehman Brothers. This is not the truth - or at least not all of it. The crash actually followed a $2 trillion margin call by these four global banks on their prime brokerage clients and OTC counterparties - effectively a 30 per cent increase in required margin. It was the margin call that forced liquidation of global portfolios of all asset classes - and particularly the high quality, most liquid asset classes...Bilateral agreements are not made public, and neither are the margin calls. This is why the $2 trillion dollar margin call did not make the news. Each prime brokerge client and each OTC counterparty dealt with their margin call as a bilateral obligation, despite it being systemically the most important event in the history of financial markets....As the markets crashed, the US Congress was threatened with chaos and martial law if it did not pass the Paulson Plan to grant $700 billion to Wall Street banks without any formal process or review. The Federal Reserve in parallel innovated a series of secret, extra-legal measures to give money to the same banks in exchange for assets which would never be disclosed, publicly valued or audited. The need to raise dollar liquidity globally to meet margin calls in US dollar led to the innovation of central bank dollar swaps - to preferred central banks only, of course...After all the global liquidity had been sucked into the hands of these few global banks, and the dollar surged to strength along with US Treasuries, the game of increasing leverage started all over. The firms sitting on all the margin cash and global liquidity bought up all the quality assets lying about the crashed global markets at deep discount, then they started lending again. They have been reporting huge profits consistently ever since as their clients and counterparties take the assets and exposures in this "recovery" on terms very profitable to those running the markets and liqudity business.

And remember, these few firms see all your positions and know all your clearing balances better than you can. And they chair all the margin committees at all your clearinghouses and exchanges too. And they even own the warehouses where you believe your gold, silver and other hedges against financial chaos are supposed to be stored...We are now nearing the same global levels of leverage as prevailed in summer 2008. The political situations in the US and in Europe are unstable, and China is slowing. There is money to be made in instability.

It isn't the leverage that causes a crisis, but the margin call.


SATURDAY'S MUST READ--HOW THE GAME IS RIGGED AGAINST EVERYONE

[Demeter]

78. How Goldmans cost Gaddafi a $1.3bn fortune

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/how-goldmans-cost-gaddafi-a-13bn-fortune-2291506.html

After losing the cash in just a handful of complex trades, the bank was told it had to offer some sort of compensation...(HENCE THE WAR AGAINST HIM?) Goldman Sachs managed to lose nearly all of the money it had been given to invest by the Libyan government, which eventually led the giant Wall Street bank to offer shares as compensation that would have effectively made Colonel Gaddafi one of its largest single investors.

The Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund worth tens of billions of dollars into which the Gaddafi administration poured the money it made from oil sales, handed over $1.3bn to the bank in 2008 with a mandate to invest in foreign currency markets and other structured products. The deal was struck months before the onset of the financial crisis, and sources close to the bank yesterday claimed that the LIA had initially been uninterested when Goldman told it that the value of the investment had lost several hundreds of millions of dollars...But by early 2009 Goldman Sachs had lost 98 per cent of what it had been given, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. It is believed that senior Goldman Sachs officials were then summoned to Tripoli, and were told that, after losing the cash in just a handful of complex trades, the bank would need to offer some sort of compensation. The bank alleges that its officials were physically threatened during meetings in Tripoli, but denies that it hired bodyguards for its staff.

Along with several other Western companies, Goldman Sachs was eager to get its hands on some of the newly available Libyan wealth after international sanctions were lifted against the country in 2004. The LIA was, until the start of the country's civil war this year, feted by the likes of HSBC, JP Morgan and Lehman Brothers as well as Goldman Sachs and other large companies in Europe and the United States.

When Colonel Gaddafi's security forces were ordered to put down pro-democracy demonstrations that began in February, the LIA's assets were frozen. Goldman Sachs is understood to still hold at least three different accounts containing LIA money; two in its asset management division and one in foreign exchange, a legacy of the initial $1.3bn. The bank yesterday declined to give details of how much money it was holding, but said that the accounts had been frozen in line with worldwide efforts to throttle the Gaddafi regime.

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS, AND I DON'T MEAN GADDAFI!

[xchrom]

80. Coffee prices are getting a jolt

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-coffee-prices-20110604,0,5518770.story

The price of your morning buzz is about to get even higher.

Hit with wildly increasing costs for beans from growers, coffee roasters are charging more to supermarkets and other retailers — and those folks are passing the higher prices on to consumers.

J.M. Smucker Co., which distributes the Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts coffee sold at stores, said last week it was hiking prices for a pound by 11% — the company's fourth and biggest increase in a year. A few days later, Starbucks — which had already raised prices on some coffee drinks in the fall — said it would raise prices for bags of coffee beans sold at its cafes by 17%.

Prices for coffee have been rising steadily. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a 1-pound can of ground coffee sold for an average of $5.10 in the U.S. in April, up from $3.64 the year before.

[Fuddnik]

82. I'd better stock up.

We just bought a Keurig single cup brewer. The K-cups seemed a little pricey. We've always bought Dunkin' beans, but when you figure in what we were wasting, the K-cups were about equal, minus all the prep, and mess. Plus you always have fresh, never stale coffee. Or if it's evening, and you just feel like a cup of decaf, it,s perfect.

[DemReadingDU]

84. We've had a Tassimo coffee machine

I would occasionally have a single cup of coffee, or tea, or hot chocolate, and the price was okay for that.

