Weekend Economists on a 3 Hour (I mean, DAY) Tour January 17-20, 2014

[Demeter]

Yup! Market's closed on Monday. I'll be here all Weekend, don't forget to tip your wait staff...

Russell Johnson, The Professor on Gilligan's Island, Dead at 89



Sadly, another castaway has left the island for good.

Russell Johnson, best known for playing the brainy Professor on Gilligan's Island, has died, E! News confirms. He was 89 and the last surviving male star from the classic 1960s sitcom—which famously listed all of its characters in the more well-known version of its iconic opening theme song.

We're told that the actor died of natural causes Thursday at 5:21 a.m. at his home with wife Constance and daughter Kim by his side.

"He was a gentleman, very kind," Johnson's agent, Mike Eisenstadt, tells E! "He was very smart and very respectful. He was a nice, normal guy."

Johnson retired from acting in the 1990s but still made Gilligan's Island-related appearances in more recent years.

The Pennsylvania-born actor worked regularly in TV and films for more than 40 years, appearing on the likes of The Twilight Zone, Lassie, The Lone Ranger and The Jeffersons. He was also on the big screen in the cult sci-fi classic It Came From Outer Space and in a number of Westerns, including The Stand at Apache River and Tumbleweed.

But he will always be remembered as the coconut-radio-building Professor, the single-and-unconcerned heartthrob of the bunch, alongside Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Tina Louise and Dawn Wells on Gilligan's Island.

"I've had people in the ensuing years say to me, 'If they did Gilligan's Island toda,y you'd all be living in the same tent.' It's true. That innocence was kept and it worked," Johnson said in a 2004 interview for the Archive of American Television, discussing the standards the sitcom maintained in a time when Wells' Mary Ann wore plenty of crop tops but never actually showed her belly button and there was a constant conversation going over how much cleavage Louise's Ginger should actually flaunt...

Married three times, Johnson is survived by his wife, actress Constance Dane, stepson Courtney Dane and daughter Kim from his second marriage. His son, David, died of AIDS in 1994, inspiring Johnson's activism as a fund-raiser for AIDS research.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1582177.1389904936!/img/httpImage/image.jpg


http://www.eonline.com/news/500305/russell-johnson-the-professor-on-gilligan-s-island-dead-at-89

[Demeter]

1. " I grow old … I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JAO3QTU4PzY

[Demeter]

2. Stasi 2.0: ‘NSA using same illegal spy tactics from Cold War’

http://investmentwatchblog.com/stasi-2-0-nsa-using-same-illegal-spy-tactics-from-cold-war/

[Demeter]

3. 'The Americans Lied': Trans-Atlantic 'No-Spy' Deal on the Rocks

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/us-german-no-spy-deal-in-danger-of-failure-a-943614.html

Last summer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised her citizens a pact which would prohibit US spying on German citizens. But since then, Washington has shown little interest in pursuing such a treaty. Now, officials in Germany fear the deal is dead.

Failed talks? Hardly. The negotiations "are continuing," says Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). "We are still talking," says the German government. In other words, nothing has yet been decided. The No-Spy deal is still alive.

But the statements coming out of Berlin and Pullach, where the BND is headquartered, reek of forced optimism. Nobody wants it to look as though efforts have been abandoned toward a deal which would see the US agree to swear off spying operations in Germany. Yet despite the assertions, most of those involved are slowly coming to the realization that a surveillance deal between Washington and Berlin isn't likely to become reality. The US government is still digging in its heels.

On Tuesday, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted one source who is familiar with the talks as saying "we won't get anything." The paper also reported that the US is refusing to promise that it won't monitor members of the German government and other politicians in the future...MORE

[Demeter]

5. The Special Ops Surge: America’s Secret War in 134 Countries By Nick Turse

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37388.htm

They operate in the green glow of night vision in Southwest Asia and stalk through the jungles of South America. They snatch men from their homes in the Maghreb and shoot it out with heavily armed militants in the Horn of Africa. They feel the salty spray while skimming over the tops of waves from the turquoise Caribbean to the deep blue Pacific. They conduct missions in the oppressive heat of Middle Eastern deserts and the deep freeze of Scandinavia. All over the planet, the Obama administration is waging a secret war whose full extent has never been fully revealed -- until now.

Since September 11, 2001, U.S. Special Operations forces have grown in every conceivable way, from their numbers to their budget. Most telling, however, has been the exponential rise in special ops deployments globally. This presence -- now, in nearly 70% of the world’s nations -- provides new evidence of the size and scope of a secret war being waged from Latin America to the backlands of Afghanistan, from training missions with African allies to information operations launched in cyberspace.

In the waning days of the Bush presidency, Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed in about 60 countries around the world. By 2010, that number had swelled to 75, according to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post. In 2011, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that the total would reach 120. Today, that figure has risen higher still.

In 2013, elite U.S. forces were deployed in 134 countries around the globe, according to Major Matthew Robert Bockholt of SOCOM Public Affairs. This 123% increase during the Obama years demonstrates how, in addition to conventional wars and a CIA drone campaign, public diplomacy and extensive electronic spying, the U.S. has engaged in still another significant and growing form of overseas power projection. Conducted largely in the shadows by America’s most elite troops, the vast majority of these missions take place far from prying eyes, media scrutiny, or any type of outside oversight, increasing the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences....MORE



Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, on the BBC and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author most recently of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

[Demeter]

9. NSA reform measures quietly included in $1.1tn spending bill

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/nsa-reform-included-spending-bill-passes-house?CMP=ema_565



Congress is calling on the National Security Agency to detail the effectiveness of its bulk data collection programmes and will outlaw certain types of domestic surveillance, using two little-noticed clauses included in its giant federal spending bill. The $1.1tn budget bill passed the House of Representatives Wednesday afternoon by 359-67 votes and is expected to become law after clearing the Senate as soon as Friday.

But in a sign of pent-up reform pressure on Capitol Hill, two measures dealing with the NSA were quietly included in the 1,600-page spending text with relatively little fanfare – or opposition from the White House – and are likely to pave the way for more binding legislative efforts once President Barack Obama outlines his own response to the surveillance scandal on Friday. The first, and more unexpected, of the two NSA budget measures directs the agency to reveal “the number of records acquired by the NSA as part of its bulk telephone metadata program” over a five-year period, and to turn the data over to the House and Senate judiciary committees within 90 days.

“This report shall provide, to the greatest extent possible, an estimate of the number of records of United States citizens that have been acquired by NSA as part of the bulk telephone metadata program and the number of such records that have been reviewed by NSA personnel in response to a query,” it demands.

It is also calls for more information on the vexed question of how helpful such metadata has been in foiling terror plots, something that both NSA critics and Obama's own review panel say has been greatly exaggerated.

The report should be “unclassified to the greatest extent possible and with a classified annex if necessary, listing terrorist activities that were disrupted, in whole or in part, with the aid of information obtained through NSA's telephone metadata program and whether this information could have been promptly obtained by other means”, says the budget text.

A separate NSA reform measure dealing with domestic surveillance is included in the main legislation text, and would carry more power to compel the NSA. It bars the agency from using any of the funding it gets from Congress to target US citizens for surveillance under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. However, the demand for fresh NSA disclosure is contained in an introduction to the budget bill rather than the main text of the legislation and, according to congressional staff, is thought likely to have an advisory effect rather than carry the full weight of law...

MORE

[Demeter]

4. Government of the Rich, by the Rich and for the Rich: It’s Time for ‘Militant Nonviolent Resistance’

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37394.htm



We now live in a two-tiered system of governance. There are two sets of laws: one set for the government and its corporate allies, and another set for you and me.

The laws which apply to the majority of the population allow the government to do things like sending SWAT teams crashing through your door in the middle of the night, rectally probing you during a roadside stop, or listening in on your phone calls and reading all of your email messages, confiscating your property, or indefinitely detaining you in a military holding cell. These are the laws which are executed every single day against a population which has up until now been blissfully ignorant of the radical shift taking place in American government.

Then there are the laws constructed for the elite, which allow bankers who crash the economy to walk free. They’re the laws which allow police officers to avoid prosecution when they shoot unarmed citizens, strip search non-violent criminals, or taser pregnant women on the side of the road, or pepper spray peaceful protestors. These are the laws of the new age we are entering, an age of neo-feudalism, in which corporate-state rulers dominate the rest of us, where the elite create the laws which can result in a person being jailed for possessing a small amount of marijuana while bankers that launder money for drug cartels walk free. In other words, we have moved into an age where we are the slaves and they are the rulers.



Unfortunately, this two-tiered system of government has been a long time coming. As I detail in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the march toward an imperial presidency, to congressional intransigence and impotence, to a corporate takeover of the mechanisms of government, and the division of America into haves and have nots has been building for years.

Thus we now find ourselves at a point where, for the first time in history, Congress is dominated by a majority of millionaires who are, on average, 14 times wealthier than the average American. Making matters worse, as the Center for Responsive Politics reports, “at a time when lawmakers are debating issues like unemployment benefits, food stamps and the minimum wage, which affect people with far fewer resources, as well as considering an overhaul of the tax code,” our so-called representatives are completely out of touch with the daily struggles of most Americans--those who live from paycheck to paycheck and are caught in the exhausting struggle to survive on a day-to-day basis....

MORE




John W. Whitehead is a civil liberties and human rights attorney and founder of the Rutherford Institute where this article first appeared

[Demeter]

6. "Iron-fisted Kleptocratic Financial Oligarchy" 95% Income Growth Goes to the 1%: Michael Hudson

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[Hotler]

12. I disagree. It's time to get fighting mad and take to the streets by the thousands.

Shut this country down with a general strike the likes the world has never seen before. The rest of the world will be behind us. As of now they are laughing at us. There was what, about three million people at the Washington mall when O was sworn in? There should be twice that many there come this spring. Everytime a cop tazers one of us we take two of them down a march forward. There are more of us than there are of them. Yes some of us will have to take a hit for the team. You get three million behind me and I will take the first shot. Unless we rise up now there will never be a end to the fucking we are getting from the PTB. If it doesn't work we can a least say we tried instead of just sitting back and bitching and say it will never work. We need to put the fear of God in to those fuckers in Washington and on Wall St. that is the reason they are spying on us cause they are a little scared already and they know we can take them out if we band together. Wolverines!
Hi agent Mike.

[DemReadingDU]

41. Oh yeh

But we all know most Americans have other priorities. Not until there is no food and they are hungry, no income nor savings, and are desperate. Desperate people will shut down the country with national strike. But by then, will it be too late?

