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Demeter

(85,373 posts)
Fri Jan 16, 2015, 05:50 PM Jan 2015

Weekend Economists Revere Two Kings January 16-19, 2015



As promised, we continue the Elvis story, and add the Martin Luther King story. Both men shaped their times, which overlapped, and shaped our culture.

And if some drivel about the Swiss franc, Eurozone, and so forth should leak in, it's all good.
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Weekend Economists Revere Two Kings January 16-19, 2015 (Original Post) Demeter Jan 2015 OP
I sincerely doubt that any bank will be closed today SURPRISE! Demeter Jan 2015 #1
It’s time we reconsidered the principle that states must always repay their sovereign debt Demeter Jan 2015 #2
Euro zone ponders yet another Greek bailout Demeter Jan 2015 #9
The Swiss Just Made Things Worse for the Euro Demeter Jan 2015 #3
Can the U.S. Stay Out of the Deflation Vortex? Demeter Jan 2015 #6
Thank the SNB for the Truth Tim Knight Demeter Jan 2015 #13
Ukraine’s Creditors Grab for the Biggest Pieces of Its Carcass by Eric Zuesse Demeter Jan 2015 #4
Soros: Europe must bail out Ukraine to beat Putin Demeter Jan 2015 #10
US to Provide $2 Billion Loan Guarantee to Ukraine Demeter Jan 2015 #21
Why Are Gas Prices So Low? THE ONION KNOWS! Demeter Jan 2015 #5
Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar By Tyler Durden Demeter Jan 2015 #7
"financial market illiquidity" Demeter Jan 2015 #8
Russia Cuts Off Ukraine Gas Supply To 6 European Countries By Tyler Durden Demeter Jan 2015 #11
EXCELLENT SUMMARY FROM THE COMMENTS Demeter Jan 2015 #12
Gazprom warns EU to link to Turkey pipeline or lose Russian gas Demeter Jan 2015 #15
Damn, Demeter... MattSh Jan 2015 #27
I wanted to be sure you saw them! Demeter Jan 2015 #40
Down the Plughole 40 Years of Economic Policy in One Chart By Mike Whitney Demeter Jan 2015 #14
U.S. attorney general bans asset seizure by local police Demeter Jan 2015 #16
WAPO: Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police Demeter Jan 2015 #19
America's Dirtiest Cops: Cash, Cocaine and Corruption on the Texas Border Demeter Jan 2015 #20
That ought to cheer them up. kickysnana Jan 2015 #26
Regional U.S. mortgage agency settles lawsuits with banks Demeter Jan 2015 #17
Ruin Is Our Future By Paul Craig Roberts 8 STEPS TO THE FUTURE Demeter Jan 2015 #18
LET'S FINISH THE ELVIS STORY: Comeback (1968–73) Demeter Jan 2015 #22
Back on tour and meeting Nixon Demeter Jan 2015 #23
Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii Demeter Jan 2015 #24
Health deterioration and death (1973–77) Demeter Jan 2015 #25
The Elvis Presley coverup: What America didn’t hear about the death of the king DemReadingDU Jan 2015 #48
Ukraine’s Budget: Gas vs the Wall | Ukraina.ru MattSh Jan 2015 #28
Parliament member recommends that Yatsenyuk ride a donkey | Ukraina.ru MattSh Jan 2015 #30
As young minds leave, industrialized eastern Ukraine faces brain drain | Al Jazeera America MattSh Jan 2015 #31
Ukrainian men are jumping the ship for the Russian shores ahead of mobilization deadline - Fort Russ MattSh Jan 2015 #32
Russia Leaves the European Commissioner for Energy Union out in the Cold MattSh Jan 2015 #33