But spouse would drink up the entire package of coffees or lattes or cappuccinos or expressos, in 1 day! I guess he finally realized that it became too expensive, cause he hasn't bought any in months. Instead, he drops in at the Waffle House. Maybe for the coffee, but I think to flirt with the waitresses.

[xchrom]

81. Portugal vote winner to face daunting job under bailout

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/04/us-portugal-election-idUSTRE75311B20110604

(Reuters) - Portugal's Social Democrats are favorites to win a general election on Sunday, but celebrations could be short as they face the urgent task of forming a coalition government to enact a demanding bailout plan.

Polls suggest the center-right Social Democrats (PSD) will win the vote but not a full majority. They will have to team up with the rightist CDS-PP to form a coalition and implement the measures set by a 78-billion-euro ($112.5 billion) bailout agreed with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund last month.

Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates, who has been in power since 2005, appears headed for a humbling defeat following his resignation in March and subsequent request for a bailout which he had resisted for several months.

A tough fighter, Socrates blamed the opposition for triggering the bailout request by blocking his party's austerity package, but voters seem to have tired of his excuses for the dire state of the economy and his handling of the debt crisis.

[Fuddnik]

85. The Deadly Summer Lemonade.

1 can of frozen lemonade.
Instead of 4 cans of water, use 2 cans of water and 2 cans of vodka.

Serve in large glass over ice.

Even better, keep a bag of fresh-frozen strawberries in the fridge. Use a couple of the berries for ice cubes. As they thaw in the drink, they release their flavor.

You'll never taste the vodka, and you'll never know what hit ya!

Do not attempt to drive, operate heavy machinery, or hold an intelligent conversation after consuming. Otherwise you'll be reduced to shooting dog video's in the back yard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QLjgtarK10

[DemReadingDU]

92. Yum!

Roscoe sure enjoys getting drinks from that sprinkler!

[bread_and_roses]

103. You put vodka in your sprinkler? (n/t)

[Fuddnik]

105. Nah, he's just nutz!

He's the most lovable sweetie you could imagine. He's still a puppy, 10 months old. But, he's enjoying every minute of life.

We love him. Sara loves him. He's still a pain in the ass, but he gets cuter as the days go on.

[xchrom]

86. Regulators shut small SC bank; 45 failures in 2011

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BANK_CLOSURES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-06-03-18-23-17

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators on Friday shut down a small bank in South Carolina, the 45th U.S. bank failure this year in the wake of economic distress and piles of bad loans.

The pace of closures has slowed, however, as the economy improved and banks worked their way through the bad debt. By this time last year, regulators had closed 81 banks.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Atlantic Bank and Trust, based in Charleston, S.C., with $208.2 million in assets and $191.6 million in deposits. First Citizens Bank and Trust Co., based in Columbia, S.C., agreed to assume the assets and deposits of the failed bank.

In addition, the FDIC and First Citizens Bank and Trust agreed to share losses on $141.8 million of Atlantic Bank and Trust's loans and other assets.

[bread_and_roses]

87. One Year of Food = One Week of Tax Cuts

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/06/03-0

One Year of Food = One Week of Tax Cuts. What's Wrong With This Picture?

by Abby Zimet

The numbers continue to astound. The GOP House plan to slash over $900 million from three federal nutrition programs could deprive up to 500,000 women, infants and children - and they threw in some seniors for good measure - of the food they need...

chart of rise in food stamp use at link - unbelievable. And even more unbelievable, that our bought and sold media - as well as our bought and sold President - treat these ghouls like they are to be taken seriously.

[xchrom]

88. Dow Falls in Longest Slump Since 2004 Amid Concern About Economy

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-06-04/dow-falls-in-longest-slump-since-2004-amid-concern-about-economy.html

June 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks fell this week, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its longest streak of losses since 2004, after worse-than-estimated reports on jobs and manufacturing fueled concern earnings growth will slow.

All 10 Standard & Poor’s 500 Index groups dropped, with declines exceeding 1.3 percent. Newell Rubbermaid Inc. sank 15 percent, leading declines in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, after cutting its profit forecast. J.C. Penney Co. and Stanley Black & Decker Inc. slumped more than 6 percent as investors sold companies tied to economic growth. General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. decreased at least 4 percent after sales growth missed projections.

The S&P 500 lost 2.3 percent to 1,300.16, the biggest weekly decline since August. Its five-week losing streak is the longest since 2008 and puts the index at its lowest level since March. The Dow fell 290.32 points, or 2.3 percent, to 12,151.26, also posting a fifth-straight weekly slump.

[Demeter]

91. China Controls Our Food Supply: Barry Lynn on Radio Free Dylan

http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/04/28/a-system-built-to-crash-barry-lynn-on-radio-free-dylan/

Would you rather have a perfectly efficient system that, if hit by a pebble, would shatter? Or, would you rather have an adaptable system that may not give you the exact output you want, but can handle anything? According to Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation, our economy and our entire domestic food supply are being set up to be shattered...Because of our obsession with efficiency over flexibility, our “lowest-price-above-all” philosophy over fair prices for producers, and our acceptance of a monopolistic commercial distribution structure, lots of essential products are now coming over seasons from a single foreign source. That includes one critical preservative that is in nearly every food in America’s grocery stores, which China currently has a monopoly on.

The issue with getting critical products from one place is that, as we’ve seen over recent years, the world isn’t predictable. Global disruptions — like an economic squabble with China, a massive political upheaval in the Middle East, or a natural disaster like the tsunami in Japan — have the capacity to topple the very fragile U.S. import structure. The culprit? Our reliance on monopolistic, single-source production and distribution structure for things we need to survive, says Barry.

