STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 21 June 2013

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 21 June 2013[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 20 June 2013

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 20 June 2013
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Dow Jones 14,758.32 -353.87 (-2.34%)
S&P 500 1,588.19 -40.74 (-2.50%)
Nasdaq 3,364.63 -78.57 (-2.28%)


[font color=black]10 Year 2.42% 0.00 (0.00%)
[font color=red]30 Year 3.52% +0.05 (1.44%) [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
Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.










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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. It's more like a typhoid-infested bucket of water and a common dipper

Last edited Thu Jun 20, 2013, 09:23 PM - Edit history (1)

I remember a story that someone invented an origami paper cup to prevent the spread of disease in 3rd world schools...like Appalachia...

The modern paper cup was developed in the 20th century. In the early 20th century, it was common to have shared glasses or dippers at water sources such as school faucets or water barrels in trains. This shared use caused public health concerns. One notable investigation into their use was the study by Alvin Davison, biology professor at Lafayette College, published with the sensational title "Death in School Drinking Cups" in Technical World Magazine in August 1908, based on research carried out in Easton, Pennsylvania's public schools. The article was reprinted and distributed by the Massachusetts State Board of Health in November 1909.--wikipedia

Chinese Paper Folding for Beginners. Courier Dover Publications. pp. 6–7. ISBN 0-486-41806-5. — how to make a paper cup out of a square of paper using origami

Allyn Freeman and Bob Golden (1997). "Little Dipper". Why Didn't I Think of That? : Bizarre Origins of Ingenious Inventions We Couldn't Live Without. John Wiley and Sons. pp. 183–184. ISBN 0-471-16511-5. — the Dixie Cup


Wouldn't you know it--Koch Bros. own Dixie cups!

[Demeter]

2. And as the Land of the Rising Sun Sinks Slowly in the West

I am reminded of Spike Jones...for some odd reason...not his war propaganda song, either.

[Demeter]

3. France targets multinationals with tax rules shake-up FROM JUNE 6

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/06/france-tax-idUSL5N0EI3DH20130606

The French government said on Thursday it aimed to root out a loophole on intra-group transfers that firms can use to shift profits to tax havens and will consider new penalties for abuses.

The government promised a clampdown after an internal report found France's rules for such transactions, which date back to 1933, left companies too much leeway and were generally wanting compared with other developed countries.

Intra-group transfers are attracting the attention of media and lawmakers after a series of reports showed how companies such as Google and Starbucks use them to cut their tax bills.

The cash-strapped French government is increasingly looking for new revenues as it struggles to rein in its budget deficit, strained by weak economic activity and one of the highest levels of public spending in the rich world....

NOT TO MENTION, A WILLINGNESS TO FACE FACTS!

[Demeter]

4. Brussels dismisses 'plainly wrong' IMF criticism over Greece

WHO WANTS TO LISTEN TO A BUNCH OF SPROUTS, ANYWAY?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10103912/Brussels-dismisses-plainly-wrong-IMF-criticism-over-Greece.html

The European Commission has expressed "fundamental disagreement" with a "plainly wrong" IMF report that has accused the EU of sacrificing Greece to save the euro from debt crisis contagion.

AND THAT'S WHY THE EURO IS DOOMED

[Demeter]

5. Eurozone: three countries have debt-to-income ratios of more than 300%

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/09/eurozone-crisis-debt-income-ratios



Ireland, Greece and Portugal are labouring under debt-to-income ratios of more than 300%, according to figures that expose the indebtedness of eurozone governments in relation to their government revenues.

The measure, intended to show governments' abilities to pay debts, shows Ireland's total debt in 2012 was €192bn (£163.1bn), or 340% of the government's income. Ireland came a narrow second in the table to fellow bail-out recipient Greece, which has amassed an even worse debt-to-revenue total of 351%. Portugal – which has also received aid from the troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European commission and the European Central Bank – came third with a debt-to-revenue ratio of 302%, while Britain was sixth last year on the list of 27 European Union member states, with a debt-to-revenue ratio of 212%, according to calculations based on European commission figures.

Debt figures are usually calculated as a ratio of a country's national income and expressed as a proportion of GDP. But national income figures reflect activity across the whole economy, in both the public and private sectors. governments must pay debts from tax receipts and other government income, not the income for the economy as a whole. Some analysts argue a government's debt-to-revenue ratio provides a clearer picture of its ability to fund annual debt payments once interest rates are taken into account.

The US is in even worse shape than Greece. Its $16tn (£10tn) debt is the equivalent of 105% of GDP, but more than 560% of government revenues. Washington's debt payments are cheap after a plunge in the interest it pays on government bonds, but with revenues of only 14% of GDP compared with about 40% across much of the EU, its ability to pay is weakened...

NO, IT ISN'T, BUT IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER, YOU CAN TELL YOUR EURO-SLAVES THAT.

[Demeter]

8. Greece's natural gas privatisation failure leaves programme in tatters

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/jun/10/greece-natural-gas-privatisation-failure

Given DEPA was the jewel in the crown, Athens' chances of hitting €2.6bn asset sale target this year look extremely slim...Greece's already troubled privatisation programme lies in tatters after the failure to sell the natural gas company DEPA to the Russian energy company Gazprom. Given that DEPA was seen as the "jewel in the crown", the chances of Greece hitting the target of €2.6bn (£2.2bn) of asset sales in 2013 now look extremely slim. That's clearly a problem for the government in Athens, which has been told in no uncertain terms by representatives of the troika – the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union – that there must be no further delays in privatising state-owned companies. But it is also a problem for the troika, which will have to decide how to respond if – perhaps that should be when – Greece says it can't come up with this year's privatisation proceeds. Already on Monday, there was talk by the finance ministry of putting back the sale of the oil refining company, Hellenic Petroleum. The troika would be within its rights to tell Greece to make up for the shortfall through additional cuts in public spending or by raising taxes. There are three reasons why it should not do so, however:

Reason number one is that ploughing on with privatisation at the current juncture would be a fire sale. Greece would get less, probably much less, than the assets are worth.

Reason number two is that Greece is actually over-achieving on deficit reduction this year, albeit at a terrible cost to the economy. Greece's primary budget deficit – which excludes debt interest payments – was just under €1bn in the first five months of 2013, well below the €4.2bn target. But that has only been achieved by slashing public spending and capital investment, contributing to an expected 4.6% decline in national output this year. Greece needs additional fiscal pain like a hole in the head.

Reason number three is that there will be plenty of people in Brussels and Washington who will be privately glad, on geo-political grounds, that Gazprom is not buying DEPA. Last week, the IMF admitted it had made mistakes in its handling of Greece. This is the time to cut a bit of slack, not to compound past errors.

[Demeter]

9. ECB will not buy bonds to save states from going under - Draghi JUNE 10

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/uk-ecb-draghi-idUKBRE9590SY20130610

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Monday the organisation would not use its yet-to-be-activated bond-buying programme to save profligate countries from insolvency, but only to preserve the euro. The central bank's programme has helped calm markets over the past couple of months, but it has raised particular concern in Germany, which is most exposed to potential risks involved as the ECB's largest shareholder. Draghi spoke on the eve of hearings at Germany's top court to weigh the legality of so-called Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme.

"The ECB says if there is a confidence crisis in the euro which is threatening the solvency of the countries not beyond what their fundamentals are, then we are ready to intervene," he said in a video interview with German public broadcaster ZDF.

"But we will not intervene to ensure the solvency of the countries if they are profligate," he said, speaking in English.

The central bank launched the potentially unlimited bond-buying programme in September to reduce crisis-stricken countries' borrowing costs and defend the euro. The German court hearings, to see whether it infringes the constitution's insistence on sovereign parliamentary control over budget matters, take place on Tuesday and Wednesday. No ruling is expected until after German national elections on September 22.

IT WILL PROBABLY BE ALL OVER AND A MOOT POINT BY THEN...DEMETER

The ECB has in the past spent less on buying bonds than other major central banks, Draghi said. Thanks to calmer markets after the announcement of the OMT, "the risks for the German taxpayer are much lower today than they were a year ago," he added. Draghi said interest rates - currently at a record-low level of 0.5 percent - will rise again when confidence in economic recovery returns. Draghi said euro zone countries had made significant progress in the last year in terms of reducing their budget deficits, cutting public debt and becoming more competitive. So the idea that big differences in interest rates were necessary to force governments to act was only partly true, he added.

"You don't need spreads that are so high that the rest of the world will lose any confidence in the sustainability of the euro itself and therefore in the single countries," he said.

"You need spreads that clearly reflect the fundamentals of the country. It would be profoundly mistaken if we were to lower these spreads artificially," he added.

MORE DRAGHI BLATHER AT LINK...THE MAN IS CRAZY, THERE'S NO OTHER EXPLANATION

[Demeter]

6. America’s non-banks, The anointed: The number of too-big-to-fail institutions gets bigger

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21579038-number-too-big-fail-institutions-gets-bigger-anointed

ALTHOUGH the names on the list are supposed to be secret, AIG and Prudential, two insurers, this week confirmed they are on it. So too did GE Capital, the conglomerate’s financial arm. These firms, and perhaps others, have joined America’s largest banks and clearinghouses in being designated “systemically important financial institutions” (SIFIs) by the new Financial Stability Oversight Council, a regulatory watchdog. What that means in practice is that because they are thought to be significant enough to blow up America’s economy, they should get special attention.

An appeals process against being labelled a SIFI will last for 30 days, but discussions have been going on for years so it is hard to believe minds will be swayed now. The immediate consequence is that the firms will be regulated by the Fed and subjected to tougher capital and operational requirements. Jack Lew, the treasury secretary, said the designations would “protect taxpayers, reduce risk in the financial system, and promote financial stability.”

