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Tansy_Gold

(17,817 posts)
Thu Jan 23, 2014, 08:00 PM Jan 2014

STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 24 January 2014

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 24 January 2014[font color=black][/font]


SMW for 23 January 2014

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 23 January 2014
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Dow Jones 16,197.35 -175.99 (-1.07%)
S&P 500 1,828.46 -16.40 (-0.89%)
Nasdaq 4,218.87 -24.13 (-0.57%)


[font color=green]10 Year 2.78% -0.04 (-1.42%)
30 Year 3.68% -0.04 (-1.08%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.








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


36 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 24 January 2014 (Original Post) Tansy_Gold Jan 2014 OP
Well, looks like the bloom fell off the Rosy Scenario bush Demeter Jan 2014 #1
Big Bike-Sharing Supplier's Bankruptcy Doesn't Doom U.S. Programs Demeter Jan 2014 #2
U.S. Willing to Hold Talks if Snowden Pleads Guilty By STEVE KENNY Demeter Jan 2014 #3
Fined Billions, JPMorgan Chase Will Give Dimon a Raise Demeter Jan 2014 #4
JPMORGAN NEEDS AN ALICE Demeter Jan 2014 #8
End the Phone Data Sweeps Demeter Jan 2014 #5
Surveillance and Scandal Time-Tested Weapons for U.S. Global Power By Alfred McCoy Demeter Jan 2014 #6
Argentina Submits Offer to Paris Club for $10 Billion Debt Demeter Jan 2014 #7
STUDY: CLIMBING INCOME LADDER HASN'T GROWN HARDER xchrom Jan 2014 #9
It hasn't gottten any easier, either. And DEFINITELY not any fairer or equitable. Demeter Jan 2014 #22
Employers know that any litigation for sexism, agism, or other illegal unfairness will take forever. kickysnana Jan 2014 #33
UK'S OSBORNE DENIES MONETARY POLICY CHANGES FAILED xchrom Jan 2014 #10
CENTRAL BANKS TO WIND DOWN DOLLAR LENDING xchrom Jan 2014 #11
The end of the US dollar as a Reserve Currency is Nigh! Demeter Jan 2014 #29
MICHIGAN SEEKS VISAS TO LURE IMMIGRANTS TO DETROIT xchrom Jan 2014 #12
Work camps? What a BS idea from our Right-to-work, soon to be ex-Governor Demeter Jan 2014 #23
NO ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE FOR GREENLAND IN SIGHT xchrom Jan 2014 #13
Contagion Spreads in Emerging Markets as Crises Grow xchrom Jan 2014 #14
Rental-Home Bond Issues May Reach $20 Billion-a-Year, Stark Says xchrom Jan 2014 #15
Gundlach Counting Rotting Homes Makes Subprime Bear xchrom Jan 2014 #16
Davos Austerity Debate Renewed as Summers Splits With Osborne xchrom Jan 2014 #17
I smell fear--the mob has come to Larry's attention Demeter Jan 2014 #25
Schaeuble "very optimistic" on France after Hollande plans xchrom Jan 2014 #18
Argentina to ease foreign exchange controls after peso slump xchrom Jan 2014 #19
Argentina Devaluation Sends Currency Tumbling Most in 12 Years Demeter Jan 2014 #27
US says businesses should be 'cautious' over Iran xchrom Jan 2014 #20
Cab Company Uber - When high demand, the price goes up DemReadingDU Jan 2014 #21
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value antigop Jan 2014 #24
Another plunging open--I guess the Davos concensus is Run for Your Lives! Demeter Jan 2014 #26
Trying to hold that 16K line at 1 PM Demeter Jan 2014 #30
Famous Last Words Demeter Jan 2014 #31
-244 DOW DemReadingDU Jan 2014 #32
And we close DOWN -318.24 Demeter Jan 2014 #34
Wow! DemReadingDU Jan 2014 #35
China. Yep. Long way to go... n/t Ghost Dog Jan 2014 #36
This is drawing sneers from the greater DU unwashed and uneducated Demeter Jan 2014 #28
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
1. Well, looks like the bloom fell off the Rosy Scenario bush
Thu Jan 23, 2014, 09:31 PM
Jan 2014
Stocks slide on worries over earnings, China

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fiw-wall-street-20140123,0,2431684.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+%28L.A.+Times+-+Business%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo


Stocks are broadly lower after earnings and forecasts from several U.S. companies disappointed investors. Investors also worried about a slowdown in China, a major driver of global growth, after a survey there suggested the country's manufacturing sector was contracting.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 176 points, or 1.1 percent, to close at 16,197 Thursday. It had been down as much as 232 points. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 16 points, or 0.9 percent, to 1,828. The Nasdaq composite lost 24 points, or 0.6 percent, to 4,218.

