STOCK MARKET WATCH - Tuesday, 13 March 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 13 March 2012[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 12 March 2012

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 12 March 2012
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Dow Jones 12,959.71 +37.69 (0.29%)
S&P 500 1,371.09 +0.22 (0.02%)
[font color=red]Nasdaq 2,983.66 -4.68 (-0.16%)


[font color=red]10 Year 2.03% +0.04 (2.01%)
30 Year 3.17% +0.03 (0.96%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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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
Credit Union Tracker
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
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
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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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Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = [/font][font color=red]12[/font]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison



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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. So, Friday the 13th comes on a Tuesday this month

it figures.

[Demeter]

2. Whistleblowers drawn by tip-off payouts

Company informants tempted by the prospect of multimillion dollar payouts are rushing to US regulators with audio recordings and internal documents to take advantage of a new programme that can make whistleblowing on wrongdoing lucrative, lawyers and regulators say.

Many of the complaints, lawyers say, involve allegations of accounting fraud and foreign bribery at financial and industrial companies. Others include allegations of market manipulation or other crimes by hedge funds and private equity firms.

Read more >>

http://link.ft.com/r/LVA6WW/7ARCUQ/NRHD3/NJT0NT/WTX426/JY/t?a1=2012&a2=3&a3=12

[Tansy_Gold]

3. ooh, ooh, this calls for

[Po_d Mainiac]

12. Calling all whistle blowers to the south stone wall

Lead injection won't hurt a bit.

[DemReadingDU]

4. Sounds too good to be true

From the FT article...
Under the programme, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, any person who reports a credible tip or complaint can qualify for 10 per cent to 30 per cent of the amount that the Securities and Exchange Commission recovers through the courts or a settlement. That could result in a big payday for an informant who uncovers a fraud that leads to a multimillion dollar settlement.


So what happens to the previous whistleblowers who have lost their jobs, who have been spied on, who have been made to feel like the bad guy/gal, for coming forward with the truth. And now we're supposed to believe the whistleblowers will be compensated a percentage of the settlement, assuming there will be a settlement.

[Demeter]

5. Solution: Regime change

Ron Paul type.

[Demeter]

8. Supreme Court Likely to Endorse Obama’s War on Whistle-Blowers By Chris Hedges

www.truthdig.com/report/item/supreme_court_set_to_endorse_obamas_war_on_whistleblowers_20120312/

Totalitarian systems disempower an unsuspecting population by gradually making legal what was once illegal. They incrementally corrupt and distort law to exclusively serve the goals of the inner sanctums of power and strip protection from the citizen. Law soon becomes the primary tool to advance the crimes of the elite and punish those who tell the truth. The state saturates the airwaves with official propaganda to replace news. Fear, and finally terror, creates an intellectual and moral void.

We have very little space left to maneuver. The iron doors of the corporate state are slamming shut. And a conviction of Bradley Manning, or any of the five others charged by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act of 1917 with passing on government secrets to the press, would effectively terminate public knowledge of the internal workings of the corporate state. What we live under cannot be called democracy. What we will live under if the Supreme Court upholds the use of the Espionage Act to punish those who expose war crimes and state lies will be a species of corporate fascism. And this closed society is, perhaps, only a few weeks or months away.

Few other Americans are as acutely aware of our descent into corporate totalitarianism as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 to The New York Times and is one of Manning’s most ardent and vocal defenders. Ellsberg, who was charged under the Espionage Act, faced 12 felony counts and a possible sentence of 115 years. He says that if he provided the Pentagon Papers today to news organizations, he would most likely never see his case dismissed on grounds of government misconduct against him as it was in 1973. The government tactics employed to discredit Ellsberg, which included burglarizing his psychoanalyst’s office and illegal wiretaps, were subjects of the impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon. But that was then.

“Everything that Richard Nixon did to me, for which he faced impeachment and prosecution, which led to his resignation, is now legal under the Patriot Act, the FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendment act, the National Defense Authorization Act,” Ellsberg told me late Friday afternoon when we met in Princeton, N.J....

MORE

[Demeter]

9. Obama Impeachment Bill Now In Congress By Drew Zahn

http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/obama-impeachment-bill-now-in-congress/?cat_orig=us

Let the president be duly warned. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., R-N.C., has introduced a resolution declaring that should the president use offensive military force without authorization of an act of Congress, “it is the sense of Congress” that such an act would be “an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor.”

Specifically, Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution reserves for Congress alone the power to declare war, a restriction that has been sorely tested in recent years, including Obama’s authorization of military force in Libya.

In an exclusive WND column, former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo claims that Jones introduced his House Concurrent Resolution 107 in response to startling recent comments from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta:

“This week it was Secretary of Defense Panetta’s declaration before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he and President Obama look not to the Congress for authorization to bomb Syria but to NATO and the United Nations,” Tancredo writes. “This led to Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., introducing an official resolution calling for impeachment should Obama take offensive action based on Panetta’s policy statement, because it would violate the Constitution.”

In response to questions from Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., over who determines the proper and legal use of the U.S. military, Panetta said, “Our goal would be to seek international permission and we would … come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this, whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress – I think those are issues we would have to discuss as we decide what to do here.”

“Well, I’m almost breathless about that,” Sessions responded, “because what I heard you say is, ‘We’re going to seek international approval, and then we’ll come and tell the Congress what we might do, and we might seek congressional approval.’ And I just want to say to you that’s a big [deal].”

Asked again what was the legal basis for U.S. military force, Panetta suggested a NATO coalition or U.N. resolution.

Sessions was dumbfounded by the answer.

“Well, I’m all for having international support, but I’m really baffled by the idea that somehow an international assembly provides a legal basis for the United States military to be deployed in combat,” Sessions said. “They can provide no legal authority. The only legal authority that’s required to deploy the United States military is of the Congress and the president and the law and the Constitution.”

The exchange itself can be seen below:

The full wording of H. Con. Res. 107, which is currently referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary, is as follows:

Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a president without prior and clear authorization of an act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.

Whereas the cornerstone of the Republic is honoring Congress’s exclusive power to declare war under article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that, except in response to an actual or imminent attack against the territory of the United States, the use of offensive military force by a president without prior and clear authorization of an act of Congress violates Congress’s exclusive power to declare war under Article I, Section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution and therefore constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.

[Demeter]

22. Reader Query: What Sleazy Con Artist Does the Obama “Greatness” Campaign Evoke?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/reader-query-what-sleazy-con-artist-does-the-obama-greatness-campaign-evoke.html

Just when you think things have gotten as bad as they can, whether in matters of great import of small, they manage to get worse. I should be inured to relentless Obama propagandizing by now, but to make sure the public doesn’t miss the fact that they are lucky enough to be governed by someone possessed of true genius, the pre-election PR is now taking on heavy-handed cult of personality overtones. As if Obama has enough in the way of personality for anyone to notice.

For instance, I’d like to know what sexual favors were exchanged to get this Washington Monthly puff piece published: “The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama.” And no, this isn’t meant to be ironic. The artwork depicts Obama being added to Mount Rushmore.

And Glenn Greenwald put out a red alert on a 17 minute Obama hagiography scheduled for release next week, via an advance skewering by Piers Morgan of the cloying leader worship displayed by producer David Guggenheim:

&feature=player_embedded

[Demeter]

6. New Rules for Global Governance Needed By Mukul Sanwal

WHERE DOES THE 600 LB GORILLA (CHINA) SIT AT THE CONFERENCE TABLE?

ANYWHERE HE WANTS TO!

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2012-03/12/content_14809707.htm

The BRICS summit, to be held in New Delhi at the end of March, provides the opportunity to begin a discussion on the global governance deficit. Looking ahead to 2050, the major challenges for growth are sustainability and climate change. A strategic vision of a common future is urgently required.

The current global economic governance has resulted in unprecedented prosperity for some along with heightened inequality for others. The cheap commodities and labor of developing countries produced a surge in the economic growth of industrialized countries, which account for around 80 percent of the natural resources consumed. At the same time the developing countries providing these resources have developed rapidly and there has been a shift in economic power to the BRICS countries.

At present the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - have half the world's population and one-third of the global GDP. By 2030 their economies will be larger than the seven industrialized countries that set the global priorities in the 20th Century.

The strategic issue before the Summit is whether to tweak a failing system established by, and in the interests of, 20 percent of the world's population, which has brought benefits to another 30 percent in poor countries, or shape new rules that will bring prosperity to the half of humanity that have yet to benefit from industrialization....

[Demeter]

7. The Financial Crisis as A Global Crime By Danny Schechter

THIS PROVES THE CASE OF THE PREVIOUS POST

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30794.htm

... A few weeks back, The International Institute for Peace, Justice & Human Rights, a human rights NGO in Geneva that lobbies the UN, invited me to present my views on the relationship between the global financial crisis and human rights. This is an issue I have been working on since 2005 when I started making the film In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts. After it burst, I followed up with a focus on financial times with Plunder the Crime of Our Time and the companion book The Crime of Our Time.

For nearly two years, I tried to raise the visibility of my arguments until better-funded films came along and Occupy Wall Street burst on the scene. I certainly wish it was my doing, but by then, there was something in the air, and who knows, I might have helped seed the clouds. I write about that in my new book Occupy: Dissecting Occupy Wall Street.

Now a new moment has arrived. I will be in Geneva next week making the case for the financial crisis as a crime against humanity, an international offense that the UN was set up to prevent and now even prosecutes, however sparingly, in the International Criminal Court....Here’s how the speech I have written begins:

Leave it to a Harvard Business School Professor, deeply schooled in the nuances of corporate practice, to raise one of the most profound analyses to come out of a devastating financial crisis that has become a seemingly permanent feature of global life.

Back in 2009, Professor Shoshanna Zuboff, argued that “crimes against humanity” had been committed by Wall Street’s financial manipulators.

“By refusing to consider the consequences of their actions, those who created the financial crisis exemplify the banality of evil,” she wrote.