Not that the USA can't top that though.... MattSh Jan 2015 #29
Energy Is Becoming Cleaner And More Plentiful — Whatever The Price Of Oil xchrom Jan 2015 #34
The Swiss Franc Move Blew A Big Hole In Citigroup Too xchrom Jan 2015 #35
BUCK UP, PROFITS DOWN: HIGH DOLLAR DENTS US COMPANY EARNINGS xchrom Jan 2015 #36
OIL-COMPANY RALLY SNAPS 5-DAY LOSING STREAK xchrom Jan 2015 #37
SWISS FRANC'S STAGGERING ASCENT TO BE FELT FAR AND WIDE xchrom Jan 2015 #38
US REGULATORS CLOSE SMALL FLORIDA BANK xchrom Jan 2015 #39
POSTAL SERVICE PROPOSES SMALL PRICE INCREASES ON POSTAGE xchrom Jan 2015 #41
DISNEY CEO IGER'S PAY PACKAGE SURGED 27 PERCENT IN 2014 xchrom Jan 2015 #42
Tavis Smiley: The Hidden Dr. King DemReadingDU Jan 2015 #43
Thanks for starting off the MLK portion of the weekend Demeter Jan 2015 #47
Steepest Oil-Rig Drop Shows Shale Losing Fight to OPEC xchrom Jan 2015 #44
One Thing Migrant Smugglers Can't Do Without: Big U.S. Banks xchrom Jan 2015 #45
The Women He Left Behind--Elvis Lives! Demeter Jan 2015 #46
Ukraine Faces Default Risk as Russia Puts Neighbor on Notice Demeter Jan 2015 #49
A Hedge Fund With $830 Million In Assets Went Bust After The Swiss Franc Surge xchrom Jan 2015 #50
Talk about a stupid longshot! Demeter Jan 2015 #52
hi Miss Demeter! xchrom Jan 2015 #53
Oh no! Demeter Jan 2015 #54
well i need to get some roto rooter type operation xchrom Jan 2015 #56
Get some help, please! Demeter Jan 2015 #58
Hit it with a 4-1 ratio of water to bleach. Fuddnik Jan 2015 #73
Hedge funds, speculators face big losses on Swiss franc rally Demeter Jan 2015 #59
Easy come, Easy go. Fuddnik Jan 2015 #72
The Swiss Franc Chaos Shows Why Negative Interest Rates Don't Work xchrom Jan 2015 #51
Financial Cheating Doesn't Pay Demeter Jan 2015 #55
Bernie Sanders Agrees With Goldman Sachs .. Sort Of Demeter Jan 2015 #57
Why a Grexit is more costly for Germany than a default inside the euro area Demeter Jan 2015 #60
Money Dries Up for Oil and Gas, Layoffs Spread, Write-Offs Start Demeter Jan 2015 #61
AT&T estimates charges of $10 billion in fourth quarter Demeter Jan 2015 #62
Older Job Seekers Find Ways to Avoid Age Bias Demeter Jan 2015 #63
Solar Jobs Report Shows Huge Growth Demeter Jan 2015 #64
What a BS Job Demeter Jan 2015 #65
I like this one better Demeter Jan 2015 #66
Michael Hudson: The Crisis in Europe and the Machinations of the Rentier Class Demeter Jan 2015 #67
So, Davos is next week Demeter Jan 2015 #68
US Prisons--Slave Nation Demeter Jan 2015 #69
Russia may lift food import ban from Greece if it quits EU - Russian agriculture minister Demeter Jan 2015 #70
In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims Demeter Jan 2015 #71
Attorney General Holder Announces Biggest Civil Rights Reform in Years BEST EXPLANATION YET Demeter Jan 2015 #74
Martin Luther King...A Man for All Seasons Demeter Jan 2015 #75
In his own words Demeter Jan 2015 #76
Report: Every US State Tax System Is Fundamentally Unfair Demeter Jan 2015 #77
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
1. I sincerely doubt that any bank will be closed today SURPRISE!
Fri Jan 16, 2015, 05:55 PM
Jan 2015

Last edited Fri Jan 16, 2015, 08:18 PM - Edit history (1)

Although, if they were foolish enough to get caught in the currency crossfire...we shall see!