[Hotler]

44. I know.....

When I write shit down here in SMW it is like a journal and for one tiny brief moment I fell better and then it's back to I have no hope. I see no future. Thanks for letting me vent.

[Demeter]

7. Weather and Whether Reports

Today was like February, however, next week it's back to Finland. Groan.

HOWEVER, WE HAVE A BANK FAILURE!

DuPage National Bank, West Chicago, Illinois, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Republic Bank of Chicago, Oak Brook, Illinois, to assume all of the deposits of DuPage National Bank. The three former branches of DuPage National Bank will reopen as branches of Republic Bank of Chicago during their normal business hours...

As of September 30, 2013, DuPage National Bank had approximately $61.7 million in total assets and $59.6 million in total deposits. Republic Bank of Chicago will pay the FDIC a premium of 1.20 percent to assume all of the deposits of DuPage National Bank. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the DuPage National Bank, Republic Bank of Chicago agreed to purchase essentially all of the failed bank's assets...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $1.6 million. Compared to other alternatives, Republic Bank of Chicago's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. DuPage National Bank is the 1st FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Covenant Bank, Chicago, on February 15, 2013.

[Demeter]

14. It's Finland already---7F at 7 AM Saturday

The jet stream is broke, that's what it is...or maybe it's the equatorial region...

[Demeter]

8. How to avoid becoming a sheep of Wall Street – and getting fleeced

http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/jan/12/avoid-sheep-wall-street-investment-advice?CMP=ema_565

The rising stock market, with its record share prices, has ushered us into an era of “caveat emptor”: buyer beware. Last year was a great year for stocks. That means 2014 is likely to be a great year for extravagant marketing claims by folks trying to sell us investment products, ideas or services. It’s just this kind of bull market environment that can tempt us to take risks with our finances. And the folks encouraging us to toss caution to the winds can be respected and established institutions....


...

It’s important to be cautious. Know that “high-growth”, on Wall Street, means “high-risk”. Also know that small cap stocks tend to be less liquid and more volatile, and you shouldn’t invest any money you can’t afford to lose. Whether you’re shopping for an appliance or a new investment strategy, logic and research are better allies than greed and emotions. Marketing pitches will make a lot of promises, but they rarely, if ever, detail all the risks you may face – unless you look at the fine print.

MORE

[Demeter]

10. It’s 5 times more expensive to be a woman (THAN A MAN)

AND I'LL BET THEY AREN'T COUNTING THE CHOCOLATE BILLS....CERTAINLY NOT CONTRACEPTION OR HEALTH CARE OR EVEN HEALTH INSURANCE....

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-things-women-pay-more-for-than-men-2014-01-17?siteid=YAHOOB



Even if you’ve never heard of the “woman tax,” you’ve probably paid it — and over your lifetime, it can mean spending tens of thousands of dollars more on goods and services targeted to women. Indeed, a number of studies show that many items are routinely more expensive for women than for men. A study from the state of California on this so-called woman tax found that women, on average, pay about $1,351 annually in extra costs for similar goods and services. While the study is from the ’90s, many experts say that such pricing discrepancies still exist — and will continue to: “I don’t see this going away anytime soon, because the dialogue in our culture is that men and women are different — we call each other the ‘opposite sex,’” says Nicholas Guittar, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina Lancaster, who has studied gendered pricing; thus, he says, pricing differences don’t bother Americans enough for people to rebel against them. “Gendered pricing disparities will persist despite the presence of increased gender equality in society.”

To be sure, there are retail situations in which women get better prices. “Ladies night” at a bar — when ladies get in free but men must pay admission — is one of them. Car insurance is another: Men pay an estimated $15,000 more over their lifetime for car insurance than women do, according to insurance comparison site CoverHound.com. And just because men may tend to pay less for an item doesn’t mean gender discrimination is always at work, says Catherine Liston-Heyes, an economist at the University of Ottawa who has studied differential pricing. Sometimes an item or service costs, on average, more to provide for women than men, so that is reflected in the pricing, she explains.

Whatever the reason for differential pricing, one thing’s certain: “The cumulative cost of these differences is significant,” says Guittar.

Here are five things women generally pay more for:

1. Mortgages

2. Dry-cleaning

3. Haircuts

4. Deodorant

5. Cars

[Demeter]

11. 10 people to watch in Davos this week MUST WE?

Last edited Sat Jan 18, 2014, 09:58 AM - Edit history (3)

JUST IN CASE THERE MIGHT BE SOME FUTURE SIGNIFICANCE TO THIS MASSIVE SELF-STIMULATIVE ACTIVITY

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-people-to-watch-in-davos-next-week-2014-01-18?siteid=YAHOOB

James Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein : OH YES, WATCH THEM LIKE A HAWK, AND BRING HANDCUFFS

Marissa Mayer CEO YAHOO

Ray Dalio HEDGE FUND BANKSTER

Joseph Stiglitz THIS OFF-MESSAGE ECONOMIST WILL TRY TO BEND THE EARS OF BILLIONAIRES...GOOD LUCK, JOE!

Christine Lagarde SHE'S GOT TO BE THE LEAST HAUTE COUTURE FRENCHWOMAN I'VE EVER SEEN...GET HER TO THE HAIRDRESSER'S, STAT!

Lagarde, in her role as head of the IMF, has used Davos to rail against an emphasis on austerity and a lack of focus on growth in Europe. Expect her to keep pressure on central banks to fight the threat of deflation , which she earlier this month called a growth-threatening “ogre that must be fought decisively.”

Mario Draghi I ALWAYS THINK OF PAGLIACCI WHEN I THINK OF MARIO...

&feature=player_detailpage

Shinzo Abe AH, SO!

Japan’s prime minister has been a very busy man since last year’s annual meeting. He’s followed through on an election pledge to see the Bank of Japan undertake aggressive quantitative easing in an effort to break a long deflationary spiral, while also undertaking aggressive fiscal stimulus efforts. The Bank of Japan is also holding a policy meeting on January 21 and 22.

Japanese equities soared last year and the yen dropped. Abe, who will address the annual meeting on Wednesday, is under pressure to follow up his efforts with structural reforms.

Jiang Jianqing THE CHINESE BANKSTER

Hasan Rouhani I FEAR THE IRANIAN PRESIDENT WILL BE THE FEATURED ENTREE FOR LUNCH...HE'S BRAVER THAN I!

[Hotler]

13. A good read from the past.

Barry Seal. Things that make you go hmmmmm.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKseal.htm

[Demeter]

15. wow, hotler. that's hot stuff

I notice it's from the UK.

[Hotler]

38. That will dove tail in with the BCCI scandal,.......

and Gary Webb's Dark Alliance" series . I like the part about Seal having a video tape of shrub and Jeb getting bust for coke. And the assassins being told what to do by Olie North.

[Ghost Dog]

72. Thanks Hotler. Always worth drawing the attention of any 'newbies'

to this area of documented recent history...

[Demeter]

16. Obama Signs Trillion-Dollar Federal Spending Bill

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/17/263511534/obama-signs-trillion-dollar-federal-spending-bill?ft=1&f=1001



President Obama signed the $1.1 trillion spending bill into law Friday afternoon, enacting more than 1,500 pages of legislation that received broad support in the House and Senate earlier this week. The expansive bill ensures the U.S. government won't face a potential shutdown until at least October.

...the omnibus spending bill is the result of a compromise brokered in December by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. If their deal holds in coming months, it should keep the issue of a federal shutdown off the table through the coming election season.

The AP reminds us that the bill signed today "funds every agency of the federal government and also scales back automatic spending cuts that hit the Pentagon and major domestic programs last year."

The spending legislation was approved in the Senate by a vote of 72-26, and in the House by a 359-67 margin.

[Demeter]

17. The Battle Hymn of the War on Poverty: How the call to empathy helped mobilize a nation.

http://www.thenation.com/article/177932/battle-hymn-war-poverty#

MUST READ...A COMPILATION I WISH WE HAD LAST WEEKEND...

On May 5, 1964, four months after Lyndon Johnson committed America to a “War on Poverty,” Sargent Shriver addressed a meeting of the Advertising Council in Washington, DC. At the time, Shriver was working two jobs: he was head of the Peace Corps and, simultaneously, had been tapped by the new president as a special assistant to run Johnson’s anti-poverty initiative.

Standing before his audience, Shriver talked of a meeting that he’d had with an unnamed journalist the previous week. The journalist told him, he reported, that “before you can do anything about poverty, you’ll have to fumigate the closet in which Americans keep their ideas about the poor. You’ll have to rid America of all its clichés about the poor, clichés like the one which says that only the lazy and worthless are poor, or that the poor are always with us.”

The newly appointed special assistant to the president looked at his Advertising Council audience and said, “I think she may be right. Our minds are so cluttered up with myths, slogans and clichés about the poor that it would be a great public service if you would help us clear the air.”

... Shriver launched an all-out effort to shift Americans’ understanding of poverty and transform the language in which poor people were framed. It was an empathy push on a par with that used by abolitionists, suffragists and civil rights leaders to expand the borders of democracy—a campaign, says cognitive linguist George Lakoff, that was in many ways the mature expression of an empathetic language that had emerged over nearly three centuries of Western political philosophy and embedded itself in American political practices. Says Lakoff, “The American conception of democracy developed over a period of time and is based on empathy. Democracy is based on citizens caring about each other.”

MORE

[Demeter]

18. If you think I'M Grumpy....William Rivers Pitt | A Good Week for Hard Drinking

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21288-william-rivers-pitt-a-good-week-for-hard-drinking

...So, to recap: a father was shot, his wife was shot, two students were shot at school, two women were shot at the grocery store, the guy who shot them was shot, a five-year-old was shot, a three-year-old was shot, and a four-year-old was shot by a four-year-old. Wikileaks let us know that all the environmental rhetoric emanating from our president is a cloud of hot gas thanks to the trade deal he's just wild about. Screwed unemployed Americans are screwed. The only reason Congress decided to work together for the first time in six years was in service of their Wall Street paymasters. The internet is over, maybe, but probably. The GOP wants the IRS to audit rape victims and make eating harder for poor people. Oh, and the Elk River region of West Virginia is what the rest of the country and the world will be like once we are led, finally and forever, into free-market no-regulations business-friendly paradise...

[Hotler]

40. When Will is pissed he doesn't hold back. He is a good writer. n/t

[Ghost Dog]

56. He is that. n/t

[hamerfan]

46. Thanks, Demeter!

Will Pitt is a hero of mine. I just wish I could write like him.