China currently has a production stranglehold over a critical chemical compound that helps keep food fresh — ascorbic acid. We use this to preserve almost all the food that is on the store shelves. It’s essential to keep food on America’s tables, and we don’t have any control over its production or distribution.

“It was first synthesized by an American scientist, it was first mass produced by an American company. 100% of our ascorbic acid or vitamin C now comes from China,” says Barry. “In terms of pricing, just about to the day that the Chinese finished capture and control over our supply of Vitamin C, ascorbic acid, they jacked up the price by 400%,” says Barry.

AUDIO AT LINK

[Demeter]

93. A Productive Morning

Sold a dining room table and chairs and got half my garage emptied, cleaned 2 bathrooms and did laundry and dishes, even ate! Time to do some other things...

[DemReadingDU]

94. wow, I don't get that much done in a week

My morning has been trying to figure out why the treadmill wouldn't run. It's plugged in, I can hear it beep, but it wouldn't activate.

I was all set to call the manufacturer when I noticed the red safety button was gone. Silly me, I had removed it so the grandbabies wouldn't play with it!

[Demeter]

97. I was possessed

Now, I'm in pain. Even after a double dip in the pool. Hope the aspirin kicks in before Sunday paper time.

[xchrom]

95. Investment in forestry needed to lift African formers from poverty

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-06/04/c_13911257.htm

NAIROBI, June 4 (Xinhua) -- The practice of incorporating trees into agricultural landscape is fast becoming increasingly important throughout the world.

In Africa, Kenya is one of the countries that have already developed a policy under the ministry of agriculture that requires all crop farmers to set aside 10 percent of their land under tree cover.

Research has also shown that the nitrogen fixing faidherbia albida and several other tree species are doubling unfertilized crop lands and is already improving maize and millet yield in most countries in West and the southern Africa.

Trees can provide many livelihood benefits to smallholder farmers and other community members, including a diversified income, resilient to risk, nutritious foods, medicines, green fertilizers, timber, fuel wood, oil, charcoal and fodder.

[bread_and_roses]

104. There's too much here! I can't keep up! and it's all good...time for a recipe

here's something for when the world is too much with you - not cheap, but not nearly as expensive as it tastes. My copy of the original Vegetarian Epicure disintegrated long ago (I keep meaning to get another one) - so this is off the intertubes:

http://www.justbestrecipes.com/condiment-spread/chocolate-custard-595l.html

I don't know if the rules allow the full recipe, so just posting the ingredients - go to link for directions. It's easy, and quite divine.

Ingredients for Chocolate Custard:

* 4 large eggs
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
* 1 1/4 cups evaporated milk
* 1 cup cream
* 3 1/2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
* butter

[Demeter]

106. ANOTHER GOLDMAN SCANDAL: How Big Traders Can Extract Excessive Profits

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2007/02/how-big-traders-can-extract-excessive.html


...Dizard discusses how Goldman plays the commodities market, using its role as the largest manager of commodities index funds (Goldman designed and maintains the most popular index, the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index, or GSCI, the biggest commodities index, which it has successfully leveraged into becoming the largest manager of GSCI-based index funds), market maker, and principal trader (see this post on the questionable role of indexes).

Dizard calculates the collective losses to investors (organizations like pension funds, endowments, and insurers) on the monthly roll of the GSCI (required because the index uses futures contract that expire every month) at 150 basis points on $100 billion of funds, or $1.5 billion. And who is on the other side of these trades? Dizard believes Goldman is at the top of the list:

I was describing the practice known as index roll congestion, or “date rape”. This involves profiting from the requirement that public investors’ positions in commodities indices be “rolled over” from one contract month to another over a known five-day period. The price of the old month’s contract is depressed and the price of the new month’s contract is inflated. This can be a huge source of profit for those ready to take advantage of the naive public... index roll congestion costs people who use indices such as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index something in the order of 150 basis points of return a year. Given that formula-managed commodities index funds have $100bn in assets, of which GSCI-linked funds account for $60bn, a lot of money is being lost by the public to someone... The economic function of the locals, or speculators, in the view of public policy, is to provide liquidity for hedgers who want to offset the risk of a future requirement to buy or sell a commodity. For a price, the speculator commits his capital to taking the risk the hedger is unwilling to assume. Hedgers are supposed to be nice people who act for consumers; speculators are supposed to be non-nice people who wear pinky rings, buy magnums of champagne in nightclubs, run the exchanges and bet against the public...I had thought that the mountain of index fund money, with its fixed, known periods of buying and selling, would be a source of profit principally for the speculators...Actually, the problem is that there probably isn’t enough speculative capital relative to the huge weight of the index funds. And, one might add, firms that manage the index funds. Firms such as Goldman Sachs.

Locals besieged me with e-mails insisting on their innocence and said that Goldman was likely to be the principal beneficiary from the index roll. I finally did get a response from the firm. First, Goldman pointed out that it was not the only seller of funds – or notes or swaps – linked to the GSCI. (It is, however, the largest user of GSCI-linked product). The firm said it was obligated only to deliver the closing price on the reference days for each commodity contract in the index.