First National Bank of Crestview, Crestview, Florida, 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 First NBC Bank, New Orleans, Louisiana, to assume all of the deposits of First National Bank of Crestview.

The three former branches of First National Bank of Crestview will reopen as branches of First NBC Bank on Tuesday, the first business day of the week given the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday...As of September 30, 2014, First National Bank of Crestview had approximately $79.7 million in total assets and $78.6 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of First National Bank of Crestview, First NBC Bank agreed to purchase approximately $62.0 million of the failed bank's assets. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition...

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $4.4 million. Compared to other alternatives, First NBC Bank's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. First National Bank of Crestview is the 1st FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Valley Bank, Fort Lauderdale, on June 20, 2014


 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
2. It’s time we reconsidered the principle that states must always repay their sovereign debt
Fri Jan 16, 2015, 06:00 PM
Jan 2015
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/its-time-we-reconsidered-the-principle-that-states-must-always-repay-their-sovereign-debt/?utm_content=buffer6616c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Is it true that states must always repay their sovereign debt – even after a major regime change – to maintain their future creditworthiness?
Odette Lienau writes that this conventional wisdom on sovereign debt is overly simplistic and in some cases entirely wrong. She argues that the assumptions of political neutrality, creditor uniformity, and historical constancy, upon which this common narrative rests, do not stand up to closer inspection. This suggests that more flexibility exists in terms of our understanding of government debt and how the market determines creditworthiness.

Conventional wisdom holds that all nations must repay debt. Regardless of the legitimacy of the regime that signs the contract, the actual use of loan proceeds, or the exigencies of any potential default, a country that fails to honour its loan obligations damages its reputation, inviting still greater problems down the road.

Yet difficult questions have arisen from this assumption: Should a black-African-led South Africa really be expected to repay apartheid era debt? Or, given that Saddam Hussein was a dictator who used funds for the oppression of a majority of Iraq’s population, would it be appropriate to require future Iraqi generations to pay for his iniquity? Although the strict repayment norm comes into starkest relief in situations of regime change and transitional justice, its expectations filter into debt negotiations more generally. If repayment is expected even in such extreme circumstances, then it is reasonable to expect debtors to bear most of the burden in all other situations as well.

Rethinking sovereign debt


My book, Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Politics, Reputation, and Legitimacy in Modern Finance, argues that the market narrative supporting the repayment norm is overly simplistic and in some respects entirely wrong. I suggest that the framing of repayment and reputation as a market principle immobilises our sovereign debt regime in part by propagating the following three assumptions.

  • First, the dominant approach implies that although creditors may assess a specific borrower’s political characteristics through the lens of sovereign risk, judgements about a borrower’s repayment decisions are not shaped by politics per se. Rather, they are simply the best objective assessment of a given set of material facts, and are therefore unchallengeable on the basis of political or moral principle.

  • Second, the mechanism of sovereign reputation itself is assumed to be similarly free from subjective and historically variable political judgments, and therefore similarly immune from challenge.

  • And third, all rational creditors are expected to respond in basically the same way to particular debt events, suggesting that efforts to understand or reshape their identities and interests would be futile.

    But in fact none of these assumptions seem to hold up to closer scrutiny, which means that the strict debt repayment norm is more politically and historically variable than it first appears. To begin with, any discussion of sovereign debt is rendered intelligible only by quietly incorporating one of the most highly politicised (and thus deeply contested) terms in international law and international relations: “sovereignty.” Depending on the theory of sovereignty implicitly or explicitly adopted, the practices of sovereign debt and reputation could be expected to diverge significantly. Furthermore, creditor uniformity cannot simply be assumed, and in fact different creditors may interpret – and historically have interpreted – the same politicised debt repudiation in opposing ways. The post-World War I cases of the Soviet Union and Costa Rica have been held out to suggest the futility of challenging the timeless rules of capital markets. But in fact these cases demonstrate quite the opposite, showing how creditors can reasonably make reputational judgements in favour of post-repudiation lending, at least under conditions of market competition and ideological flexibility. The Soviet case in particular has been misinterpreted in the economics literature; a look at the historical correspondence between banks and governments, rather than only at bond float data, demonstrates that private interest did exist in lending to the new Soviet regime, at least among new American banks eager to compete with established European financiers...MORE