Several companies fell after issuing quarterly results and outlooks, including Noble Corp., Johnson Controls, Jacobs Engineering and United Continental.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.78 percent.


NOT A PEEP ABOUT THE LAYOFFS, STORE CLOSINGS, BANKRUPTCIES, AND UNEMPLOYMENT DATA....
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
2. Big Bike-Sharing Supplier's Bankruptcy Doesn't Doom U.S. Programs
Thu Jan 23, 2014, 09:39 PM
Jan 2014
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/21/264582819/big-bike-sharing-suppliers-bankruptcy-doesnt-doom-u-s-programs?ft=1&f=1001



The Canadian company that is the main equipment and technology suppliers for bike-sharing systems across the U.S. has filed for bankruptcy. Public Bike System Co., (PBSC) which owns the widely used BIXI bike-sharing system, ANNOUNCED THE BANKRUPTCY MONDAY, citing almost $50 million in debt... Its bikes and technology are used in 16 AREAS AROUND THE WORLD, including major cities such as Chicago, New York, London, Montreal, and Washington, D.C. After the bankruptcy was announced, Alta, a company that operates several BIXI bike-share systems in the U.S., SAID that its customers won't have their service interrupted. Alta says it plans to expand current systems and launch new ones this year.

PBSC's bankruptcy doesn't jeopardize bike-sharing, says Elly Blue, author of BIKENOMICS, a book analyzing the economics of cycling.

"I don't see this as being a very big bump in the road for bike share," Blue says. "I just see this as a chance for cities to learn — we can't run our transportation systems like a business, it doesn't really work that way because then we run the risk of not serving the people that need to be served."


PBSC attributes the bankruptcy partly to cities that have not paid it, including around $5.1 million from New York and Chicago. It is also IN A LAWSUIT with the company that makes its bike-share analysis software.

The bankruptcy doesn't surprise JOHN PUCHER, who studies bicycling as a professor of urban planning at Rutgers University and who recently published a book about the cycling boom in cities.

"Looking at the operating data of the cost and revenues of the [bike-sharing] systems that I've seen, they vary from one system to another, but I'm just not convinced overall that it's a profitable venture," Pucher says. "It's not a big money maker the way they've set it up."


He points out that although some systems have come close to breaking even, whatever money the bike-sharing systems get from customers will not cover the cost of installing the system and getting bikes in the first place. The fees can almost cover the operating cost — the money needed to repair bikes, move them around to meet demand and hire staff — but the systems need sponsors. CITIBANK PAID FOR THE SYSTEM IN NYC, the advertising company JCDECAUX PAID FOR THE ONE IN PARIS, and City of Minneapolis PROVIDED START-UP FUNDING to the system there....

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
3. U.S. Willing to Hold Talks if Snowden Pleads Guilty By STEVE KENNY
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 05:49 AM
Jan 2014

NOW THERE'S AN OFFER THAT'S A CINCH TO REFUSE...IT'S NOT ONLY DOA, IT'S ALSO KMA (KISS MY ASS)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/us/politics/us-willing-to-hold-talks-if-snowden-pleads-guilty.html

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday that the United States was willing to discuss how the criminal case against Edward J. Snowden would be handled, but only if Mr. Snowden pleaded guilty first. Mr. Holder, speaking at a question-and-answer event at the University of Virginia, did not specify the guilty pleas the Justice Department would expect before it would open talks with Mr. Snowden’s lawyers. And the attorney general reiterated that the United States was not willing to offer clemency to Mr. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked documents that American officials have said threaten national security.


“Instead,” Mr. Holder said in response to a question at the university’s Miller Center, “were he coming back to the U.S. to enter a plea, we would engage with his lawyers.”


SOMEHOW, THE US EXECUTIVE BRANCH HAS GOT TO GET OVER THE IDEA THAT THEY ARE LORDS OF THE UNIVERSE. THEY AREN'T NOW, IF THEY EVER WERE. AND THE NSA CAN'T MAKE THEM OVERLORDS, EITHER.

“I absolutely think the tide has changed for Snowden,” Jesselyn Radack, a legal adviser to Mr. Snowden and a lawyer with the Government Accountability Project, said last month. “All of these things taken together counsel in favor of some sort of amnesty or pardon.”


Mr. Holder ruled out that possibility on Thursday. “We’ve always indicated that the notion of clemency isn’t something that we were willing to consider,” he said, adding that any discussions with Mr. Snowden’s lawyers would be the “same with any defendant who wanted to enter a plea of guilty.”


Some lawmakers have also softened their stance on how Mr. Snowden’s case should be handled.

“I don’t think Edward Snowden deserves a death penalty or life in prison; I think that’s inappropriate, and I think that’s why he fled, because that’s what he faced,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, has said.

“I think, really, in the end,” Mr. Paul added, “history’s going to judge that he revealed great abuses of our government and great abuses of our intelligence community” by exposing the broad sweep of electronic surveillance by the N.S.A.

