STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 8 December 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 8 December 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 7 December 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 7 December 2015
[center][font color=red]
Dow Jones 17,730.51 -117.12 (-0.66%)
S&P 500 2,077.07 -14.62 (-0.70%)
Nasdaq 5,101.81 -40.46 (-0.79%)


[font color=green]10 Year 2.23% -0.04 (-1.76%)
30 Year 2.97% -0.04 (-1.33%) [font color=black]


[center][/font]

[HR width=85%]

[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
[center]
(click on link for latest updates)
Market Updates
[/center]

[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

[/center]

[center]

[/center]

[HR width=95%]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
[center]
Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
[/center]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
[center]
The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
Wall Street on Parade
[/center]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
[center]
Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


[/center]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
[center]
LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center]

[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
[center]
Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
[/center]

[div]
[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.





[HR width=95%]


[center]

[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]

[haikugal]

1. Thanks!

[Proserpina]

2. What to Do About Disloyal Corporations ROBERT REICH

Just like that, Pfizer has decided it’s no longer American. It plans to link up with Ireland’s Allergan and move its corporate headquarters from New York to Ireland. That way it will pay less tax. Ireland’s tax rate is less than half that of United States. Ian Read, Pfizer’s chief executive, told the Wall Street Journal the higher tax rate in the United States caused Pfizer to compete “with one hand tied behind our back.” Read said he’d tried to lobby Congress to reduce the corporate tax rate (now 35 percent) but failed, so Pfizer is leaving.

Such corporate desertions from the United States (technically called “tax inversions”) will cost the rest of us taxpayers some $19.5 billion over the next decade, estimates Congress’s joint committee on taxation. Which is fueling demands from Republicans to lower the corporate tax rate. Donald Trump wants it to be 15 percent. Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz want to eliminate the corporate tax altogether. (Why this would save the Treasury more money than further corporate tax inversions is unclear.)

Rather than lower corporate tax rates, an easier fix would be to take away the benefits of corporate citizenship from any company that deserts America.

• One big benefit is the U.S. patent system that grants companies like Pfizer longer patent protection and easier ways to extend it than most other advanced economies. In 2013, Pfizer raked in nearly $4 billion on sales of the Prevnar 13 vaccine, which prevents diseases caused by pneumococcal bacteria, from ear infections to pneumonia – for which Pfizer is the only manufacturer. Other countries wouldn’t allow their patent systems to justify such huge charges. Neither should we – especially when Pfizer stops being an American company.
  
  
• The U.S. government also protects the assets of American corporations all over the world. In the early 2000s, after a Chinese company replicated Pfizer’s formula for Viagra, the U.S. Trade Representative put China on a “priority watch list” and charged China with “inadequate enforcement” against such piracy. Soon thereafter the Chinese backed down. Now China is one of Pfizer’s major sources of revenue. But when Pfizer is no longer American, the United States should stop protecting its foreign assets. Nor should Pfizer reap the benefits when the United States goes to bat for American corporations in trade deals.
  
  
• In the Pacific Partnership and the upcoming deal with the European Union, the interests of American pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer – gaining more patent protection abroad, limiting foreign release of drug data, and preventing other governments controlling drug prices – have been central points of contention. And Pfizer has been one of the biggest beneficiaries. From now on, it shouldn’t be. U.S. pharmaceutical companies rake in about $12 billion a year because Medicare isn’t allowed to use its huge bargaining power to get lower drug prices. But a non-American company like Pfizer shouldn’t get any of this windfall. From now on, Medicare should squeeze every penny it can out of Pfizer.
  
  
• American drug companies also get a free ride off of basic research done by the National Institutes of Health. Last year the NIH began a collaboration with Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation – subsidizing Pfizer’s appropriation of early scientific discoveries for new medications. In the future, Pfizer shouldn’t qualify for this subsidy, either.
  