Others are less enthusiastic. “This is a catastrophe,” says Peter Wallison, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, and a former White House counsel. Putting these institutions under the thumb of the Fed will inevitably undermine their ability to innovate, he argues. And joining the group of entities perceived to be too big to fail means they will enjoy an implicit government guarantee. That will put them at a funding advantage against smaller companies, he says, and imply that their products are government-backed, a huge help for insurers in particular.

Firms themselves appear to have mixed feelings about the SIFI label. AIG seems to approve; MetLife, an insurer that has not been designated, thinks that the higher capital requirements it brings could undermine the viability of some products. Much depends on whether SIFIs are now perceived to have an implicit guarantee, and on whether that can be monetised. It also matters how many other firms are designated SIFIs. Lots of financial firms in America are large: there are rumblings about money-market funds, asset managers and private-equity firms. Risk can move around the financial system. The question today is which firms should be on the list. Eventually it might be which to leave off.

IGNORE ANYTHING AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE HAS TO SAY...

AND CATCH THIS ON JACK LEW! SEE NEXT POST

[Demeter]

7. At NYU, plunder has become a very attractive career path.Naked Capitalism / By Yves Smith

Disgusting! Top University Administrators Create Student Debt Slaves to Subsidize Summer Palaces, Ginormous Pensions


When union members demand decent pay levels and work conditions, they are charged with featherbedding and overmanning or the new neoliberal catchall, “demanding uncompetitive wages”. But when the upper crust loots institutions, the mainstream media is typically missing in action. The latest find is from Pam Martens, who has been keeping tabs on the administrator-enriching real estate racket at NYU. She ferreted out an egregious housing deal for Jack Lew when he was at NYU. As we wrote in February:

Recall that Lew is essentially a career elite technocrat, with his major stint out of government being during the Bush Administration, when he first served as the Executive Vice President for Operations at NYU (where his noteworthy accomplishment was busting the bargaining rights of grad students) and then became the chief operating officer for Citigroup’s alternative investment group….

Lew came from a job at NYU where he already looks to have been considerably overpaid. He received over $840,000 for the academic year 2002-2003, which had him earning more than most university presidents, including NYU’s president. And on top of that, as Pam Martens ferreted out, he was apparently given a $1.3 million house. I’m not making that up, go read her piece. The mechanism was that NYU lent the $1.3 million to buy the house to Lew and then forgave it over five years. Oh, and they paid him the money to pay the interest too. We will assume that the forgiveness of debt was reported properly to the IRS.

Now the house deal (which is rather bizarre given that NYU owns lots of nice faculty housing) might be what made Lew’s pay deal so out of line relative to his job. But if the forgiveness of debt was not included in the total, it’s even more insane, the equivalent of $1.1 million a year.

There’s simply no way this compensation level (or the house side deal) was justified by any notion of what the position demanded. You don’t need a marquee name for an operations job. I can give a long list of people I know personally who have more relevant experience and be happy with a ton less money. Nor is there any evidence that Lew did enough in the way of fundraising to justify his NYU pay level. This was a low-stress overpaid sinecure arranged by the Rubin mafia. And it’s important to recognize that this sort of rent extraction by unproductive overhead is a significant contributor to the explosion in education costs. When I was young, the top administrators were modestly paid. They viewed the job as quasi public service. The hours were generally not taxing, although the politics could be fractious. The faculty looked down on you but you had lots of stature in the local community, the top echelon might live in housing the school owned as a perk and you got the bennies of university life. The sort of people who took those jobs were old money who’d spent some time in the private sector and wanted a change of pace in their middle age or executives who’d lost out in corporate intrigue or via a takeover.

Benjamin Ginsberg says that 30% of the increase in educational costs over the last twenty-five years is due to administrative “growth”. That sounds low to me, and I’d imagine the overheads have attributed as much of their costs as possible to program. For instance, universities have also overspent on facilities, and a big building program not only justifies more adminisphere, but some of those costs may have been allocated to the big build rather than as ongoing overheads. I mean, why have Jack Lew types around if they can’t pretty up the books?

http://www.alternet.org/education/nyu-and-student-debt?akid=10601.227380.k5VYHw&rd=1&src=newsletter858146&t=16

[Demeter]

14. Meet America’s Most Shameless Defender of 1%, Harvard Economist Greg Mankiw / Lynn Stuart Parramore

http://www.alternet.org/economy/greg-mankiw-and-one-percent

Is there anything Mankiw won’t say to serve plunderers and plutocrats?

It’s not really news that America’s economics departments, particularly at elite institutions, are stuffed with people whose careers are founded on protecting monied interests. But it’s pretty rare when someone just comes straight out and announces the fact...Meet Greg Mankiw, chairman and professor of economics at Harvard, one of the most influential economists in the country. As chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, he guided the economic blundering of George W. Bush. Then in 2006, he became an adviser to Mitt Romney and steered Romney's economic positions in 2012, which included some of the most shocking expressions of classism yet heard from a presidential candidate. Mankiw's name might not be a household word, but the tentacles of his power and influence extend into Washington, the blogosphere and the classroom, where he molds young minds through his ubiquitous textbooks and lectures (that is, when students are not walking out to protest his conservative bias and harmful agenda).

Above all, Mankiw is the self-appointed Defender in Chief of the 1 percent. How do we know this? Well, because he just published a 23-page paper called “ Defending the One Percent.” It’s helpful to understand the official propaganda line in the class war, and Mankiw has laid it out in a paper that purports to determine whether income inequality requires any intervention. Professor Mankiw begins by asking the reader to imagine a perfectly egalitarian society where the economy is totally efficient and everybody has the same amount of money. What happens, he asks, when a Steve Jobs pops up? Somebody smarter, more creative than everybody else? Suddenly Mr. Entrepreneur makes amazing things that everybody wants to buy, and now economic inequality has entered the egalitarian utopia. Is it fair to intervene and restore equality by penalizing Mr. Entrepreneur? It must be said that this opening sally, with its clumsily constructed straw man, would not pass muster with a high school debating coach. Most of Mankiw’s opponents do not ask for perfect income equality or imagine perfect efficiency, but rather envision a playing field in which everyone has a chance to succeed and Mr. Entrepreneur has incentives to conduct his business fairly and to share some of the rewards of his efforts with the community that made them possible. Instead of forming a cartel to hold down the wages of his young engineers, as Steve Jobs did. Or colluding to fix prices, as Steve Jobs is also accused of having done. Or backdating stock options to be sure he comes out in the money. And so on.

Mankiw’s writing displays the sensibility of a young person suddenly infatuated with the writings of Ayn Rand, and in the fine tradition of Randian entrepreneur worship, he pretends that economic inequality is mostly the result of certain people being smarter and more creative than others (one brief glance at the Forbes list of the richest Americans, which is populated by quite a few trust fund babies, destroys this illusion). In a nutshell, he argues that egalitarianism in antithetical to entrepreneurialism. Not many people would actually argue that we don’t want smart people making cool things. We do. But we also recognize that sometimes Mr . Entrepreneur, heady with his economic success, becomes greedy and starts to try to arrange things so that other entrepreneurs will not be able to compete with him. He begins to cheat and bully and set his boot on the neck of his fellow residents of Utopialand. He may even channel his brilliance into making things that don’t help his neighbor, but actually do harm, like a complicated financial product rigged to drain the bank accounts of unsuspecting citizens....

MORE

[Demeter]

10. 6 Unbelievable Ways the Big Banks Are Scamming You

IT CANNOT BE SAID TOO LOUDLY--MOVE YOUR MONEY!

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/bank-scam?akid=10592.227380.gAkZMZ&rd=1&src=newsletter857774&t=8&paging=off

1. Falsifying Paperwork, Blitzing, Lying About Payments to Force Homeowners Into Foreclosure

2. Bank Protection “Service” Puts Consumers at “Greater Risk Of Harm”

3. Transaction Ordering

4. Forced Arbitration (JUST VALIDATED BY THE DANCING SUPREMES!)

5. Marketing Refinancing That Costs People

6. Banks Trying To Kill the CFPB

Over the years, scam after scam is exposed, and nothing has been done about it. But there is a new cop on the beat, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB’s job is to police the big banks, and protect financial consumers. Of course the big banks are trying to head this agency off at the pass. The Republican Party and its conservative infrastructure have basically been contracted by Wall Street’s big banks to obstruct and even kill this agency. Senate Republicans have been blocking the confirmation and are still trying to obstruct the nominee to head up the agency. Republicans have been filibustering the nomination of Richard Cordray to be its director and even vowing to filibuster to keep any nominee from being confirmed to head the agency. President Obama finally made a recess appointment of Cordray in January 2012. But this recess appointment runs out at the end of the year with no end to Republican obstruction in sight.

Republicans are also trying to defund the agency. Republicans and the (billionaire, Wall Street, oil and tobacco-financed) conservative movement have also launched a propaganda campaign against the agency. Recently, at the Senate Republican Policy Committee website, "CFPB: Unaccountable and Unrestrained," claims, “A recent action by the CFPB to monitor consumer credit cards and the spending habits of millions of Americans is raising new concerns in a government suffering from a trust deficit.” In an example of how the right’s echo machine works, the Heritage Foundation echoes this attack, alleging that CFPB gathering data for reports like this one is an example of government “surveillance” on consumers, “amassing an Orwell-worthy database on all manner of spending, including … overdrafts …”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren – the person most credited with the creation of the CFPB – spoke at a Senate hearing on the CFPB last March on the role of the CFPB and Republican obstruction of the agency:

"I see nothing here but a filibuster threat against Director Cordray as an attempt to weaken the consumer agency," Warren said. "I think the delay in getting him confirmed is bad for consumers, it's bad for small banks, bad for credit unions, for anyone trying to offer an honest product in an honest market."