Quoting on, she noted in the pages of Business Week:

“Each day's economic news leaves me haunted by Hannah Arendt's ruminations on Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann as she reported on his trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker 45 years ago. Arendt pondered "the strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil" and sought to capture it with her famous formulation "the banality of evil." Arendt found Eichmann neither "perverted nor sadistic," but "terribly and terrifyingly normal."

She even found a way of comparing the economic catastrophe that so many of us are living through to the Holocaust, although back stepped, no doubt in fear of provoking too strong a dismissive reaction from those who see that crime s uniquely horrific in history.

“The economic crisis is not the Holocaust but, I would argue, it derives from a business model that routinely produced a similar kind of remoteness and thoughtlessness, compounded by a widespread abrogation of individual moral judgment. As we learn more about the behavior within our financial institutions, we see that just about everyone accepted a reckless system that rewards transactions but rejects responsibility for the consequences of those transactions. Bankers, brokers, and financial specialists were all willing participants in a self-centered business model that celebrates what's good for organization insiders while dehumanizing and distancing everyone else—the outsiders.”

It is precisely this framework though, steeped in moral as well as economic lessons that we need to adopt to judge the vast human rights implications of the decisions and practices that led to the massive unemployment, homelessness, foreclosures, downward mobility and poverty that grips our world.

Is there the slightest chance of a remote possibility that a UN body, made up, as it is by politicians and nation states, would acknowledge the need for, much less the desirability of, prosecuting financial institutions and the governments that cover up for them, often in the name of protecting the social and economic rights of vulnerable people caught in the matrix of downward mobility?

At a time when the “right to protect” is so much in vogue, that is, when it involves bombing and drone attacks that actually cause additional harm to vulnerable civilians trapped in wars, can it be reframed as an affirmative duty for an international body to step in where national governments are unwilling to tread to stand up for the rights millions facing poverty and joblessness because of the deregulation and decriminalization by legislators compromised by corruption and payoffs.

In what everyone agrees is a GLOBAL crisis, is there not a need for Global solutions that go beyond somewhat stronger national regulations and “reforms” that have proven illusionary. Even the overdue Tobin Tax on financial transactions is not international and inadequate.

•Where are the global rules outlawing risky derivatives and casino-like gambling with people’s lives in financial markets?

•Where are the safeguards against the offshore hoarding of corporate funds and great fortunes? Are these abuses not as serious as insider trading?

•Where is the exposure of the economic austerity programs launched with official knowledge about the pain they will cause to ordinary people who are not responsible for the economic meltdown? Can the UN protect them?

•Where is the outrage against programs and policies that deepen economic inequality, or violently repress peaceful protests by citizens working for economic justice?

•Hasn’t the UN been tracking the international abuses against non-violent Occupy Movements worldwide?

•Is all the police overreach—surveillance, spying and the use of provocateurs to promote violence—not worthy of UN attention and condemnation as it is taking place worldwide and across borders?

•Where is the global determination to investigate more deeply, name and shame the financial violators of human rights, indict the guilty and prosecute them in the name of global justice?

*Why all the silence in the face of this ongoing onslaught against democracy and economic prosperity.

•Aren’t social and economic rights as worthy of upholding as political ones?

Isn’t it time to get serious or forever hang our heads in shame?

I will report next on what happened in Geneva, if anything.

******************************************************************************************

News Dissector Danny Schechter writes the Newsdissector.net blog. He has written widely and made films about financial crimes. He hosts a radio show on PRN.fm. Comments to [e-mail]

[Demeter]

10. Romney Says No Thanks To Medicare

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03/12/148471674/romney-says-no-thanks-to-medicare?ft=1&f=1001

So Mitt Romney is turning 65. And on his landmark birthday, he's doing the exact opposite of what roughly 99 percent of Americans do at that age: He's not signing up for Medicare. The news was broken by the blog Buzzfeed, and quickly confirmed by the Romney campaign.

Romney is clearly making a political point. Wealthy people like him ought to pay more for their Medicare benefits (if they get them at all) and that perhaps 65 is a little young to qualify, too. "Wealthier seniors will receive less support," under the changes Romney is proposing for Medicare, according to his website. At the same time, he is proposing to "gradually raise the retirement age to reflect increases in longevity."

But could his political point cost him more down the road if he changes his mind? Maybe. Medicare charges penalties for those who wait to sign up. It's the program's way of ensuring that people don't wait until they get sick to enroll.

Signing up for Medicare Part A, which covers hospital care, never used to be a problem, because it's free once you reach eligibility age. But a recent court ruling, involving former House Majority Leader Dick Armey as one of the plaintiffs, found that Social Security benefits and Medicare Part A are a package deal. If you sign up for the Social Security, you have to take Part A as well....

IT'S SO F***ING COMPLICATED! MUST READ

[Demeter]

11. Banks to Face Tough Reviews, Details of Mortgage Deal Show

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/business/tough-reviews-ahead-for-banks-in-26-billion-mortgage-deal.html

Banks will face stiff penalties and intense public scrutiny if they fail to live up to the standards of a $25 billion mortgage settlement with state and federal authorities, according to court documents filed as part of the deal Monday in federal court in Washington.

While the broad outline of the deal was announced last month, the mechanics of the agreement that took more than a year to negotiate were laid out in Monday’s filing, including exactly how much credit the five banks would receive for varying levels of loan forgiveness. and just what kind of conduct from the past is off-limits to future investigations.

“We are taking a zero-tolerance approach,” said one senior Obama administration official on Monday morning, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the documents had not yet been filed.

Banks must review their adherence to the new rules every quarter through a random sampling of cases, with a maximum threshold for errors at 1 percent in some cases if they are to avoid fines. “Any error that is found during the sampling process will have to be corrected,” the official said...

OOOH! I'M SCARED!

[Po_d Mainiac]

15. OOOH! I"M SCARED!

The morgue and god's chosen raise their middle fingers in salute.

Needless to say AWOL (dick) Holder ...............aw shit, nevah mind.

[Demeter]

27. Anecdotes of Mortgage Fraud By L. Randall Wray

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2012/03/anecdotes-of-mortgage-fraud.html

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been pushing foreclosure fraud. Well, not pushing the fraud but rather arguing that foreclosure is fraud. It has to be. If a mortgage was registered at MERS, then the chain of title was broken. Broken chains mean the bank cannot foreclose. But that was MERS’s business model, and so most mortgages are “infected”. Still, there’s a lot more to it than that.

I’ve been arguing since early on in the crisis that the entire real estate food chain is like Shrek’s onion—as you peel back every layer you find fraud. From the appraiser to the broker, from the lender to the securitizer, from the recording of the mortgage sales to the securitization’s trustees, from the accounting firms that signed off on everything to the ratings agencies that rated everything AAA, from the investment banks that created CDOs to the hedge fund managers who bet against the synthetics Goldman sold to its own customers, and from the bank lawyers to the judges that help banks steal homes. The whole damned onion is fraud.

And most of it, today, is to cover up the chain of fraud that dates back to the early 2000s. It has been all fraud, all the time, since 2000.

As is widely noted, the FBI warned of an epidemic of fraud in 2004. The Fed’s FOMC discussed rising fraud even before that. While anecdotal evidence, alone, should not be enough to convince one, there is certainly plenty of it. Today I want to talk briefly about a couple more examples of the fraud that led up to the crisis....

[Demeter]

29. Fed Said to Balk at Bank Payouts Over Loan-Loss Estimates

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-09/fed-said-to-balk-at-banks-dividend-plans-amid-higher-loan-loss-estimates.html

The Federal Reserve is pushing back against some banks’ proposals to pay dividends and repurchase shares, after concluding that the lenders are underestimating the potential for losses on consumer debt in a severe economic slump, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

Executives and Fed examiners have been wrangling in recent weeks over the central bank’s stress-test process as the March 15 deadline for results approaches. The Fed hasn’t yet given banks a ruling on their proposed payouts or told firms how much higher its estimates are for losses on mortgage loans and credit cards, the people said. Examiners are still fine-tuning calculations, which may change.

“If the Fed fights back and disagrees and is more aggressive in their stance on cards and mortgages, it would mean banks wouldn’t be able to pay out as much,” missing investors’ expectations, said Glenn Schorr, a senior bank analyst for Nomura Securities in New York. Investors expect banks will pay out 50 percent to 60 percent of earnings this year, he said.

The exams may bolster confidence in the nation’s largest banks by demonstrating they can handle a deeper downturn or a “market shock” after a year in which financial markets were battered by prolonged economic weakness and the European debt crisis. Thirty-one lenders are undergoing tests and submitting capital plans that the Fed must approve before they can boost payouts and share buybacks.

The Fed’s 25 economic variables in the tests include a 13 percent jobless rate and a 20 percent slump in home prices...

I'D BE MORE IMPRESSED IF THERE WERE SUCH GOVERNMENTAL SOLICITUDE FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE, AND PROVISIONS FOR THEM TO SURVIVE STRESSES LIKE "a 13 percent jobless rate and a 20 percent slump in home prices..."

[Demeter]

13. Taxing the Rich Does Not Hurt Jobs

This Real News Network interview with professor of economics Jeffrey Thompson debunks the notion that increasing taxes on the well off is a negative for employment.

&feature=player_embedded

[tclambert]

40. What matters to employers is whether customers have money.

Customers = working people. It DOES NOT MATTER how much money the rich guy who owns the company has. The managers doing the hiring will not use his money to hire anyone. Salaries and benefits have to come from revenues--from sales to customers--or it's a bad business model.

[Demeter]

14. Lawsuit » Goldman, Bank of America have tried to protectshort-selling records.

Judge orders documents in Overstock case unsealed

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/53683903-79/overstock-public-stock-documents.html.csp

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. documents that were deemed confidential in a lawsuit filed against them by Overstock.com Inc. must be made public, a state court judge in San Francisco ruled.

The case involves a 2007 lawsuit by Salt Lake City-based Overstock claiming the banks manipulated its stock from 2005 to 2007, causing its shares to fall. State Court Judge John Munter dismissed the case on Jan. 10, ruling the conduct took place outside of California. Overstock appealed, and also asked Munter to make public those documents he put under seal.