[Demeter]

19. Supreme Court To Decide If Warrant Needed To Search Cellphone OH, GOODY

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/17/263512714/supreme-court-to-decide-if-warrant-needed-to-search-cellphone?ft=1&f=1001



The U.S. Supreme Court is delving into the technology-versus-privacy debate, agreeing to hear two cases that test whether police making an arrest may search cellphones without a warrant. The court's announcement Friday that it would take the cases came just hours after President Obama outlined his proposals to address government retention of citizen phone data... outlining reforms at the National Security Agency.

The court said it would hear arguments, likely in April, in two cases with conflicting decisions from the lower courts. In one case, (CA) David Riley was pulled over for expired tags. When police then discovered loaded guns in his vehicle, they arrested Riley and searched his smartphone. Investigators found photos and contacts linking Riley to gang activity, and prosecutors used the smartphone information at trial to win a conviction. Riley received a prison term of 15 years to life. The California Supreme Court, which had previously ruled that such searches are legal, left Riley's conviction in place.

Across the country, a federal appeals court in Boston...barrED all warrantless cellphone searches except in emergency situations. The Obama administration appealed that ruling, contending that immediate searches of cellphones are especially important because the information contained in them can be so easily and quickly erased.

The Supreme Court's eventual decision in these cases could lay the groundwork for future rulings on the NSA's collection of cellphone metadata. However the Supreme Court rules, its decision will have enormous practical consequences, since 90 percent of all Americans own mobile phones.

[Demeter]

20. In the battle between hackers and retailers, it sure looks as though the hackers are winning...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/opinion/nocera-unto-the-breach.html


...If you have read anything about the Target data breach, you know that from Nov. 27 to mid-December, hackers siphoned off the credit card information of 40 million Target shoppers, including card numbers, passcodes and the three-digit security code on the back. They also took names and email addresses of tens of millions of other Target customers.

Target acknowledged the breach on Dec. 19, but only after a reporter named Brian Krebs had broken the news on his authoritative blog, Krebs on Security. When I talked to Krebs, he told me that while Target was “hardly a poster boy for how to secure data,” the company probably wasn’t all that much worse than most other retailers. Its digital system undoubtedly had all the current antivirus software, none of which had detected the malicious software — “malware,” as it’s called — that had infected it. Krebs was pretty convinced that the hackers were Russians. It was obvious that they were extremely sophisticated in how they went about stealing credit card data....After burrowing into a Target server, he explained on his blog, the malware would then grab data from Target’s point-of-sale terminals all across the country shortly after customers swiped their cards. At that moment, a moment of maximum vulnerability since all the data was unencrypted at that point, the magnetic stripe would yield all the information the hacker needed.

Virtually every security expert I spoke to said it is likely that a lot more retail companies have been breached than has been acknowledged. Indeed, last week, Neiman Marcus admitted that its systems had been breached. And just the other day, the Department of Homeland Security sent a report to retailers and banks warning about point-of-sale malware, which it suspects has infected more systems than just Target’s.

So why don’t retailers do more to stop such attacks? Part of the reason is that nobody is forcing them to. It costs a lot of money to completely revamp their systems in ways that would make them harder to breach. However disruptive to customers, there really hadn’t been any business consequences, not until the Target breach, anyway. (Target saw its Christmas sales decline after the breach was announced.) ...The simplest thing we could do to diminish data breaches would be to move away from magnetic stripes, which are relatively easy to copy, and go to a system in which credit and debit cards are embedded with chips. In widespread use in Europe and elsewhere, such cards are practically nonexistent in the United States (though a rollout is supposed to begin in the fall of 2015). In 2009, a payment company called Heartland suffered a breach that was even larger than Target’s. You would think that would have been a wake-up call, but apparently it wasn’t.

[Demeter]

34. Cybercrime firm says uncovers six active attacks on U.S. merchants

http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-cybercrime-firm-uncovered-six-active-attacks-u-171258654--sector.html

A cybercrime firm says it has uncovered at least six ongoing attacks at U.S. merchants whose credit card processing systems are infected with the same type of malicious software used to steal data from Target Corp. Andrew Komarov, chief executive of the cybersecurity firm IntelCrawler, told Reuters that his company has alerted law enforcement, Visa Inc and intelligence teams at several large banks about the findings. He said payment card data was stolen in the attacks, though he didn't know how much...Komarov, an expert on cybercrime who has helped law enforcement investigate previous attacks, told Reuters on Friday that retailers in California and New York were among those compromised by BlackPOS. Reuters was unable to confirm their names...Komarov said he has not directly contacted those merchants. Security experts typically report cybercrimes through law enforcement rather than going directly to victims because the process can be time-consuming and victims are often suspicious when they first learn of attacks.

IntelCrawler's findings are the latest sign that the cyberattacks disclosed by Target Inc and upscale department store Neiman Marcus are part of a wider assault on U.S. retailer customer data security. On Thursday, the U.S. government and the private security intelligence firm iSIGHT Partners warned merchants and financial services firms that the BlackPOS software used against No. 3 U.S. retailer Target had been used in a string of other breaches at retailers - but did not say how many or identify the victims.

Credit card companies, banks and retailers say that victims of any fraud resulting from the theft of their payment card data bear "zero liability" and will be credited for fraudulent purchases made on their accounts.

"Our rules say five days, but most consumers get (their money) back within 24 hours," Visa spokeswoman Rosetta Jones said.

Yet consumer advocates said that any debit card fraud could result in money being drained from a bank, mutual fund or other cash account at a time when those funds were really needed.

"Even if you are able to recover the money later, that's going to cause you an awful lot of pain and heartburn," said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit advocacy group.

BlackPOS was developed by a hacker whose nickname is "Ree4" and who is now about 17 years old and living in St. Petersburg, Russia, according to Los Angeles-based IntelCrawler.

The teenager sold the malicious software to cybercriminals who then launched attacks on merchants, said Komarov, who has been monitoring Ree4's activities since March.

Komarov declined to specifically identify the sources of his intelligence, though he said he has been monitoring criminal forums where Ree4 sells his software and posted an excerpt of a chat with a client on the IntelCrawler website.

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

BlackPOS is a type of RAM scraper, or memory-parsing software, which enables cybercriminals to grab encrypted data by capturing it when it travels through the live memory of a computer, where it appears in plain text.

It is derived from code that has been floating around underground cybercrime forums since at least 2005 and may be related to malicious software used in attacks as early as 2003, said Shane Shook, an executive with cybersecurity firm Cylance Inc who has helped investigate major breaches at retailers.

While the technology has been around for many years, its use has increased as retailers have improved their security, making it more difficult for hackers to obtain credit card data using other approaches.

It succeeded in evading detection by anti-virus software when it infected the Windows-based point-of-sales terminals at retailers like Target, according to the report that the government privately distributed to merchants on Thursday, which iSIGHT Partners helped prepare.

[Demeter]

39. Don’t give Target your Social Security number! “Trust no one,” not even fraud investigators!

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-give-target-your-social-security-number-2014-01-17?siteid=YAHOOB



After announcing the massive credit-card breach, Target warned customers against giving out their Social Security number, driver’s license number and other personal details to fraudsters trying to profit from confusion and anxiety over the news. But what if Target itself wants your social security number?

On Wednesday, one Target customer received a call from the Target fraud-detection department about a suspicious $1,200 transaction on his store credit card. But Michael Baxter, from Sommerville, Mass., says he was surprised by the depth of confidential information the company asked him to fork over — and wondered if it was a scam. Target emailed him a fraud-investigation questionnaire requesting information such as his Social Security number, driver’s license number, phone number, credit card number, address and even his children’s names. “I told them they were insane to be expecting this information,” he told CBS News in Boston .

Target later said the disclosure wasn’t necessary. “Our policy is to investigate all fraud claims even if the form is not filled out, and filling out the form is not a requirement,” it said in a statement. “However, if we don’t have the form filled out, it makes our investigation more difficult.

”

Some consumer advocates disagree. “With all due respect to Target, I’m not sure how it makes their job more difficult,” says John Ulzheimer, a credit expert at CreditSesame.com, a firm that provides online credit and debt analysis to consumers. Companies should never ask for a full social security number or driver’s license, they should confirm your card number, zip code and one or two security questions. To set up a store card in the first place, Target should have all that information on file already, Ulzheimer says, and asking customers for that information is merely a time-saving shortcut.

“The Target form was total overkill,” says Adam Levin, co-founder of online security company Identity Theft 911. “When a consumer is a victim of identity theft or fraud, the last thing you do is pressure them to give you more information.” To be sure, Target’s credit-card agreement requires customers to “ comply with the procedures ” it may require for its investigation. But other forms, like this Navy Federal Credit Union affidavit of fraud, doesn’t ask for the consumer’s social security number, Levin says. Assume every call is a phishing scam, experts say. Consumers should never give out personal details over the telephone, even if the caller seems to represent Target or the email appears to be from a Target email address. “Consumers need to be careful whenever they are contacted by an unsolicited caller,” says Linda Sherry, director of national priorities at Consumer Action. Hang up and call the number on your card. Target itself warns against “phishing” scams — calls, emails or text messages that appear to offer protection, but are actually trying to get more personal information from customers.

Bottom line: “Don’t share any information with organizations that they don’t absolutely require,” says Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser at Sophos, an online security consultancy. There is no federal legislation governing what information a consumer can withhold in the event of a data breach and it typically depends on the agreement signed. In the meantime, Wisniewski says, “trust no one.” A supermarket or coffee shop wants your birth date and zip code for their frequent shopper card? Choose Jan. 1. and 90210, Wisniewski suggests. “Thousands of security experts were born on Jan. 1,” he says.

[Demeter]

48. A Sneaky Path Into Target Customers’ Wallets

NYT TRACES EVENTS THAT LED TO THE TARGETING OF TARGET....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/business/a-sneaky-path-into-target-customers-wallets.html?hp

[xchrom]

21. Irish debt upgraded from junk status by Moody's

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25788643


The credit rating agency Moody's has upgraded Ireland's debt from junk status to investment grade, saying its economy has growth potential.

The news is the latest in a run of positive reports for Ireland and comes as investors start to welcome the chance to invest in the country through its government-issued bonds.

Moody's was the only one of three key agencies to class the debt as "junk".

An investment grade mark means more investors can buy Irish debt.

[xchrom]

22. Financial Conduct Authority appoints Libor administrator

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25773273

A new body has been appointed to administer Libor - the London Interbank Offered Rate.

A subsidiary of the Intercontinental Exchange Group (ICE), a global network of exchanges and clearing houses, has been appointed to ensure Libor cannot be rigged by banks again.

The Financial Conduct Authority has authorised ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA) to do the job from 1 February.

Libor is the rate at which London banks lend short-term money to each other.

