STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 14 October 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, 14 October 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 13 October 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 13 October 2015
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Dow Jones 17,081.89 -49.97 (-0.29%)
S&P 500 2,003.69 -13.77 (-0.68%)
Nasdaq 4,796.61 -42.03 (-0.87%)

[font color=green]10 Year 2.04% -0.01 (-0.49%)
[font color=red]30 Year 2.88% +0.01 (0.35% [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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(click on link for latest updates)
Market Updates
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
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Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
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Naked Capitalism
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Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
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Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts
08/03/15 Former City (London) trader Tom Hayes found guilty of rigging global Libor interest rates. Each fo eight counts carries up to 10 yr. sentence.
08/21/15 Charles Antonucci Sr, former pres. Park Ave. Bank sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and attempt to steal $11MM in TARP bailout funds, as well as $37.5MM fraud on OK insurance company. To pay $54MM in restitution and give up additional $11MM.
09/21/15 Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn apologizes for VW cheating on air quality standards with emission testing avoidance device. Stock drops 20%, fines may total $18B.
09/22/15 Stewart Parnell, CEO Peanut Corp. of America, sentenced to 28 years in prison for selling salmonella-tainted peanut butter that killed nine.





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

[Demeter]

1. Not getting anything done

The debate....it's mesmerizing. It's also the only thing going on.

[Demeter]

2. Puerto Rico’s Colonial Economy Arthur MacEwan

http://triplecrisis.com/puerto-ricos-colonial-economy/

Arthur MacEwan is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and the author of Neo-liberalism or Democracy? Economic Strategy, Markets and Alternatives for the 21st Century (1999), Debt and Disorder: International Economic Instability and U.S. Imperial Decline (1992), and (with John Miller) Economic Collapse, Economic Change: Getting to the Roots of the Crisis (2011).

Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. Colonial status, with some exceptions, is not a good basis for economic progress. Recently, the details of the Puerto Rican economic mess, and especially the financial crisis, have become almost daily fodder for the U.S. press. Yet, the island’s colonial status and the economic impact of that status, which lie at the foundation of the current debacle, have been largely ignored.

Puerto Rico, like other colonies, has been administered in the interests of the “mother country.” For example, for many years, a provision of the U.S. tax code, Section 936, let U.S. firms operate on the island without incurring taxes on their Puerto Rican profits (as long as those profits were not moved back to the states). This program was portrayed as a job creator for Puerto Rico. Yet the principal beneficiaries were U.S. firms—especially pharmaceutical firms. When this tax provision was in full-force in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it cost the U.S. government on average more than $3.00 in lost tax revenue for each $1.00 in wages paid in Puerto Rico by the pharmaceuticals. (What’s more, the pharmaceuticals, while they did produce in Puerto Rico, also located many of their patents with their Puerto Rican subsidiaries, thus avoiding taxes on the profits from these patents.)

Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but residents of the island have no voting representatives in Congress and do not participate in presidential elections. The Puerto Rican government does have a good deal of autonomy, but is ultimately under U.S. law. And without voting representatives in Congress, Puerto Rico is unable to obtain equal status in federal programs or full inclusion in important legislation. A good example of the latter, which has become especially important in the ongoing financial crisis, is that U.S. law excludes the Puerto Rican government from declaring bankruptcy, an option available to U.S. states and their cities.

It is often asserted that the U.S. government provides “generous” benefits to Puerto Rico. Perhaps the largest federal payment to Puerto Ricans is Social Security. Yet Puerto Ricans on the island pay Social Security taxes just like residents of states and the District of Columbia. Likewise, Puerto Ricans pay Medicare taxes just like residents of the states, but, unlike residents of the states, their Medicare benefits are capped at a lower level.