Mr. Paul said he favored “a fair trial with a reasonable sentence.”


Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has gone even further, suggesting that the United States offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency. But Mr. Schumer said that if Mr. Snowden considered himself part of the “grand tradition of civil disobedience in this country,” he should return to stand trial. Such a legal proceeding, the senator said, could be enlightening for the country.

LET THE COUNTRY GET ENLIGHTENED SOME OTHER WAY...NOT BY SACRIFICING ITS BRIGHTEST AND BEST.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
4. Fined Billions, JPMorgan Chase Will Give Dimon a Raise
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 05:53 AM
Jan 2014

NOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? REWARD JAMIE, AND IMPRISON SNOWDEN? IT SHOULD BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/fined-billions-bank-approves-raise-for-chief/

A year after an embarrassing trading blowup led to millions of dollars being docked from Jamie Dimon’s paycheck, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase is getting a raise.

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JPMorgan’s board voted this week to increase Mr. Dimon’s annual compensation for 2013, hashing out the pay package after a series of meetings that turned heated at times, according to several executives briefed on the matter. The raise — the details were not made public on Thursday — follows a move by the board last year to slash Mr. Dimon’s compensation by half, to $11.5 million.

When it made that deep pay cut, the board was giving a stern rebuke over the fallout from the “London Whale” multibillion-dollar trading blunder. This week, directors, gathered in a conference room at the bank’s Park Avenue headquarters overlooking a snow-covered Central Park, discussed what message their next decision on the bank chieftain’s compensation would send.

The debate pitted a vocal minority of directors who wanted to keep his compensation largely flat, citing the approximately $20 billion in penalties JPMorgan has paid in the last year to federal authorities, against directors who argued that Mr. Dimon should be rewarded for his stewardship of the bank during such a difficult period. During the meetings, some board members left the conference room to pace up and down the 50th-floor corridor....


CRIME DOES PAY, IF IT'S WHITE COLLAR.

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
5. End the Phone Data Sweeps
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 05:56 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/opinion/end-the-phone-data-sweeps.html

Once again, a thorough and independent analysis of the government’s dragnet surveillance of Americans’ phone records has found the bulk data collection to be illegal and probably unconstitutional. Just as troubling, the program was found to be virtually useless at stopping terrorism, raising the obvious question: Why does President Obama insist on continuing a costly, legally dubious program when his own appointees repeatedly find that it doesn’t work?

In a 238-page report issued Thursday afternoon, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a five-member independent agency, called on the White House to end the phone-data collection program, for both constitutional and practical reasons. The board’s report follows a Dec. 16 ruling by Federal District Judge Richard Leon that the program was “almost certainly” unconstitutional and that the government had not identified “a single instance” in which it “actually stopped an imminent attack.”

Two days later, a panel of legal and intelligence experts convened by Mr. Obama after the disclosures by Edward Snowden echoed those conclusions in its own comprehensive report, which said the data sweep “was not essential to preventing attacks” and called for its end.

The growing agreement among those who have studied the program closely makes it imperative that the administration, along with the program’s defenders in Congress, explain why such intrusive mass surveillance is necessary at all. If Mr. Obama knows something that contradicts what he has now been told by two panels, a federal judge and multiple members of Congress, he should tell the American people now. Otherwise, he is in essence asking for their blind faith, which is precisely what he warned against during his speech last week on the future of government surveillance.

“Given the unique power of the state,” Mr. Obama said, “it is not enough for leaders to say: trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached.”
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
6. Surveillance and Scandal Time-Tested Weapons for U.S. Global Power By Alfred McCoy
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 06:01 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37421.htm

http://www.alternet.org/visions/how-us-uses-surveillance-and-scandal-advance-its-global-control?akid=11419.227380.1JbU1V&rd=1&src=newsletter949141&t=6&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington. The answer is remarkably simple. For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line -- like, in fact, the steal of the century. Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.

For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion. Not surprisingly, in a post-9/11 bipartisan exercise of executive power, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have presided over building the NSA step by secret step into a digital panopticon designed to monitor the communications of every American and foreign leaders worldwide.

What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long history of U.S. surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies.

Not only does such surveillance help gain intelligence advantageous to U.S. diplomacy, trade relations, and war-making, but it also scoops up intimate information that can provide leverage -- akin to blackmail -- in sensitive global dealings and negotiations of every sort. The NSA’s global panopticon thus fulfills an ancient dream of empire. With a few computer key strokes, the agency has solved the problem that has bedeviled world powers since at least the time of Caesar Augustus: how to control unruly local leaders, who are the foundation for imperial rule, by ferreting out crucial, often scurrilous, information to make them more malleable....
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
7. Argentina Submits Offer to Paris Club for $10 Billion Debt
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 06:07 AM
Jan 2014

ARGENTINA'S FALLING APART ECONOMICALLY AGAIN...THE WEAK MAN OF LATIN AMERICA...AND THE VULTURES ARE CIRCLING, AS USUAL...VULTURE FUNDS, I MEAN.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-20/argentina-sees-agreement-on-10-billion-debt-with-paris-club.html

Argentina formally presented an offer to settle about $10 billion it owes to the Paris Club of creditors, 13 years after the country’s record $95 billion debt default, the spokeswoman for the group of creditors said.