Munter granted Overstock’s request to make public a large chunk of documents. "The subject matter of this action is of substantial public interest. This case concerns publicly traded securities and the operation of the national securities markets, and those are of great public interest."

Munter also ruled, though, other documents "laced with identifying information about hundreds of thousands of financial transactions of third parties" should remain sealed...Overstock claims large portions of its stock was the subject of illegal naked shorting...The clearing operations at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, the brokerage acquired by Bank of America in 2009, intentionally failed to locate and deliver borrowed shares for clients, allowing the firms to earn fees and interest on phantom securities transactions, Overstock said in court filings. It sought millions in damages...

MORE

[Po_d Mainiac]

18. I had the links to all this on the old box..prior to the blackout..hellofa read

Wish Byrne's all the best....BTW Pat, stay away from private aircraft and watercraft

[DemReadingDU]

31. Years ago, I had seen a video about Overstock's price being manipulated

It made me realize the horrors of investing, that any stock could be manipulated. I came to the conclusion that nothing in these markets can be trusted, so I got out.

It will be interesting to see what is being unsealed in the Overstock lawsuit case.

[Demeter]

16. Hawaii does in the AG settlement?

HAWAII SENATE RESOLUTION DIRECTING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL TO INVESTIGATE CASES WHERE FRAUDULENT TRANSFERS AND ASSIGNMENTS OF MORTGAGE LOAN DOCUMENTS ARE ALLEGED.

http://deadlyclear.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/hawaii-senate-resolution-directing-the-attorney-general-to-investigate-cases-where-fraudulent-transfers-and-assignments-of-mortgage-loan-documents-are-alleged/

YVES SMITH: Hah, if the legislature signs this soon enough (unlikely) the state AG can’t sign the mortgage settlement.

[Po_d Mainiac]

59. Hawaii signed

http://nationalmortgagesettlement.com/states

[Demeter]

17. The Fukushima story you didn't hear on CNN by Greg Palast

http://www.gregpalast.com/the-fukushima-story-you-didnt-hear-on-cnn/

READ IT AND WEEP

[DemReadingDU]

35. I've been reading and weeping for years

The more I read, the more I weep. It appears that everything is screwed up and falling apart.

[Demeter]

19. Iron Age Beer-Making Operation Discovered

http://news.discovery.com/history/beer-making-brewery-france-110615.html

Although this domestic brewery operated 2,500 years ago, the beer then was about the same as it is today.

THE GIST

Archaeological evidence for France's oldest known beer-making operation has been found in the Provence region.

The brewer used malted barley to make his beer, which might have resembled modern home brews.

The Celts of Provence imported wine from the Mediterranean and also made their own wines, but likely couldn't trade beer for wine.

[Demeter]

20. Ancient Nubians Drank Antibiotic-Laced Beer

http://news.discovery.com/history/antibiotic-beer-nubia.html

A group of people who lived nearly 2,000 years ago in Sudanese Nubia took doses of tetracycline -- through their beer.

THE GIST

Human use of antibiotics began not 80 years ago, but nearly 2,000 years ago along the banks of the Nile River.
Those ancient people got tetracycline out of fermented grain that they used to brew beer.
Everyone drank the antibiotic-laced beer often, starting as early as age two.

..They (ARCHEOLOGISTS) were also able to trace the antibiotic to its source: Grain that was contaminated with a type of mold-like bacteria called Streptomyces. Common in soil, Strep bacteria produce tetracycline antibiotics to kill off other, competing bacteria.

[Demeter]

21. These last two posts were to round out the Weekend before last, which celebrated beer

I have an artist for the upcoming weekend: Christine Lavin, the quirky chanteuse and song writer. I think you will enjoy her outlooks on life and love and all that.

If not, you can get out your beer-making kit and try to introduce tetracycline into the brew...

[Demeter]

23. 'Occupy' as a business model: The emerging open-source civilisation

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/2012361233474499.html

This is your lesson for the week in political economy....too complicated to excerpt, too important to ignore....MUST READ

[bread_and_roses]

28. I only grasp the faintest glimmer of what he's talking about ....

... I need someone who can break that down in simpler language. But the little glimmer I get is fascinating - I wish I knew more about "open -source software" - that might help me "get it." I know what it is, but that's all - and have never used it, though ever since I heard about it I've always thought that I should use it - the concept is in line with my ethics.

Meanwhile, way down here on my mundane level, I'd like to know more about the "Global Square Project" the aim of which is described as "whose aim is to ultimately replace Facebook with a civic network."

FB is the perfect illustration of the madness of our times, on which even our very person-hood is mined for profit. I have to use it for my work - (part of the madness is that an organization must be on FB - so that my organization, a not-for-profit dedicated to workers rights, is there along with, say, P&G, and we too contribute our mite to the billions and billions captured by Zuckerman et al. So - I'd very much like to see an alternative to that juggernaut.

[FarCenter]

75. Extrapolating Occupy or open source software to a larger scale won't work

In the case of Occupy, the source of food, supplies, etc. was either the accumulated capital of the participants or contributions from outside the Occupy participants. You can sustain any type of economic model if you have enough charity inputs. On the other hand, what goods or services did the Occupy participants provide that would be valued by society if expanded to a significant percentage of GDP?

Open source software is more interesting, although it is also not a scaleable model.

Software has the characteristics that:
- the value of software to users is a very weak function of the cost of producing the software,
- software, like fine arts, is written by developers for personal satisfaction and communal recognition,
- software can be composed from existing pieces of software to significantly increase value with minor costs,
- the marginal cost of manufacturing and distributing software is close to zero.

What this implies generally is that any software function that is well understood and widely used will become a commodity that is priced at zero or close to zero.

Only novelty and legal monopoly protection allow software to be priced much above zero, and then only for a time.

Therefore, open source software economics does not provide a model for a wider economy, although it does have implications for digital creative works more generally, such as books, movies, etc.

IT companies are moving towards being services companies relying on subscriptions, maintenance, and consulting, rather than relying on licensed software sales.

[Demeter]

83. I look at it this way

I can grow food, make clothes, make meals, build some machinery, do repairs, and write and analyze and evaluate and lots of other things, abstract and concrete.

What I cannot do is "make money". The reason is, I cannot figure out how to steal. And I'm useless at gambling.

You can make lots of things, but you cannot "make" money. You can exchange the fruits of your labors and your intellect for a commonly-accepted medium of exchange, but to "make money", in these days of zero interest on savings, you have to steal and/or gamble.

If Occupy can get the gambling addicts and the congenitally crooked out of the halls of power, and write decent and fair regulations that are applied equally to all, they will have succeeded.

The fact that this means a complete reworking of society and politics and law doesn't faze them, nor should it.

The alternative is slow death by inequality and poverty.

[FarCenter]

91. But of course, you are actually gambling

Anyone who raises food gambles on the weather, pests, weeds, etc.

You took the gamble that learning how to cook and to sew was worth the investment of time in learning how to do those things, as well as the investment in the tools of those trades.

Same thing for developing your expertise and acquiring the assets needed to build machinery and do repairs.

On the other hand, maybe you aren't good at stealing.

Finance is just a very large multi-player electronic networked game, with participants sitting at terminals or implemented on server farms near other server farms that do the exchange hub functions. It is special only in that the rules are written by the government and enforced by the police and the courts (sort of).

[Demeter]

24. Greece’s CDS: more lucky than smart By Felix Salmon

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/09/greeces-cds-more-lucky-than-smart/

It’s official:

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. (ISDA) today announced that its EMEA Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee resolved unanimously that a Restructuring Credit Event has occurred with respect to The Hellenic Republic (Greece).

The word that jumps out at me here is Restructuring. In Europe, restructuring counts as a credit event; in north America, by contrast, it doesn’t. Which means that the derivatives market was pretty lucky here. If the standard Greek CDS documentation had looked like the standard US CDS documentation, there wouldn’t have been a credit event, as ISDA spokesman Steve Kennedy confirmed to me via email:

If you own CDS, and if you do not have restructuring as a credit event in your contract, it would not trigger if a CAC were invoked. You would know this going in. It is not a surprise.

The issue of restructuring as a credit event has been discussed for a decade. In other words, where restructuring is not a standard credit event (such as for US corporates), protection buyers buy the CDS protection knowing that there is no restructuring clause, that the credit event triggers are failure to pay and bankruptcy (for corporates) and repudiation/moratorium (for sovereigns), and the CDS is priced accordingly.

Now this isn’t quite as scary as it looks at first glance, because while US bonds do include CACs, if you want to amend the payment terms, you typically need 100% of the bondholders to agree to change the terms. A CDS holder could therefore buy a single bond and thereby ensure payment default and CDS payout....But still, the whole CDS saga in Greece and elsewhere does rather feel as though ISDA is making it up as it goes along. Check this out, from the official FAQ:

How can an auction be held if there are no “old bonds” because they have been exchanged for new bonds?

The EMEA Determinations Committee will ultimately decide which of the obligations are deliverable under the Credit Derivatives Definitions for purposes of the Greek CDS settlement auction. It is important to note that Greece has outstanding a wide variety of obligations. Not all existing bonds are covered by the use of CACs. In addition, new bonds are being issued that might satisfy the requirements for deliverable obligations.

In other words, yes, the CDS market looks a little bit broken, but we’ll muddle through somehow, and hey, you never know, maybe the new bonds will work as deliverables after all...Greece is now the second high-profile CDS case which could have gone horribly wrong for investors who thought they were actually protecting themselves when they bought protection. First came AIG, which ended up paying out on its CDS obligations at 100 cents on the dollar, although that decision was highly controversial. AIG’s Joe Cassano reckons that AIG shouldn’t have paid out anything at all, since the underlying obligations hadn’t actually defaulted. The problem was that AIG itself was downgraded, and couldn’t come up with the requisite margin; as a result, it had to unwind the CDS it had written at the bottom of the market and at enormous cost. And of course most of the rest of us reckon that because AIG was insolvent, its creditors/counterparties shouldn’t have got everything they were owed, and should instead have taken some kind of haircut.