  
• Finally, non-American corporations face restrictions on what they can donate to U.S. candidates for public office, and how they can lobby the U.S. government. Yet Pfizer has been among America’s biggest campaign donors and lobbyists. In 2014, it ponied up $2,217,066 to candidates (by contrast, its major competitor Johnson & Johnson spent $755,000). And Pfizer spent $9,493,000 on lobbyists. So far in the 2016 election cycle, it’s been one of the top ten corporate donors. Pfizer’s political generosity has paid off – preventing Congress from attaching a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, or from making it easier for generics to enter the market, or from using Medicare’s bargaining power to reduce drug prices. And the company has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the candidacies of state attorneys general in order to get favorable settlements in cases brought against it. But by deserting America, Pfizer relinquishes its right to influence American politics.

If Pfizer or any other American corporation wants to leave America to avoid U.S. taxes, that’s their business. But they should no longer get any of the benefits of American citizenship – because they’ve stopped paying for them.

Even better, ban Pfizer products from Medicare and make its drugs generically

[Proserpina]

7. Global Tax Dodging Just One Part of Pfizer’s Corrupt Business Model

http://ineteconomics.org/ideas-papers/blog/global-tax-dodging-just-one-part-of-pfizers-corrupt-business-model

There’s plenty that doesn’t add up about Pfizer’s claim that the low Irish tax rates it will pay by merging with Allergan are necessary if the company is to fund drug research to stay competitive. Consider that while the pharmaceutical giant was provisioning $2.2 billion for income taxes over the first nine months of this year, it was distributing five times as much – $11.4 billion – to its shareholders, $6.2 billion in stock buybacks and $5.2 billion in dividends. That was 159 percent of its profits over these three quarters.

And for Pfizer such mind-numbing distributions to shareholders are nothing new. The company has been piling stock buybacks on top of dividends since 1985. From January 2001 through September 2015, Pfizer paid out $95.5 billion in buybacks and $87.1 billion in dividends, representing 117 percent of its net income. Meanwhile, it booked $37.1 billion in corporate income taxes to the IRS.

Yet in a Wall Street Journal interview in October, to forestall the public criticism of corporate flight that was bound to come with the upcoming Pfizer-Allergan merger announcement, Pfizer CEO Ian C. Read moaned that its U.S. tax bill puts the company at a “tremendous disadvantage” in global competition. “We’re fighting,” Read said in the interview, “with one hand tied behind our back.” When one looks at Pfizer’s gargantuan distributions to shareholders, however, it is obvious that if Read can’t make use of both hands to secure innovation finance, it is not Uncle Sam who tied the knot.

If Pfizer is cash-constrained, it is far more likely that it is the golden handcuffs of stock-based executive pay that are the source of the problem. In 2014 Read as CEO had total direct compensation of $22.6 million, of which 27 percent came from exercising stock options and 50 percent from the vesting of stock awards. The other four highest-paid executives named on Pfizer’s 2015 proxy statement averaged $8.0 million, with 24 percent from stock options and 41 percent from stock awards. Pfizer states that the company has a prime commitment to ”enhancing shareholder value,” a self-serving ideology for executives whose remuneration depends on the company’s stock-price performance. And stock buybacks provide a potent tool for manipulating a company’s stock price for the sake of enhancing executive stock-based pay...

[Proserpina]

3. Happy Hannukah!

[Proserpina]

4. Obamacare "Observations" and the Elusive Search for Improvements; Seniors Beware!

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/12/obamacare-observations-and-elusive.html

Obamacare "Observations"

Team Obama brags that the readmission rate of patients to hospitals has been dropping. It has. And that was one of the goals of Obamacare.

Are congratulations in order?

Not exactly. Medicare enacts a penalty on hospitals that do not meet readmission goals. To meet the new goals, hospitals readmit patients, but they don't label it "readmission", they label it "observation".

...more patients are entering or re-entering hospitals under something called “observation status”—a category that keeps them out of the readmission tallies.

Patients on observation status can remain in the hospital for days, and typically receive care that is indistinguishable from inpatient stays, experts say. But under Medicare billing rules, the stays are considered outpatient visits, and as such, don’t trigger penalties under the health law.

The Journal’s analysis of Medicare billing data shows that increases in observation stays can skew the readmission numbers, letting hospitals avoid penalties even if patients continue to have complications and return for repeat visits.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/medicare-rules-reshape-hospital-admissions-1449024342

Medicare does not pay for observations. If patients don’t spend three days under formal inpatient admission in the hospital, the federal program won’t pay for a subsequent nursing-home stay. So patients pay out of pocket, and it can be very costly.... Make sure you are being "admitted, not observed". The difference can set you back $20,000 or more.