[xchrom]

23. US monthly inflation pushed up by higher fuel prices

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25763091

US consumer inflation spiked in December, driven higher by rising fuel prices.

The consumer price index rose 0.3% on a seasonally adjusted basis, the US Labor Department said.

Fuel prices jumped 3.1% last month, their biggest rise since June, while food prices rose 0.1%.

But grocery prices were flat as the cost of fruit and vegetables fell sharply, the biggest fall for five years, the Department said.

[Demeter]

24. West Virginia chemical company files for bankruptcy after leak

I HOPE THE COURT ORDERS LIQUIDATION AND FILES CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST THE OWNERS AND MANAGEMENT...

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-wva-water-bankruptcy-20140118,0,3811547.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fnationworld%2Fnation+%28L.A.+Times+-+National+News%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo



Bombarded by lawsuits and under federal investigation, the chemical company that spilled a dangerous solvent into a West Virginia river and fouled the drinking water of 300,000 people filed for federal bankruptcy protection Friday.

Freedom Industries Inc., owner of a storage tank that ruptured Jan. 9 and spilled 7,500 gallons of a coal-treatment foaming agent called MCHM into the Elk River, sought protection from creditors under a Chapter 11 filing by its parent company, Chemstream Holdings Inc. of Pennsylvania. The filing will protect Freedom from creditors, temporarily halt lawsuits against it and allow the company to continue operating.



...Eight businesses and individuals filed a joint class action suit Monday in federal court in Charleston against Freedom, the local water company and the Tennessee chemical company that produced the MCHM, which is used to wash coal. The suit alleges that the companies either failed to take reasonable precautions to prevent the spill or concealed the true dangers of the chemical. In addition, at least two dozen lawsuits against Freedom and other companies have been filed in state court in West Virginia. The U.S. attorney in Charleston has launched an investigation...Kevin Thompson, a Charleston lawyer who filed the federal class action suit, said in an interview Friday that Freedom seemed to be claiming that a shard of ice from the water pipe rupture pierced the storage tank. "That sounds pretty preposterous," Thompson said. "It's not much of a steel tank if a chunk of ice can pierce it." Thompson said the bankruptcy filing would put his lawsuit against Freedom on hold but did not affect his clients' claims against West Virginia American Water Co. or Eastman Chemical Co., the Tennessee firm that makes MCHM, or 4-methylcyclohexane methanol....

MORE

[Demeter]

25. Senators Question Fed’s Review of U.S. Banks’ Commodities Units

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-16/senators-question-fed-s-review-of-u-s-banks-commodities-units.html


U.S. Senate Democrats said the Federal Reserve’s decision to weigh further restrictions on banks’ trading and warehousing of physical commodities is insufficient and too late.

The Fed sought comment on the risks posed by bank ownership and trading of commodities such as oil, gas and aluminum by deposit-taking banks and the possible benefits of imposing additional capital standards...The Fed said it is considering whether additional restrictions are needed to ensure physical commodities activities by banks are conducted in a safe and sound manner. The central bank said it will consider whether further rules are needed after the public comment period ends on March 15.

The Fed’s review, announced Jan. 14, was criticized by Democratic Senators on the Banking Committee yesterday. At a subcommittee hearing on the issue, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said the action didn’t go far enough.

“The Fed’s proposal yesterday is a timid step, it was too slow in coming, and there is still too much that we do not know about these activities and investments” said Brown, who led the hearing.

The Fed’s decision was “certainly a step forward but a meager one,” Warren said. “I think we already have ample evidence that the Fed needs to place additional restrictions on how banks trade and warehouse physical commodities to reduce systemic risk and protect consumers from market manipulation.”

...The Fed’s action could increase pressure on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley to sell commodities businesses. Although the Fed generally forbids bank holding companies to own or trade physical commodities, the two Wall Street firms were permitted to retain units after they converted into banks during the 2008 financial crisis....Commodity trading revenue at the 10 largest global investment banks fell 18 percent in the first nine months of 2013 to $4 billion, industry analytics firm Coalition Ltd. said in a report this month....

SCANDALOUS DETAILS AT LINK

[Demeter]

26. 10 things you need to know about digital wallets

MUST I REALLY? GROAN...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/15/10-things-u-need-to-know-digital-payments?CMP=ema_565


Google, Apple and Square are vying to take the lead in persuading us to lose our metal and plastic...Barring a few changes – such as chip-and-pin technology, contactless payments – the standard mix of loyalty cards, credit and debit cards, and cash in a wallet is much the same as it was 20 years ago. But there's a big prize waiting for the first company to convince us to ditch all our metal and plastic for something more 21st century. Here's what you need to know about the groups jostling for position in your back pocket.

1. The big three: A small group has taken the lead in digital payments online: Google, Amazon and PayPal. Now they are trying to build their businesses in the physical world. Google's Wallet service lets users put cash on their phone to spend in-store as well as online. And, with near field communication technology, it turns a compatible Android phone into a contactless card.

2. Google Wallet's real wallet: If your favourite coffee shop isn't hooked in to Google's system, the company has also just released a physical Wallet Card, which lets you spend your balance anywhere in the US where Mastercard is accepted. It's basically just another debit card but hooked up to the Bank of Google.

3. The Coin card: The aim of the $100 Coin, launching in the US in the summer, is to allow one card to do the job of every other one in your pocket, from debit cards to supermarket loyalty cards. It scans the magnetic strip on the back of the cards, and then replicates the strip electronically on its own back. With the click of a button, you can switch from paying with a debit card to paying with a credit card and back – and even swipe for loyalty points in between.

4. Square: Digital wallets have a chicken-and-egg problem: they're useless to customers without shops which take them, and no shop will accept payment in them if their customers don't use them. Square, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's new company, provides small businesses with an appendage that plugs into the headphone jack of a mobile phone and allows merchants to swipe cards and take payments. But Dorsey's real goal is removing cards altogether. Every merchant using Square to take card payments can also take payments directly from the Square app on customers' phones – and thanks to a high-profile deal with Starbucks, that's now quite a few customers.

5. US: Google's Wallet Card, Coin and Square are unavailable outside the US. There are the standard commercial pressures to blame, plus in the UK we've moved to a chip and pin system. That is significantly more secure than the magnetic stripes still used in the US, but also harder to programme for. It's doubtful that something like the Coin card could exist with chip and pin payments, for instance.

6. iZettle: Some companies are dealing with chip and pin. Stockholm's iZettle lets stores use an iPhone or iPad to take credit card payments, but the more complex technology comes at a cost: whereas PayPal and Square offer free mag-stripe readers in the US, iZettle's chip and pin reader costs almost £100, as does PayPal's competing hardware.

7. NFC payments: Mobile phones that can carry out contactless payments have been available in the UK since 2011, but the technology hasn't taken off. Phones with the required technology are still quite rare. And most of the services require you to set up a separate digital wallet, rather than linking directly to your bank account, adding an extra layer of bureaucracy between you and your money.

8. Horrible fragmentation: Every company has its own, non-transferrable, digital wallet app. In 2014 some of that fragmentation should end as Vodafone, EE and O2 form a mobile wallet service, "Weve". But the days of digital wallets being as straightforward as credit cards seem a long way off.

9. Bitcoin: Despite news stories about bitcoin being illustrated with shiny metallic discs, bitcoins are simply chunks of data on a hard drive that can be bought with "real" money or "PRODUCE" them by getting a computer to chug through some complex maths. Their fully digital nature gives them potential as an international currency, and allows users to transfer them between each other without having to go through banks.

10. The elephant in the room: Some suspect Apple has a plan up its sleeve: a combination of its vast horde of credit card data, Touch ID fingerprint scanners and new "iBeacon" technology for short-distance communications could create a fearsome competitor.

[Demeter]

27. The Forgotten Virtues of Tammany Hall By TERRY GOLWAY

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/opinion/the-forgotten-virtues-of-tammany-hall.html



...Political machines clearly aren’t what they used to be. But last fall’s designation of the old Tammany Hall headquarters on Union Square as a city landmark is a reminder of just how powerful the nation’s most famous machine was, and why it remains a presence in political conversations.

Tammany Hall — shorthand for the faction that controlled Manhattan’s Democratic Party for most of a 150-year period — has a well-deserved place in the annals of urban misgovernment in the United States. It stole elections, it intimidated political antagonists, and it shook down contractors and vendors. It produced the very face of political corruption, William M. Tweed, known to friend and foe as “Boss.” And it was at best indifferent to the grievances of African-Americans and, later, Hispanics in New York.

But there’s more to the story. Tammany Hall’s leaders delivered social services at a time when City Hall and Albany did not. They massaged justice at a time when the poor did not have access to public defenders. And they found jobs for the unemployed when the alternative was hunger and illness....For generations of immigrants and their children in Manhattan, the face of government was the face of the local Tammany ward heeler. And it was a friendly face. This was something entirely new for Russian Jews, Southern Italians and, to be sure, the Irish who dominated the machine. Their experience with politics in the old country was not quite so amiable.

For Tammany, power rested on voter turnout. And turnout was a function of relentless outreach and tireless service. The legendary Tammany leader George Washington Plunkitt — the man who coined the phrase “honest graft” — met with constituents and lesser Tammany officials in his district several times a week to find out who was happy with Tammany’s services and who required some special attention... VIGNETTES...Tammany Hall certainly was guilty of many of the offenses arraigned against it. But those flaws should not overshadow Tammany’s undoubted virtues. The machine succeeded not simply because it could round up votes. It succeeded because it was unafraid of the grunt work of retail politics and because it rarely lost touch with its voters.



Terry Golway is the author of the forthcoming book “Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics.”


A LESSON FOR THE DEMOCRATIC NON-MACHINE, TODAY

[Demeter]

28. Taking a break for a bit

See you all in the afternoon...

[xchrom]

29. David Brooks Is Wrong About Inequality

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-brooks-is-wrong-about-inequality-2014-1

David Brooks has a column about inequality today and it's wrong. But it's wrong in a way that helps explain why conservatives have no idea how to talk about inequality.

Brooks offers two theories of what sort of problem inequality might be: That people at the top are accruing too much money, and that people at the bottom are getting left behind. Like most conservatives, he wants to focus on the second problem. Regarding the first, he attacks the "primitive zero-sum mentality" that holds "growing affluence for the rich must somehow be causing the immobility of the poor."

The thing is, while growing affluence for the rich isn't causing low and moderate incomes to stagnate, they are to a large extent results of the same forces. There is a zero-sum tradeoff between the two, so a zero-sum mentality (primitive or otherwise) is called for.