    About the Author

    Odette Lienau is Associate Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School. She is the author of Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Politics, Reputation, and Legitimacy in Modern Finance(Harvard University Press, 2014).
  •  

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    9. Euro zone ponders yet another Greek bailout
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 07:15 PM
    Jan 2015

    I THINK IT'S TOO LATE NOW...EUROPE IS SCREWED--AND THEY DID IT THEMSELVES

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/102345426



    Euro zone officials discussed on Thursday extending Greece's bailout program by up to six months more to allow time for talks with any new government in Athens on closing the current bailout and on what should replace it.

    The current bailout, which has already been extended by two months, runs out at the end of February. Athens had hoped to replace it with an Enhanced Conditions Credit Line (ECCL) from the euro zone bailout fund that it would never have to use.

    "There will have to be an extension beyond February. It will be inevitable,'' one euro zone official with knowledge of thetalks said. "It could be six months more.''


    The extension would have to be requested by the new Greek government that emerges after elections on Jan. 25. But with Greek borrowing costs skyrocketing on uncertainty about policy after the elections, Athens looks set to need further euro zone support and a credit line for insurance purposes only may not be enough, euro zone officials said. Also, without another program, under which Greece gets cheap euro zone loans or access to a credit line in exchange for reforms, the European Central Bank said it could not provide liquidity to the Greek banking sector.

    No decisions were taken and the issue is likely to be further discussed at the next meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Jan. 26, a day after the Greek vote.

    "The ECCL is for a country which has in principle market access, and the ECCL is an insurance policy to calm any remaining doubts in the market,'' a second euro zone official said.

    "With some goodwill you could say that towards the end of last year, this could apply to Greece. Now with the uncertainty, stress on the financial system, Greek long-term yield going beyond 10 percent - all that makes it much less obvious Greece qualifies for an ECCL,'' the official said.


    "The entire Greek situation looks less favorable than six weeks ago. What they would need is just a normal program,'' the official said, adding that Greece could need a program extension of five to six months."


    There was no discussion among the officials preparing the ministerial meeting of any amounts of a potential third bailout or any other details. "It was brainstorming, the discussion was about scenarios rather than any concrete decisions,'' the first official said. Another source of concern was the outflow of Greek bank deposits, which the first official said was at about 60 million euros a day. The deposit outflow was among the reasons why two major Greek banks, Eurobank and Alpha, have applied to tap the national central bank's emergency funding a year after ending their reliance on it. Euro zone officials said the deposit outflow undermined the source of funding envisaged for the Greek credit line - the 10.9 billion euros in the Greek bank stability fund, the HFSF, left over from a recapitalization loan for Greek banks.

    After the ECB's asset quality review and stress tests last year, Greek banks were declared in the clear and euro zone finance ministers wanted to re-use some 10 billion of the HFSF money as the new precautionary credit line, leaving roughly 1 billion in for emergencies. "It now looks like it is more prudent to keep more money in the HFSF,'' the second euro zone official said.

    A Greek finance ministry spokesperson declined to comment.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    3. The Swiss Just Made Things Worse for the Euro
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 06:06 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-16/euro-s-march-lower-getting-boost-from-swiss-bankers-currencies.html

    The euro is shaping to be the biggest casualty of Switzerland’s decision to scrap its currency cap.

    Soon after the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly ended its three-year policy of keeping the franc weaker than 1.20 per euro, bearish bets on Europe’s common currency soared. While setting a record low versus the franc yesterday, the euro also plunged 3.5 percent against a basket of 10 developed-nation peers, the most since its 1999 debut, and reached an 11-year low against the dollar today.