Paris Club members on Jan. 22 will discuss the offer delivered today by Argentina’s Economy Minister Axel Kicillof to Paris Club Chairman Ramon Fernandez, Clotilde L’Angevin, the club spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview from Paris. Fernandez, also the head of France’s treasury, will brief other club members on Argentina’s proposal, she said today, adding they aren’t expected to make an immediate official response.

“Argentine officials presented some main principles that could serve as a basis for repayment proposals that Argentina can make to the club,” L’Angevin said. “The meeting was short, between one, two hours and is not part of a negotiation process.”

Kicillof submitted the plan along with Hernan Lorenzino, a former economy minister who now heads Argentina’s Debt Restructuring Unit. About $4 billion of interest and penalties on the debt could be forgiven, and the country would pay slightly more than $6 billion, Buenos Aires-based newspaper Ambito Financiero reported today, citing officials it didn’t identify. L’Angevin declined to comment on the terms of the restructuring proposal...The Paris Club, a group comprising of 19 countries, expects full repayment and won’t accept a reduction in the amount owed by Argentina, a person briefed on the matter said. Neither side revealed details of the proposal... he origin of the Paris Club dates back to 1956 when Argentina first met its public creditors in Paris. Since then, the Paris Club has reached 429 agreements with 90 different debtor countries. Since 1956, the total debt of Paris Club agreements amounts to $573 billion.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
9. STUDY: CLIMBING INCOME LADDER HASN'T GROWN HARDER
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 07:35 AM
Jan 2014
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ECONOMIC_MOBILITY_STUDY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-23-13-34-06

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Young Americans from low-income families are as likely to move into the ranks of the affluent today as those born in the 1970s, according to a report by several top academic experts on inequality.

The study, published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, runs counter to the widespread belief that a widening gap between rich and poor has made it harder to climb the economic ladder.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike have expressed alarm over what had been seen as diminishing opportunities for economic advancement through hard work and ingenuity.

Instead, the study found that 9 percent of children born in 1986 to the poorest 20 percent of households were likely to climb into the top 20 percent - little-changed from 8.4 percent for such children born in 1971.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
22. It hasn't gottten any easier, either. And DEFINITELY not any fairer or equitable.
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 10:14 AM
Jan 2014

So I'm not impressed.

kickysnana

(3,908 posts)
33. Employers know that any litigation for sexism, agism, or other illegal unfairness will take forever.
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 04:43 PM
Jan 2014

They just don't care about people, quality of life, national security etc, etc. Bad citizens and the USSC says they are people for most purposes but not for killing folks.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
10. UK'S OSBORNE DENIES MONETARY POLICY CHANGES FAILED
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 07:37 AM
Jan 2014
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-24-05-53-37

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) -- George Osborne, Britain's economic minister, dismissed suggestions Friday that the Bank of England's strategy to link monetary policy to unemployment has been a failure after its governor gave a clear hint that it would be scrapped.

A day after Mark Carney said he was against "unnecessarily focusing too much on one indicator," Osborne told a panel at the World Economic Forum that the governor's plan to change the guidance was evidence the policy "works."

Last year, the bank introduced "forward guidance" to its monetary policy framework, whereby it would not consider raising rates from their super-low levels until the unemployment rate was down at 7 percent. Figures this week showing the U.K.'s unemployment rate down at 7.1 percent stoked speculation that the bank would start raising interest rates soon.

Without a clear communications strategy, Osborne suggested unemployment would not have fallen as much.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
11. CENTRAL BANKS TO WIND DOWN DOLLAR LENDING
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 07:39 AM
Jan 2014
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_CENTRAL_BANKS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-24-05-32-04

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- The European Central Bank said Friday that it and three other major central banks will wind down their dollar-lending operations amid improving market conditions.

The ECB, along with the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank, plans to stop lending dollars to banks for three-month periods at the end of April.

The ECB said the step was taken "in view of the considerable improvement in U.S. dollar funding conditions and the low demand for U.S. dollar liquidity-providing operations." In other words, banks are getting by fine without having to tap the central banks for loans denominated in dollars.