Productive economic activity produces returns to both labor and capital. Over the last few decades, returns to labor have fallen relative to returns to capital. This has promoted sharp rises in wealth at the top and stagnating wage income for most of the public.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/david-brooks-is-wrong-about-inequality-2014-1#ixzz2ql1M8xko

[Demeter]

30. David Brooks is wrong about everything...why select only one point?

Never seen a more useless piece of work...as if the 1% really needed another spokesperson.

Good morning, X!

Do you think mimosas with brunch would help?

[xchrom]

32. mimosas always help! with everything.

[Fuddnik]

31. Don't forget to tip your cabbie either.

Don't make me go all DeNiro on you.

[Demeter]

33. Morning, Doc!

How is the cabbie life treating you? How many hours a day/week? Think I'd do better at that than throwing paper?

[xchrom]

35. Wells Fargo Leads Banks Quitting Deposit Advance Market

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-17/wells-fargo-leads-banks-quitting-deposit-advance-market.html

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and U.S. Bancorp are among lenders that plan to stop offering advance loans to direct deposit customers as the business comes under pressure from regulators and consumer activists.

Wells Fargo, the biggest U.S. home lender, is shutting down its service starting Feb. 1, the company said today in a statement. Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, the nation’s largest regional lender, said its program would end Jan. 31, as did Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp. (FITB) Regions Financial Corp. (RF) announced Jan. 15 that it would discontinue its Ready Advance service this year.

Banks are abandoning these products amid intensifying scrutiny from regulators about their high costs and similarities to payday lending. As the majority of lenders offering these services leave the market, they risk losing the potential to generate $500 million in fees as customers seek alternative forms of short-term credit, according to 2010 estimates from Aite Group LLC.

“It’s obviously regulatory pressure strong-arming them, because it’s a product that consumers like and that banks want to offer,” said Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virgina, who has researched payday lending and deposit advance. “The question is, what happens to these consumers?”

[xchrom]

36. New York City to Expand Paid Sick Leave, De Blasio Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-17/new-york-city-to-expand-paid-sick-leave-de-blasio-says.html

More New York City businesses would be required to offer employees paid sick leave under legislation backed by the City Council speaker that will be one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first initiatives.

De Blasio, a 52-year-old Democrat, took office this month after making the issue part of his campaign pledge to combat income inequality in the most populous U.S. city. The measure may take effect as soon as April 1, de Blasio said today at a news briefing outside Esmeralda’s Restaurant in Brooklyn. The mayor was joined by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and more than 20 members of the 51-member legislative body.

“We talked a lot about the tale of two cities; our goal is to create one city, where everyone can rise together, and this is one of the steps we have to take to make that possible,” de Blasio said. “The time to act is now.”

The expansion of an existing sick-leave law to cover 500,000 more workers would amount to a show of force by the mayor and his ally, Mark-Viverito, who have vowed to put their self-described progressive values into action. They said a majority of council members supports the plan. De Blasio won election in November by 49 percentage points, the biggest margin by a non-incumbent in city history.

[xchrom]

37. New York’s Schneiderman Expands Financial Crimes Unit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-17/new-york-s-schneiderman-expands-financial-crimes-unit.html

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman expanded an existing criminal bureau to include a focus on financial wrongdoing two years after Governor Andrew Cuomo created a regulator with a similar mandate.

Gary Fishman, 44, a former state prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, will serve as chief of the Criminal Enforcement and Financial Crimes Bureau, an expansion of the Criminal Prosecutions Bureau, the attorney general’s office said yesterday in a statement.

“Financial industry leaders who play by the rules deserve a level playing field, and those bad actors who seek to take advantage of their competitors and their neighbors must be stopped and punished,” Schneiderman said in the statement.

New York has intensified market enforcement since the financial crisis. In 2010, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. formed a major economic crimes unit, where Fishman was principal deputy chief. This was followed by Cuomo’s 2011 merger of state insurance and banking regulators into a Department of Financial Services under Benjamin Lawsky, a top prosecutor when Cuomo was attorney general.

[Demeter]

42. Breakfast helps with mood swings and sociablity....

[Demeter]

43. Obama and the NSA Subthread

Well, the Public Relations-in-chief spoke....and everybody jumped on him. Deservedly so....

The President on Mass Surveillance NYT Editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/opinion/the-president-on-mass-surveillance.html

In the days after Edward Snowden revealed that the United States government was collecting vast amounts of Americans’ data — phone records and other personal information — in the name of national security, President Obama defended the data sweep and said the American people should feel comfortable with its collection. On Friday, after seven months of increasingly uncomfortable revelations and growing public outcry, Mr. Obama gave a speech that was in large part an admission that he had been wrong.

The president announced important new restrictions on the collection of information about ordinary Americans, including the requirement of court approval before telephone records can be searched. He called for greater oversight of the intelligence community and acknowledged that intrusive forms of technology posed a growing threat to civil liberties.

“Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power,” Mr. Obama said in a speech at the Justice Department. “It depends on the law to constrain those in power.”

But even as Mr. Obama spoke eloquently of the need to balance the nation’s security with personal privacy and civil liberties, many of his reforms were frustratingly short on specifics and vague on implementation. The president’s most significant announcement was also the hardest to parse. He ordered “a transition that will end” the bulk collection of phone metadata as it currently exists, but what exactly will end? The database will still exist, even if he said he wants it held outside the government. Mr. Obama should have called for sharp reductions in the amount of data the government collects, or at least adopted his own review panel’s recommendation that telecommunications companies keep the data they create and let the National Security Agency request only what it needs. Instead, he gave the Justice Department and intelligence officials until late March to come up with alternate storage options, seeking a new answer when the best ones are already obvious.

But he added two restrictions that could significantly reduce the possibility of abuse of this information: Wherever the database resides, he said, it may be queried only “after a judicial finding or in the case of a true emergency.” (That calls for a clear definition of “emergency.”) Agency analysts will be permitted to pursue phone calls that are two “hops” removed from a number associated with a terrorist organization, instead of three. That extra hop allowed for the examination of an exponentially larger number of phone calls. Mr. Obama did not address the bigger problem that the collection of all this data, no matter who ends up holding onto it, may not be making us any safer. That was the conclusion of the president’s review panel as well as a federal judge in Washington who ruled that the bulk-collection program was probably unconstitutional and an extensive report by the New America Foundation finding that the program “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity.”

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


One of his biggest lapses was his refusal to acknowledge that his entire speech, and all of the important changes he now advocates, would never have happened without the disclosures by Mr. Snowden, who continues to live in exile and under the threat of decades in prison if he returns to this country.

MORE...AND THE COMMENTARY IS ALSO WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION

Obama takes swipe at Snowden in spy reform speech By Jeff Mason REUTERS

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-takes-swipe-snowden-spy-reform-speech-183410499--sector.html

President Barack Obama on Friday took a swipe at Edward Snowden, the former U.S. spy contractor whose revelations about American surveillance practices tarnished relations with foreign allies and prompted reforms in Washington...

"Given the fact of an open investigation, I'm not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden's actions or his motivations," Obama said in his address at the Department of Justice, taking the somewhat unusual step of mentioning the former National Security Agency contractor by name.

"I will say that our nation's defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation's secrets."

The White House has argued that Snowden - along with other whistleblowers - had other options for raising concerns about intelligence practices without making massive and damaging leaks.

Snowden fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia, where he currently has asylum. The White House wants him returned to the United States for prosecution.

"If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy," Obama said.

"Moreover, the sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat than light, while revealing methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations in ways that we may not fully understand for years to come."

A legal adviser to Snowden, Jesselyn Radack, said Obama's comments framed the issue in a false way of making people choose between liberty and security.

"His unnecessary swipe at Snowden for the unauthorized disclosure ... was really unwarranted," Radack, the national security and human rights director at the Government Accountability Project, said in an interview.

...MORE

Obama bans spying on leaders of U.S. allies, scales back NSA program Reuters By Steve Holland, Mark Hosenball and Jeff Mason

MAYBE SO, PROBABLY NO....HOW COULD ANYONE KNOW? TAKE HIS WORD FOR IT?

http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-obama-announce-overhaul-controversial-nsa-program-110226635--finance.html

President Barack Obama banned U.S. eavesdropping on the leaders of close friends and allies on Friday and began reining in the vast collection of Americans' phone data in a series of limited reforms triggered by Edward Snowden's revelations. In a major speech, Obama took steps to reassure Americans and foreigners alike that the United States will take into account privacy concerns highlighted by former spy contractor Snowden's damaging disclosures about the sweep of monitoring activities of the National Security Agency (NSA).

"The reforms I'm proposing today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe," he said.

THIS KIND OF DELUSION GETS PEOPLE INTO MENTAL HOSPITALS FOR EXTENDED PERIODS

While the address was designed to fend off concerns that U.S. surveillance has gone too far, Obama's measures fell short of dismantling U.S. electronic spying programs...Even as the White House put the final touches on the reform plan this week, media outlets reported that the NSA gathers nearly 200 million text messages a day from around the world and has put software in almost 100,000 computers allowing it to spy on those devices.

Obama promised that the United States will not eavesdrop on the heads of state or government of close U.S. friends and allies, "unless there is a compelling national security purpose." A senior administration official said that would apply to dozens of leaders. The step was designed to smooth over frayed relations between, for example, the United States and Germany after reports surfaced last year that the NSA had monitored the cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff postponed a state visit to Washington in protest of the NSA spying on her email and cellphone.

AND I BET THEY AREN'T IMPRESSED, EITHER.

"The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to learn what they think about an issue, I will pick up the phone and call them, rather than turning to surveillance," Obama said.

SORRY, BARACK, CAN'T PUT THAT GENIE BACK IN THE BOTTLE

Still, he said, U.S. intelligence will continue to gather information about the intentions of other governments, and will not apologize simply because U.S. spy services are more effective.

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

"The biggest deal is going to the court each time," said retired General Michael Hayden, a former director of both the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency.

..........

Members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called for more restraint on the NSA..."In particular, we will work to close the 'back-door searches' loophole and ensure that the government does not read Americans' emails or other communications without a warrant," Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich said in a joint statement.

.............................
The White House did not address those points (CORRUPTING CRYPTOGRAPHY, BACK DOORS INTO SOFTWARE), to the disappointment of outside experts who feel the United States is making Internet security worse.

"NSA sabotage of crypto standards was the thing most conspicuously absent for me," University of Pennsylvania cryptographer Matt Blaze wrote on Twitter.