Among the important programs from which residents of Puerto Rico are excluded, a big one is the earned income tax credit (EITC). As a result, a two-parent, two-child family in Puerto Rico earning $25,000 a year ends up, after federal taxes and credits, with about $6,000 less income than a family in the states with the same earnings and family structure. Opponents of extending the EITC to residents of Puerto Rico argue that they should not get the EITC because they are not liable for federal income taxes. Yet many EITC recipients in the states pay no federal income taxes simply because their incomes are so low (e.g., the family in the above example). Moreover, the EITC was established to offset the burden on low-income families of Social Security and Medicare taxes, which Puerto Rico residents do pay, and to reduce poverty, of which Puerto Ricans have more than their share.

If Puerto Rico gets “generous” benefits from Washington, several states are treated more generously. In particular, if states are ranked in terms of their “net receipts” per capita from the federal government—that is, funds received from the federal government minus federal taxes—in a typical year about one-third of the states rank above Puerto Rico (though the number varies somewhat in different years). In 2010, for example, West Virginia received $8,365 per capita more in federal expenditures than were paid from the state in federal taxes, Kentucky $7,812 more, Vermont $6,713 more, and Alaska and Hawaii topped the list with $11,123 per capita and $10,733 per capita more from the federal government than they paid to the federal government. That year Puerto Rico received on net $4,697 per capita.

Beyond these particular disadvantages of colonial status, Puerto Rico suffers from a pervaisive condition of “dependency.” In setting economic policy, the Puerto Rican government has continually looked beyond the island, to investments by U.S. firms and favors from Washington. As James Dietz has usefully summed up the situation in his 2003 book Puerto Rico: Negotiating Development and Change: “…Puerto Rico’s strategy of development lacked a focus on the systematic support or fostering of local entrepreneurs and local sources of finance.” As a consequence “the central role of domestic entrepreneurs, skilled workers and technological progress that underlies sustained economic progress” has been weaker in Puerto Rico than in sovereign nations where sustained economic progress has proceeded more rapidly. Moreover, government policy and decisions by investors tend to be short-sighted, failing to build the foundation for long-term economic progress. The poor condition of the public schools and the weak physical infrastructure are examples of the consequences.

All of these factors have retarded the Puerto Rican economy for decades. The island did experience a burst of economic activity in the post-World War II period, heavily dependent on low-wage labor, privileged access to the U.S. market, and federal and local tax breaks for U.S. firms. As wages rose and other parts of the world gained access to the U.S. market, the economy faltered. From the mid-1970s on into the early 2000s, Puerto Rico lost economic ground compared to the states.

The severe recession that then emerged in 2006 and that Puerto Rico has suffered for the past decade, only partially attenuated by heavy government borrowing on the bond market, was an outcome to be expected from the economy’s long-term weakness and, in fact, was precipitated by that heavy government borrowing.

By 2006, the Puerto Rican public debt was 70% as large as GNP. (Now it is slightly more than 100%.) Under this debt pressure, in an effort to cut its expenditures, the government temporarily laid off without pay 100,000 workers (almost 10% of the total work force). Had the Puerto Rican economy not been so weak and had the U.S. economy not soon entered the Great Recession, perhaps the downturn from this layoff shock would have been brief. But the weak economy and then recession in the states undercut any basis for quick recovery. In 2009 and 2010, Puerto Rico did receive a share of the funds in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which attenuated but did not end the island’s recession. The impulse from the ARRA funds was too small and too short-lived.

Many commentators and Puerto Rican government officials try to explain the emergence of Puerto Rico’s recession by the termination of the Section 936 tax breaks and call for a renewal of 936 provisions to aid the economy. However, for the firms, the tax breaks did not end, but were maintained under other tax code provisions, and there was virtually no decline of employment in 936 firms as the tax provision was being phased out between 1996 and 2006. After 2006, however, the employment provisions of Section 936, as weak as they were, did collapse. As a result, while, for example, exports of pharmaceuticals have grown apace in subsequent year, employment in the industry has dropped sharply. Perhaps the termination of 936 contributed to the continuation of the downturn, through its impact on employment, but it was not the primary or major causal factor. Most important, a renewal of 936 provisions is not a solution to Puerto Rico’s economic difficulties.