Now comes Greece, which seems as though it will pay out at roughly the right level, if only because the EMEA paperwork had a restructuring clause, and because it had some obscure foreign-law bonds which can be used as deliverables.

Going forwards, then, I can’t imagine that investors will have much if any confidence that CDS will really perform the hedging function they’re designed for. My feeling is that if you look at the numbers for total single-name CDS outstanding, they’ll decline steadily from here on in. Because you ultimately can’t trust them when you really need them.

[Demeter]

84. (Actually, it was a gentlemen's agreement not to crash the world)

They divided up the spoils and stuck the powerless with the bills. Then they let the "defualt" become official, to get the last drops of honey....I mean, money.

[Demeter]

25. Japan's nuclear crisis: Fukushima's legacy of fear (OCCUPY JAPAN?)

http://www.nature.com/news/japan-s-nuclear-crisis-fukushima-s-legacy-of-fear-1.10183

[Demeter]

26. Another Plunge in 3-Month Rolling Average of Petroleum and Gasoline Usage

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/03/another-plunge-in-3-month-rolling.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis+%28Mish%27s+Global+Economic+Trend+Analysis%29

The following chart shows U.S. petroleum and gasoline usage for December-February compared with the same three months in prior years. Chart is courtesy of reader Tim Wallace.

Note that petroleum usage is back to December 1995 thru February 1996 levels. Gasoline usage is back to December 2001 thru February 2002 levels.




...Wallace comments "If this trend lasts for the rest of the year, Obama's stated goal of a 15% reduction in greenhouse gases based off 2005 numbers may be met this year instead of his 2015 goal."

Should that happen, I wonder how many will be happy with the economic result.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

[Demeter]

30. Is MF Global Getting a Free Pass? By JOE NOCERA

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/nocera-is-mf-global-getting-a-free-pass.html

It’s sure starting to look as if Jon Corzine is going to get away with it.

By now, it has been well established that Corzine’s former firm, MF Global, committed the sin of sins for a broker-dealer. In late October, during the final, desperate days before it entered bankruptcy proceedings, its executives took money from segregated customer accounts — money that belonged not to MF Global but to the farmers and commodities traders that were its clients — and used it to prop up its rapidly collapsing business. Nor was this petty cash: of the $6.9 billion in customer assets that MF Global held, a stunning $1.6 billion is missing. There is virtually no chance that the full amount will ever be recovered.

Let’s not mince words here. These executives committed a crime. Virtually every knowing violation of the Commodities Exchange Act is a crime, but taking money from segregated customer accounts is at the top of the list. And for good reason. Customer money is supposed to be sacrosanct. If a broker-dealer goes bankrupt, the segregated accounts are supposed to remain safe, a little like the way bank deposits remain protected if a bank goes under. Indeed, customers need to be able to trust the fact that their money is segregated and protected at all times. Otherwise, the markets can’t function.

Yet, a few weeks ago, Azam Ahmed and Ben Protess, who have done a remarkable job covering the MF Global bankruptcy for The Times, wrote an article suggesting that prosecutors were having trouble putting together a criminal case against anyone at MF Global. So far, wrote Ahmed and Protess, they’d been “unable to find a smoking gun.” In fact, they continued, “a number of federal prosecutors have expressed doubts” that MF Global “intentionally misused customer money.” Apparently, the current theory is that it was all just a big accident, the chaos of those final days causing the firm’s executives to tap into customer funds without realizing it.

Excuse me while I roll my eyes. Of course there isn’t a smoking gun. As a general rule, financial professionals tend not to write e-mails that say, “Hey, we’re desperate. Let’s break into the customer accounts!” And, of course, they are always going to say it was unintentional. They are saying it already, starting with Corzine, who told Congress last year that “there was no intention to violate segregation rules.”

MORE SARCASM AT LINK

[Demeter]

33. Donohue to step down as CME chief

The futures exchange’s chief executive will leave his job at the end of the year in a bid to restore market confidence after MF Global’s collapse

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/BLH300/16E87A/RP6QL/B5Q3XC/5VJ9FW/FW/t?a1=2012&a2=3&a3=13

[CAPHAVOC]

37. They have the goods on others in high places

To expose Corzine would open a can of worms.

[DemReadingDU]

39. It's an election year

Of course, Corzine gets a pass, isn't he helping Obama to get re-elected

[Demeter]

42. If Obama's Re-election Were Threatened

he'd prosecute Corzine in a heartbeat. And win honestly, for he would have demonstrated some desire to actually do the job for which he was chosen.

Not only would it be cheaper, it would be ethical. Therefore, it will not happen....unless Mitt the Halfwit catches fire.

[Demeter]

47. MF Global Still Set to Pay Bonuses

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203961204577269841477216320.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Three top executives of MF Global Holdings Ltd. when it collapsed could get bonuses of as much as several hundred thousand dollars each under a plan by a trustee overseeing the securities firm's bankruptcy case, people familiar with the matter said.

Louis Freeh, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director now in charge of unwinding what is left of the New York company, is expected to ask a bankruptcy-court judge as soon as this month to approve performance-related payouts for the chief operating officer, finance chief and general counsel at MF Global, these people said. All three executives kept their jobs after the company's Oct. 31 failure in order to help Mr. Freeh untangle the firm's assets and maximize payouts to creditors.

Under the expected pay plan, the three executives and as many as 20 other MF Global employees working for Mr. Freeh would get the bonuses only if they hit specified targets such as increasing the value of MF Global's estate for creditors. The payments could vary in size depending on progress with the estate and likely would be paid in batches throughout 2012, a person familiar with the matter said. The total payouts are expected to be smaller than bonuses received by the same executives before MF Global sank amid panic over the big bets made on European sovereign debt under Jon S. Corzine, the company's former chairman and chief executive. He resigned in November.

For example, Bradley I. Abelow, president and chief operating officer at MF Global, got a salary of $829,545 and a bonus of $1.25 million for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011, according to a securities filing. His total compensation was $7.6 million. After the Chapter 11 filing, Mr. Abelow agreed to cut his annual salary to $60,000, another securities filing shows....MORE

[Demeter]

48. MF Global Customers Call Trustee’s Demands ‘Unwarranted’

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-08/mf-global-customers-call-trustee-s-demands-unwarranted-.html

MF Global Inc. (MFGLQ)’s trustee asked futures customers to release claims on the defunct brokerage in return for money they are owed, demanding an “unwarranted” transfer of legal rights, a group of customers said. The customers, including William Fleckenstein, Thomas Wacker and Summit Trust Co., said in a court filing yesterday that they were notifying the judge supervising the firm’s liquidation of their “concern” in case he wasn’t aware that trustee James Giddens had mailed his demands to some customers along with his determination of their claims. One of Giddens’s demands may require customers to release claims made in class- action lawsuits, they said.

“It may be interpreted to release claims being asserted in the numerous class action lawsuits filed by aggrieved customers,” the customers said in the filing. “It could also potentially be asserted as a bar to recovery by some or all of the defendants joined in these lawsuits, including claims in the suits against parties alleged to be responsible for the misappropriation of customer funds.”

MF Global futures customers including Fleckenstein, a Seattle money manager, have filed at least seven separate suits against Jon Corzine, the parent company’s former chief executive officer, over the alleged theft of their assets, according to filings in federal court in Manhattan. Giddens has said there is a gap of at least $1.6 billion between funds he can obtain and commodity customers’ claims....Kent Jarrell, a Giddens spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on yesterday’s filing. The futures customers will publish a detailed account of their objections to Giddens’s request later, they said in the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

MF Global Holdings Ltd., the brokerage’s parent, filed the eighth-largest U.S. bankruptcy on Oct. 31 with debt of almost $40 billion after making bets on sovereign debt and getting margin calls. Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey and former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has said he didn’t authorize any misuse of customer money that may have occurred...

[Demeter]

32. MATT TAIBBI INTERVIEWS VIDEO

http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/?task=viewvideo&video_id=73192

[Demeter]

34. US to bring rare earths trade case against China

The US is preparing to launch a case at the World Trade Organisation against China’s export controls on rare earths, in a move highlighting the growing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing ahead of this year’s US presidential election.

A senior US official confirmed that the Obama administration would soon bring a case against China over rare earths – 17 elements crucial for producing a range of items from fluorescent lightbulbs and BlackBerrys to guided missiles and hybrid cars.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/0QSDPP/5VJ024/JQU4J/MSLOF8/2OQI98/SN/t?a1=2012&a2=3&a3=13

[Demeter]

36. Carlyle Owners Took $398.5 Million Payout With Debt Before IPO

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-13/carlyle-owners-took-400-million-tax-deferred-payout-before-ipo-with-debt.html

Carlyle Group LP (CG), in a transaction nine months before it filed to go public, saddled itself with debt to pay owners including William Conway, Daniel D’Aniello and David Rubenstein a $398.5 million tax-deferred dividend.

The private equity firm borrowed $500 million from Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Co. in December 2010, saying it would use part of that to expand investment products. Instead, it paid out almost 80 percent of the money to existing owners, according to regulatory filings. Separately, the Washington- based firm negotiated bank credit giving it the option to distribute an additional $400 million prior to its initial public offering, lending agreements filed last month show.

The deals, which echo the dividend recapitalization private equity managers use to extract cash from the companies they acquire, leave Carlyle’s future shareholders with the cost of servicing the debt. Assuming Carlyle holds its IPO by the end of June, Mubadala will have earned a return in excess of 50 percent, including a $200 million equity stake the owners gave away to obtain a loan that lasted about a year and a half.

“It begs the question, ‘Why would you do that?’ ” said Matthew Pieniazek, the president of Darling Consulting Group, an adviser to banks in Newburyport, Massachusetts. “IPOs are not guaranteed. They were willing to give up some of the upside for the certainty of” a distribution....By financing the dividends with debt, Carlyle’s founders can receive the full amount without facing an immediate tax bill, and without having to sell shares in the IPO. Under Internal Revenue Code regulations for partnerships, the owners can defer paying taxes on the distribution until the debt is retired, said Allan Weiner, a partner in the Washington office of the law firm Kelley Drye & Warren LLP.