MORE EVER MORE

Dishfire and What Obama Couldn’t Say About the N.S.A. by Amy Davidson NEW YORKER

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2014/01/dishfire-and-what-obama-shouldnt-say-about-the-nsa.html

VIDEO OF OBAMA'S SPEECH AT LINK, FOR EASY REFERENCE


“DISHFIRE contains a large volume of unselected SMS traffic,” a says a presentation that was put together by Britain’s General Communications Headquarters, and obtained by the Guardian thanks to Edward Snowden. The volume is very large: close to two hundred million text messages from around the world every day. “This makes it particularly useful for the development of new targets, since it is possible to examine the content of messages sent months or even years before the target was known to be of interest.” The documents go on to say that Dishfire, a National Security Agency program, whose products the G.C.H.Q. was allowed to look at, “collects pretty much everything it can, so you can see SMS from a selector which is not targeted.”

And there, in a few sentences, is an expression of why so many of the reassurances that we have heard since the first Snowden revelations seem hollow—and why President Obama has been pushed to confront their inadequacy in a speech on Friday morning. The N.S.A. collects information on people that it has no reason to suspect; it does so indiscriminately; its standard is what “it can” do, not what it ought to; and it includes not just abstract metadata but rich content. Also, the phrase “not targeted” means “surveilled without the paperwork” or, in plain English, “targeted.” The Guardian notes that the agency has “minimization” procedures for information that it somehow gets from Americans whom it hasn’t targeted. As the N.S.A. said in a statement to the paper:

Dishfire is a system that processes and stores lawfully collected SMS data. Because some SMS data of US persons may at times be incidentally collected in NSA’s lawful foreign intelligence mission, privacy protections for US persons exist across the entire process concerning the use, handling, retention, and dissemination of SMS data in Dishfire.

And yet, the minimizing never quite seems to make the volume as small as the N.S.A.’s practices makes it large....MASSIVE EDIT HERE


My colleague John Cassidy has a good analysis of why Obama needs to let go of the notion that if people were being sensible they would just trust him to make sure that their privacy is protected. As Cassidy says, they can’t. Dishfire is one of many programs that have come to light: it has international reach, and there will be more to learn about how many Americans get tangled in it. But it is already useful as a reminder of what Obama can no longer say: that metadata is slim and impersonal (lean and hungry is more like it); that only proper suspects are spied on; or that everything is basically headed in the right direction, with the only issue being the need to make us feel better.

There is one more argument for Obama, and the rest of us, to avoid: the idea that running the N.S.A. differently, with real and not just mechanical respect for civil liberties and privacy, would just be too much trouble—that neither the agency nor the public could handle it. That argument was made in a letter from Judge John Bates, formerly of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, to the Senate and House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. He urged them not to listen to the President’s review panel, which suggested dozens of changes, such as a more adversarial process and more transparency. “Releasing freestanding summaries of court opinions is likely to promote confusion and misunderstanding,” Bates wrote. Confusion tends to lead to questions, which one would think would be useful—especially when what is confusing are claims about safety and privacy in a democracy. Effectiveness in fighting terrorism and blind gliding are not the same thing. Bates also worried that “some of the proposed changes would profoundly increase the Courts’ workload.” Would that mean a large volume of cases? That’s work that we can do, and have to do.

OR AS LUCKOVICH SHOWS US:



http://assets.amuniversal.com/58a626e0619c01316a1a001dd8b71c47

In Keeping Grip on Data Pipeline, Obama Does Little to Reassure Industry By DAVID E. SANGER and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/technology/in-keeping-grip-on-data-pipeline-obama-does-little-to-reassure-industry.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article

Google, which briefly considered moving all of its computer servers out of the United States last year after learning how they had been penetrated by the National Security Agency, was looking for a public assurance from President Obama that the government would no longer secretly suck data from the company’s corner of the Internet cloud.

Microsoft was listening to see if Mr. Obama would adopt a recommendation from his advisers that the government stop routinely stockpiling flaws in its Windows operating system, then using them to penetrate some foreign computer systems and, in rare cases, launch cyberattacks.

Intel and computer security companies were eager to hear Mr. Obama embrace a commitment that the United States would never knowingly move to weaken encryption systems.

They got none of that....

POOR BABIES! THEY HAVE AS MUCH SECURITY AS ANY OF THEIR LITTLE PEOPLE CUSTOMERS....THAT SHOULD BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM!

[Demeter]

49. ANOTHER COMPENDIUM FROM WASHINGTON'S BLOG

I JUST PICKED THE HIGH POINTS...

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/01/obama-speech-nsa-spying-substance.html

Obama Speech On NSA Spying: “A Nothing Burger Served Hot And With A Sympathetic Smile”



Representative Rush Holt says:

The President’s speech offered far less than meets the eye.

“His proposals continue to allow surveillance of Americans without requiring a Fourth Amendment determination of probable cause. They continue to regard Americans as suspects first and citizens second. They continue to allow the government to build backdoors into computer software and hardware. They fail to strengthen protections for whistleblowers who uncover abusive spying.

“The President spoke about navigating ‘the balance between security and liberty.’ But this is a faulty and false choice. As Barack Obama himself urged in his first inaugural address, we must ‘reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.’

“The Fourth Amendment and other civil liberty protections do not exist to impede police or intelligence agencies. To the contrary, they exist to hold to hold government agents to a high standard – to ensure that they act on the basis of evidence, rather than wasting time and resources on wild goose chases.

“Even the modest improvements announced today are subject to reversal at a stroke of the President’s pen. A standard of ‘trust my good intentions’ isn’t good enough. Congress should reject these practices and repeal the laws that made the NSA’s abuses possible.”

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund notes:

Rather than dismantling the NSA’s unconstitutional mass surveillance programs, or even substantially restraining them, President Obama today has issued his endorsement of them. What are billed as ‘reforms’ are mere window dressing, cosmetic changes that leave this unconstitutional system intact and, in fact, provide presidential ratification.

Today’s speech full of minimization and outright denial regarding the now-documented massive scope of NSA spying on the population served as the presidential announcement of an intention to permanently implement a national surveillance grid and indiscriminate mass data collection. Every keystroke will still be captured, every phone call will still be logged.

***

Using tactics of misdirection, the president has tried to reframe the issue as who should house the massive collection of data on law-abiding people, rather than the real issue, which is that this massive indiscriminate collection and warehousing of data must stop. This speech will fail to stop the tide of opposition of people in the United States and around the world who reject living under a Surveillance State.

David Swanson comments:

Massive bulk collection of everybody’s data will continue unconstitutionally, but Obama has expressed a certain vague desire to end it, sort of, except for the parts that are needed, but not to do so right away. The comparisons to the closure of the Guantanamo death camp began instantly.

***

Obama has not proposed to end abuses. He’s proposed to appoint two new bureaucrats plus John Podesta. Out of this speech we get reviews of policies, a commitment to tell the Director of National Intelligence to read court rulings that impact the crimes and abuses he’s engaged in, and a promise that the “Intelligence Community” will inspect itself. (Congress, the courts, and the people don’t come up in this list of reforms.) Usually this sort of imperial-presidential fluff wins praise from Obama’s followers. This time, I’m not hearing it.

HE MUST NOT HAVE LOGGED INTO DU YET...



ACLU’s executive director Anthony Romero says:

The president’s decision not to end bulk collection and retention of all Americans’ data remains highly troubling. The president outlined a process to study the issue further and appears open to alternatives. But the president should end – not mend – the government’s collection and retention of all law-abiding Americans’ data. When the government collects and stores every American’s phone call data, it is engaging in a textbook example of an ‘unreasonable search’ that violates the Constitution. The president’s own review panel recommended that bulk data collection be ended, and the president should accept that recommendation in its entirety.”

Artwork by Anthony Freda


AND THERE'S SO MUCH MORE!

[Demeter]

50. Today I (Bruce Schneier) Briefed Congress on the NSA - TTG

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2014/01/today-i-bruce-schneier-briefed-congress-on-the-nsa-ttg.html

"This morning I spent an hour in a closed room with six Members of Congress: Rep. Lofgren, Rep. Sensenbrenner, Rep. Scott, Rep. Goodlate, Rep Thompson, and Rep. Amash. No staffers, no public: just them. Lofgren asked me to brief her and a few Representatives on the NSA. She said that the NSA wasn't forthcoming about their activities, and they wanted me -- as someone with access to the Snowden documents -- to explain to them what the NSA was doing. Of course I'm not going to give details on the meeting, except to say that it was candid and interesting. And that it's extremely freaky that Congress has such a difficult time getting information out of the NSA that they have to ask me. I really want oversight to work better in this country." (Schneier on Security)

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

I found this story of Bruce Schneier's visit to Congress more interesting than President Obama's speech on NSA reforms. Does anyone else find it astounding that Congressmen have to ask someone who's viewed the documents stolen from the NSA by Snowden in order to find out what the NSA is doing? Does this make the NSA look like an imperious rogue agency with nothing but contempt for Congress, the American people and the Constitution? I got to know a lot of competent, caring and patriotic people at the NSA. They do an important job and they do it well. Those who insist on protecting the unconstitutional collection and surveillance activities of the NSA are doing us all a disservice, especially those good people I knew at the NSA.

THIS BENIGHTED SOUL BELIEVES THAT THE NSA CAN BE "REFORMED" AND ITS USEFUL PARTS SAVED...

HE'S NOT THINKING STRAIGHT. THE "USEFUL PARTS" ARE EXACTLY THOSE THAT WE WANT ELIMINATED...BECAUSE AS A TOOL FOR FIGHTING TERRORISM, THE NSA IS ABSOLUTELY USELESS.

BUT FOR BLACKMAIL, EXTORTION, FRAUD AND LIBEL, IT'S UNPARALLELLED....IT WAS MADE TO SUPPRESS DISSENT.

[mother earth]

68. Well said. nt

[hamerfan]

45. Musical Interlude

Stairway To Gilligan's Island by Little Roger And The Goosebumps:

[Demeter]

47. I've heard of cross-over fanfiction

but this positively the first musical cross-over (since PDQ Bach) I've ever heard. (I don't get out much...)

That was clever!

Well, that's not true. There's Weird Al Yankovich, too. But usually, it's parody.

[Demeter]

51. What in the world: Does the US want Snowden dead?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-25787306


Edward Snowden is the subject of some violent fantasies...Defence and intelligence officials want Edward Snowden dead. Or, at least, they joke about wanting him dead.

That's the takeaway from an article on Buzzfeed by Benny Johnson, who has some rather choice anonymous quotes from civilian and military personnel.

"Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him," one defence contractor tells him.

"I would love to put a bullet in his head," says a Pentagon official.

If that wasn't detailed enough, here's this scenario, recounted by an Army intelligence officer:

"I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly," he said. "Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it's a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower."