"The American people deserve a Congress that worries less about helping big banks," she added, "and more about helping regular people who have been cheated on mortgages, on credit cards, on student loans and on credit reports."

Don’t expect much to change until we have a government that is willing to take on these financial giants. As long as we keep seeing “settlements” with these giants instead of prosecutions, and as long as we allow big money to buy influence over our government, nothing will change.

[Demeter]

11. Celebrate the Defeat of the Granny Bashers! Billionaire-backed Campaign Fails to Cut Social Security

By Dean Baker

I WON'T CELEBRATE UNTIL SOCIAL SECURITY GETS AN HONEST-TO-GOD INCREASE-DEMETER

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/campaign-fix-debt-and-social-security-and-medicare?akid=10589.227380._83eoV&rd=1&src=newsletter857124&t=14&paging=off


It isn't often that progressives in the United States have much to celebrate. After all, the news has swung between bad and worse for most of the last three decades. That is why we should be celebrating the victory over the Campaign to Fix the Debt and its efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare. Just to remind everyone, the Campaign to Fix the Debt (CFD) is yet another Peter Peterson-inspired initiative that has as its main goal cutting and/or privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Peterson has used the billions of dollars he earned as a Wall Street investment banker and private equity fund manager to finance a whole slew of Washington-based outfits for this purpose over the last two decades. The CFD was the biggest and boldest effort yet, incorporating funding and support from the heads of many of the largest corporations in America. It hoped to take advantage of the deficits that resulted from the collapse of the housing bubble.

The idea was to whip up hysteria over a deficit crisis. They wanted to paint a picture of out-of-control government spending that could only be addressed by major cuts to the country's two most important and popular social programs. While they got the cooperation of much of the national media, who consistently put the CFD's views and spokespeople at the center of the budget debate, the facts refused to cooperate. First, the real scary projections of exploding deficits in the next two decades largely disappeared as the rate of health care cost growth slowed sharply. When the Congressional Budget Office and other official forecasters incorporated slower health care cost growth into their numbers, the deficits projections no longer provoked the same sort of hyper-ventilation. Slower projected health care cost growth eliminated almost 70 percent of the projected shortfall in Medicare. Second, there were actually substantial cuts in the budget, both in 2011 and more recently as a result of the sequester. These cuts are not good news, they are hurting important programs. They also are slowing the economy and costing jobs, but they have lowered projected deficits to levels that fall within almost anyone's acceptable range.

Finally, the intellectual case for a looming debt crisis got blown out of the water because of the famous Reinhart-Rogoff Excel spreadsheet error. The uncovering of this error led to a debate that showed conclusively that there is no debt cliff at 90 percent of GDP. Furthermore, the evidence that there is causation from high debt to slower growth (as opposed to the opposite) is weak to non-existent. The idea that we were about to raise our debt to levels that would lead to a sharp falloff in growth had no basis in reality. As a result of this turn of events, the FTD crew seem prepared to abandon ship. Maya MacGuineas, the leading spokesperson for FTD, apparently having given up on Congress, was last seen calling on Silicon Valley to use its technological prowess to disrupt the political process. And the Washington Post, which has been an open CFD cheerleader, mournfully noted the improbability of a deal involving major cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

In this case the strong support of the public for these programs -- which cuts across party and demographic lines -- overcame the power of corporate money and the political elite. When push came to shove, not enough politicians were prepared to go against the strongly held views of their constituents. And it helped that the facts were on their side. It would be great if we could switch from defense to offense. The Wall Street financial types who brought on this economic catastrophe are richer and more politically powerful than ever. They are laughing at the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, and looking to several more decades of free "too-big-to-fail" insurance from the government. In the same vein, other major industries such as the pharmaceutical companies, the health insurance industry, and the telecommunications industry, continue to rake in record profits due to their monopoly power and government protections. It would be great if the same people who recognized cuts to Social Security and Medicare as attacks on low- and middle-income people could also see the need to move the ball forward onto the other team's turf. This means applying the same sort of sales taxes to financial speculation that the rest of us pay when we buy clothes or shoes. It means breaking up the big banks. It means ending the abuse of patent monopolies by drug companies who push bad drugs at high prices. And it means ending abuses of market power in a number of industries.

The result will be a somewhat smaller share of the pie for those on top and a larger share for everyone else. And it will almost certainly also mean a more rapidly growing economy. The latter would especially be true if we could reverse the sequester and other pointless austerity measures. But the move to offense is not about to happen right now. And with all the money it has available, we can't even assume the CFD effort will stay dead. But we should take a moment to celebrate the victory we have achieved. So pick up a glass of the beverage of your choosing and drink a toast to Social Security and Medicare, to the people whose lives they have made more secure, and to the people who have worked to ensure that these programs are there for current generations and those yet to come in the decades ahead.

[Demeter]

12. Emerging markets will soon make up 50% of world economy

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/06/10/business-montreal-conference.html

...Emerging countries led by Asia, Africa and Latin America will soon control half of the world economy, up from a third currently, Scotiabank chief economist Warren Jestin told the Conference of Montreal.

Jestin says U.S. is slowly recovering at about two per cent growth, but European won't move much beyond recession any time soon.

He told the economic conference that Europe faces high unemployment and growth that will at best reach one per cent over the next five years.

Jestin said growth rates in the developing world will be two to three times the level of the developed world and will be the global economic engine by 2020....

MORE

[Demeter]

13. Africa Has Strongest Growth in Sovereign Funds, JPMorgan Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-10/africa-has-strongest-growth-in-sovereign-funds-jpmorgan-says.html

Africa is experiencing the strongest growth in new sovereign wealth funds in the world as the continent’s nations are amassing commodity revenues and foreign-exchange reserves, according to JPMorgan Asset Management Inc.

During the past two years, 15 state funds have been set up or are being considered in Africa, Patrick Thomson, the global head of sovereigns at JPMorgan Asset said. The region will see more starting in the coming years, he added.

With commodity prices rising, African countries are putting their surpluses into government-owned funds designed to manage a country’s wealth for future generations. Angola set up its $5 billion state fund in October, Uganda said in April it plans to create a sovereign fund, and Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, inaugurated its $1 billion fund eight months ago.

“We expect the number in Africa to grow further over the coming years,” Thomson, 45, said in a telephone interview from Hong Kong on June 6. There are two main reasons why more state funds are being set up in Africa, “it’s the growth in commodity prices, and it’s the growth in foreign exchange reserves.”

Africa is catching up with many Asian and Middle-East countries that already have a state fund, Thomson said. Latin America will see the second-strongest growth in the number of new funds, he said, without elaborating...

MORE

[Demeter]

15. Monsanto’s Website Hacked After 2 Million March By Christina Sarich

http://www.nationofchange.org/monsanto-s-website-hacked-after-2-million-march-1371736891

The Monsanto corporate website was hacked on May 29, 2013, just days after more than 2 million people marched against the organization around the world, and despite an almost complete media blackout. Anonymous, a group of internet hackers calling themselves ‘hacktivists’, was able to temporarily shut down the site as an act of outright revolt against Monsanto’s illegal and predatory practices of planting poison GMO crops even despite the public’s desperate attempts to stop them.

A statement released by Anonymous relates:

“Monsanto is facing the wrath of activists because they are altering the nature of our food supply without a concern about long term effects on human health, because they are creating a monopoly on the supply of seeds for farmers, and, because of increasing evidence of long term environmental damages.”

This same hacktivist has previously hacked into Monsanto’s website before, and also the public relations companies associated with them. In December of 2012, the hackers infiltrated the PR firm known as The Biving Group due to “15+ years of running marketing campaigns and helping some of the most corrupt corporations on the planet, as well as several governmental agencies, cover up their dirt.” Going by information released by Anonymous, Bivings Group shut down all of their servers and liquidated their assets after the infiltration. Will activists take on increasingly desperate attempts to shut down corporations like Monsanto as the global spread of GMO seed endangers our food supply? As Monsanto seems to slide like a slippery eel through government institutions that are supposed to protect the people from health hazards like GMO, including the Senate, Congress, FDA, and our completely mute presidential office, perhaps the public is getting anxious as the GMO monopoly continues to grow in India and the US, as in other countries, despite rampant activism to stop them.

The group itself demands Monsanto to stop:

Contaminating the global food chain with GMO’s.

Intimidating small farmers with bullying and lawsuits.

Propagating the use of destructive pesticides and herbicides across the globe.

Using “Terminator Technology”, which renders plants sterile.

Attempting to hijack UN climate change negotiations for your own fiscal benefit.

Reducing farmland to desert through monoculture and the use of synthetic fertilizers.

Inspiring suicides of hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers.

Causing birth defects by continuing to produce the pesticide “Round-up”

Attempting to bribe foriegn officials

Infiltrating anti-GMO groups

One commenter on AnonymousEX’s Facebook timeline stated, “Anonymous is not one, Anonymous is everybody!”

[Demeter]

16. FBI director admits domestic use of drones for surveillance

http://rt.com/usa/fbi-director-mueller-drones-947/

The FBI uses drones for domestic surveillance purposes, the head of the agency told Congress early Wednesday. Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed to lawmakers that the FBI owns several unmanned aerial vehicles, but has not adopted any strict policies or guidelines yet to govern the use of the controversial aircraft.

“Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on US soil?” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Mr Mueller during an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Yes,” Mueller responded bluntly, adding that the FBI’s operation of drones is “very seldom.”

Asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) to elaborate, Mueller added, “It’s very seldom used and generally used in a particular incident where you need the capability.”

Earlier in the morning, however, Mueller said that the agency was only now working to establish set rules for the drone program. Mueller began answering questions just after 10 a.m. EDT. He briefly touched on the recently exposed NSA surveillance program that has marred the reputation of the United States intelligence community. Mueller said 22 agents have access to a vast surveillance database, including 20 analysts and two overseers.

When Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) asked Mueller later in the morning if he’d consider being more open about the FBI’s surveillance methods, the director expressed reluctance to be more transparent. Mueller said the FBI has and will continue to weigh the possibility of publishing more information about its spy habits, but warned that doing so would be to the advantage of America’s enemies.

“There is a price to be paid for that transparency,” Mueller said. “I certainly think it would be educating our adversaries as to what our capabilities are.”

[Demeter]

17. 'Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer:' Hot mic catches NSA boss

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2344098/NSA-hearing-Hot-mic-catches-NSA-boss-praising-FBI-chiefs-supportive-testimony-surveillance-programs.html

The director of the National Security Agency was overheard offering a round of beer to the FBI's second-in-command following Tuesday's congressional hearing on the NSA's controversial surveillance programs.

The three-hour hearing had just wrapped up around 1 p.m. when NSA Director Keith Alexander turned to FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and praised him for his testimony.

'Thank you, Sean,' Alexander said, according to a clip of the exchange that was first reported by Ben Doernberg.

'Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer,' he added.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2344098/NSA-hearing-Hot-mic-catches-NSA-boss-praising-FBI-chiefs-supportive-testimony-surveillance-programs.html#ixzz2WoemMcU2
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

[Demeter]

18. The Prism: Privacy in an age of publicity by Jill Lepore

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/06/24/130624fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all

An extraordinary fuss about eavesdropping started in the spring of 1844, when Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian exile in London, became convinced that the British government was opening his mail. Mazzini, a revolutionary who’d been thrown in jail in Genoa, imprisoned in Savona, sentenced to death in absentia, and arrested in Paris, was plotting the unification of the kingdoms of Italy and the founding of an Italian republic. He suspected that, in London, he’d been the victim of what he called “post-office espionage”: he believed that the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, had ordered his mail to be opened, at the request of the Austrian Ambassador, who, like many people, feared what Mazzini hoped—that an insurrection in Italy would spark a series of revolutions across Europe. Mazzini knew how to find out: he put poppy seeds, strands of hair, and grains of sand into envelopes, sealed the envelopes with wax, and sent them, by post, to himself. When the letters arrived—still sealed—they contained no poppy seeds, no hair, and no grains of sand. Mazzini then had his friend Thomas Duncombe, a Member of Parliament, submit a petition to the House of Commons. Duncombe wanted to know if Graham really had ordered the opening of Mazzini’s mail. Was the British government in the business of prying into people’s private correspondence? Graham said the answer to that question was a secret.

Questions raised this month about surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency have been met, so far, with much the same response that Duncombe got from Graham in 1844: the program is classified. (This, a secret secret, is known as a double secret.) Luckily, old secrets aren’t secret; old secrets are history. The Mazzini affair, as the historian David Vincent argued in “The Culture of Secrecy,” led to “the first modern attack on official secrecy.” It stirred a public uproar, and eventually the House of Commons appointed a Committee of Secrecy “to inquire into the State of the Law in respect of the Detaining and Opening of Letters at the General Post-office, and into the Mode under which the Authority given for such Detaining and Opening has been exercised.” In August of 1844, the committee issued a hundred-and-sixteen-page report on the goings on at the post office. Fascinating to historians, it must have bored Parliament silly. It includes a history of the delivery of the mail, back to the sixteenth century. (The committee members had “showed so much antiquarian research,” Lord John Russell remarked, that he was surprised they hadn’t gone all the way back to “the case of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, who opened the letters which had been committed to his charge, and got Rosencrantz and Guildenstern put to death instead of himself.”)

The report revealed that Mazzini’s mail had indeed been opened and that there existed something called the Secret Department of the Post Office. Warrants had been issued for reading the mail of the king’s subjects for centuries. Before Mazzini and the poppy seeds, the practice was scarcely questioned. It was not, however, widespread. “The general average of Warrants issued during the present century, does not much exceed 8 a-year,” the investigation revealed. “This number would comprehend, on an average, the Letters of about 16 persons annually.” The Committee of Secrecy was relieved to report that rumors that the Secret Department of the Post Office had, at times, sent “entire mail-bags” to the Home Office were false: “None but separate Letters or Packets are ever sent.”

The entire episode was closely watched in the United States, where the New-York Tribune condemned the opening of Mazzini’s mail as “a barbarian breach of honor and decency.” After the Committee of Secrecy issued its report, Mazzini published an essay called “Letter-Opening at the Post-Office.” Two months after the Mazzini affair began, the Secret Department of the Post Office was abolished. What replaced it, in the long run, was even sneakier: better-kept secrets.

The opening of Mazzini’s mail, like the revelations that the N.S.A. has been monitoring telephone, e-mail, and Internet use, illustrates the intricacy of the relationship between secrecy and privacy. Secrecy is what is known, but not to everyone. Privacy is what allows us to keep what we know to ourselves. Mazzini considered his correspondence private; the British government kept its reading of his mail secret. The A.C.L.U., which last week filed a suit against the Obama Administration, has called the N.S.A.’s surveillance program a “gross infringement” of the “right to privacy.” The Obama Administration has defended both the program and the fact that its existence has been kept secret....

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[jtuck004]

22. Do You Have ANY IDEA How Widespread Government Spying Really Is?

Pretty good, but long, article, lots of details, maps of new U.S. surveillance drone locations, etc.

The link about billboards that look back at you was interesting...

At The Big Picture, Here

Also, private industry is putting the government folks to shame, and without warrants. Most people don't realize, I think, that THEY are the product. More specifically their habits and behaviours, where they go, who they call, what and when they buy etc. Facebook, (which, it is suggested, may become the next company to provide credit scores, based on the datafication of the information they are gathering),Ttwitter, your cell phone data - lots of companies out there are amassing nearly incomprehensible amounts of data designed to, mostly, take more money out of your pocket. One part of the whole is the mining of data for correlations that no one has found yet. For example, a company that can predict health issues, such as heart attacks or other stress-related issues as accurately as a blood test, and a whole lot cheaper. People's position in car seats are being measured, and that data is being used to develop anti-theft technology, as they identify who is sitting in the seat based on posture, the way you hold your body, etc.

There's a lot more, but it's a fairly quick read, in a book called "Big Data", the authors are Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth
Cukier. I got it at the library.

Wish it would quit raining. My garlic doesn't need any more water...

[Demeter]

28. NO, I don't. But I can guess at how wide-spread it COULD be

if they just applied themselves...and the Spies keep bumping into public opposition! It's a tremendous nuisance. What good is spying on people, if they know you are doing it?

Worse yet, what if the People just don't care, and continue doing their thing in defiance of all your bluster and bullying? then it's time for those Predator Drones, my friend!


Fact is, has anyone constructed a guess as to WHAT the abusers of power are looking for?

That alone could explain what they are doing, and why, and how. Occupy and other social movements for policy and social change seem to be the only identified targets, at the moment.

[Fuddnik]

60. I used to make a point of studying surveillance.

I needed to know for business purposes.

I started out reading James Bamfords "The Puzzle Palace" in 1984. The NSA's capabilities were amazing back then. And that was just what Bamford discovered. He said that the NSA scientists always strived to stay at least 5 years ahead of the state of art technology.

Fast forward 30 years, and it scares the shit out of me.

[Demeter]

19. In other news, they're predicting the big 9-0 for the weekend

I may go live in the pool and skip WEE.

[Fuddnik]

20. Asian markets tanking again tonight.

Harbinger for another screwed up day on Wall Street?

These, and other questions will be answered on the next episode of "Soap".

[Demeter]

21. They must have applied an ancient oriental cure--500 point swing into black

It's unreal.

[Demeter]

23. The First Economist

[xchrom]

24. Markets Are Higher After The Bank Of China Saves The Day

http://www.businessinsider.com/morning-markets-june-21-2013-6



Yesterday was a total bloodbath in the market.
Today, markets are generally green.

The difference. The People's Bank of China reportedly stepped in and eased the massive liquidity crunch in the Chinese banking market that was sending China's version of LIBOR (SHIBOR) higher.

The intervention reduced she SHIBOR rate significantly, and today markets are higher in Europe and in the US futures market.

It's not a massive snapback, but for now, things are calm.

Incidentally, Chinese stocks fell another 0.5%, hitting brand new lows.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morning-markets-june-21-2013-6#ixzz2Wqa4GW3k

[Demeter]

29. Ah, So!

I wondered what Helicopter Ben had done...but it was the Other Guy. Europe simply doesn't matter any more, does it? Nor does Japan. Pretty soon, the US won't make a difference, either.

[xchrom]

25. 20-Second Aerial Video Shows Just How Gigantic Last Night's Protest In Rio De Janeiro Was

http://www.businessinsider.com/20-second-aerial-video-shows-just-how-gigantic-last-nights-protest-in-rio-de-janeiro-was-2013-6

This newsclip has 20-seconds of video showing just how gigantic last night's protests in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil were.

300,000 apparently came out in the city alone. As you can see, the crowd just goes on forever.

Following last night's protests, the President of Brazil has called for an emergency cabinet session.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/20-second-aerial-video-shows-just-how-gigantic-last-nights-protest-in-rio-de-janeiro-was-2013-6#ixzz2Wqaf8v2O

[Hotler]

53. If only we could get that many people in the streets here. Oh well......

I have no hope. I see no future.

[DemReadingDU]

61. Most prefer watching mindless TV and eating junk food

[Demeter]

65. Which streets? DC? NYC? Detroit? Or all of them?

That would be 10% of the US population. Give a good reason, and it will happen. 10% is nothing...spreading it out over a continent dampens the impact.

300,000 in one city would probably hit all the alarm buttons at DHS. We don't want to trip the Paranoia Panic Attack---we want them to come out and join us in Solidarity!