[Demeter]

38. GREECE: Debt crisis: as it happened - March 12, 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9137373/Debt-crisis-as-it-happened-March-12-2012.html

Lawyers in Germany are representing 110 bond holders who have formed a class action group, as new Greek bonds started trading on Monday and remained the highest-yielding debt in the currency bloc.

[Demeter]

41. Fed Fights Subpoena on Bernanke

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303717304577277712160795098.html

The Federal Reserve is fighting a subpoena from lawyers in a civil lawsuit who want the central bank's chairman, Ben Bernanke, to testify about conversations he had with Bank of America Corp. executives before the lender completed its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co...The Federal Reserve opposes efforts to make its chairman, Ben Bernanke testify on the Merrill Lynch takeover....

The three-year-old class-action suit alleges that the Charlotte, N.C., bank and Kenneth D. Lewis, then its chief executive, misled shareholders about ballooning losses at Merrill before the $19.4 billion acquisition was approved. The government provided $20 billion in U.S. aid after Bank of America officials told Mr. Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in December 2008 that they might abandon the deal because of the losses...Lawyers for the six plaintiffs, which include the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, want to question Mr. Bernanke about conversations he had with Mr. Lewis before the Merrill purchase closed in January 2009, said a person close to the case. The lawyers from several firms, including Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP, disclosed the subpoena to Mr. Bernanke in a document filed with the Southern District of New York.

It would be highly unusual for an acting top regulator to be compelled to testify in a private lawsuit. The Fed has argued that the regulator's behavior isn't central to the case and that the Fed itself isn't a party in the case, said people familiar with situation. J. Virgil Mattingly Jr., a Sullivan & Cromwell attorney who served as the Fed's general counsel from 1989 to 2004, said he couldn't think of any previous instances in which a top regulator was deposed in a private case. Though there were a few rare cases during his time at the Fed in which officials were asked, Mr. Mattingly said "it would be unprecedented" if Mr. Bernanke were actually deposed.

One big point of contention in the months after the deal closed was whether Mr. Bernanke threatened to oust Mr. Lewis if the chief executive didn't go through with the Merrill purchase....

TOOK THEM LONG ENOUGH...WONDER WHAT CRACK OF LEGALITY THEY PRIED OPEN...

[Demeter]

43. Former New Jersey governor goes undercover as homeless man (NO, NOT CORZINE)

http://news.yahoo.com/former-jersey-governor-goes-undercover-homeless-man-023749042.html

A phony beard, a fake tattoo and clothes dragged through grass and stained with coffee were all it took to transform former New Jersey Governor Richard Codey into a homeless man looking for shelter on a frigid night this week. His self-appointed undercover mission to spotlight what he calls discrimination against men by shelters took about three months of planning before Codey stood at the door of the Goodwill Rescue mission in Newark, New Jersey at 8 p.m. on Monday, asking to be let in.

Codey, 65, who is a state senator but disguised himself as a homeless man, had already been denied admission to about 25 other local shelters because he was not receiving welfare or other government assistance, he told Reuters on Wednesday. "We called and I said, 'My uncle, he's homeless, we want to find him a place at night to sleep.' Each time I was told, 'Does he have SSI? Welfare? Disability?' When we said 'No,' we were told there was no room at the inn."

Codey, frequently mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for governor, plans to take his findings to seek more federal money for the homeless. The National Alliance to End Homelessness said more than 636,000 people were homeless in the United States in 2011. He is particularly concerned with single men and those with mental health issues, who he says are unfairly shut out of the shelter system. He said women and families have far greater access to emergency housing.

When Goodwill agreed to take him in, offering a thin bedroll, a blanket and a spot on a linoleum floor with 20 other men, he thought he'd finally found a haven. Then came the shower call. "I was terrified because I knew if I had a shower, my makeup was coming off," said Codey, whose undercover team included a makeup artist who spent nearly an hour transforming him, painting tobacco stains on his teeth and drawing broken blood vessels and dirt on his skin...

[Demeter]

44. An Industry’s Failure to Verify, After Trusting

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/business/mbia-and-an-industrys-failure-to-trust-but-verify.html?ref=business

As the financial crisis intensified in mid-2008, the largest of the monoline insurance companies that had guaranteed payments on complicated securities retained an investment bank to evaluate the risks it had taken on in a small part of its portfolio — a group of 15 collateralized debt obligations.

The report commissioned by MBIA came back days before that investment bank, Lehman Brothers, itself failed in September 2008. Lehman concluded that MBIA stood to lose more than $7.7 billion on those 15 securities. That was about three times the loss reserves the company had established for all of its policies. If accurate, it raised serious questions about the company’s solvency.

About 10 weeks later, on Dec. 5, MBIA asked the New York Insurance Department, now part of New York’s Department of Financial Services, for permission to split into two units. One would have just the dubious business — known as structured finance — including securities backed by home mortgages and the even riskier C.D.O.’s that are backed by securities that in turn are backed by mortgages. The other unit would be responsible for MBIA’s traditional business of insuring municipal bonds. It presented to the department financial projections showing both companies would be well capitalized. Eric R. Dinallo, the state insurance commissioner at the time, approved the transaction on Feb. 17, 2009, without having held any hearings or even notifying the public that the idea was under consideration. The beneficiaries of those insurance policies — largely banks and hedge funds that owned the structured finance securities — promptly sued in both state and federal court to overturn the approval.

More than three years later, it appears that one of those cases will go to trial in May in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan. If it does, it will be the first major civil case from the financial crisis to go to trial. Many cases charging misbehavior have been settled, often with payments of billions of dollars, but there has been no public presentation of evidence and cross examination of witnesses before a judge. This trial, and ones that could follow it, will not change how much money has been and will be lost because of bad loans made during the boom. But the trials are likely to affect the division of the losses. For those who watch them, they will also document just how irresponsible — or worse — many of the players were....MORE

[bread_and_roses]

45. "Ethical" shopping choices - what a joke

this author means well but is totally on the wrong track:

http://www.alternet.org/activism/154499/3_surprising_shopping_habits_that_are_bad_for_the_world/?page=entire

3 Surprising Shopping Habits That Are Bad for the World
While most progressives are aware of Wal-Mart's labor problems, they may not know about the way workers at an Amazon shipping facility are treated.

... 1. Buying from online retailers that treat their warehouse workers like dirt...

She goes on with others - but the end result is that the individual consumer must research the company, evaluate their labor and disposal (and presumably, though she doesn't address it specifically, sourcing) practices, and then make a decision to buy or not to buy.

This is ridiculous. Who has the time? The energy? And it requires that "ethical" shopping behavior disregard one's own economic interests/situation. Like telling low-wage and poor people not to do their grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.

Toward the end she gets to

Still, we shouldn't despair. Instead, we should use this information to fire us up about supporting workers' rights in every industry and pushing for things like ethical shopping certifications, to borrow an excellent idea from McClelland's warehouse reporting.

eh? what's McClelland's warehouse reporting?

and then concludes with

The bottom line is that we're all going to have to get creative, and stay informed, to make headway toward widely available, ethical shopping choices.

No, Lauren, I'm sorry - that is not the bottom line. The bottom line is that we must have laws, regulations, enforcements that make these abuses unprofitable - even deadly - to the vampire Corporations that practice them.

Telling "shoppers" to do this themselves is futile. Even someone like myself, who "shops" for scarcely ever anything but necessities, reads constantly, is informed and aware, and is not poor, cannot do this on a daily basis.

[Demeter]

52. Exactly! An Ounce of Regulation is Worth a Pound of Flogging

[Tansy_Gold]

63. Amen.

And I do the same thing, as much as I can, but even then it's impossible.

Or we can go back to living in caves.

[Demeter]

85. One thing about caves--there's a lot less housework

It's either that, or a convent.

[Fuddnik]

74. McClellands warehouse reporting.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor.

She went undercover at a online supply warehouse. I think she lasted less than four days. But, she had a job to fall back on.

I agree. Who has time to research every place they shop. We need laws, regulations, and ENFORCEMENT. I know better than to shop at Amazon, but I do anyway, sometimes. Say last year, I checked prices all over for a Korg synthesizer. The cheapest around was Best Buy, (who has screwed me in the past) at $500. Or, $400 from Amazon delivered to my door. And saved another 7% on sales tax.

[bread_and_roses]

98. thanks, Fudd -

- and yeah, I've bought things from Amazon too. Not a lot, because I don't buy a lot of anything. But a few gifts. It was so easy, and I get so tired. It is totally ludicrous and also plays into the right-wing theme of "individual responsibility" to promote these ideas of expecting individual consumers to take responsibility for monitoring corporate behavior . They are not just wrong-headed, I believe they actually support the very practices they deplore - both by diverting energy and awareness AND by promoting the right-wing philosophy of consumer responsibility.

[Demeter]

46. U.S. Regulators ‘Paralyzed’ by Cost-Benefit Suits, Chilton Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-08/u-s-regulators-paralyzed-by-cost-benefit-suits-chilton-says.html

Wall Street banks are using the threat of lawsuits to prevent regulators from writing rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, said Bart Chilton, a Democrat on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“Some regulators live in constant fear and are virtually paralyzed by the threat” that they will face “spuriously” filed suits alleging that the costs and benefits of their rules weren’t adequately considered, Chilton said in a speech prepared for the Trade Tech 2012 conference today in New York. “It is a bastardization of the conduct and use of cost-benefit analyses in regulatory rulemaking.”

The CFTC is defending against a challenge filed last year in federal court that the agency overstepped its authority under the Dodd-Frank Act and inadequately assessed the costs of new limits on speculation in oil, natural gas and other commodities. The lawsuit was filed by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association Inc. and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

The lawsuit is one of the financial industry’s highest profile efforts to challenge Dodd-Frank, the regulatory overhaul enacted in 2010. The associations represent JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), among other derivatives dealers. A judgment is pending....MORE

[Demeter]

49. Banks foreclosing on US churches in record numbers

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/09/usa-housing-churches-idUSL2E8E804X20120309

Banks are foreclosing on America's churches in record numbers as lenders increasingly lose patience with religious facilities that have defaulted on their mortgages, according to new data. The surge in church foreclosures represents a new wave of distressed property seizures triggered by the 2008 financial crash, analysts say, with many banks no longer willing to grant struggling religious organizations forbearance.

Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group. In 2011, 138 churches were sold by banks, an annual record, with no sign that these religious foreclosures are abating, according to CoStar. That compares to just 24 sales in 2008 and only a handful in the decade before. The church foreclosures have hit all denominations across America, black and white, but with small to medium size houses of worship the worst. Most of these institutions have ended up being purchased by other churches.

The highest percentage have occurred in some of the states hardest hit by the home foreclosure crisis: California, Georgia, Florida and Michigan. "Churches are among the final institutions to get foreclosed upon because banks have not wanted to look like they are being heavy handed with the churches," said Scott Rolfs, managing director of Religious and Education finance at the investment bank Ziegler. Church defaults differ from residential foreclosures. Most of the loans in question are not 30-year mortgages but rather commercial loans that typically mature after just five years when the full balance becomes due immediately. It's common practice for banks to refinance such loans when they come due. But banks have become increasingly reluctant to do that because of pressure from regulators to clean up their balance sheets, said Rolfs. "A lot of these loans were given when the properties were evaluated at a certain level in 2005 or 2006," Rolfs said. "Banks have had to reappraise the value of these properties, whether it's a church or a commercial office building. Values have gone down, so the loans cannot continue in the same form."

The factors leading to the boom in church foreclosures will sound familiar to many private homeowners evicted from their properties in recent years. During the property boom, many churches took out additional loans to refurbish or enlarge, often with major lenders or with the Evangelical Christian Credit Union, which was particularly aggressive in lending to religious institutions. Then after the financial crash, many churchgoers lost their jobs, donations plunged, and often, so did the value of the church building.

[Demeter]

50. The Pernicious “Foreclosures are Good” Meme By: David Dayen

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/03/08/the-pernicious-foreclosures-are-good-meme/

The New York Times editorial board has an appropriate take today on the barrage of housing-related spin coming from all corners lately. If you follow these issues, you would have to be willfully blind not to notice a concerted effort to paint the housing recovery as just around the corner, the bottom reached, the best yet to come. But the NYT, to their credit, doesn’t buy the spin.

In the last quarter of 2011, national home prices fell 4 percent, putting prices back to levels last seen in mid-2002, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller price index. Moody’s Analytics estimates that 3.3 million homes are in or near foreclosure and another 11.5 million underwater homeowners are at risk of foreclosure if the economy or their finances weaken.

And you can add to that the fact that foreclosure starts and sales have ramped up again, as the regulators eased off the pressure by agreeing to the foreclosure fraud settlement. Some would buy the bank-friendly argument that these foreclosures are necessary, that they “let the market clear.” We’ve heard this a lot, that foreclosures are good. I’m surprised any economist still tries this line of argument. A foreclosure drops property values, increases state and local government costs in the case of blight, and wrecks entire communities. One foreclosure causes $250,000 of damage to the larger economy. And a good deal of them are unnecessary, and could be avoided simply with the time-honored process of renegotiating contracts in a way that works financially for the borrower and lender. What’s more, simple supply and demand dictates that throwing more vacant properties on the market when it’s already distressed doesn’t help anyone. In fact, it robs current homeowners of their equity. Households lost $213 billion in real estate value in just the last quarter alone. More negative equity, incidentally, adds to the downward spiral of more foreclosures, more supply, and lower prices, leading to more negative equity.

Certainly the Administration wouldn’t take the public view that foreclosures are good, even if their policies privately reflect that. They claim that the settlement will provide meaningful relief to borrowers, and their new new fraud investigation will provide more. NYT isn’t buying that either.

The main component of the administration’s new efforts is the recent foreclosure settlement between the big banks and state and federal officials [...] The settlement was announced nearly a month ago, but the specific terms have yet to be released. One concern is that banks may have leeway to tailor loan modifications in ways that help them clean up their balance sheets, while leaving many homeowners deeply underwater. Another is that states may be able to use money from the settlement for purposes other than foreclosure relief.

The investigation that is supposed to be the powerful follow-up to the settlement has also gotten off to a worryingly slow start. Announced in January by Mr. Obama, it still has no executive director, raising questions about the administration’s commitment to truly holding the banks accountable. The longer it takes to do an investigation, the longer it will take to secure verdicts or settlements that would include money for further antiforeclosure efforts.

And the more incidents will reach their statute of limitations.

Some housing analysts are in their fourth straight year of predicting a rebound in the market. But nothing meaningful has been done to change incentives and to deliver relief to those who need it.

[Demeter]

51. Lowering our expectations for foreclosure settlement

http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/foreclosure/la-fi-hiltzik-20120307%2c0%2c1771842.column

The shortcomings of the $25-billion deal with five major banks seem to proliferate with each passing day...The federal government's response to the home mortgage crisis always has been an exercise in living down to one's lowest expectations.

The $25-billion settlement with five big banks over foreclosure abuses that U.S. housing officials and 49 state attorneys general announced last month was supposed to be an exception. Here, at last, was real compensation from those who played key roles in the disaster. But with every passing day, the shortcomings of this deal appear to proliferate. That is, as far as we know, because the specific terms of the settlement are still not public, nearly one month after it was unveiled in Washington with the sort of fanfare formerly associated with the splashdown of a space capsule.

The latest explanation for the secrecy is that the parties are waiting until the settlement is filed with a federal court in Washington, which could happen this week or next. But the explanation only evades the question of why the deal wasn't filed in court before or simultaneously with the big dog-and-pony show, as is customary with high-profile legal settlements.

It's fair to say that there are positive aspects to the settlement. It creates some incentives for the five banks — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial (the former GMAC) — to be more aggressive in offering relief to strapped borrowers whose home values have fallen below their mortgage balances. For each variety of mortgage relief, the banks will get a certain credit against their $20-billion target. For every dollar of balance reduction offered a homeowner who is up to 75% underwater, for example, they get a dollar credit; for principal forgiveness on delinquent home-equity lines, the credit ranges from 10% to 90%.

"We've got a frozen housing market," observes Arthur Wilmarth, a banking expert at George Washington University Law School. "If we can unfreeze it to some extent and still make the banks feel some pain for what they've done, that's not a bad result." TALK ABOUT WISHFUL THINKING!

[xchrom]

53. it's morning...and lucky 13

[Fuddnik]

60. I think I did sleep in the toaster last night.

Got a bad case of the "Wells Fargo head" this morning.

And, if this dog doesn't quit bugging me with this ball.........

[xchrom]

61. ...

my dogs bug me when i sit on the back stoop -- they're convinced i sat there just for them to wrestle with.

[Tansy_Gold]

65. First alarm goes off at 4:30

Second at 4:40, and I'm usually up by 4:45. Slept in this morning until 4:55.

Turn the computer on on the way to the door to let the dogs out.

Boot up all the software for work, let the dogs in, give them their cookies, and I start my day by 5:05.

No coffee until I hit the coffee shop about 9:15, but I usually do grab a granola bar.

But then, I'm weird and I know it.

[xchrom]

66. i'm noticing that dogs manage to move themselves way up in the schedule order.

i try to ignore them in the morning to assert a sense of order.

they don't know they are being ignored!

[DemReadingDU]

79. I set my alarm such that I have to get up to shut it off

Goes off at 4:45, then do some kind of exercise routine. After that, go downstairs to turn on computer and let out dogs. Bring in dogs and feed them and the cat. But before I can sit down at the computer, my white dog always has to go back out. Finally, everyone is contented as I now have my coffee and breakfast and aol-chat with my sisters at 7-ish.

[Demeter]

54. 0.2% Interest? You Bet We’ll Complain By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/business/low-rates-for-savers-are-reason-for-complaint-fair-game.html?ref=business

STOP your bellyaching. That was the message delivered last Thursday to Americans who today make almost nothing on the savings in their bank accounts. It came from Sarah Bloom Raskin, an insider at the Federal Reserve. Ms. Raskin, one of the governors on the Fed board, made the usual disclaimer that her comments reflected her own thinking. But Fed watchers said her remarks probably mirrored views inside the central bank. The issue — as anyone looking for income-producing investments knows — is that the Fed drove down interest rates to almost zero to shore up big banks and an economy that those banks helped drive off a cliff. Now savers, who did nothing to create the financial crisis, are being punished. This is one of the more troubling paradoxes of the Fed’s rescue of the financial system. And, according to Ms. Raskin, it is likely to continue for some time. So suck it up, America: If it’s good for the financial system, it’s good for you.

Yes, Ms. Raskin, who delivered her message during a speech in Westport, Conn., nodded at how low rates put pressure on savers. But she quickly extolled the advantages that rock-bottom rates offer to ordinary Americans.

“Many households are benefiting from the low level of interest rates, and some critics of the Federal Reserve’s accommodative monetary policy seem to minimize this point,” Ms. Raskin said, according to prepared remarks posted on the Fed’s Web site. “Purchases of motor vehicles and other household durables can be financed more cheaply, and in many cases, households have been able to refinance their mortgages into lower-rate loans, freeing up income for other uses.”

APPARENTLY, Ms. Raskin hasn’t tried to refinance a home mortgage lately. I have, and the process was labyrinthine, glacial and exasperating. Putting potential borrowers through the wringer is a bank’s prerogative, and I have no interest in returning to the days of E-Z Loans “R” Us. But the idea that legions of people have been able to refinance their mortgages recently is a bit optimistic. The credit scores associated with the mortgage I refinanced were around 800, the loan was for only about 30 percent of the property’s value, and no equity was taken out of the property. Given this experience, it seems clear that troubled borrowers — including those who are underwater on mortgages and who most need assistance — are least likely to receive it.

.......................................