Controversy over Puerto Rico’s status has been a dominating theme of the island’s politics for decades. Various polls, including most recently one associated with the 2012 election, have shown a rough split between maintaining the current status and statehood, with the latter gaining an edge in the 2012 in a poll associated with the election. The polls show support for independence far behind.

The current colonial status, in addition to its negative economic impact, involves a fundamental violation of human rights and democracy, and Puerto Ricans should be given a clear choice between independence and statehood; maintenance of the current colonials status (or a somewhat different colonial status that has some support) should be off the table. Beyond the interests of the Puerto Ricans, how can those of us in the states make a claim to democracy while we hold Puerto Rico as our colony?

[Demeter]

3. 3 days of frost ahead: Sat, Sun, Mon

It's all over, folks. Except there are two buds on my rose trees upstairs!

[MattSh]

4. Russia in Syria causes upturns in the gas sector of the region

The involvement of Russia in the Syrian war is a development of macro-historical proportions. It is the first time in history that Russia intervenes directly, and with formidable military force, in the Middle East, within a stone's throw from the Saudi Peninsula where immense hydrocarbon reserves are securing the world's energy. Even during the height of the might of the former USSR in the wars back in 1967 and 1973, Moscow was adamant about not investing military and was cautiously supporting either Egypt or Syria via aid and training. Apart from the wider geopolitical change of balances that are observed, there are consequent micro-trends that directly affect the natural gas sector in the region.

First of all, Azerbaijan, through its Azerbaijan Methanol Company, signed a 5 year contract to secure gas imports from Gazprom for around 2 bcm annually. Although imports were being conducted between 2009-2013 never exceeded 1 bcm per year. In fact, Baku seemed hesitant in enlarging this cooperation. Nevertheless it seems that Azerbaijan is getting closer to Moscow in gas terms, since the impeding opening up of the Iranian market after the lifting of international sanctions will witness a wider alliance between two gas giants, Russia and Iran, who together control around 45% of the global natural gas reserves and 25% of yearly global production. Baku is also continuously pressurized by its hostile relations with Armenia, whilst the local administration over the past 12 month is gradually cracking down opposition groups or liberal teams of people that are linked with NGO's financed mainly by US and EU political and business circles. Thus, we should witness a greater alliance between the Azeris and a Gazprom unravelling in the coming period based on the above realities.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister o Energy of Georgia, Kakha Kaladze, relayed to the local press recently that Russian gas is a preferred choice and better priced than Azeri imports for the Georgian market. Already he stated that talks have been held with Gazprom's chief Alexei Miller on the issue and that Georgia is also interested in securing imports from Iran in the future. Like Azerbaijan, Georgia is facing geopolitical realities based on the dynamics of the re-emergence of the Russian role in the region and that of Iran and the destabilization of Turkey. Thus it stands to be cornered and an upturn of Tbilisi's stance towards forging stronger ties in gas business with Moscow is emerging.

Turkey is also of wider importance. Already it is in dire straits due to its effective civil war with the Kurdish guerillas and the disastrous policy of meddling in the Syrian war that resulted in considerable financial losses, up to $40 billion since 2011, a massive refugee wave of more than 2 million Syrians and a significant drop in the credibility of the Turkish diplomacy in the region. More importantly Turkey imports some 29 bcm per year from Gazprom and 10 bcm from Iran who both constitute around 80% of its import market.

-----> http://www.naturalgaseurope.com/war-in-syria-changes-regional-gas-balance-25814

[antigop]

5. Four words from Hillary: "I represented Wall Street." nt

[Fuddnik]

6. Statement last night from Bernie Sanders.....

Congress doesn't regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress"!!!!!!!

Truer words were never spoken.