[Hotler]

71. Oh never mind I was dreaming. n/t

[Demeter]

26. Obama’s Expanding Kill List By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33931.htm

...We are now witnessing the expansion of Obama’s Kill List. The list began under the Bush regime as a rationale for murdering suspect citizens of countries with which the US was not at war. The Obama regime expanded the scope of the list to include the execution, without due process of law, of US citizens accused, without evidence presented in court, of association with terrorism. The list quickly expanded to include the American teen-age son of a cleric accused of preaching jihad against the West. The son’s “association” with terrorism apparently was his blood relationship to his father.

As Glenn Greenwald recently wrote, the power of government to imprison and to murder its citizens without due process of law is the certain mark of dictatorship. Dictatorship is government unconstrained by law. On February 10 the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Obama dictatorship now intends to expand the Kill List to include those accused of acting against foreign governments. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an “Algerian militant” accused of planning the January attack on an Algerian natural gas facility, has been chosen as the threat that is being used to expand Obama’s Kill List to include participants in the internal disputes and civil wars of every country.

If the Obama regime is on the side of the government, as in Algeria, it will kill the rebels opposing the government. If the Obama regime is on the side of the rebels, as in Libya, it will kill the government’s leaders. Whether Washington sends a drone to murder Putin and the president of China remains to be seen. But don’t be surprised if Washington has targeted the president of Iran...The next time former US Representative Cynthia McKinney gets on an aid ship to Palestine, will Washington give the green light to Israel to kill her as a terrorist agent for her association with aid to Gaza, ruled by the “terrorist organization,” Hamas? Already a year or two ago, the director of Homeland Security said that the federal police agency’s focus had shifted from terrorists to “domestic extremists,” another elastic and undefined term. A domestic extremist will be all who disagree with Washington. They also are headed for the Kill List.

Where is the government going with this? The most likely outcome is that everyone disliked or distrusted by those who have the power to add to the Kill List will find themselves on the list. The government can expand the Kill List beyond the original intent as easily as the RICO Act was expanded beyond its original intent...Registered voters have a different view of the extra-judicial murder of US citizens. In what the rest of the world will see as further evidence of American double-standards, 48% believe it is illegal for Washington to murder US citizens without due process of law. However, 24% agree with the Obama regime that it is permissible for the government to murder its own citizens on accusation alone without trial and conviction of a capital crime. As The Onion put it, “24% of citizens were unequivocally in favor of being obliterated at any point, for any reason, in a massive airstrike.” http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-citizens-split-on-doj-memo-authorizing-go,31207/

As the Founding Fathers knew and the American people have forgot, no one is safe in a dictatorship.

[xchrom]

27. Greece Is Getting Clobbered

http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-is-getting-clobbered-2013-6

Greece is getting clobbered today.
The Athens Stock Exchange is down over 2.6%.

Yields on Greek bonds are jumping.

What's going on?

The big news is that the coalition government (which came into power in the summer of 2012) is deteriorating.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-is-getting-clobbered-2013-6#ixzz2WqbyVhPR

[xchrom]

30. LOGITECH CEO: 'I Love Hiring English Majors'

http://www.businessinsider.com/logitech-ceo-bracken-darrell-loves-hiring-english-majors-2013-6



Don't fret, English majors: There are employers out there looking for you.
One such empolyer is Bracken Darrell, the CEO of Logitech. He loves hiring English majors.

In fact, he thinks graduates of the liberal arts are so rare that he calls them "endangered species."

"If you find one, you need to run over and catch them in a conversation," he tells Business Insider.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/logitech-ceo-bracken-darrell-loves-hiring-english-majors-2013-6#ixzz2WqkEr1qa

[Demeter]

33. They make great canapes!

What a load of crap. My stomach is churning so, I won't be able to eat breakfast....

[xchrom]

35. !

[Demeter]

36. Good morning, X!

Sure, if some 1% white son of a colleague or potential ally turns up with a BA in English, he'll hire him.

Pardon my cynicism.

[xchrom]

40. Happy Solstice, Miss Demeter!

i hope there is some fun in store for you this weekend -- and on the 23rd there is a super moon.

oh lets face it -- everything is upside down and there is every excuse under the sun not to hire some one.

most of my friends have liberal arts degrees -- and most of them are working in some tech related field -- it's where what jobs there were available..
for them it was they had a wide variety of experience -- from research to tapping out their papers -- endlessly -- on computers.

[Demeter]

42. But are they management material?

or just keyboard drones?

[xchrom]

44. Some are managers...

But I suspect most were 'driven' to tech jobs because there's not a lot available in what they wanted to do.

[xchrom]

31. "Free Trade" Was Never Really About Trade

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/20-10

First, let me say that I am 100% in favor of trade. Trade is when we do what we do best, they do what they do best, and we trade. Trade, done right, will raise living standards.

If trade is good, then free trade must be better, right? So consider this old joke about "free trade."

It's not free.
It's not trade.
Twenty years after NAFTA we can add that it doesn't work. It's bad for millions of workers, families and communities around the world.

"Free trade" is not free. Our free trade policy encourages production to leave the country. We've lost millions of manufacturing jobs. More than 60,000 manufacturing plants were closed between 2000 and 2010 as production moved overseas. These costs are real.

"Free trade" is not trade. Basically, trade is when each country makes things of value for export and gets things of comparable value in imports. In modern globalization, other countries manipulate their currencies, use tax strategies that distort exports and imports, and apply effective well-designed industrial policies to build manufacturing capacity. They export more products to us, and import fewer products from us.

[Demeter]

51. Profits Without Production By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/opinion/krugman-profits-without-production.html

One lesson from recent economic troubles has been the usefulness of history. Just as the crisis was unfolding, the Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff — who unfortunately became famous for their worst work — published a brilliant book with the sarcastic title “This Time Is Different.” Their point, of course, was that there is a strong family resemblance among crises. Indeed, historical parallels — not just to the 1930s, but to Japan in the 1990s, Britain in the 1920s, and more — have been vital guides to the present.

Yet economies do change over time, and sometimes in fundamental ways. So what’s really different about America in the 21st century? The most significant answer, I’d suggest, is the growing importance of monopoly rents: profits that don’t represent returns on investment, but instead reflect the value of market dominance. Sometimes that dominance seems deserved, sometimes not; but, either way, the growing importance of rents is producing a new disconnect between profits and production and may be a factor prolonging the slump.
To see what I’m talking about, consider the differences between the iconic companies of two different eras: General Motors in the 1950s and 1960s, and Apple today. Obviously, G.M. in its heyday had a lot of market power. Nonetheless, the company’s value came largely from its productive capacity: it owned hundreds of factories and employed around 1 percent of the total nonfarm work force.

Apple, by contrast, seems barely tethered to the material world. Depending on the vagaries of its stock price, it’s either the highest-valued or the second-highest-valued company in America, but it employs less than 0.05 percent of our workers. To some extent, that’s because it has outsourced almost all its production overseas. But the truth is that the Chinese aren’t making that much money from Apple sales either. To a large extent, the price you pay for an iWhatever is disconnected from the cost of producing the gadget. Apple simply charges what the traffic will bear, and given the strength of its market position, the traffic will bear a lot.
Again, I’m not making a moral judgment here. You can argue that Apple earned its special position — although I’m not sure how many would make a similar claim for Microsoft, which made huge profits for many years, let alone for the financial industry, which is also marked by a lot of what look like monopoly rents, and these days accounts for roughly 30 percent of total corporate profits. Anyway, whether corporations deserve their privileged status or not, the economy is affected, and not in a good way, when profits increasingly reflect market power rather than production.

Here’s an example. As many economists have lately been pointing out, these days the old story about rising inequality, in which it was driven by a growing premium on skill, has lost whatever relevance it may have had. Since around 2000, the big story has, instead, been one of a sharp shift in the distribution of income away from wages in general, and toward profits. But here’s the puzzle: Since profits are high while borrowing costs are low, why aren’t we seeing a boom in business investment? And, no, investment isn’t depressed because President Obama has hurt the feelings of business leaders or because they’re terrified by the prospect of universal health insurance. Well, there’s no puzzle here if rising profits reflect rents, not returns on investment. A monopolist can, after all, be highly profitable yet see no good reason to expand its productive capacity. And Apple again provides a case in point: It is hugely profitable, yet it’s sitting on a giant pile of cash, which it evidently sees no need to reinvest in its business. Or to put it differently, rising monopoly rents can and arguably have had the effect of simultaneously depressing both wages and the perceived return on investment. You might suspect that this can’t be good for the broader economy, and you’d be right. If household income and hence household spending is held down because labor gets an ever-smaller share of national income, while corporations, despite soaring profits, have little incentive to invest, you have a recipe for persistently depressed demand. I don’t think this is the only reason our recovery has been so weak — weak recoveries are normal after financial crises — but it’s probably a contributory factor.

MORE

[xchrom]

52. +1

[Demeter]

32. Don’t Fall For Pentagon Spin By Ben Freeman NO SEQUESTRATION HERE!

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34300.htm

Never mind what you heard about massive new cuts to the defense industry. Here's how contractors avoided calamity...sequestration’s plan to reduce Pentagon spending by $492 billion over the next nine years was the reason Democrats mistakenly believed Republicans would seek to avoid it at all costs. The truth? We’re watching a political magic trick. Right now, we’re at the part of the show where it appears Congress and the President sawed through Pentagon contractors. They’re moaning and complaining – giving the audience a good show – but fear not, contracts will be just fine. This is largely because of the rock solid foundation the industry is standing on. Every year for the last five years the Pentagon has doled out at least $360 billion to contractors. In fact, every year since the war in Afghanistan began contractors have received more than half of the Pentagon’s total budget. In other words, contractors have received more taxpayer money than the Department of Defense’s civilian employees and nearly 1.4 million active duty military personnel combined.
All that money has really added up. So much so that Pentagon contractors are sitting on a backlog of contracts worth nearly as much as the entirety of Pentagon sequestration. In other words, even if contractors absorbed all of the Pentagon sequestration cuts, they’d still be on track to receive more than $300 billion a year in new contracts, which is more than double what any other country in the world spends on its military...contractors may have been a target of sequestration, but they’re still winning the war for the Pentagon’s budget.