The Fed has been following this plan for more than three years now. Yes, we are seeing some improvements here and there. But the transfer of wealth from savers’ pockets has been immense. And with the price of gasoline and other goods going up, the vise is tightening. “We are rapidly approaching a situation,” Mr. Todd said, “where Congress and the administration are unwilling to confront bankers on the need of thoroughgoing reform of everything involving household finance and credit reporting/credit scoring because it would cost the bankers money to do so.” The big banks, meanwhile, complain bitterly about regulation, but don’t mention how regulation might have helped mute the crisis. “Our policy makers do need to think about what we are transferring to the banks,” Mr. Todd said. “Why is the public obligated to provide them with all those subsidies? Nobody will ask these questions.”

And that’s a crying shame.

[Demeter]

55. Illinois judge: law barring recording police is unconstitutional

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/illinois-judge-law-barring-recording-police-is-unconstitutional.ars

DOLLARS TO DONUTS, THAT'S WHY THE G8 MOVED TO CAMP DAVID...

[Demeter]

56. Spain's "Debt Crisis" Was Created by the ECB Dean Baker

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/spains-qdebt-crisisq-was-created-by-the-ecb?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beat_the_press+%28Beat+the+Press%29

The NYT had an article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/business/global/spain-unable-to-meet-goal-for-deficit-cuts-this-year.html?ref=world
on how Spain is struggling to both reduce its deficits to address its debt crisis and try to simultaneously promote growth. It would have been worth pointing out that Spain's debt crisis is almost entirely a result of the European Central Bank's policy.

By explicitly refusing to act as a lender of last resort and imposing austerity conditions on Spain and other euro zone countries, the ECB has raised questions in financial markets about Spain's ability to pay its debt. Spain had been running budget surpluses before the crisis and its debt to GDP ratio remains below that of the UK, the United States and many other countries that have no difficulty borrowing in financial markets.

[Demeter]

57. Maybe if I start Reality an hour earlier

I can catch up with the hour lost on Sunday....see you all later!

[xchrom]

58. German investor confidence most in 21 months

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17351039

German investor confidence has risen to the highest level since June 2010.

The latest monthly survey from the ZEW institute rose to 22.3 in March, up from 5.4 in the previous month.

"Currently, it seems as if the crisis in the eurozone has taken a pause for breath," the institute said.

Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, has been booming while some of its neighbours, such as Spain and Italy, have struggled to grow and pay off their huge debts.

[xchrom]

62. Italy confirms it is in recession

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/Italy-confirms-it-is-in-recession/articleshow/12235252.cms

MILAN: Heavily-indebted Italy fell into recession late last year when the economy contracted by 0.7 percent from output in the previous three-month period, the national statistics institute said on Monday, confirming an earlier estimate.

Coming on the heels of a 0.2-percent drop in the third quarter, the data met the official definition for recession of two quarterly declines of output in a row.

Italy has the third-biggest economy in the eurozone after those of Germany and France.

On a 12-month basis, Italian gross domestic product (GDP) slipped by 0.4 percent in the final three months of 2011, slightly better then an initial estimate of minus 0.5 percent, figures from the Istat institute showed.

[xchrom]

64. Oil rises above $107 amid improving US economy

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/Oil-rises-above-107-amid-improving-US-economy/articleshow/12244308.cms

SINGAPORE: Oil prices rose above $107 a barrel on Tuesday in Asia as traders bet an improving US economy will boost demand at a time when the ability to increase crude production is limited.

Benchmark oil for April delivery was up 68 cents to $107.02 at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.06 to settle at $106.34 per barrel in New York on Monday. Brent crude was up 19 cents at $125.53 per barrel in London.

A third straight month of strong US jobs growth in February has bolstered investor confidence that the recovery in the world's biggest economy is strengthening and will eventually increase demand for crude.

The Federal Reserve is scheduled to hold a one-day policy meeting later Tuesday, and the oil market will be watching closely for any hint the central bank is considering stimulus measures to boost economic growth.

[Fuddnik]

67. Some of the wreckage in JP Morgans wake in Alabama.

Since Jefferson County filed bankruptcy, they don't have anybody to run the election today. They're all laid off, and the polls are being manned by untrained people from other departments and volunteers.

Fist fights are breaking out in lines for license plates and drivers licenses, because offices have been closed and staff laid off. Isn't Alabama one of those states that allows every yay-hoo in the world to carry guns? This should end up well.

One area had a dead cow laying in the road, but the department that picked up road-kill was disbanded, so the job is being outsourced to coyote's.


It's not posted here yet, but should be later. I just watched it.

http://www.democracynow.org/

[Demeter]

86. Now, THERE'S A Job for OCCUPY!

They could reorganize the whole damn county....if the yahoos would let them.

Odds are, the yahoos prefer it that way.

[Fuddnik]

92. They've got the 4 stooges occupying them today.

Mitt, Sanitarium, Noot, and that Crazy Guy!

[xchrom]

68. Women Politicians Unite to Push for Gender Quota

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,820871,00.html

Defeat? Ursula von der Leyen isn't interested in talk of defeat. That's something that simply doesn't happen in the life of Germany's labor minister, and certainly not on March 8, International Women's Day. The country's newspapers may well be reporting that the center-right government coalition has set aside the goal of establishing a legal quota for women in businesses, but von der Leyen won't let the gloomy headlines ruin her mood.

At work in her office, she quickly finishes signing a document promoting one of her women employees to the status of a civil servant with lifetime tenure. She doesn't fail to point out that the employee in question has children, providing another example of how both are possible, family and career.

Is the gender quota dead? No, von der Leyen says. The day's headlines are undoubtedly a setback, but "the issue isn't going away anymore," she adds.

Indeed, her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is not prepared to accept the quota veto by their junior coalition partner, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), and frustrations are running high. FDP leader Philipp Rösler was not even willing to accept the "flexi-quota" proposed by Family Minister Kristina Schröder of the CDU, which was little more than a conciliatory gesture to set a voluntary commitment by companies into law. Chancellor Angela Merkel is annoyed, and if she can't implement the quota during this legislative period, she plans to make it a campaign topic -- even against the FDP, if necessary.

[xchrom]

69. Euro Zone Split over Financial Transaction Tax

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,820965,00.html

It's being greeted as a breakthrough. When the 27 European Union finance ministers meet in Brussels on Tuesday, they plan to discuss the introduction of a financial transaction tax in Europe. It's the first time that the issue has been on the agenda at such a meeting. Supporters of the tax argue that is evidence that the tax is making progress in its long journey through the EU's institutions.

Indeed, a certain amount of progress can be seen in the ongoing battle over a tax on financial transactions -- at least on paper. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the EU's two most powerful leaders, have made the issue a priority. And in September 2011, the European Commission presented a draft directive which foresees a financial transaction tax on all stock, bond and derivative transactions within the EU. The tax could come into force in 2014 -- provided all 27 EU members agree to it.

Therein lies the rub. There is little chance of such an agreement. Officially, supporters of the tax are still aiming for the "comprehensive solution," as the Commission's proposal is dubbed. But an agreement is already regarded as a pipedream. A whole row of naysayers, led by Britain and Sweden, are opposed to the tax unless it is introduced globally. They consider it to be detrimental to growth and fear that they will become less competitive on the international playing field if they introduce a tax. The unanimity principle applies to tax matters within the EU, so even a single veto would be sufficient to derail the plan.

[Fuddnik]

70. That's a coincidence. It's Tuesday Afternoon.

And I have tickets to see the Moody Blues tonight in Clearwater. It's the 45th anniversary tour for the release of the Days of Future Passed album. Including this song.

And now this dog is trying to eat my laptop.

[xchrom]

72. i'm jealous. love, love, love the moody blues.

you need to buy the dogs their own lap top.

[Demeter]

87. Yeah, they would just lap it up

Never hand the Demeter a straight line...

[xchrom]

88. ...

[Fuddnik]

93. That's weird.

I just looked at my post, and the two Moody Blues videos were replaced by one from Piers Morgan (yech) and something else.

I hit "reload", and it came back right again.

[Demeter]

99. Data corruption?

Funny things happening on DU today...I lost them entirely at one point.

[xchrom]

71. money markets unchanged since 2008 crisis, remain big risk

http://www.nationofchange.org/money-markets-largely-unchanged-2008-crisis-remain-big-risk-1331561790

Plain-vanilla money mar­ket funds, part of the skele­tal struc­ture of Amer­i­can fi­nance, may be a $2.7 tril­lion dis­as­ter hid­ing in plain site.

When Con­gress in 2010 passed the most sweep­ing re­vamp of fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion since the Great De­pres­sion, it tried to ad­dress most of the prob­lems that led to or were ex­posed by the near-col­lapse of the fi­nan­cial sys­tem. Money mar­ket funds slipped through the cracks.

Money mar­ket funds, a $2.7 tril­lion in­dus­try, re­main largely un­reg­u­lated. They re­main vul­ner­a­ble to runs from in­vestors, who re­tain the false per­cep­tion that there's no risk in them. The funds have been pitched as "can't fail" in­vest­ments, yet as re­cently as last sum­mer the largest money mar­ket funds had 45 per­cent of their as­sets tied up in Eu­ro­pean bank debt.

"Noth­ing in fi­nan­cial ser­vices is as dan­ger­ous as a guar­an­tee with­out cap­i­tal back­ing it," Sal­lie Kraw­check, the for­mer pres­i­dent of wealth man­age­ment for Bank of Amer­ica, warned in a re­cent essay in The Wall Street Jour­nal.

[xchrom]

73. busted for busting out at bank of america

http://www.nationofchange.org/busted-busting-out-bank-america-1331569295



“Strip­ping Pro­tes­tors In Pink Bras Crashed Bank Of Amer­ica CEO Brian Moyni­han's Speech,” de­clared Busi­ness In­sider on March 8, show­ing Moyni­han’s stern photo with a pink bra play­fully dan­gling in the air be­side him.

It’s true, things did get a bit wild at Citi's Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices con­fer­ence at New York’s Wal­dorf As­to­ria when Brian Moyni­han got on stage and began flip­ping through his te­dious pow­er­point.