    The SNB’s decision removes a key pillar of support for the euro, boosting the odds that its recent slide will accelerate. Companies from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s biggest manager of active bond funds, have in recent days talked about the euro falling to parity with the dollar, a 14 percent decline from its current level.

    MORE
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    6. Can the U.S. Stay Out of the Deflation Vortex?
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 06:44 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://origin-www.businessweek.com/articles/2015-01-16/can-the-us-stay-out-of-the-deflation-vortex#r=rss

    Deflation is like a black hole, sucking seemingly everything into itself. Switzerland succumbed to the vortex on Jan. 15 when the central bank gave up trying to keep its currency from rising—a defeat that will punish the Swiss economy by making the nation's goods more expensive on world markets. Could the U.S. be next? The U.S. dollar is up about 11 percent since last summer by the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, a rise that makes American-made goods less competitive. And there is a whiff of deflation in the air this morning with the news that the U.S. Consumer Price Index fell 0.4 percent in December from the previous month, the biggest decline since the economy was in free fall six years ago. "Deflationary pressures continue to build," Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West, wrote in a report today, Jan. 16, that cited a drop in import prices and came out before the news about the Consumer Price Index.

    The bottom line is that the U.S. is probably safe. The economy is strong enough that it's likely to withstand the deflationary drag emanating from Europe. The U.S. should expand a little more than 3.1 percent in 2015, better than the estimated 2.4 percent this past year, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. But that doesn't mean there's no risk. Deflation is dangerous because it can travel across international borders. Here's the concern in a nutshell: Europe's economy is chronically weak. With demand for goods and services weak, prices in the euro zone fell 0.2 percent over the past year. The European Central Bank is widely expected to try to revive growth by buying bonds to drive down interest rates. That makes the euro a less attractive currency for investors, sending them to other havens, whose currencies are rising. That's why the Swiss franc and the U.S. dollar are getting more expensive—and less competitive. In effect, if Europe's strategy is a success, it will improve European growth at the expense of growth in the U.S., Switzerland, and elsewhere. The rise in the dollar vs. the euro is "great for Europe and their exports and not so much for American exports. ... The heat is on!" Mark Grant, managing director for taxable fixed income at Southwest Securities, wrote in a note to clients today.

    Economists knew that falling gasoline prices would cause the overall price index to decline in December. What they didn't expect was the weakness in the "core" index, which excludes food and energy. The core index was flat compared with November's, while the median expectation was for a 0.1 percent increase. Prices of apparel, vehicles, and airfare fell in December. Inflation that's well below the Fed's 2 percent target will make it harder for the inflation hawks on the Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee to justify raising interest rates this year. "Our expectation is that the policy debate is heating up as inflation cools off," the U.S. economics team of Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a client note. On the other hand, the hawks can argue that the tightening of the U.S. labor market will push up wages this year and eventually put upward pressure on inflation. Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note today that lower prices for energy and imports "won't have much of an impact on services inflation, which makes up 75 percent of the core index." He notes that prices of shelter and medical care did rise in December.

    "One positive from low inflation is that it is boosting workers' real (inflation-adjusted) earnings. With the big drop in gasoline and other energy prices, workers' paychecks are going farther, allowing them to boost their spending on other goods and services," Gus Faucher, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group, wrote in a report today. Indeed, the University of Michigan preliminary consumer sentiment rose this month to its highest level in 11 years.

    SINCE THE US WAS THE SOURCE OF MOST, IF NOT ALL OF THE INFLATION IN THE GLOBAL ASSET MARKET, IT ONLY SEEMS FAIR THAT IT DEFLATE, NOW THAT EVERY TRADING PARTNER IS DEFLATING ALREADY....

    WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND

    MAYBE ELECTIONS WILL COME DOWN IN PRICE SO THAT THE AVERAGE AMERICAN CAN AFFORD TO BUY ONE...
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    13. Thank the SNB for the Truth Tim Knight
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 07:49 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-15/thank-snb-truth

    Remember, years ago, when the markets were a mechanism for honest price discovery and a gathering place for buyers and sellers to participate in open, unvarnished capitalism? Yes, I know it was years ago, but I'm sure you can think back to those days. And do you sometimes ask yourself, "What would it be like if markets were normal again? What if the world's central bankers all decided to go f*ck themselves and leave the markets to act naturally on their own? And how much would I pay to see Janet Yellen commit suicide on pay-per-view?" OK, maybe not that last one, but I bet you've asked the first two.

    Well, my friends, the Swiss National Bank has, by their own actions, provided a sort of answer. Look no further than the Euro/Swiss Franc exchange rate graph:



    There are, contained herein, three distinct section. The cyan (that's "blue" to the color illiterates out there) area is Markets As God Intended. The green section is the rigidly-controlled, ruled-by-doctrine, price-by-decree market, which went on for nearly three years. And the magenta area, which is just a single price bar, neatly represents what happens when the markets are allowed, pushing and shoving, back into reality.

    And that single price bar, my friends, is really all you need to see in order to understand what's ahead. Because one day, probably when Janet is busy shaving her armpits one morning, the markets are going to pop back onto the scene, invited or not, and the graphs are going to "catch up" to where they should have been if our banker friends had never fucked with them in the first place.

    So thank you, Switzerland! It's nice to get a little peek at how things are supposed to work.

    ASIDE FROM THE GRATUITOUS SLURS ON JANET YELLEN...IF HE REALLY WANTS TO GO AFTER SOMEONE, I'D SAY STANLEY FISCHER...
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    4. Ukraine’s Creditors Grab for the Biggest Pieces of Its Carcass by Eric Zuesse
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 06:14 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/ukraines-creditors-grab-biggest-pieces-carcass.html

    The lifelong Russia-enemy, George Soros, and the Russian Government itself are now openly fighting over which parts of the Ukrainian Government they’ll be getting in the bankruptcy proceeding that’s already unofficially starting. Here’s the necessary background, so that the battle now occurring on the part of Ukraine’s creditors can be truthfully and honestly understood:

    In December 2013 — just before the overthrow of the Russia-friendly Ukrainian Government of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, by Soros’s American President and major political-campaign investment, Barack Obama — Russia lent Ukraine $3 billion with a contract saying that if Ukraine’s debt would rise above 60% of Ukraine’s GDP, then Russia would be able to demand immediate repayment, and Ukraine agreed to the contract’s condition that Ukraine wouldn’t pay a cent to any other creditor before the entire due-balance on this $3 billion loan is returned to Russia.

    Then, on 4 February 2014, Victoria Nuland of Obama’s State Department selected Ukrainian banker Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the person to take control over Ukraine as soon as Obama’s Ukrainian coup would occur, which turned out to be 18 days later, on February 22nd.

    Soros’s and Obama’s plan was to privatize as much of the Ukrainian Government as possible in a fire-sale of its assets, such as the valuable gas-fields in the Yuzivska region in Ukraine’s southeast (where the civil war now is), so that Soros and the other investors would be able to get their money back, with interest. Furthermore, inasmuch as only Soros and other insiders would be in on this fire-sale, those same people would also be the bidders; and thus Ukraine’s assets would be sold to them at prices far lower than their actual worth as economic investments for the future. This would turn their prior Ukrainian bonds into super-discounted equity or stock in what now are Ukrainian Government-owned gas-fields, electrical power companies, factories, etc. Furthermore, Western agribusiness giants are now coming into Western Ukraine to buy up Ukrainian farmland, which is among the world’s most-fertile. The basic privatization-scheme that’s being used here had originally been drawn up by the Harvard economist, and the then-World-Bank chief, Lawrence Summers, and by Harvard’s Economics Department, in the 1990s, as being the way for American insider investors and the U.S.S.R.’s Communist Party insiders, to buy the U.S.S.R.’s assets dirt-cheap, and thereby profit from the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Those economists oversaw the sell-offs of industrial and other assets throughout many of the 15 nations comprising the Soviet Union, one of which is Ukraine, where the fire-sales are now occurring.