That means Goldman knows the size and position of the target it must hit and can, as its people say, “manage our corresponding position”. That means that it has to deliver a price at the end of the roll period. If it can cover that obligation at a better price, it will, and pocket the difference. While Goldman won’t disclose just how good a business this is, it agrees the business is consistently profitable. Given that Goldman knows how many contracts it has to buy and sell on certain dates, that in many pits the GSCI is the biggest single factor in the market and that it has many trading hours to cover its positions at advantageous moments, its profitability is not surprising. The GSCI has not been as profitable for all the investors who use it to get commodities exposure. Last year it lost about 15 per cent on a total return basis. Goldman itself had a record year. The customers’ yachts weren’t just small, they were under water...There is no failure to disclose here since Goldman lays out the GSCI’s terms and conditions on its website and in customer contracts. The real failure is with the institutional investing community that still does not understand how commodity markets work.

Goldman’s people and its shareholders aren’t the only winners in the game with institutional commodity investors. As one local said: “Grain companies are winners too because they own storage and are short hedgers.” Also commodities funds that give some freedom to their managers to roll their positions on dates other than when the index rolls take place can earn a significantly better return. But that requires the investor to concede some discretion to the manager. And too many want a magic, automatic box that prints money. Sadly, that doesn’t exist. Unless, that is, you own an investment bank that has an ingenious marketing department.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a947f334-b586-11db-a5a5-0000779e2340.html

[Demeter]

107. How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis SUNDAY'S MUST READ

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_created_the_food_crisis

Demand and supply certainly matter. But there's another reason why food across the world has become so expensive: Wall Street greed.

It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there's value, there's money to be made. In 1991, Goldman bankers, led by their prescient president Gary Cohn, came up with a new kind of investment product, a derivative that tracked 24 raw materials, from precious metals and energy to coffee, cocoa, cattle, corn, hogs, soy, and wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known henceforth as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI).

For just under a decade, the GSCI remained a relatively static investment vehicle, as bankers remained more interested in risk and collateralized debt than in anything that could be literally sowed or reaped. Then, in 1999, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission deregulated futures markets. All of a sudden, bankers could take as large a position in grains as they liked, an opportunity that had, since the Great Depression, only been available to those who actually had something to do with the production of our food.

Change was coming to the great grain exchanges of Chicago, Minneapolis, and Kansas City -- which for 150 years had helped to moderate the peaks and valleys of global food prices. Farming may seem bucolic, but it is an inherently volatile industry, subject to the vicissitudes of weather, disease, and disaster. The grain futures trading system pioneered after the American Civil War by the founders of Archer Daniels Midland, General Mills, and Pillsbury helped to establish America as a financial juggernaut to rival and eventually surpass Europe. The grain markets also insulated American farmers and millers from the inherent risks of their profession. The basic idea was the "forward contract," an agreement between sellers and buyers of wheat for a reasonable bushel price -- even before that bushel had been grown. Not only did a grain "future" help to keep the price of a loaf of bread at the bakery -- or later, the supermarket -- stable, but the market allowed farmers to hedge against lean times, and to invest in their farms and businesses. The result: Over the course of the 20th century, the real price of wheat decreased (despite a hiccup or two, particularly during the 1970s inflationary spiral), spurring the development of American agribusiness. After World War II, the United States was routinely producing a grain surplus, which became an essential element of its Cold War political, economic, and humanitarian strategies -- not to mention the fact that American grain fed millions of hungry people across the world.

Futures markets traditionally included two kinds of players. On one side were the farmers, the millers, and the warehousemen, market players who have a real, physical stake in wheat. This group not only includes corn growers in Iowa or wheat farmers in Nebraska, but major multinational corporations like Pizza Hut, Kraft, Nestlé, Sara Lee, Tyson Foods, and McDonald's -- whose New York Stock Exchange shares rise and fall on their ability to bring food to peoples' car windows, doorsteps, and supermarket shelves at competitive prices. These market participants are called "bona fide" hedgers, because they actually need to buy and sell cereals...On the other side is the speculator. The speculator neither produces nor consumes corn or soy or wheat, and wouldn't have a place to put the 20 tons of cereal he might buy at any given moment if ever it were delivered. Speculators make money through traditional market behavior, the arbitrage of buying low and selling high. And the physical stakeholders in grain futures have as a general rule welcomed traditional speculators to their market, for their endless stream of buy and sell orders gives the market its liquidity and provides bona fide hedgers a way to manage risk by allowing them to sell and buy just as they pleased.

But Goldman's index perverted the symmetry of this system. The structure of the GSCI paid no heed to the centuries-old buy-sell/sell-buy patterns. This newfangled derivative product was "long only," which meant the product was constructed to buy commodities, and only buy. At the bottom of this "long-only" strategy lay an intent to transform an investment in commodities (previously the purview of specialists) into something that looked a great deal like an investment in a stock -- the kind of asset class wherein anyone could park their money and let it accrue for decades (along the lines of General Electric or Apple). Once the commodity market had been made to look more like the stock market, bankers could expect new influxes of ready cash. But the long-only strategy possessed a flaw, at least for those of us who eat. The GSCI did not include a mechanism to sell or "short" a commodity...This imbalance undermined the innate structure of the commodities markets, requiring bankers to buy and keep buying -- no matter what the price. Every time the due date of a long-only commodity index futures contract neared, bankers were required to "roll" their multi-billion dollar backlog of buy orders over into the next futures contract, two or three months down the line. And since the deflationary impact of shorting a position simply wasn't part of the GSCI, professional grain traders could make a killing by anticipating the market fluctuations these "rolls" would inevitably cause. "I make a living off the dumb money," commodity trader Emil van Essen told Businessweek last year. Commodity traders employed by the banks that had created the commodity index funds in the first place rode the tides of profit.