The central banks will continue lending dollars over one-week periods until at least July 31. The ECB says it will address "in due course" whether such operations need to continue.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
12. MICHIGAN SEEKS VISAS TO LURE IMMIGRANTS TO DETROIT
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 07:41 AM
Jan 2014
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DETROIT_IMMIGRATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-23-20-29-56

DETROIT (AP) -- Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder asked the federal government Thursday to set aside thousands of work visas for bankrupt Detroit, a bid to revive the decaying city by attracting talented immigrants who are willing to move there and stay for five years.

The Republican governor has routinely touted immigration as a powerful potential force for growing Detroit's economy, saying immigrant entrepreneurs start many small businesses and file patents at twice the rate of U.S.-born citizens.

"Let's send a message to the entire world: Detroit, Michigan, is open to the world," Snyder said at a news conference.

The proposal involves EB-2 visas, which are offered every year to legal immigrants who have advanced degrees or show exceptional ability in certain fields.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
23. Work camps? What a BS idea from our Right-to-work, soon to be ex-Governor
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 10:17 AM
Jan 2014

Who ought to be put in Gitmo, IMO, and see how he likes it.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
13. NO ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE FOR GREENLAND IN SIGHT
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 07:43 AM
Jan 2014
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GREENLAND_MINING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-24-05-42-18

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- An independent report says Greenland's mineral wealth is unlikely to help it obtain economic independence from Denmark, the dream of many Inuits on the Arctic island.

The 13-member panel of Nordic academics that compiled the report says Greenland's minerals and offshore oil could help the sparsely populated island develop but not achieve a full split from its financial dependency on Denmark.

The report, released Friday, said semi-autonomous Greenland would continue to rely on Denmark's annual grant. It amounted to 3.3 billion kroner ($602 million) in 2013.

Last year, Greenland removed a 25-year-old ban on uranium mining as it is often found mixed with other rare earth metals used for smartphones and weapons systems.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
14. Contagion Spreads in Emerging Markets as Crises Grow
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 08:51 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-24/contagion-spreads-in-emerging-markets-as-crises-grow.html

The worst selloff in emerging-market currencies in five years is beginning to reveal the extent of the fallout from the Federal Reserve’s tapering of monetary stimulus, compounded by growing political and financial instability.

The Turkish lira plunged to a record, while Ukraine’s hryvnia sank to a four-year low and South Africa’s rand fell to the weakest level since October 2008, after tumbling yesterday beyond 11 per dollar for the first time since 2008. Argentine policy makers devalued the peso by reducing support in the foreign-exchange market, allowing it to drop the most in 12 years to an unprecedented low.

Investors are losing confidence in some of the biggest developing nations, extending the currency-market rout triggered last year when the Fed first signaled it would scale back stimulus. While Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa were the engines of global growth following the financial crisis in 2008, emerging markets now pose a threat to world financial stability.

“The current environment is potentially very toxic for emerging markets,” Eamon Aghdasi, a strategist at Societe Generale SA in New York, said in a phone interview yesterday. “You have two very troubling things: uncertainty about the Fed policy, combined with concerns about growth, particularly in China. It’s difficult to justify that it’s time to go out and buy emerging markets at the moment.”

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
15. Rental-Home Bond Issues May Reach $20 Billion-a-Year, Stark Says
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 08:55 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-24/rental-home-bond-issues-may-reach-20-billion-a-year-stark-says.html

Wall Street may sell more than $20 billion a year of bonds backed by rental homes as investors become comfortable buying securities tied to loans to small landlords, according to Ryan Stark, a director who runs mortgage finance at Deutsche Bank AG.

“The numbers could be fairly staggering,” Stark said at a Structured Finance Industry Group conference in Las Vegas. “This could be a $15 billion or $20 billion-plus-a-year kind of an asset class. Certainly if those smaller shops get more volume, you’re going to see even more in growth in that area.”

Institutional investors, led by companies such as Blackstone Group LP (BX)’s Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent (AMH), have bought as many as 200,000 homes in the last two years, Stark said. They are taking advantage of home prices that fell as much as a third from the 2006 peak and rising demand for rental homes among about 8 million former owners who lost property to foreclosure since 2007.

The big opportunity for debt is among smaller landlords who own most of the 14 million single-family homes occupied by renters, he said.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
16. Gundlach Counting Rotting Homes Makes Subprime Bear
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 08:59 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-24/gundlach-counting-rotting-homes-makes-subprime-bear-mortgages.html

For Jeffrey Gundlach, the U.S. housing recovery isn’t so rosy.

The founder of $49 billion investment firm DoubleLine Capital LP is largely avoiding the subprime-mortgage bonds that jumped about 17 percent last year after home prices surged by the most since 2006, deterred by the lengthy process to sell foreclosed houses and the destruction that’s creating.

“These properties are rotting away,” Gundlach, 54, said last week on a conference call with investors, about homes stuck in foreclosure pipelines, adding that it could take six years to resolve defaulted loans made to the least creditworthy borrowers before the real-estate crash.