Shocking or not, I strongly suspect we still have not seen the end of these types of "improvement" revelations by the Obama administration.

more

[Proserpina]

5. Why the Fed Has to Raise Rates

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2015/12/why-fed-has-to-raise-rates.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+google%2FRzFQ+%28oftwominds%29

No empire has ever prospered or endured by weakening its currency.

A great many insightful commentators have made the case for why the Fed shouldn't raise rates this month--or indeed, any other month. The basic idea is that the Fed blew it by waiting until the economy is weakening to raise rates. More specifically, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke--self-hailed as a "hero that saved the global economy"--blew it by keeping rates at zero and overfeeding the stock market bubble baby with quantitative easing (QE).
Now that the Fed isn't feeding the baby QE, it's throwing a tantrum.

On the other side of the ledger is the argument that the Fed must raise rates to maintain its rapidly thinning credibility. I have made both of these arguments: that the Bernanke Fed blew it big-time, and that the Fed has to raise rates lest its credibility as the caretaker not just of the stock market but of the real economy implodes.

But there is another even more persuasive reason why the Fed must raise rates. It may appear to fall into the devil's advocate camp at first, but if we consider the Fed's action through the lens of Triffin's Paradox, which I have covered numerous times, then it makes sense...

more

[Proserpina]

6. "But It's Just A 0.25% Rate Hike, What's The Big Deal?" - Here Is The Stunning Answer

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-03/its-just-025-rate-hike-whats-big-deal-here-stunning-answer

....

Where will General Collateral trade when the fed funds target range is moved 25 basis points higher to .25% to .50%? In the most simple method, GC has averaged about .15% for the past month, which implies a GC rate around .40% after the Fed move.

However, given the unprecedented amount of liquidity in the financial system, there's a belief the Fed will have problems moving overnight rates higher.

We have two quantifiable events over the past few years where the Fed moved Repo rates higher or lower: quarter-end and the QE programs. Given there are so many moving parts, consider these to be very rough estimates: Beginning in 2015, when funding pressure began each quarter-end, the market, on average, took approximately $255B additional collateral from the Fed and, on average, GC rates averaged 20.5 basis points higher.

In 2013 on my website, I calculated that QE2 moved Repo rates, on average, 2.7 basis points for every $100B in QE. So, one very rough estimate moved GC 8 basis points and the other 2.7 basis points per hundred billion. In order to move GC 25 basis points higher, in a very rough estimate, the Fed needs to drain between $310B and $800B in liquidity.

If readers didn't just have an "oops" moment, please reread the last bolded sentence until they do, because it explains precisely what the market is missing about the Fed's rate hike cycle: according to Skyrm's calculations, to push rates by a paltry 25 bps, the smallest possible increment, what the Fed will have to do is drain up to a whopping $800 billion in liquidity!

Putting that in context, QE2 - which pushed the S&P higher from November 2010 until June 2011 - was "only" $600 billion.

In other words, to "prove" to itself that it is in control and the economy is viable, the Fed will effectively conduct, via reverse repo, an overnight QE2.... only in reverse.

For those who think this will have a positive, or even neutral, impact on risk assets, we have several bridges located in Brooklyn that we are looking to offload at 150% of par. Please send your BWICs to the usual address.

[Proserpina]

8. Yves Smith Trashes Latest Bond Film: Bond, Treasury Bond: 007 Out of Cash, but Government Can’t Be

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/bond-treasury-bond-007-is-out-of-cash-but-your-government-cant-be.html

[Proserpina]

9. Asset managers face withdrawals from Persian Gulf SWFs

A plunge in oil prices has prompted Persian Gulf sovereign-wealth funds to withdraw money from asset managers and use it to bolster their economies. More withdrawals are likely, experts say.

http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/hkaoBYvBbTCTshpgCicOlvCicNpsUM?format=standard

Some idiot...Paulson, maybe, used to rail that there was a savings glut. Well, there is: in multinational corporations and sovereign bond funds. By trying to put fracking out of business, the Arabs are reducing their savings glut...one big Middle Eastern war ought to finish the job...