To be clear, the contractor lobby didn’t take the hit from sequestration on March 1, but on August 2, 2011 when the Budget Control Act of 2011 was enacted and included cuts to Pentagon spending as a punishment for Congressional inaction. Unfortunately for the contractor lobby, inertia is the norm for a Congress that hasn’t passed an actual budget in nearly four years. For many policymakers sequestration became the best, worst option. Most Members of Congress got at least something they wanted by doing what Congress does best – nothing. But, even with the enactment of sequestration, contractors can rest assured of their preeminent role in the Pentagon’s budget. They’re being protected as much as possible from all sides – the Secretary of Defense, Hawks on the Hill, the Department of Defense Comptroller, and the White House. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said during his confirmation hearing, “The continuing health of the industrial base will be a high priority for me.” And despite sequestration, hawks are far from an endangered species on Capitol Hill. John McCain (R-AZ), for example, remained an especially ardent opponent of Pentagon cuts, arguing that it would “significantly impact our industrial capabilities.” Then there’s Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale, who said in a sequestration briefing on February 20, “I don’t anticipate that we will cancel many, if any, contracts…And, I would like to say to reassure them {contractors}, if you’ve got a contract with us, we’re going to pay you.”...In short, existing contracts aren’t likely to be cancelled, and new contracts are only a “high priority initiative” rubber stamp away. Sequestration will reduce the amount of money flowing to the industry. But, even though the Pentagon pie will be smaller, all signs point to contractors still getting most of it.

Who’s Actually Disappearing?

While contractors aren’t disappearing en masse in this magic trick, the same can’t be said of the Defense Department’s civilian employees, who are facing the economic impact of sequestration head-on. Hale announced that the Pentagon will furlough most of its civilian workforce – nearly 800,000 employees – beginning in April. This includes approximately 15,000 military school teachers and staff. Employees are expected to be furloughed one day per week, without pay, for the remainder of the fiscal year. The Defense Department is, by far, the largest employer of government workers, so there’s likely plenty of waste in this bloated bureaucracy. But, cutting civilian workers without taking meaningful steps to reduce the Pentagon’s over-reliance on contractors may ultimately cost taxpayers far more than it saves. Furloughing civilians may create work vacuums where the Pentagon has no choice but to hire contractors to complete essential tasks. From a taxpayer’s perspective, this might not be problematic if they both cost the same amount, but they don’t. An analysis by my colleague, Scott Amey, of the Project On Government Oversight has found that service contractors employed by the Pentagon cost between two and eight times as much as civilian employees, on average.


...Sequestration won’t upset the military industrial (Congressional) complex that President Eisenhower warned the U.S. about more than 50 years ago. It will only ensure that taxpayers pay for a little less of it.

FOLLOW THE MONEY--AT LINK

Dr. Ben Freeman is a National Security Investigator at the Project On Government Oversight, specializing in Department of Defense personnel issues, weapons procurement, and the impact of lobbying by foreign governments on U.S. foreign policy.

[Demeter]

34. we petition the obama administration to: Pardon Edward Snowden

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD

He should get a Medal of Freedom, for protecting the People and the Constitution, IMO...

[xchrom]

38. ...

[Demeter]

41. What Is The Government’s Agenda? By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35245.htm

...The latest whistle blower, Edward Snowden, has sought refuge in Hong Kong, which has a better record of protecting free speech than the US government. Snowden did not trust any US news source and took the story to the British newspaper, the Guardian...There is no longer any doubt whatsoever that the US government is lawless, that it regards the US Constitution as a scrap of paper, that it does not believe Americans have any rights other than those that the government tolerates at any point in time, and that the government has no fear of being held accountable by the weak and castrated US Congress, the sycophantic federal courts, a controlled media, and an insouciant public.

Binney and Snowden have described in precisely accurate detail the extreme danger from the government’s surveillance of the population. No one is exempt, not the Director of the CIA, US Army Generals, Senators and Representatives, not even the president himself. Anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can find interviews with Binney and Snowden and become acquainted with why you do have very much indeed to fear whether or not you are doing anything wrong.

James Clapper, the lying Director of National Intelligence, who would have been perfectly at home in the Hitler or Stalin regimes, condemned Snowden as “reprehensible” for insisting that in a democracy the public should know what the government is doing. Clapper insisted that secretly spying on every ordinary American was essential in order to “protect our nation.” http://news.antiwar.com/2013/06/07/us-spy-chief-slams-reprehensible-leak-of-nsa-surveillance-scheme/ Clapper is “offended” that Americans now know that the NSA is spying on the ordinary life of every American. Clapper wants Snowden to be severely punished for his “reckless disclosure” that the US government is totally violating the privacy that the US Constitution guarantees to every US citizen. President Obama, allegedly educated in constitutional law, justified Clapper’s program of spying on every communication of every American citizen as a necessary violation of Americans’ civil liberties that “protects your civil liberties.” Contrast the lack of veracity of the President of the United States with the truthfulness of Snowden, who correctly stated that the NSA spying is an “existential threat to democracy.”

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

Demonization is the US government’s technique for discrediting Bradley Manning for complying with the US Military Code and reporting war crimes and for persecuting Julian Assage of Wikileaks for reporting leaked information about the US government’s crimes. Demonization and false charges will be the government’s weapon against Snowden. If Washington and its presstitutes can convince Americans that courageous people, who are trying to inform Americans that their historic rights are disappearing into a police state, are espionage agents of foreign powers, America can continue to be subverted by its own government...This brings us to the crux of the matter. What is the purpose of the spying program?

Even if an American believes the official stories of 9/11 and the Boston Marathon Bombing, these are the only two terrorist acts in the US that resulted in the lost of human life in 12 years. Far more people are killed in traffic accidents and from bad diets. Why should the Constitution and civil liberty be deep-sixed because of two alleged terrorist acts in 12 years? What is astounding is the absence of terrorist attacks. Washington is in the second decade of invading and destroying Muslim governments and countries. Civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are extremely high, and in those countries that Washington has not yet invaded, such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria, civilians are being murdered by Washington’s drones and proxies on the ground. It is extraordinary that Washington’s brutal 12 year assault on Muslim lives in six countries has not resulted in at least one dozen real, not fake FBI orchestrated, terrorist attacks in the US every day. How can something as rare as terrorism justify the destruction of the US Constitution and US civil liberty? How safe is any American when their government regards every citizen as a potential suspect who has no rights?

...What is the government’s real agenda? Clearly, “the war on terror” is a front for an undeclared agenda. In “freedom and democracy” America, citizens have no idea what their government’s motives are in fomenting endless wars and a gestapo police state. The only information Americans have comes from whistleblowers, who Obama ruthlessly prosecutes. The presstitutes quickly discredit the information and demonize the whistleblowers. Germans in the Third Reich and Soviet citizens in the Stalin era had a better idea of their government’s agendas than do “freedom and democracy” Americans today. The American people are the most uninformed people in modern history. In America there is no democracy that holds government accountable. There is only a brainwashed people who are chaff in the wind.

[Demeter]

45. One American Who Isn't For Sale By Robert Scheer

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35240.htm

...Brian points out that the for-profit folks spying on us also get to grant high level government security clearances. Those private sector employees are then entrusted to work in the most secretive sectors of the government's national security apparatus, including at the National Security Agency. It's good work if you can get it. In January, the Defense Department granted Booz Allen a five-year, $5.6 billion deal assigning its private sector employees in key positions to advise Pentagon personnel on crafting military policy. Maybe they can find some new conventional wars to fight just in case the one against terrorism loses its profitability.

That could happen now that the American public has been alerted to the fact that in the grand design of that war, it is the ordinary American citizen, even when shopping on the Internet, who gets to play enemy. That reality is what seems to have turned Snowden, like others before him, into a courageous whistle-blower. He signed up for training with the Army Special Forces to go fight in Iraq because he bought the Bush administration's line that it was a war "to help free people from oppression." That misplaced idealism collided with the observation that "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," Snowden told the British newspaper The Guardian.

Still, he continued to serve the government, both with the CIA and then at the NSA, where he worked as a Booz Allen contractor. There he witnessed a part of the sordid story that he chose to share with his fellow Americans. As he explained to The Guardian:

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. ... If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

The folks at Booz Allen, and its parent company the Carlyle Group, love that world as a fabulous profit center, and it is truly inspiring that there are still folks like Snowden whom they can't buy.




Obama is listening to the People--You can count on it!

[snot]

69. And by the way . . .

who is looking at whether anyone with access to the results of all this surveillance might be being used for purposes of insider trading or the like?

[Demeter]

48. The Whistleblowers Are The New Generation of American Patriots By Gary Younge

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35324.htm

CURRENT 20-YEAR-OLDS ARE LEADING THE WAY...