DoubleLine is giving up potentially higher yields that last year attracted money managers including Western Asset Management Co. along with hedge funds as 21 percent of foreclosed homes across the U.S. are in limbo, vacated by former owners and not yet seized by lenders, according to data company RealtyTrac.

Those residences are a sign of an uneven U.S. recovery, which has left blighted neighborhoods in cities from Los Angeles to Detroit and about 8 million borrowers still owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
17. Davos Austerity Debate Renewed as Summers Splits With Osborne
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 09:02 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-24/davos-austerity-debate-renewed-as-summers-splits-with-osborne.html


U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers sparred over how much governments can spur investment, reviving the debate over the virtues of austerity.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Summers argued the U.S. government should take advantage of low interest rates to invest in infrastructure, contending such expenditure would spur economic expansion and pay for itself through higher tax revenues.

Osborne, who is deploying the U.K.’s biggest fiscal squeeze since World War II, responded that British government spending would need to be balanced by budget cuts elsewhere or risk drawing the ire of financial markets and creating uncertainty for business.

“In the American context, I think that the right investment strategies are actually win, win, win,” said Summers, a former adviser to President Barack Obama.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
25. I smell fear--the mob has come to Larry's attention
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 10:19 AM
Jan 2014

What do you know? The old dog CAN learn new tricks!

I'd call that Janet Yellen's FIRST success, and she hasn't even been installed, yet...at least, I don't think so.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
18. Schaeuble "very optimistic" on France after Hollande plans
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 09:17 AM
Jan 2014
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/01/24/uk-davos-germany-france-idUKBREA0N0X120140124

(Reuters) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Friday that he was optimistic France would emerge stronger once it implements the economic reforms announced last week by President Francois Hollande.

"France is and remains a strong country and France will make the right decisions," Schaeuble said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in response to a question about whether Germany's neighbour had done enough to bolster its struggling economy.

"We've seen that the French president has made the necessary decisions and I think it is the right path," Schaeuble added. "I am very optimistic that the role of France will be strengthened through this and that we can bring Europe forward together."

Hollande unveiled a series of policy measures last week, including public spending cuts and tax relief for businesses, designed to strengthen France's sluggish economy.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
19. Argentina to ease foreign exchange controls after peso slump
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 09:30 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25877391

Argentina is to relax its strict foreign exchange controls, a day after the peso suffered its steepest daily decline in 12 years.

Cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich said the country would reduce the tax rate on dollar purchases and allow the purchase of dollars for savings accounts.

The measures would take effect from Monday, he said.

On Thursday, the peso fell 11% against the dollar, its steepest fall since the country's 2002 financial crisis.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
27. Argentina Devaluation Sends Currency Tumbling Most in 12 Years
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 10:38 AM
Jan 2014

Argentina devalued the peso the most in 12 years after the central bank scaled back its intervention in a bid to preserve international reserves that have fallen to a seven-year low.

The peso has plunged 12.7 percent over the last two days to 7.8825 per dollar at 3:45 p.m. in Buenos Aires, after falling to as low as 8.2435, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The decline in the peso marks a policy turn for Argentina, which had been selling dollars in the market to manage the foreign-exchange rate since abandoning a one-to-one peg with the U.S. dollar in 2002.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who said May 6 that the government wouldn’t devalue the peso, is struggling to hold onto dollar reserves which have fallen 31 percent to $29.4 billion amid annual inflation of more than 28 percent. Reserves are the government’s only source to pay foreign creditors. Since changing her economy minister, cabinet chief and the head of the central bank on Nov. 18, the peso has fallen 25 percent, the most in the world, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“They’re running out of cash and they’re sitting in the corner at the moment,” Phillip Blackwood, who oversees $3.5 billion in emerging market assets as a managing partner at EM Quest Capital LLP, said in a phone interview from London. “There’s a feeling in the market that they’re not going to intervene any more.”

The tumble in the currency is the biggest since March 2002, the year the government abandoned a one-to-one peg with the U.S. dollar following a record $95 billion default...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-23/argentina-s-peso-plunges-17-as-central-bank-scales-back-support.html

xchrom

(108,903 posts)
20. US says businesses should be 'cautious' over Iran
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 09:32 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25872467



US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said companies must "proceed with caution" when dealing with Iran, in an interview with the BBC in Davos.

Mr Lew, who is attending the World Economic Forum, said recent easing of sanctions represented "limited relief" and most sanctions were still in place.

The US eased restrictions on products including cars and petrochemicals.

Iranian President Hassan Rohani is also at the summit and analysts say he is touting Iran for potential investors.