Johnson notes that there is "no indication that the United States has sought to take vengeance on Snowden". I'm not sure Mr Snowden would be reassured by that...Across the internet, the article is generating quite a stir.

This underscores "how deeply some defence officials hate Snowden", writes Mediate's Noah Rothman.

Reason magazine's Matthew Feeney writes: "It's sad, but not surprising, that there are some in the U.S. intelligence community that would like to see Snowden killed. He deserves thanks, not the pathetic hostility highlighted by Johnson."

Esquire's Charles P Pierce writes that the anonymous officials need to be identified and fired. "And, of course, these folks went back to their day jobs and didn't think at all of abusing the power that has been placed in their hands," he adds.

[Demeter]

52. ORIGINAL SOURCE

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/americas-spies-want-edward-snowden-dead

[Demeter]

55. Edward Snowden will join FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOUNDATION board of directors.

https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/01/highlights-daniel-ellsbergs-reddit-ama-edward-snowden-and-nsa-surveillance

GOOD READ--COVERS A LOT

[Demeter]

53. FINALLY, A PREDICTION I THINK WILL HAPPEN: 2014: Desperately seeking demand

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/01/2014-desperately-seeking-demand/



Patrick Chovanec, chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management, has released his first quarter Investment Strategy Note, which argues that the global economy remains afflicted by a lack of demand and excess capacity, which is likely to pose a major obstacle to growth in the year ahead. Below are some key extracts:

The main obstacle to stronger economic growth is lack of sufficient demand. Though consumer spending is rising, the economy is still operating way below capacity. U.S. non- financial corporations are sitting on a record $1.25 trillion in cash because they are unsure where to invest it. Portfolio investors are in the same boat, with $2.7 trillion parked in U.S. money market funds. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers posits that the U.S., like Japan since the 1990s, has entered an era of “secular stagnation” where the “natural interest rate” (the rate where the desire to save is matched by the willingness to invest) has fallen below zero, meaning return expectations are so low or uncertain that investors essentially must be paid to put their money to work (or penalized, via inflation or other means, for not doing so).

There are many domestic reasons, in the U.S., why demand is depressed. They include cyclical causes like the wealth effect from assets that lost value during the financial crisis, especially housing, as well as the delay in household formation due to high unemployment among young people. There are also structural reasons, which may prove more persistent. We are in the midst of a technological revolution that, alongside globalization, is reducing the need for and the value of the sort of routine mental and physical labor that long provided the foundation for mass middle-class employment in the US…

These kinds of efficiency gains are good for the U.S. economy. They mean we are doing more with less. But they also mean the rewards to value-creation are often spread among fewer people, and many people with more mundane skills may struggle to add much value at all. Before the crisis, the impact on consumer purchasing power was masked by easy access to consumer credit: what people could not earn, they could borrow. Not anymore.

The conventional response, among economists, is that the government must take action to boost domestic demand in the United States, with either monetary or fiscal stimulus, or by redistributing wealth. But the limits of intervention are also apparent. While Fed QE was essential to preventing a credit collapse during the financial crisis, a nearly fourfold increase in the base money supply has done less than one might expect to get people lending and spending again. The case for more aggressive policies must be weighed against legitimate concerns they could destabilize the economy’s future by piling up too much debt, distorting incentives, or inflating asset bubbles. In any case, the political impasse in Washington makes any agreement on these matters nearly impossible…

For the past several decades, the U.S. has served as the world’s consumer of last resort. That allowed developing countries – namely Japan, and later China – to turbo-charge growth by producing more than they consumed, confident in the knowledge that Americans would provide the demand by consuming more than they produced. (A parallel pattern emerged within the EU, with Germany playing net producer and the rest of Europe net consumer). The surplus countries kept the game going by taking their export proceeds and lending them back to their customers so the deficit countries could keep buying. This is the global growth model we all became comfortable with…

We’re not going back to the past. The old growth model is broken. Here’s what will replace it, with a number of positive implications:

1) China faces a major correction. As its credit binge is either brought under control, or buckles under its own weight, GDP growth will fall, perhaps abruptly. We may see signs of financial stress, or instability. The end of China’s investment boom will hurt metals and mining, as well as makers of capital goods, on a global basis… Far from being a catastrophe, a correction that forced China to transform its huge accumulated savings into demand could turn the Chinese consumer into a major driver of global growth…

2) It will become increasingly evident that other Europeans can’t earn their way out of Germany’s debt until the Germans start saving less and buying more. Until the EU’s leaders recognize this, Europe is simply marking time between crises…

3) Abenomics is an experiment, a calculated bet that printing money will spark controlled inflation which, along with much-needed structural reforms… I’m cautiously optimistic, but I suspect all the good news is already priced into the market, while the toughest choices are yet to be faced. Meanwhile, the risk of some kind of armed conflict with China, over disputed islands in the East China Sea, is quite real and cannot be ignored…

4) The American consumer isn’t going to re-leverage and drive global demand, and the government is in no position to replace him. Domestic demand will grow, but mainly on the back of a production story driven by global rebalancing, which we are already seeing take shape. The U.S. will capitalize on traditional strengths in agriculture and technology, as well as new ones, such as its energy cost advantage from shale oil and gas. Stagnant wages may be hurting domestic demand, but they are making the U.S. more competitive.

As the U.S. economy gradually gains momentum, the Fed will have to taper, then unwind, its QE bond purchases. Interest rates will rise…

The shift to a new global growth model is a positive story, but it’s also an extremely disruptive one. People who don’t see it coming will be inclined to panic in reaction to the changes it involves. Investors who understand it will find opportunity where others see only uncertainty and upheaval…

The full report, which is worth reading, can be downloaded here: http://t.co/Yoe8MXbStD

[Demeter]

54. MORE: ALBERT EDWARDS: We're On The Cliff Of Deflation And Markets Don't Seem To Care

http://www.businessinsider.com/albert-edwards-cliff-of-deflation-2014-1

"Markets remain stoic about the risks of outright deflation in the US and eurozone for one very simple reason," he writes.

"They simply do not believe a recession that would trigger outright deflation is on the horizon. Quite the reverse - they believe with all their heart that we are at the start of a self-sustained recovery. That is despite the fact that the US recovery is already noticeably longer than average, and that the classic signs of old age, such as rapidly slowing productivity growth and stagnant corporate profits, can clearly be seen."

Market expectations of inflation — via the 10-year bond market — has "remained entrenched" above 2% for more than a year, Edwards writes.

"A chasm is growing between reality, both on a core and headline basis, and expectations," he says. "If investors begin to doubt the economy recovery then they will no longer be able to ignore the lurking deflationary threat. Rapid market moves would ensue."

[xchrom]

57. TECH INDUSTRY: OBAMA'S NSA REFORMS 'INSUFFICIENT'

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_TECH_NSA_REACTION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-18-13-22-41

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Technology companies and industry groups took President Barack Obama's speech on U.S. surveillance as a step in the right direction, but chided him for not embracing more dramatic reforms to protect people's privacy and the economic interests of American companies that generate most of their revenue overseas.

"The president's speech was empathetic, balanced and thoughtful, but insufficient to meet the real needs of our globally connected world and a free Internet," said Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a group that represents Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other technology companies upset about the NSA's broad surveillance of online communications.

On Friday, the president called for ending the government's control of phone data from hundreds of millions of Americans and ordered intelligence agencies to get a court's permission before accessing such records. He also issued a directive that intelligence-gathering can't be employed to suppress criticism of the United States or provide a competitive advantage to U.S. companies.

In addition, the president directed Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to consider whether new privacy safeguards could be added to online data gathering. Although those activities are only meant to target people outside the U.S. as part of national security investigations, information on Americans sometimes gets swept up in the collection.

[Demeter]

65. Not to mention our needs as a Constitutional democracy

I'm just saying....

[xchrom]

58. 'The Daily Show' Nails Why Health Care Will Never Work As A Free Market

http://www.businessinsider.com/daily-show-steven-brill-obamacare-2014-1


Time columnist Steven Brill on The Daily Show.

Steven Brill, author of Time's in-depth health care analysis "Bitter Pill," appeared on "The Daily Show" this week to discuss his opinion of Obamacare.
Brill's work exploded his career into a love-hate relationship with Obamacare, now leading to a book. Speaking with Jon Stewart, Brill certainly made his criticisms known, but we also think he pinpointed exactly why health care just can't work as a free market.

Brill told the story of a cancer patient forced to pay $13,700 out-of-pocket, up-front for transfusion of a drug. And that cost only constituted part of a greater $83,000 payment. Brill claims, however, the drug only cost the pharmaceutical company $300.

"The cost has shifted to the taxpayers — which I think is a good thing. But it's outrageous that we haven't done anything to control those costs," Brill explained.

Certain laws actually prohibit Medicare from negotiating drug prices, the Los Angeles Times has reported. President Obama, who once condemned the pharmaceutical industry, may have conceded this lobbying point to ensure the Affordable Care Act's passage.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/daily-show-steven-brill-obamacare-2014-1#ixzz2qqft9Get

[xchrom]

59. Why You Should Be Living Paycheck To Paycheck

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-should-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-2014-1

David Sapper, a car salesman, and his wife, Tina, a real estate broker, live on a set budget of $2,500 from their two paychecks that must cover all groceries, health care bills and extracurricular expenses.

Even in their home in greater Las Vegas, where the cost of living is far lower than it is in other parts of the country, the Sappers have to budget carefully to make it work.

They rarely go out to dinner, they shop at discount chain stores and many of their recreational decisions are dictated by Groupon.

Such a way of living gives one the illusion that the Sappers are poorer than they actually are — yet in reality, they make an annual combined income of about $500,000.



Read more: http://www.learnvest.com/2014/01/save-more-living-paycheck-to-paycheck/#ixzz2qqhLKAoO

[xchrom]

60. 'I Quit' Will Be Familiar Refrain in 2014

http://www.livescience.com/42700-employee-turnover-expected-to-spike-this-year.html

?1390089626

Research from CareerBuilder discovered that 21 percent of full-time employees plan to change jobs this year — the largest percentage of expected turnover seen in the post-recession era and up from 17 percent last year. Many factors could be contributing to the expected rise in turnover, including employees' overall dissatisfaction with their job, their chances of being promoted within the company and their work-life balance.

The study shows that among those who are dissatisfied with their job, 58 percent plan to change jobs in the new year. The most cited reasons for employee dissatisfaction were concerns over salary and not feeling valued.

The research also revealed that 45 percent of workers who are dissatisfied with advancement opportunities at their current company expect to look for new work this year. Moreover, 39 percent of employees who are dissatisfied with their work-life balance plan to do the same.

Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, said offering frequent recognition, merit bonuses, training programs and clearly defined career paths are important ways to show workers what they mean to the company.

[Hotler]

73. I'm a hairs width away from quiting. n/t

[xchrom]

61. Britain is scared to face the real issue – it's all about inequality

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/19/inequality-threat-recovery-poverty-pay

It's inequality, stupid. It's inequality that is behind poverty, ill-health and the growth of the welfare bill. It's inequality propelling the escalating demand for credit. It's inequality that has created our fragile banking system and its still feral proclivities. It's inequality that has provoked the collapse in productivity, and the stagnation in innovation and investment – evident before the financial crisis and even more so now. This is the truth that cannot yet be spoken.

Yet reality will out. Ed Miliband's "cost of living" crisis is a sideways route into opening up an argument over inequality. As he knows full well, the problem is not just the gnawing away of average living standards, but how the effects hit you more savagely the lower your income. It matters how the cake is shared. If George Osborne calls for the minimum wage to rise to £7 an hour, be sure that some acute Conservative political antennae are recognising that the salience of inequality is rising. Finally, it is tiptoeing on to the national stage.

The sheer unfairness of who gets how much is the first reaction to inequality, a challenge to us as moral beings. It is not just that so many incomes at the top, many times higher than a generation ago, are plainly undeserved and unrelated to merit; it is also about the multiple ways that inequality expresses itself. Your starting point in life and your parents' networks are ever more important in determining your life chances, whether you want to get on as an investment banker or actor. Your chance of getting on the housing ladder early or late is closely determined by the wealth of your parents.

Inequality is all around. You can rage at the phenomenon of young people, unable to afford sky-high London rents, cramped into one shared room, while the super-rich dig down under their homes or buy the house next door to expand their living space.

[xchrom]

62. Davos faces up to weak growth and rising inequality

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/19/world-economic-forum-davos-issues-2014

More than 2,500 of globalisation's movers and shakers gather for their annual four-day mountaintop conclave this week, aware that the world is still being shaken by the events of half a decade ago.

When the World Economic Forum met in Davos in early 2009, it was against the backdrop of the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers a few months earlier, and a contraction in activity that raised fears of a second Great Depression. Since then, hopes of a quick return to business as usual have been dashed by sluggish recovery, an incomplete repair job on banks, rising inequality, growing political alienation and concerns about extreme weather events and internet meltdown.

Klaus Schwab, founder and chairman of the WEF, has told the business executives, academics and government officials attending Davos this year that much remains to be done. "Economic growth patterns, the geopolitical landscape, the social contract that binds people together, and our planet's ecosystem are all undergoing radical, simultaneous transformations, generating anxiety and, in many places, turmoil," he said.

Much also remains to be done if the WEF is to make progress on the gender quotas it set four years ago. Then it told its 100 corporate partners – attracted to the Swiss resort by the opportunities to hammer out business deals behind the scenes – that they could bring a fifth representative only if it was a woman. Yet the percentage of women attending is just 16%.


***some one must have overheard someone saying: eat the rich.

[xchrom]

63. European Banks Face $1 Trillion Gap Before Review, Study Shows

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-18/european-banks-face-1-trillion-gap-before-review-study-shows.html

European banks have a capital shortfall of as much as 767 billion euros ($1 trillion) before the European Central Bank’s probe into the financial health of the region’s lenders, according to a study.

French banks show the biggest gap of 285 billion euros, followed by German lenders with as much as 199 billion euros, Sascha Steffen of the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin and Viral Acharya at New York University said in their study dated Jan. 15. The figures assume a benchmark capital ratio for other book measures of leverage of 7 percent, they wrote.

“A comprehensive and decisive AQR will most likely reveal a substantial lack of capital in many peripheral and core European banks,” the authors wrote, referring to the central bank’s Asset Quality Review stage of the Comprehensive Assessment.

The Frankfurt-based ECB is conducting a three-stage assessment of bank assets before it assumes oversight of about 130 lenders across the 18-member currency bloc this November. Steffen and Acharya examined 109 of the 124 euro-area banks that will be part of the AQR, including Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Credit Agricole (ACA) SA, BNP Paribas SA (BNP) and Banco Santander.

[xchrom]

64. Thai Protest Blast Injures 28 at Bangkok Anti-Government Rally

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-19/thai-protesters-target-bangkok-s-north-in-push-to-oust-yingluck.html

At least 28 people were injured as two explosions rocked a protest site in central Bangkok, adding to the tally of almost daily attacks as groups push to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and derail a Feb. 2 election.

The afternoon blasts occurred at Victory Monument, one of seven Bangkok intersections that have been blockaded by anti-government demonstrators since Jan. 13, according to the Bangkok Emergency Medical Center. One man was killed and 39 wounded in a grenade attack on a protest march two days ago, and another man was shot and injured late last night, the medical center said on its website.

Defense forces chief Tanasak Patimapragorn called for talks between the government and protesters, who in past weeks have invaded ministries, blocked election offices and shut down parts of the capital to destabilize Yingluck’s administration. The demonstrators want to replace the government with an unelected council that would change laws to ensure parties linked to Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, can’t return to power.

“If there’s a chance that both the government and protesters lose but the country wins, I’m confident they will take it,” Tanasak told reporters yesterday. “Without any talk, there will be no way out.”

[Demeter]

66. Your Intrepid Weekender Feels As If She Survived a Shipwreck

It's not as cold as the last arctic vortex....but that doesn't mean it's normal. Or tolerable for any length of time..

and based on the amount of advertising in the Sunday paper...retailers expect a lot of shopping on Monday (or maybe hoping and praying?).

[Demeter]

67. Make Wealthy Pay Social Security Taxes on Their Full Salaries --

-- and Retirement Benefits Could Likely Be Expanded for All

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18419-lift-the-117-000-income-cap-on-social-security-taxes-and-benefits-could-likely-be-expanded

According to RT.com, the 900 wealthiest Americans paid their full Social Security tax obligation for 2014 by January 2nd.

How is that possible?

As BuzzFlash at Truthout has pointed out before, there is an inexplicable cap on collecting Social Security tax above an income of $117,000 a year. Most payrolled Americans pay 6.2 percent of their income into the Social Security Trust Fund (the employer pays another 6.2 percent). But if you are a high-flying CEO who earns $50 million a year, $49,883,000 of your income is exempt from Social Security taxes.

If the wealthy paid Social Security taxes on their full salaries (and we aren't even talking stock options and other forms of bonuses that are not subject to Social Security taxation) the Social Security Trust Fund would likely be able to expand benefits. This would be a far cry from the ongoing right wing -- and White House -- efforts to reach a "grand bargain" on cutting Social Security benefits (even though there is no immediate crisis and any problems that do exist largely result from the government borrowing from the fund)....

MORE

[Demeter]

69. Apple Meets Its Worst Nightmare: Federally Appointed Antitrust Lawyer Hell-Bent on Doing His Job

http://www.alternet.org/economy/apple-meets-its-worst-nightmare-federally-appointed-antitrust-lawyer-hell-bent-doing-his-job?akid=11405.227380._94_HL&rd=1&src=newsletter947249&t=6





As detailed in a recent article in the New York Times, Apple is flipping out over an outside monitor nosing around in its business. The technology giant has spent the last several months pulling out all the stops to keep one Michael R. Bromwich, a Washington lawyer appointed by a federal judge to ensure Apple’s compliance with antitrust laws, from doing his job.

Apple complains that Bromwich is guilty of ghastly intrusion with his impertinent requests for such things as interviews with board members and executives, including CEO Tim Cook. Otherwise known as doing what he is supposed to be doing — finding out if Apple is abiding the law. The Wall Street Journal wailed that the mean, bad Bromwich is so aggressive he would end up wanting to “disinter Steve Jobs” if he is not stopped. (Hmm. Are we quite sure Jobs was not cremated and packed into an Apple-shaped urn?)

In an effort to besmirch Bromwich's character, Apple has also accused the lawyer, who is charging the company $1,100 an hour for his services, of using the inquiry as a means of making money for himself and his Washington consulting firm. Lawyers making money! Who would have thought? Really, if Apple would like to cut down on Bromwich’s bills, it might consider cooperating with his inquiries instead of stalling and obfuscating. Those invoices do add up, don't they?

Most absurd, Apple claims that if Bromwich is not stopped, the company will no longer be able to innovate and create new products. What a hoot! If Apple was really eager to innovate and create new products, perhaps it would stop doing stock buybacks to enrich executives and devote some of the Mt. Fuji of cash it is sitting on to R&D....

[Demeter]

70. I'm calling this a wrap for Sunday

I am too exhausted by papers to continue today. Even with a nap and lunch. Have a lovely Monday off, those of you that can. See you tomorrow!

[westerebus]

71. Analytics

Reading through the many Op's marked by NSA / mega data, I find the lack of just what this data gathering is all for, disturbing.

On the face of what we know, the amount of data is taken to be unwieldy and over complex to the point of being useless, unless it it is parsed down to individual actors engaged in nefarious circumstances of their own making or ascribed to them by the agencies of government seeking out the enemies of the state on a singular basis, is simply waiting at the train station for the next the ferryboat.

It is the data that points to trends that could improve the ROI ( return on investment ) of the owners of the operation which collects the information that holds the value. The value the government considers to be in the national interest. How one defines the national interest is likely to be determines by the pay check, title, stock option, contract or honorific appellation of the person making that decision.

Analytics is high dollar business seldom mentioned in the hearing rooms or press conferences of the government and their corporate sponsors. Read the print out of speeches, pressers, folios and meeting notes and it is seldom mentioned.

If a laundry detergent maker wanted to know how best to market its product, at what price point it could charge, who its most agreeable buyer's may be, why would they not avail themselves of the analytics provided by say Google?

We have a government that does the same thing. They simply source the work through the agencies who have a vested interested in keeping those who write their budgets in power. Those in power have a vested interest in keeping a finger on the pulse of the body of we the vast users of electrons.

Would this government use the data capture and analysis to secure for themselves continued control to their positions of power? That was rhetorical.

Could we think of ways the government may show its use of control to influence outcomes they wish to pursue?

In the end, it is us versus them.

To ascribe no ill intent to our current and future batch of government officials reminds me of Ben Franklin's quip : a republic if you can keep it.

[Hotler]

74. corruption.

Did you folks see this???

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251349067

And if you want another blast from the past Google HUD scandals in Colorado from the 1980'-90's. Along with the Savings & Loan Scandals here in Denver.

[Demeter]

75. If you've read this far...

I'm starting a Monday MLK thread. It's getting too unwieldy here.

See you there!