[Demeter]

49. Edward Snowden — The Globalisation of Whistleblowing By Annie Machon

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35338.htm


...The same night the story broke about who was behind the leaks, I dis­cussed the implic­a­tions on an RT inter­view and called what he did Whistleblowing 2.0.... it appeared from his initial video interview with The Guardian that he had learned from pre­vi­ous whis­tleblow­ing cases: he had watched the media and care­fully chosen a journ­al­ist, Glenn Greenwald, with a good track record on the rel­ev­ant issues who would prob­ably fight his corner fear­lessly; his inform­a­tion clearly demon­strated that the intel­li­gence agen­cies were spin­ning out of con­trol and build­ing sur­veil­lance states; he care­fully chose a jur­is­dic­tion to flee to that might have the clout to pro­tect him leg­ally against the wrath of an over-mighty USA; and he has used his inter­net and media savvy to gain as much expos­ure and pro­tec­tion as quickly as possible. Plus, he has been incred­ibly brave, con­sid­er­ing the dra­conian war on whistleblowers that is cur­rently being waged by the Amer­ican admin­is­tra­tion. There have been three other NSA whistleblowers in recent years, all also talk­ing about endemic sur­veil­lance. All have paid a high per­sonal price, all dis­played great bravery in the face of adversity yet, sadly, none has achieved the same level of inter­na­tional impact. Were we just deaf to their warn­ings, or has Snowden played this better?

I think a bit of both. He’s a geek, a young geek, he will have seen what happened to other whis­tleblowers and appears to have taken steps to avoid the same pit­falls. He has gone pub­lic to pro­tect his fam­ily and pre­vent harm to his former col­leagues in any ensu­ing witch-hunt. And he has fled the coun­try in order to remain at liberty to argue his case, which is key to keep­ing the story alive for more than a week in the gad­fly minds of the old media. I know, I’ve been involved in the same process. He has blown the whistle to pro­tect an Amer­ican way of life he thinks “worth dying for”. Yet he has broadened out the issues inter­na­tion­ally — what hap­pens in Amer­ica impacts the rest of the world. This, in my view, is cru­cial. I have been writ­ing for years that the US is increas­ingly claim­ing global legal hege­mony over the entire inter­net, as well as the right to kid­nap, tor­ture and murder for­eign­ers at will. The Pat­riot Act has not only shred­ded the US con­sti­tu­tion, it also now appar­ently has global reach for as long as our craven gov­ern­ments allow it to. Now we know that this is not some abstract concept, the­ory or spec­u­la­tion — we are all poten­tially being watched

Edward Snowden argued his case very effect­ively in a live chat on The Guard­ian news­pa­per web­site. It became clear that he is indeed a new gen­er­a­tion of whisteblower. This is not someone who wit­nessed one crime and imme­di­ately felt he had to speak out. This is a tech­nical expert who watched, over time and with dis­may, the encroach­ing Big Brother sur­veil­lance state that is tak­ing over the world via the NSA and its clones...


Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for MI5, the UK Security Service, who resigned in 1996 to blow the whistle on the spies' incompetence and crimes. Drawing on her varied experiences, she is now a media pundit, author, journalist, political campaigner, and PR consultant. More AT LINK


THIS IS THE OBAMA GENERATION--HE MADE THEM, HE BETRAYED THEM, HE TURNED THEM INTO PATRIOTS!

[xchrom]

37. How America Became a Dollarocracy

http://www.thenation.com/blog/174902/how-america-became-dollarocracy#axzz2WlPuTg00

A radio host started an interview the other day by asking about “the $2 billion election” of 2012. I had to correct him. The commonly used $2 billion figure is a reference to an early estimate of spending on the presidential race. When the final figures came in, the campaigns, the parties, the political action committee and the various and sundry other vehicles for moving money into politics had spent well in excess of $2 billion. And that was just the start of it.

In our new book, Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America (Nation Books), Bob McChesney and I detail how the actual spending on politics during the 2012 election cycle was closer to $10 billion.

Yes, $10 billion.

How did the figure get so high? In the aftermath of a series of Supreme Court rulings, including but not limited to the decision in the Citizens United case, America’s wealthiest and most powerful political players were freed to flood the electoral process with direct donations to parties and candidates as well as massive spending on so-called “independent” and “dark-money” political projects. And they did not stop at the presidential level.



Read more: How America Became a Dollarocracy | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/174902/how-america-became-dollarocracy#ixzz2WqrUTaKb
Follow us: @thenation on Twitter | TheNationMagazine on Facebook

[Demeter]

39. Now they are "papering" gold under 1300

It can't be worth that much to them, can it? To suppress the price of gold, I mean...

[siligut]

43. Data Group Ends Peeks After Leaks

By Brody Mullins | The Wall Street Journal – 12 hours ago
WASHINGTON—A private-sector group that produces a leading consumer-confidence survey is suspending its practice of giving media organizations an early preview because it fears the information may be leaking to traders before the public.
The Conference Board, which produces the survey, said Thursday it instead will publish some of its economic indicators, including the monthly consumer-confidence survey, simultaneously on its website and through a news release.

The move is one of the biggest cracks thus far in the traditional way in which private organizations and governmental agencies release market-moving economic data to the public. Previously, the organization had given a 30-minute peek to a small group of journalists who used the head-start to digest the often complicated results and prepare reports.

The advent of high-speed computerized trading has pushed investors to seek market-moving information a fraction of a second before their competitors. To meet this demand, many media organizations, including Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., have set up systems to feed data directly into traders' computers, allowing elite investors to trade on the information ahead of the broader public.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/data-group-ends-peeks-leaks-233200374.html

I really don't believe traders would take advantage of the early release of important consumer information.

The article also touches on the 'malfunctions' that caused an early release of data and the suspicion that traders acted upon it.

[Demeter]

46. The U.S. job market is still worse than at any point during the 2001 downturn By Brad Plumer

AND THIS IS THE WASHINGTON POST!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/12/the-u-s-job-market-is-still-worse-than-at-any-point-in-the-last-downturn/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein

There’s nothing new or surprising about this chart from the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Sheirholz. It’s just a reminder that the U.S. labor market is still in rough shape — despite the considerable improvement in recent years:



Right now, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, there’s approximately one job opening for every 3.1 unemployed persons who are looking for work. That ratio of jobs to jobless has improved an enormous amount since 2009. But to put things in perspective, it’s still worse than it was at any point during the last downturn, which started in 2001.

Sheirholz also notes that the number of unemployed job-seekers appears to outstrip the number of openings in just about every industry, from construction to retail to education to hospitality. (The gap is smallest in mining, but there are relatively few jobs there, compared with the other sectors.)

[xchrom]

47. Why Cities Should Use Public Banks Instead of Big Banks

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/21-0

Of all the public entities that have fallen victim to the big bank-induced economic downturn, cities have the most compelling stories of being burned. If “all politics is local,” this is even more true for economics, at least where people’s ordinary lives are concerned. City budgets contain the life blood of communities. School districts, contracts with utility companies, waste services, and street repairs all filter locally. City social services are often the first line of response for people in need. City councils also fund soup kitchens, domestic violence shelters, and animal shelters.

So we should take good care of our cities, right? We shouldn’t throw them to the wolves when it comes to funding essential services, right?

Matt Taibbi’s well-read Rolling Stone article, “The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia,” details the struggle of municipalities, schools, and other public entities after big private banks induced them to gamble their public funds on the direction of the market -- often resulting in debts that far exceeded their budgets and the original cost estimates for the projects they were seeking to fund. Taibbi’s article specifically described how “banksters,” as populists are wont to call them these days, conned Jefferson County, Alabama, to spend $5 billion for a sewer project estimated at $250 million.

Trey Bundy and Shane Shifflett of California Watch recently detailed the story of American Canyon High School in Napa Valley. When Napa Valley’s school district needed a new high school, and taxpayers didn’t want to pay for it, the district took out a $22 million loan payable in 2049. The amount to be repaid 21 years in the future? $154 million. Bundy and Shifflett note that over 1,300 districts across the country are doing the same thing -- engaging in capital appreciation bond borrowing to finance their publicly necessary building projects. Some jurisdictions are banning this kind of borrowing, but no one is offering an alternative. Tax increases are unpopular and, apparently, politically unrealistic. Cutting budgets in other areas is impossible now -- there's virtually nothing left to cut.

[Demeter]

50. +a brazillion!

[Fuddnik]

54. I think I might go down into Tampa to hear George Packer speak this evening.

He's giving a two hour talk, and a book signing.

I was going to buy his newest book anyway. Might as well get it signed.

[xchrom]

55. nice. tell him hello from SMW & WEE. nt

[Fuddnik]

58. How American Society Unravelled After Greedy Elites Robbed the Country Blind

How American Society Unravelled After Greedy Elites Robbed the Country Blind
By George Packer

June 20, 2013 |

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-american-society-unravelled



In or around 1978, America's character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

This unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left large numbers of Americans – black people and other minorities, women, gay people – out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress, courts, churches, schools, news organisations, business-labour partnerships. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a nonviolent mass uprising led by black southerners, but it drew essential support from all of these institutions, which recognised the moral and legal justice of its claims, or, at the very least, the need for social peace. The Roosevelt Republic had plenty of injustice, but it also had the power of self-correction.

Americans were no less greedy, ignorant, selfish and violent then than they are today, and no more generous, fair-minded and idealistic. But the institutions of American democracy, stronger than the excesses of individuals, were usually able to contain and channel them to more useful ends. Human nature does not change, but social structures can, and they did.

At the time, the late 1970s felt like shapeless, dreary, forgettable years. Jimmy Carter was in the White House, preaching austerity and public-spiritedness, and hardly anyone was listening. The hideous term "stagflation", which combined the normally opposed economic phenomena of stagnation and inflation, perfectly captured the doldrums of that moment. It is only with the hindsight of a full generation that we can see how many things were beginning to shift across the American landscape, sending the country spinning into a new era.