[Demeter]

109. Goldman Sachs Investigators Bolstered by New York’s Martin Act

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-03/goldman-sachs-investigators-in-new-york-wield-laws-stronger-than-the-feds.html

Prosecutors at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who are examining Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) may have an easier time than federal authorities in bringing criminal charges because of a 90-year-old New York state law...To prove securities fraud in federal court, prosecutors must show that a defendant intended to defraud victims and that the investors relied on misstatements or omissions. Under the Martin Act, prosecutors aren’t required to prove intent, said Michael Perino, a law professor at St. John’s University in New York.

“The reason why New York prosecutors love it so much and Wall Street firms hate it so much is that it is a much, much easier case to bring,” Perino said in an interview. “All a prosecutor has to show under the Martin Act is a material misstatement in connection with a securities offering.”

..........


By using the Martin Act, Vance may instead be able to build a criminal case based on circumstantial evidence...The Martin Act was enacted in 1921, and five years later, an appeals court said it applied to “all deceitful practices contrary to the plain rules of common honesty.” The law imposes a two-year statute of limitations on misdemeanors and five years on felonies...The New York state attorney general can bring civil or criminal actions under the Martin Act, while district attorneys only use it in criminal cases. Former New York Attorneys General Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo used the law against investment banks and the mutual-fund industry, while Robert Morgenthau, Vance’s predecessor, used it often during his 34-year tenure to combat boiler rooms, Ponzi schemes, private-placement investment fraud, and corrupt trading practices.

In a Jan. 25 speech to the New York City Bar Association, Vance, who only has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Manhattan, said “the Martin Act has never been more relevant” as “widespread mistrust infects financial markets.” Still, he said the law is “marred by its overly lenient penalties,” and he called on state lawmakers to stiffen punishment...Vance said he would seek prison sentences of as long as 8 1/3 years to 25 years for frauds involving more than $1 million. The crime now carries no minimum prison sentence, regardless of the money involved. “Whether the perpetrator steals $500 or $500 million, the felony penalty is the same -- that reserved for the lowest-level felonies in New York,” two Vance deputies, Adam S. Kaufmann and Marc Frazier Scholl, wrote in Business Crimes Bulletin last September.

[Demeter]

108. Why Are the French So Determined To Run The IMF – And What Will It Cost You?

http://baselinescenario.com/2011/06/03/why-are-the-french-so-determined-to-run-the-imf-%E2%80%93-and-what-will-it-cost-you/#more-9067


Today the French government is working overtime to make sure that a Sarkozy loyalist and the leader of his economic team – Finance Minister Christine Lagarde – becomes the next managing director. Why do they and other eurozone countries now care so much about who runs the IMF?...I recall vividly discussions with eurozone authorities in 2007 – when I was chief economist at the IMF – in which they argued that current account imbalances within the eurozone had no meaning and were definitely not the business of the IMF. Their argument was that the IMF was not concerned with payments imbalances between US states (all using the dollar), and we should likewise back away from discussing the fact that some eurozone countries, like Germany and the Netherlands, had large surpluses on their current account while others, like Greece and Spain, had big deficits. Those eurozone treasury and central bank officials had a point. After all, if one of the deficit countries got into trouble, it could be helped out by other members of the currency union. As the euro is a reserve currency – and a highly regarded one, for example it remains strong relative to the dollar – the IMF is essentially now lending euros to the eurozone in its various bailout programs.

Why does this make sense?

It doesn’t – unless you understand that the goal of these various bailouts is to ensure that German and French taxpayers do not realize the full extent of their losses or the ways in which their banks have been completely mismanaged.... The International Monetary Fund is, in this regard, essentially a credit union owned by 187 countries – with voting based on ownership shares that reflect relative economic size. The European Union “owns” about 30 percent of IMF, so 70 percent of any money at risk belongs to other countries: about 17 percent US, 7 percent Japan, 35 percent emerging markets, plus some more mixed sets of countries. The managing director of the IMF is the impresario of any bailout. The big decisions must be negotiated with all significant stakeholders but this still leaves enormous scope for discretion. If Ms. Lagarde becomes managing director she can directly influence the terms of IMF involvement – and based on her negotiating position to date within the eurozone, we can presume she will lean towards more money, easier terms, and above all no losses for the banks that made foolish loans.

Increasingly it looks like the eurozone leadership, under French guidance, will go for the Full Bailout option, in which all Greek debt is bought up by the IMF, by the European Central Bank, and by other eurozone entities. This debt will be held to maturity – and any creditor who did not yet sell will be made whole (those who already sold at a loss are out of luck). This course of action will be expensive, in terms of nominal outlays and in real risk-adjusted terms, because whatever terms Greece gets must also be offered to Ireland and Portugal. The IMF may need to raise more capital or – more likely – tap its credit lines from member governments.

To be clear, the Full Bailout is still painful for the debtor countries – their fiscal adjustments will involve spending cuts, tax increases and asset sales. But the motivation is not generosity. The Europeans greatly fear their own “Lehman moment” – in which any attempt to impose even moderate losses on creditors will cause chaos throughout the financial system. The French and Germans fought hard against increasing capital requirements under Basel III and the results of various European banking “stress tests” have been completely noncredible – particularly as they did not take into account serious sovereign debt default scenarios. The French want to sway decision-making at the IMF in order to use US, Japanese, and poorer countries’ money to conceal from their own electorate that the eurozone structure has led all its members into serious fiscal jeopardy – some borrowed heavily, while others let their banks lend irresponsibly and thus created a large contingent liability. The best way to hide the true cost is to have other people’s taxpayers foot the bill, preferably with the least possible transparency. There is a lot at stake for eurozone politicians. Ms. Lagarde will run the IMF.