DemReadingDU

(16,000 posts)
21. Cab Company Uber - When high demand, the price goes up
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 09:40 AM
Jan 2014

Audio at link, appx 4 minutes

1/24/14 When A $65 Cab Ride Costs $192 by Lisa Chow

Lisa Chow says...
I was in the car for about an hour, rolling around Manhattan in the middle of a snowstorm. The ride normally would have cost me $65. But when it came time to pay, my driver, Kirk Furye, was concerned for me. "Are you going to get in trouble with NPR?" he asked. "You are almost at three times the [normal] amount."

Final cost of a one-hour cab ride: $192.00.

I had found Furye through Uber, a company that makes an app that connects cabs and cars with people who are looking for rides. One thing about Uber: When there's a lot of demand — like, say, in the middle of a snowstorm — the price goes way up.

Uber calls this surge pricing; a lot of people might call it gouging. But Uber drivers aren't employees with hourly schedules; they choose when and whether to drive. And, Uber says, raising prices when demand is high is a way to get more drivers on the road to meet that demand.

more...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/01/24/265396928/when-a-65-cab-ride-costs-192

antigop

(12,778 posts)
24. The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 10:17 AM
Jan 2014
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/myth-maximizing-shareholder-value.html

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. So many of the assertions made about “maximizing shareholder value” are false that they should be assumed to be a lie until proven otherwise. The first is that board and managements are somehow obligated to “maximize shareholder value” is patently false. Legally, shareholders’ equity is a residual claim, inferior to all other obligations. Boards and management are required to satisfy all of the company’s commitments, which include payments to vendors (including employees), satisfying product warranties, paying various creditors, paying taxes, and meeting various regulatory requirements (including workplace and product safety rules and environmental regulations). As we wrote last year:
If you review any of the numerous guides prepared for directors of corporations prepared by law firms and other experts, you won’t find a stipulation for them to maximize shareholder value on the list of things they are supposed to do. It’s not a legal requirement. And there is a good reason for that.

Directors and officers, broadly speaking, have a duty of care and duty of loyalty to the corporation. From that flow more specific obligations under Federal and state law. But notice: those responsibilities are to the corporation, not to shareholders in particular…Shareholders are at the very back of the line. They get their piece only after everyone else is satisfied. If you read between the lines of the duties of directors and officers, the implicit “don’t go bankrupt” duty clearly trumps concerns about shareholders…

So how did this “the last shall come first” thinking become established? You can blame it all on economists, specifically Harvard Business School’s Michael Jensen. In other words, this idea did not come out of legal analysis, changes in regulation, or court decisions. It was simply an academic theory that went mainstream. And to add insult to injury, the version of the Jensen formula that became popular was its worst possible embodiment.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
26. Another plunging open--I guess the Davos concensus is Run for Your Lives!
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 10:37 AM
Jan 2014

Or, alternatively, the pump of the Santa Claus rally has ended with the MLK dump....

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
31. Famous Last Words
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 02:53 PM
Jan 2014

“I wouldn’t call it a panic,” Mr. Wenzel said. An extended bull market in stocks has left investors unprepared for red indexes on their screens, he said, as investors “just aren’t used to seeing this kind of volatility.”


http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/a-worldwide-market-slump-gains-traction/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=2




...Charles Diebel, head of market strategy at Lloyds Banking in London, said investors who had been enjoying high-risk, high-return investments were now leaving emerging markets and equities and into the perceived safety of United States, German and British government bonds.

But he played down the degree of unease among investors, saying, “there’s no indication of anything systemic. It’s just the market mechanism at work.”

The damage, though, could be greater in other parts of the world....

MORE WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD...
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
28. This is drawing sneers from the greater DU unwashed and uneducated
Fri Jan 24, 2014, 10:43 AM
Jan 2014

Last edited Fri Jan 24, 2014, 11:15 AM - Edit history (1)

Why George Lucas, Eric Schmidt, (and yes, Steve Jobs) Should Go to Jail: Conspiring to Reduce Wages of 100,000 Tech Pros

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/george-lucas-eric-schmidt-steve-jobs-go-jail.html

One big difference between West Coast and East Coast oligarchs is that a lot fewer people lionize the Eastern ones. Even though the media and sadly too many regulators treat the likes of Lloyd Blankfein with far too much deference, the broader public has wised up. Even MBAs, who normally side with the rich and powerful, have asked me, “When is Jamie Dimon going to jail?” But Silicon Valley’s royalty occupy a class of their own, the toast of TED talks and the model for aspiring entrepreneurs the world over. And the admiration is particularly strong among the rank and file workers in the San Francisco area. So it’s more than a bit ironic to see that these titans of technology engaged in a formal arrangement to suppress pay to the tune of $9 billion across Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar.

Here you thought it was only those poor Foxconn workers making iPhones in China who were being exploited. Silly you.