In Youngstown, Ohio, the steel mills that had been the city's foundation for a century closed, one after another, with breathtaking speed, taking 50,000 jobs from a small industrial river valley, leaving nothing to replace them. In Cupertino, California, the Apple Computer Company released the first popular personal computer, the Apple II. Across California, voters passed Proposition 13, launching a tax revolt that began the erosion of public funding for what had been the country's best school system. In Washington, corporations organised themselves into a powerful lobby that spent millions of dollars to defeat the kind of labour and consumer bills they had once accepted as part of the social contract. Newt Gingrich came to Congress as a conservative Republican with the singular ambition to tear it down and build his own and his party's power on the rubble. On Wall Street, Salomon Brothers pioneered a new financial product called mortgage-backed securities, and then became the first investment bank to go public.

(snip)

[Demeter]

66. Cry for the Beloved Country---the Country We were Born to!

The country that may never be seen again....this is where I have no hope, see no future.

Curse you, Ronald Reagan and Poppy! You did this, you and your buddies in crime. May you all live long enough to regret it, Poppy and Co.

As for Reagan, good riddance. He died as he lived, a vegetable, overcooked.

[xchrom]

56. Trapped in Apulia: Europe's Deepening Refugee Crisis

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/eu-refugees-the-plight-of-african-migrants-living-in-apulia-italy-a-906950.html


The first time around, he ended up on the street in Hamburg, and the second time he was sent to prison. Now Sekou Kone lives in a hut made of trash and is trying to figure out how to make it to Germany a third time.

Flies circle around the bowl of rice in his hand. The stench of urine and rotten fish drifts in through the doorway. Empty cans, tires and debris litter the ground outside, where children walk along trails in the muck. The inhabitants of this settlement in the fields of Apulia, a four-hour drive southeast of Rome, call it "the ghetto." They also call it "New Mogadishu," after the lawless capital of Somalia, where life is worth about as much as a bullet. "The Ghetto," says Kone, a refugee from Liberia, "is worse than any slum in Africa." But where else can he go? His parents are dead, he says. He was a child when he left Liberia in 1991.

Kone, now 30, is wearing sandals and a dirty shirt, and he has a short haircut. His eyes are dry and empty. On most days he leaves the settlement early in the morning and walks the 15 kilometers (9 miles) to Foggia, the nearest city, where he waits for work at an intersection with dozens of other day laborers from Eastern Europe and Africa. Farmers from the region hire them to work in the fields, but in the economic crisis, even these jobs are now hard to come by. Kone says that he hasn't been offered work in three weeks. On days like this, he has no choice but to return to the camp and wait for the next morning.

Hundreds of refugees live in New Mogadishu. The slum in the fields developed around a few ruins that the Italians abandoned long ago. The refugees have built huts out of corrugated metal, plywood and plastic tarps. They sleep on worn mattresses or pieces of cardboard. There is no electricity, no gas and no running water. The slum residents go the nearest pond to bathe. Rats scurry through the garbage. The sick lean against the walls of their huts. Some are so sick that they hallucinate.

[xchrom]

57. Disunited Kingdom: Crisis Leaves Britain Deeply Fractured

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/economic-crisis-and-ukip-leave-britain-deeply-divided-a-906600.html


A boy rides his bike down an alleyway in Grimethorpe, one of the main battle sites during the miners strike in South Yorkshire in April. Since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, things have been going downhill in England. Unemployment is now at almost 8 percent, and 27 percent of children in Britain live in relative poverty.


Property developer Irvine Sellar with a model of his tower, The Shard, completed in 2012. He bagan the project in the late 1990s, during the most eupohoric phase of Britain's construction boom. Now, post-crash, some 60,000 square meters (646,000 square feet) are still empty.

From this vantage point, London seems almost innocent. Irvine Sellar, a real estate developer, points to a gray dome down near the Thames River.

It is St. Paul's Cathedral, which was the tallest structure in the city for a quarter of a millennium, until other, taller buildings were erected in the late 20th century. First there was Tower 42 (formerly NatWest Tower), straight ahead, and later, off to the right, the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, London's defiant answer to Wall Street. And now Sellar is gazing at the city from his tower, which looks like the 310-meter (1,017-foot) tip of a cocktail skewer, and which he named "The Shard." From there, St. Paul's is nothing but a gray spot in the midst of a view for which Sellar expects his tenants to pay a lot of money.

Sellar didn't want to build an ordinary office tower, he says: "I gave the city a sculpture," the tallest building in Western Europe. The island stretches into the distance below his feet, and above him is nothing but the sky.

The view of the rooftops of the British capital shows how quickly and radically the country has changed. London's silhouette is a reflection of two decades of growth, decadence and hubris.

[xchrom]

59. Five reasons the euro-optimists are wrong

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/21/five-reasons-the-euro-optimists-are-wrong/

***SNIP

Myth 1: The European economy is about to recover. Ever since the European debt crisis began in early 2010, optimists have assured us that the economic recovery was just around the corner. Yet that economic recovery has proved to be elusive, especially in the European economic periphery. Delaying that recovery has been the application of severe budget austerity at a time that the troubled European banks have been cutting bank on credit. This has all been done within a euro straitjacket that has precluded devaluation as a means to boost exports, which might have served as an offset to highly restrictive domestic demand management policies.

***SNIP

Myth 2: Markets are regaining confidence in Europe. The optimists point to the marked narrowing in European interest rate spreads over the past year as a sure indication that markets are impressed by the improvement in European economic fundamentals. They do so seemingly oblivious to the Wall Street adage that when the winds are strong even turkeys fly. Nor do they seem to pay attention to the fact that those winds have never been stronger considering the unprecedented pace at which the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan have been adding to global liquidity. The question that the optimists do not ask is why once the Fed and the BOJ music stops countries with unsustainable public debt dynamics will not be subject to the market’s full fury as has happened all too often in the past?

Myth 3: The European Central Bank provides a safety net for the euro. The optimists take much comfort in Mario Draghi’s pledge to do whatever it takes to save the euro and in the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) program announced last September that was intended to give substance to that pledge. However, they gloss over the fact that the activation of the OMT program for countries like Italy and Spain is very much conditioned upon those countries first negotiating IMF-style economic adjustment programs with the European Stability Mechanism. They also choose to ignore the clearest of signs that the political circumstances of Italy and Spain are such that those countries are progressively losing their willingness to continue with budget austerity and structural reform.

Myth 4: Europe’s economic recession will not undermine its politics. The optimists do not tire of making the point that high as European unemployment rates might be today, Europe need not fear a return to the politics of the 1930s. This blinds them to the substantial erosion that has already occurred over the past two years in the popular support for the established political parties in countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. It also blinds them to the bailout fatigue that is now all too evident in countries like Germany, Finland and the Netherlands. The question that they choose to duck is why a prolonged period of extraordinarily high unemployment in the period ahead will not exacerbate the political tensions already so apparent between Europe’s South and its North.

[DemReadingDU]

62. The Decline of an All-American Treat

6/21/13 The Decline of an All-American Treat

Traditional ice cream sales have been slowly declining and seem poised to hit their lowest levels this year since the mid 1990s. Production of regular ice cream peaked in 2002 at about 14 quarts per person each year, according to government figures. That has fallen to 11.6 quarts per person, a 13% drop. Seven of the 10 biggest ice cream chains had fewer stores in 2012 than they had in 2011, according to research firm Technomic. Cold Stone Creamery has shuttered more than 100 stores since 2009. At Baskin-Robbins, revenue and store count have fallen every year since 2008.

Health concerns are one obvious reason why Americans are consuming less full-fat ice cream. But the ice cream man has also fallen behind on innovation, or at least on gimmicky offerings that keep customers lining up at the counter. As dessert outlets have evolved from traditional parlors into buzzier chains constantly seeking a marketing edge, ice cream somehow became a bit stodgy, while frozen yogurt and other types of dessert did a better job of capturing the foodie vibe.

more...
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/decline-american-treat-140930869.html



I could eat Haagen Dazs Vanilla every day!
and sometimes I do, yum!

[Demeter]

67. Most modern Ice Cream is crap

and I don't have the time anymore to make it from scratch. Add the Kid's lactose intolerance, and the absence of fresh goat milk around here....and it's time for a diet, anyway.

[snot]

70. I require periodic fixes of Baskin Robbins mint chocolate chip.

[Fuddnik]

72. Don't ever buy Breyers Carb Smart.

I went on a low carb diet, and there were a few things I was allowed to have, such as Carb Smart, so I bought a quart.

Shit tastes like kerosene. Luckily, my wife bought some Hershey's sugar free chocolate syrup. That made it barely tolerable.

[Fuddnik]

63. ?

[xchrom]

64. And Just Like That, The Market Rally Is Gone

http://www.businessinsider.com/stock-market-update-june-21-2013-2013-6


"...and like that: he's gone."

After two huge stock market sell-offs, some traders were speculating that we could see a "dead cat bounce" today.

But so far, the bounce has been pretty unremarkable.

After trading up 100 points at the open, the Dow has lost all of its gains. All three major stock market benchmarks have gone into the red.

Recent volatility in the markets appeared to be triggered on Wednesday afternoon when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke suggested that the Fed could soon begin to taper, or gradually reduce, its extraordinary stimulative bond-buying program, aka quantitative easing.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/stock-market-update-june-21-2013-2013-6#ixzz2WrqpQJic

[Demeter]

68. That cat's really dead, Jim

On the other hand, I could buy gas at ONLY $3.51 this morning...

[DemReadingDU]

74. The Cat bounced

How many lives does this cat have?

[Warpy]

73. At least the weekend thread won't be dedicated to "Titanic."

I absolutely loathed that movie.

I told the money guy years ago I'd be absolutely ecstatic whenever the Dow was over 10K, but that I thought it was hyperinflated and probably should be around 6K. I haven't changed my mind although inflation has brought the amount up to 7K.

Because my dad was smart and stuck to income generating stocks, the net worth is largely irrelevant to me. As long as I have money for food, property taxes, upkeep, and the occasional pound of unspun wool, I'm as happy as if I had good sense.