[Demeter]

110. Oregon foreclosure filings surge 236% in April

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/06/oregon_foreclosure_filings_sur.html

Nationally, newly launched foreclosure actions dropped 14 percent in April, according to Realty Trac Inc. Not in Oregon, where they've jumped 236 percent, from 1,100 to 3,700, according to another foreclosure data tracker, ForeclosureRadar.com. Realty Trac recorded a similarly high number: 3,200. The surge in "notices of default" comes from one loan servicer -- Bank of America Corp.'s foreclosure arm, ReconTrust Co. And it follows a jump in cancelled foreclosures filed by ReconTrust in late February and March. Those followed rulings by federal judges halting out-of-court foreclosures in Oregon, saying lenders failed to follow state recording law.

Bank of America spokesperson Jumana Bauwens said the withdrawals and new filings resulted from a review late last year of its foreclosure process when it halted sales in all 50 states.

...

The bank also might have been running up against a legal deadline that limits postponed foreclosures to six months, he said...What comes next literally is anyone's guess, experts say. An attempt by the finance industry to retroactively change state recording law failed in a House committee last week after a public outcry against the move. Attorneys say it's not clear when Oregon judges will rule definitively on the legality of mortgage recordings, many of which involve the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS...
Title insurance attorneys have suggested that lenders might start foreclosing in court, but other real-estate attorneys speculate that lenders don't want to spend that much money and will face a formidable fight from borrowers.

[Demeter]

111. China is Different

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/05/guest-post-china-is-different.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

...As a friend recently commented to me, there should be three categories of economies: developed, developing and China. China may struggle, but it will struggle in a uniquely Chinese way, and inevitably pose deep questions about the future of capitalism. Pundits, especially of the bearish persuasion, are fond of deriding the comment that “this time it is different”. But are things always the same? Analytics should match the subject matter (methodology should match ontology), and what has happened in China already is very different to anything yet seen. It has been the most sustained wealth creation in history, largely unpredicted...focus on China’s extremely high levels of investment, which is about half GDP, instead of about a tenth in most developed economies...What everyone should be watching is what China is doing in its finance system, and it is moving very fast (and the shadow banking system is moving even faster). It has reformed the four key banks, allowed foreign banks to come in a limited way, managed its SOEs, started to develop a securities industry, started to develop a corporate bond market. But it is quite a balancing act. It still lacks the micro-infrastructure, such as accounting law, securities law, governance structures and so on that are necessary to having a fully functioning cost of capital – that is, capitalism (of a twentieth century type, as opposed to the much sicker, twenty first century type appearing in the West). The aim needs to be to stop the heavy dependence on various forms of lending, by instigating a shift to a better balance between shares, bonds and bank deposits as the capital structure (in developed economies they are roughly in balance). Big equity and bond markets are much safer than a system that depends mostly on bank lending because equity markets and bond markets can reprice without the system breaking, whereas banks break. So it is an issue of national security for the Chinese leadership.

...CHINA is looking to develop 100 global corporations whose profits can be used to fund the health and education systems. That is why they had a tax break. In other words, there is a version of privatisation under way (not privatisation of ownership, but privatisation of profits). Given the dubious record of privatisation in the West, which has not exactly been a highly successful exercise in wealth distribution — it has accelerated more concentration of wealth — the Chinese strategy makes sense (which is not the same as saying it is achievable). The reason the Chinese save so heavily is that health and education have little or no government support (oddly for a former communist country). That has to be fixed before consumption will increase and the Chinese leadership knows it... some deep questions need to be posed about what kind of capitalism China will pursue. To say the least, that has repercussions for capitalism everywhere else, especially when Western capitalism is in a process of being destroyed by the uber capitalists with their $4 trillion daily trade in cross border capital, their $US600 trillion of derivatives, about twice the capital stock of the world, their algorithmic trading that accounts for about half of the turnover in the US stock exchange. All those, by the way, are “different this time”. They have never existed before, it is a new variant of “capitalism”.

China is essentially choosing what kind of capitalism it will pursue; what kind of rules it will adopt. Similar to what the Japanese did, who decided to keep most of their transactions within the country, “who cares about the cost of capital”? China’s official financial system is still closer to communist than capitalist. And it is making the choice at a time when Western capitalism, courtesy of a rampant and irresponsible finance industry, is fragile in the extreme. The Chinese leadership has stopped feeling triumphant about its version of “capitalism” after seeing the failures in the West from the GFC. But there is still a serious and deep debate going on within the leadership about what direction to take. On that debate depends a large part of the future of world capitalism; that is, what we mean by “capital” (which is just rules). It is not just the scale of China’s growth that is skewing the world economy.

It would be a fool who thinks the Chinese don’t understand the challenge; they do. Having your life on the line if you get it wrong does rather tend to concentrate politicians’ minds. To get to the top in China on your merits when there is a billion people ensures some serious quality; we can safely assume that some of the Chinese leadership has significant intellectual grunt. It would be worthwhile to listen very closely to what the Chinese say about their understanding of capitalism and what it is doing at the micro, institutional level with its financial system, not so much what it does with the macro-economic levers. That would include taking seriously their claims that they remain “communist”...Perhaps it is not that we need a new framework for China, but that we need to listen a lot more closely and watch what the Chinese are doing.