While the hotel se­cu­rity was busy watch­ing anti-bank pro­test­ers ral­ly­ing out­side, CODE­PINK co­founder Jodie Evans, dressed in a hot pink bustier, burst into the con­fer­ence room. “Bust up Bank of Amer­ica be­fore it busts up Amer­ica”, she shouted, be­fore being hauled out by se­cu­rity guards. “As I was say­ing,” con­tin­ued a dead­pan Moyni­han to the laugh­ter of the crowd, re­turn­ing to the dreary slides that tried to put a rosy spin on this di­nosaur of a com­pany whose share price has plum­meted while it con­tin­ues to fore­close on fam­i­lies’ homes and faces tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages from law­suits over mort­gage in­vest­ments.

Lit­tle did Moyni­han know that the ex­cite­ment at what is nor­mally a bankers’ snooze­fest had just begun. CODE­PINK codi­rec­tor Rae Abileah and I were al­ready seated in the front of the room. Wear­ing dark busi­ness suits, we did our best to blend into the crowd of stodgy white men in black busi­ness suits.

[xchrom]

76. Spain disappointed by Eurogroup deficit demand

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/news-brief/1617861-spain-disappointed-eurogroup-deficit-demand

“European Union demands a further five billion euro adjustment in Spanish budget”, announces El País. On 12 March, Eurogroup requested that the government in Madrid reduce its deficit to 5.3% of GDP in 2012 (a cut of €35 billion euros), whereas Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy intended to reduce it by 5.8% (a €30 billion cut). Notwithstanding a context where Madrid’s partners believe they have shown they can be flexible – the initial target established by the Commission was 4.4% – the Madrid daily nonetheless argues that this latest development amounts to an “unexpected setback” for Spain –

The European partners are insisting on the credibility of the policy of budget cuts to calm the interminable euro crisis. Europe has made it clear that there is nothing more important than austerity [...] and responded to the challenge of Rajoy. [...] Spain is the new frontier of fear in the EU: too big to fail, too big to be bailed out and too big for the markets to forgo a lynching for violation of 2012’s deficit targets. [...] The punishment is in line with the challenge: everyone was expecting a reprimand [while acknowledging the target of 5.8%], and the Commission has demonstrated that it will not make concessions.

For its part, daily El Mundo interprets Eurogroup’s decision as “Olli Rehn’s revenge". The Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs “had set a course for Spain” –

For the bureaucrats in Brussels, it was particularly abominable that [Rajoy’s] announcement came on the day of the signing of the fiscal compact. [Rehn] has sought to reaffirm his authority in the prism of the new budgetary rules, and that is the argument that he presented to member states to convince them to demand a Solomon-like division of the deviation announced by Rajoy. The result is yet another makeshift solution made in Brussels [...] We were surprised by Eurogroup’s urgent insistence on a further 0.5% cut in Spain, at a time when the 2012 budget has not yet been drafted.

[xchrom]

77. Retail Sales in U.S. Rose in February by Most in Five Months

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-13/retail-sales-in-u-s-climb-the-most-in-five-months-as-recovery-takes-hold.html

Retail Sales in the U.S. rose in February by the most in five months, reflecting broad-based gains that indicate the world’s largest economy is picking up even as gasoline costs climb.

The 1.1 percent advance matched the median forecast of 81 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and followed a 0.6 percent increase in January that was larger than previously estimated, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Demand improved in 11 of 13 categories, including auto dealers and clothing stores.

Sales at chains like Gap Inc. (GPS) and Target Corp. (TGT) last month beat analysts’ estimates, a sign an improving job market is bolstering consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy. A pickup in payrolls may not be enough to satisfy Federal Reserve officials, who today will probably reaffirm a commitment to keep interest rates low.

Consumers are “unfazed by higher gas prices,” said Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York, who correctly forecast the increase in spending. “This is a pleasant surprise on the overall picture for the economy. For the Fed, it’s steady as she goes. They will be encouraged, but there is still a long way to go.”

[Demeter]

89. Unfazed? UNFAZED!!!

Let me get my phaser, I'll show them how unfazed I am at paying 60 bucks to fill a 15 gallon tank.

[xchrom]

90. i have a little corolla -- it costs $35. to fill it right now. nt

[Fuddnik]

94. Gasoline sales are included in retail sales numbers.

I'll bet that's where most of the increase in sales came from.

Unfazed? No, extorted or robbed is a better word.

I also have a 10 year old Corolla. Used mainly to haul dogs around. I fill it about once a month, and the last time was the first time I've ever put $40 in a gas tank.

It will cost me almost $20 to fill the motorcycle.

[xchrom]

78. Carlyle Owners Took $398.5 Million Payout Before IPO

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-13/carlyle-owners-took-400-million-tax-deferred-payout-before-ipo-with-debt.html

Carlyle Group LP (CG) , in a transaction nine months before it filed to go public, saddled itself with debt to pay owners including William Conway, Daniel D’Aniello and David Rubenstein a $398.5 million tax-deferred dividend.

The private equity firm borrowed $500 million from Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Co. in December 2010, saying it would use part of that to expand investment products. Instead, it paid out almost 80 percent of the money to existing owners, according to regulatory filings. Separately, the Washington- based firm negotiated bank credit giving it the option to distribute an additional $400 million prior to its initial public offering, lending agreements filed last month show.

The deals, which echo the dividend recapitalization private equity managers use to extract cash from the companies they acquire, leave Carlyle’s future shareholders with the cost of servicing the debt. Assuming Carlyle holds its IPO by the end of June, Mubadala will have earned a return in excess of 50 percent, including a $200 million equity stake the owners gave away to obtain a loan that lasted about a year and a half.

“It begs the question, ‘Why would you do that?’ ” said Matthew Pieniazek, the president of Darling Consulting Group, an adviser to banks in Newburyport, Massachusetts. “IPOs are not guaranteed. They were willing to give up some of the upside for the certainty of” a distribution.

[xchrom]

80. Dutch government in lockdown as AAA-rated Holland comes unstuck

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/mar/13/dutch-government-lockdown-eu-rulebook


Dutch PM Mark Rutte, ministers and coalition partners hold a press conference outside his villa in The Hague. Photograph: Roel Rozenburg/EPA

A hush has descended on a handsome 17th century villa in The Hague where the leaders of Holland's rightwing minority government are huddled over spending ledgers, debt projections, budget balances, housing market analyses and deteriorating pension fund figures.

Mark Rutte, prime minister and leader of the liberal-conservative VVD party, has imposed a vow of omerta on his colleagues locked away in his official residence until they chart a path out of a worsening public finances debacle.

Europe's two-year debt and deficit crisis has pitted preachy northern creditors against "feckless" Mediterranean spendthrifts – countries the Dutch are wont to dub the "garlic belt".

But suddenly the air in Brussels and elsewhere is thick with tales of pots and kettles, glass houses and stonethrowing as triple-A rated Holland comes unstuck.

Rutte launched the three-week retreat for the top members of his government at his residence last week after shock budget projections from the CPB Bureau for Economic Analysis, the old and authoritative thinktank which crunches the finance ministry's numbers.

[xchrom]

81. A thousand euros — a dream salary

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/1619071-thousand-euros-dream-salary

Six years ago, in August 2005, a young Catalan woman wrote a letter to this newspaper. It was titled “I am a mileurista”, a term she had come up with herself to describe those who earned around a thousand euros a month. Carolina Alguacil was then 27 years old, and she complained of the dearth of real jobs available to her generation.

“The mileurista is young,” she wrote, “between 25 and 34, with a degree, well-educated, at least bilingual, has postgraduate or masters degrees complemented by professional diplomas. In the labour market three or four years, hopefully half of them paying social security contributions […]. The trouble is that you don’t make more than a thousand euros, without perks, and you had better not complain. You can’t save, you don’t have a home, or a car, or any children. You live for the day. Sometimes it's fun, but it’s getting tiring.”

To reread that letter today leaves a bitter taste, because it’s evidence that things have got worse. The mileurismo has given way to an even more precarious version of itself: nimileurismo – not even a thousand euros a month. “We used to be mileuristas, and we wanted more. Now we hope to earn a thousand euros,” Alguacil continues. She studied audiovisual communications, is on her own and has since moved to Cordoba. She is no longer a mileurista, but does not think she is earning what she should: “I’m not content.”

In 2005 youth unemployment stood at about 20 percent. Now it’s creeping up to 50 percent and for a long time it’s been double the European average (22.4 percent). In Spain, the best-educated generation ever has the worst outlook since Spain returned to democracy, and it feels that it’s paying for others’ excesses. Until now, many of these young people had been able to count on help from their parents. But some have exhausted that safety net.

[xchrom]

82. Madrid accepts Eurogroup decision to clip budget overshoot figure

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/03/13/inenglish/1331642799_685652.html

Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos has said that the government accepts the budget-deficit objective of 5.3 percent of GDP imposed by Brussels at a Eurogroup meeting of EU finance ministers on Monday evening. Before entering a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday morning, De Guindos told reporters that “Spain is absolutely committed to the budgetary adjustment.”

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had surprised his European colleagues at the last EU summit by announcing that his government, which came to power last December, was setting a spending ceiling for the 2012 budget which entailed a 5.8-percent overshoot, when the figure already agreed with the European Commission for this year had been 4.4 percent. The Popular Party (PP) administration argued, however, that the expectation that Spain will fall back into recession this year and the failure of the previous Socialist government to meet its deficit target in 2011 meant that 4.4 percent was unrealistic.

The PP administration has insisted all along that the important target that must be met is that of three percent of GDP at the end of 2013.

Thanks to the Eurogroup decision, ministers in Madrid must go about working up a state budget for the current year which includes a further five billion euros in cutbacks, given that each percentage point of deficit is equivalent to around 10 billion in public spending. Rajoy’s government was already preparing to cut some 30 billion euros from the budget.

[Fuddnik]

95. The Casino will open an extended session for billionaires and assorted friends of Rmoney.

It's called NFL free agency. And it gives Kings a window to buy overpriced pawns. And it opens at 4:00pm. I can hardly wait.

Oooh. Aaah.

[hamerfan]

96. Ponies and Unicorns!

At 3:45PM:

DOW... +197
NASDAQ... +49
S&P500... +23

[DemReadingDU]

97. Wowsy!

Is bad news coming?