It’s surprising to see the Obama Administration, which has not even done a good job of faking interest in pursuing criminal charges against major financial firms or their top executives for nearly destroying the global economy, make a frontal assault on some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names. But the conduct in question, namely price fixing, is slam-dunk criminal if the charges prove out. For instance, an early 1990s price rigging investigation involving lysine and citric acid at ADM led to $100 million in fines and jail time for top executives, including the vice chairman, who was also the heir apparent, and criminal fines from other corporate co-conspirators. That success also led to other successful price fixing prosecutions, yielding billions in fines. This victory led to other successful cartel-busting prosecutions.The government’s case, as summarized by Mark Ames at Pando, is chock full of damning e-mails among top executives, which reveal Steve Jobs to have been the lead actor and main enforcer of the pay-containment pact, which dates to 2005. But its real mastermind was George Lucas, who had a similar scheme in place in the 1980s and enlisted Jobs when he sold the computer animation division of Lucasfilm to Pixar. As Ames explains:

One of the more telling elements to this lawsuit is the role played by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, who emerges as the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the wage-theft scheme. It’s almost too perfectly symbolic that Lucas — the symbiosis of Baby Boomer New Age mysticism, Left Coast power, political infantilism, and dreary 19th century labor exploitation — should be responsible for dreaming up the wage theft scheme back in the mid-1980s, when Lucas sold the computer animation division of Lucasfilm, Pixar, to Steve Jobs.

As Pixar went independent in 1986, Lucas explained his philosophy about how competition for computer engineers violated his sense of normalcy — and profit margins. According to court documents:

George Lucas believed that companies should not compete against each other for employees, because ‘it’s not normal industrial competitive situation.’ As George Lucas explained, ‘I always — the rule we had, or the rule that I put down for everybody,’ was that ‘we cannot get into a bidding war with other companies because we don’t have the margins for that sort of thing.’

Translated, Lucas’ wage-reduction agreement meant that Lucasfilm and Pixar agreed to a) never cold call each other’s employees; b) notify each other if making an offer to an employee of the other company, even if that employee applied for the job on his or her own without being recruited; c) any offer made would be “final” so as to avoid a costly bidding war that would drive up not just the employee’s salary, but also drive up the pay scale of every other employee in the firm.

Jobs held to this agreement, and used it as the basis two decades later to suppress employee costs just as fierce competition was driving up tech engineers’ wages.


Fast forward, and here is the guts of the government’s allegations:

Between approximately 2005 and 2009, Defendants Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar allegedly engaged in an “overarching conspiracy” to eliminate competition among Defendants for skilled labor. The conspiracy consisted of an interconnected web of express bilateral agreements among Defendants to abstain from actively soliciting each other’s employees. Plaintiffs allege that each agreement involved a company under the control of Steve Jobs (Co-Founder, Former Chairman, and Former CEO of Apple) and/or a company that shared at least one director with Apple’s Board of Directors. Defendants memorialized these nearly identical agreements in CEO-to-CEO emails and other documents, including “Do Not Call” lists, thereby putting each Defendant’s employees off-limits to other Defendants. Each bilateral agreement applied to all employees of a given pair of Defendants. These agreements were not limited by geography, job function, product group, or time period. Nor were they related to any specific business or other collaboration between Defendants.


One of the critical elements of this alleged conspiracy is that the way these tech giants would ordinarily have gone about recruiting would be to try to poach each other’s best employees by cold-calling them. This of course would have the effect of bidding up their prices and would likely over time drag up pay levels of some of the next-tier workers. Instead, the companies in this scheme shared their wage data with each other so they could coordinate and reduce compensation. As Intel’s senior HR executive put it:

While we pay lip service to meritocracy, we really believe more in treating everyone the same within broad bands.

And the companies had other devices for coordination and pay suppression. Again per Ames:

The evidence includes software tools used by the companies to keep tabs on pay scales to ensure that within job “families” or titles, pay remained equitable within a margin of variation, and that as competition and recruitment boiled over in 2005, emails between executives and human resources departments complained about the pressure on wages caused by recruiters cold calling their employees, and bidding wars for key engineers.

Google, like the others, used a “salary algorithm” to ensure salaries remained within a tight band across like jobs. Although tech companies like to claim that talent and hard work are rewarded, in private, Google’s “People Ops” department kept overall compensation essentially equitable by making sure that lower-paid employees who performed well got higher salary increases than higher-paid employees who also performed well.


What is stunning is all the exchanges among top executives. The filing quotes numerous e-mails among Jobs, Sergey Brin, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, and other Silicon Valley heavy-hitters that talk openly about the agreement and various threats when a member to an agreement falls out of line. By contrast, in the AMD case above, the parties to the lysine cartel were very careful to hold meetings where they’d discuss price fixing overseas, where that action was not criminal. The brazenness is remarkable.

A jury trial in San Jose is scheduled to start May 27. This should be great fun. I’ve included the filing below...SEE LINK

COLLUSION, PRICE-FIXING, AND THAT BASTARD JOBS IS DEAD...THIS COULD HAVE LEGS!
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