[Demeter]

112. Earth to Libertarians: Private Parties Have Coercive Power Too

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/05/earth-to-libertarians-private-parties-have-coercive-power-too.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

I’m sick of the free pass given the libertarian blather, “The state is the only source of coercive power.” I doubt that many non-libertarians buy that assetion, but they too often remain silent because most libertarians are rabid on that issue and arguing with them is like talking to a wall. But since that bogus assertion has been showing up increasingly in comments here as right-wing plants are becoming more common, I might as well do a quick shred, since it does not take much effort to show this claim is nonsense.from Tom Ferguson:

American history is replete with examples of business groups and individual firms retaining vast armies of military and paramilitary forces for long periods of time. In the nineteenth century many railroads kept private armies. The Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police ran their own Obrigkeitsstaat for decades. General Motors maintained the Black Legion; Ford sported a veritable Freikorps recruited by the notorious Henry Bennett; and any number of detective agencies, goon squads, “special consultants,” and wiretappers have also been active. . . . Force on such a scale potentially menaces competitors, buyers, and suppliers almost as much as it does workers.

Some modern versions of coercion don’t involve actual harm, but credible threats. For instance, I know three different lawyers who have been suing banks who have gotten ugly warnings (and some follow-up action, like break ins and messages specifying where children were on specific days; one is spending $20,000 a month on bodyguards)...And pressure can be financial rather than physical. Recall the HB Gary plans against Glenn Greenwald. They clearly planned to destroy his professional reputation (not that that would be as easy as they thought) so he would have to choose “career over cause”. But in the US, where jobs are hard to come by and safety nets are frayed to non-existant, someone over 35 and/or with kids who is not independently wealthy or is self employed with a very solid franchise is economically vulnerable.

Let’s consider another example. A friend of mine opened the Dun & Bradstreet office in Moscow in the 1990s. That meant selling information in a country which was and is not big on transparency, making the initiative a risky proposition. She says she is the only person ever to have sued a Russian oil company, win in court, collect the money, and live to tell the tale. In her day in Russia, it cost $5000 to have someone killed, which was actually a lot in local terms. It was expensive because you had to murder three people to cover your tracks properly: the target, the assassin, and the person who made the arrangement to hire the killer. The last person was costly to eliminate, they were usually much higher caliber and hence more wary than the assassins... Note there was no state power in this little murder ring: all were private contractors. Indeed, the sort of weak state that libertarians celebrate typically makes for fertile breeding grounds for all sorts of private goon squads stepping into a power vacuum. And thuggery works, witness the rarity of my friend’s evident insanity in pursuing an oil company deadbeat.
..............................

Libertarianism does a great disservice to the debate about the most productive relationship between the state and private sector, which is an ongoing challenge as economies and societies evolve. It simply denies that the private sector is intrinsically dependent on the state for key functions for it to perform well, and ignores the fact its ideal of a minimal state does not scale at all. Similarly, many forms of enterprise show considerable economies of scale and hence will dominate the political realm if the political sphere is not allowed to constrain the economic realm when broader society prefers to impose rules (for instance, via product safety and truth in advertising laws so that consumers do not have to spend considerable amounts of time researching purchases).

[Demeter]

113. The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?ref=opinion

WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition....And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources. Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives... At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible. So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet. For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift at Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again. Does this look like “A Plan,” either on the state or federal level?

We’ve been working with public school teachers for 10 years; every spring, we see many of the best teachers leave the profession. They’re mowed down by the long hours, low pay, the lack of support and respect...Imagine a novice teacher, thrown into an urban school, told to teach five classes a day, with up to 40 students each. At the year’s end, if test scores haven’t risen enough, he or she is called a bad teacher. For college graduates who have other options, this kind of pressure, for such low pay, doesn’t make much sense. So every year 20 percent of teachers in urban districts quit. Nationwide, 46 percent of teachers quit before their fifth year. The turnover costs the United States $7.34 billion yearly. The effect within schools — especially those in urban communities where turnover is highest — is devastating...But we can reverse course. In the next 10 years, over half of the nation’s nearly 3.2 million public school teachers will become eligible for retirement. Who will replace them? How do we attract and keep the best minds in the profession?

People talk about accountability, measurements, tenure, test scores and pay for performance. These questions are worthy of debate, but are secondary to recruiting and training teachers and treating them fairly. There is no silver bullet that will fix every last school in America, but until we solve the problem of teacher turnover, we don’t have a chance...The consulting firm McKinsey recently examined how we might attract and retain a talented teaching force. The study compared the treatment of teachers here and in the three countries that perform best on standardized tests: Finland, Singapore and South Korea. Turns out these countries have an entirely different approach to the profession. First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don’t.) In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don’t.) In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teachers on average 250 percent of what we do. And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low: In South Korea, it’s 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.

McKinsey polled 900 top-tier American college students and found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a minimum of $150,000. Could we do this? If we’re committed to “winning the future,” we should. If any administration is capable of tackling this, it’s the current one. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan understand the centrality of teachers and have said that improving our education system begins and ends with great teachers. But world-class education costs money. For those who say, “How do we pay for this?” — well, how are we paying for three concurrent wars? How did we pay for the interstate highway system? Or the bailout of the savings and loans in 1989 and that of the investment banks in 2008? How did we pay for the equally ambitious project of sending Americans to the moon? We had the vision and we had the will and we found a way.

....................................................
Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari are founders of the 826 National tutoring centers and producers of the documentary “American Teacher.”

[xchrom]

114. Trade Gap Probably Widened in April: U.S. Economy Preview

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-05/trade-gap-in-u-s-probably-widened-in-april-as-imported-oil-prices-climbed.html

The U.S. trade deficit probably widened in April to a 10-month high, reflecting higher crude oil costs that have since retreated, economists said before a report this week.

The gap expanded to $48.9 billion from the $48.2 billion shortfall in March, according to the median of 61 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey ahead of the Commerce Department’s June 9 report. Other figures may show prices of goods from abroad decreased in May by the most in almost a year, showing the surge in commodity costs is fading.

A drop in deliveries from Japan, where the earthquake and tsunami in March hampered shipments of auto parts and other components, may have prevented imports from climbing even more. While a weaker dollar has made American products more competitive for manufacturers like Dow Chemical Co. (DOW), a cooling in the world economy may limit U.S. exports in coming months.

“We are seeing a slowdown in global growth that should mean a slowdown in export growth,” said Julia Coronado, chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas in New York. “At the same time, in the second quarter we have pretty significant supply-chain issues that are going to weigh very heavily on imports.”

[Demeter]

115. How the UK Got Out of Iraq

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4873100&mesg_id=4873462

[Demeter]

116. Well, Dear Friends, This May Be As FarAs I Go, Today

the weather is too beautiful (not humid) and tonight is the first meeting of the organizing of a workers co-op, so I'm trying to get some basic ideas on paper and an informational survey for attendees.

But feel free to continue the weekend! I'd post more recipes, but the Kid is on a diet, so I have to not frustrate myself too much by obsessing on foods I can't make or have in the house...

[xchrom]

117. India likely to open doors to Tesco & global supermarket giants in multi-brand retail: Scindia

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/india-likely-to-open-doors-to-tesco-global-supermarket-giants-in-multi-brand-retail-scindia/articleshow/8736567.cms

LONDON: India is likely to open up its doors for Tesco and other overseas supermarket giants to set up multi-brand retail stores in the country, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jyotiraditya Scindia has indicated.

"The way I envisage it is that it must involve investment not only in the front-end, but also in the back-end," Scindia told the Sunday Telegraph.

A committee formed to explore deregulation in the sector has submitted a favourable report and ministers are preparing to forward the proposal to Cabinet.

It is likely to include obligations on new entrants to invest heavily in "back-end" warehousing, food processing and refrigerated transport networks and to create new jobs in rural India.

[bread_and_roses]

118. "you can tell when a system has reached a supercritical statez"

Thanks to WillyT for posting the link over in GD: "On Fauxgressive Rationalizations of Selling Out to Powerful, Moneyed Backers - Yves Smith/FDL"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1232652

The entire article is interesting, as are itslinks, but this is what struck me most ...

http://firedoglake.com/2011/06/05/on-fauxgressive-rationalizations-of-selling-out-to-powerful-moneyed-backers/

The technocrats are kidding themselves if they think they can optimize anything in system under as much stress as ours. The Mark Buchanan book Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen describes how complex systems are not just unpredictable but also subject to upheaval. Interestingly, you cannot tell what event, like the self immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, will unleash disruptive change, nor can you predict what direction it will take.

But you can tell when a system has reached a supercritical state, when small events have the potential to produce massive shifts. The escalating efforts of the powers that be to extend their web of control suggests they sense the potential for radical change. But the irony is efforts to prevent small disruptions, like the now-discarcded American forest management policy of preventing small fires, can increase the odds of raging conflagrations when they do occur. And it is impossible to foresee what disruptive actions might cascade into bigger changes.

The "technocrats" of whom he is speaking are specifically those in the "progressive" or "left" institutions, either blinded or corrupted by their access to power and/or their own cushy jobs. Like those in the leadership of the Labor movement (although they are not the ones in the spotlight here, they too fit the bill), or those who supported the bastardized "health care reform."

A "supercritical state" - yes, I'd say that describes our current circs pretty well.
edit to add article link which I'd forgotten

[Demeter]

119. I don't think there ARE any Progressive or Left-leaning Institutions anymore

If there were, I'd have joined them. The ones I belonged to have muted themselves, or gone out of business. Or gone out of their minds, like Ms. Magazine....

And as for the technocrats---they've all gone into hiding, or rehab, or something.

All we have left are Libertarians, Pirates and con men, trying to sell snake oil of various breeds of snake.

[bread_and_roses]

120. nothing there I disagree with in the slightest

maybe Greenpeace? I avoid reading about them, and haven't for a long time, other than headlines, because when I do I want to go off and join up - but my obligations to other humans who depend on me still feels too heavy. I could not do it with whole heart. Or maybe that's just my excuse.

[Fuddnik]

121. Chris Hedges nails their asses to the wall in "Death of The Liberal Class

[Demeter]

122. Report from the Artisan/Crafters First Organizational Meeting

10 people came out for the meeting! And they brought samples!

We have some talented people here. The biggest need seems to be marketing, pricing, cost-sharing on getting product to people.

I was looking for people saying "I need some workers/helpers", but nobody is there yet. We have to develop our marketing, first, so we are starting with venues, including online and local markets. Our first group project, a Holiday Craft fair. Our secondary project, to set it up so that we are legal.

If I had a product with a demonstrated market, I could go more into worker co-op mode directly. I think this will have to be a more indirect path...and more leisurely than I'd like, but play it where it lies.