    With this as the background, the world’s great newspaper, German Economic News, headlines, on January 10th (as translated by the present writer into English), “Putin v. Soros: Russia Grabs for EU-Billions to Ukraine,” and reports that:

    “Just a few days after Angela Merkel cleared the way for a 1.8 billion euro loan from the EU’s tax-money for [Ukrainian Premier] Arseny ‘Yaz’ Yatsenyuk, Russia launched its interest in this money: Moscow is considering to mature a loan it had made to Kiev. Russia makes this move especially against the speculator George Soros.

    Ukraine’s ‘Yaz’ Yatsenyuk met with Chancellor Merkel, at the Chancellor’s Office, on Thursday [Jan. 8]. No sooner was the Premier assured by the EU of receiving 1.8 billion euros, than Russia intervenes for the money — Moscow may trigger the state bankruptcy of Ukraine.

    Russia could use the EU payments to Ukraine to mature a loan that is due at the end of January, and Kiev cannot use its own resources: Moscow could demand early repayment of a three-billion-dollar loan to Ukraine. Ukraine did not meet a number of conditions [of the loan-agreement], reported the Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Saturday [the 10th], citing government sources. Under these circumstances, Russia was forced to insist on the earlier payment.”


    Soros has been lobbying very intensively, after the coup (see all about it by clicking on that link), to persuade the EU, IMF and U.S., to donate enough of Western taxpayers’ money, so as to enable Ukraine to buy enough weapons to win its war against the rebelling portion of Ukraine — the region which had voted 90% for the overthrown former President, Viktor Yanukovych — the region in Ukraine that’s often called “Donbass,” which is in Ukraine’s far east, and which has declared its independence, and which includes much of the Yuzivska gas-field. That region has consistently rejected the Obama-coup-imposed Government; and consequently its gas cannot be used to repay Ukraine’s debts unless Ukraine regains control over that land, where now, almost certainly, even more than 90% of the people reject that Government. (Click here in order to see the transcript of the EU officials’ phone-conversation in which their Foreign-Affairs Minister Catherine Ashton was informed by her own investigator, on 25 February 2014, that Yanukovych had been overthrown in a violent coup, rather than himself perpetrated the bloodshed, and that Ukraine’s current President, Petro Poroshenko himself, acknowledged to the EU’s investigator at the time that it was a coup — which Ashton hadn’t known of until that moment.) This is the reason why the IMF informed the coup Government, on 1 May 2014, that unless it could regain control over the rebels’ land, which means eliminate its residents (since they would never accept a Government that is set upon exterminating them), the IMF would stop lending (actually donating, since these ‘loans’ will come at the end of the long line in the bankruptcy proceeding that’s now inevitable) Ukraine more of its Western taxpayers’ money. Without those gas-fields and other assets, even the existing IMF loans to Ukraine wouldn’t likely ever be able to be paid back. New IMF loans surely won’t be.

    On 6 January 2015, an aide to Poroshenko announced that, as the news-headline on this story the following day phrased it, “Ukraine Says $450 Million Was Stolen from Its Military in 2014.” This report also noted that, “This amount happens to be precisely the same maximum amount of money that the U.S. Government, in legislation that was supported by more than 98% of U.S. Senators and Representatives and that was signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on December 18th, will donate to Ukraine’s military for this year, 2015.” Both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly support Obama’s ethnic-cleansing program to get rid of the people in that region of Ukraine and thus endorsed the $450 million donation by U.S. taxpayers. However, if the people we’re hiring to do that job are stealing as much money as we’re donating to them, then people like Soros could end up losing money on their bond-investments. This is the reason why Soros is pressing the European Union to donate lots more of their taxpayers’ money to this war. In the 5 February issue of the New York Review of Books, he says, “all the consequences of helping Ukraine would be positive. By enabling Ukraine to defend itself, Europe would be indirectly also defending itself.” He doesn’t mention that Ukraine’s Government resulted from a coup instead of from the anti-corruption demonstrators in the Maidan, and he portrays Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as being the aggressor for accepting Crimea back into Russia (where it had been during 1783-1954), and not America’s President Barack Obama as being the aggressor for perpetrating the coup and trying to oust Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from Crimea. Soros says:

    “Putin’s ambition to recreate a Russian empire has unintentionally helped bring into being a new Ukraine that is opposed to Russia and seeks to become the opposite of the old Ukraine with its endemic corruption and ineffective government. The new Ukraine is led by the cream of civil society: young people, many of whom studied abroad and refused to join either government or business on their return because they found both of them repugnant. Many of them found their place in academic institutions, think tanks, and nongovernmental organizations. A widespread volunteer movement, of unprecedented scope and power unseen in other countries, has helped Ukraine to stand strong against Russian aggression.”



    MORE HISTORY AND SUPPORTING LINKS AT OP
    ———-

    Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    10. Soros: Europe must bail out Ukraine to beat Putin
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 07:20 PM
    Jan 2015

    HEDGE FUND OWNER'S SWEAT--SO MANLY!

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/102320384

    Billionaire investor George Soros has called on European officials to urgently boost their efforts to support the Ukrainian economy, to help contend with the threat posed by Russia to the European economy. Soros, who is Hungarian by birth, stated that Europe needs to "wake up" and recognize that it is under attack from Russia, and argues that Ukraine's economy is more important to the bloc than the current political uncertainty being faced in member countries like Greece, in a new essay in the New York Review of Books this week.

    &quot There is) an urgent need to reorient the current policies of the European Union toward Russia and Ukraine. I have been arguing for a two-pronged approach that balances the sanctions against Russia with assistance for Ukraine on a much larger scale. This rebalancing needs to be carried out in the first quarter of 2015," he wrote in the essay, which was formally published late Wednesday.


    Ukraine has been thrown into turmoil after anti-government and pro-EU protests at the start of 2014 led to a change of leadership. Running battles in the streets of Kiev turned into military conflicts on the eastern border, with Moscow being accused of aiding pro-Kremlin rebels in the region. Russia decided to annex the southern Ukrainian area of Crimea back in March 2014 and, as a result, has faced tough economic sanctions from Western nations. These sanctions have left their mark, alongside a dramatic fall in the price of oil which Russia remains heavily reliant on for revenues. Moscow officials are now predicting that the recession for Russia this year could mean growth contracting by around 4 or 5 percent. The Russian ruble has depreciated around 85 percent against the dollar since the start of 2014 while the Ukrainian hyrvnia has lost 92 percent since the same date. Soros argued that the damage done to Russia has been faster and deeper than anyone could have expected and added that it would not be surprising if the crisis ended up with a default for the country.

    "Coming on top of worldwide deflationary pressures that are particularly acute in the euro area and rising military conflicts such as the one with ISIS, a Russian default could cause considerable disruption in the global financial system, with the euro area being particularly vulnerable," he noted.

    Europe, and in particular Germany, has been seen as particularly vulnerable to the geopolitical tensions with Russia. Russia exports its gas reserves to Europe through Ukraine, and the euro zone also exports goods in the opposite direction. EU exports to Russia are currently dominated by machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, medicines and agricultural products, according to the European Union, with Russia being the third largest trading partner for the region. Soros argued that more financial aid for Ukraine could help it become a "land of promise" that would not allow Putin to blame Russia's troubles on Western nations. Under this scenario, Putin would be seen as clearly responsible for the turmoil to Russia and he would either have to change course or try to stay in power by brutal repression, Soros argued.

    "If he fell from power, an economic and political reformer would be likely to succeed him. Either way, Putin's Russia would cease to be a potent threat to Europe," he added.


    The board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are set to meet and discuss Ukraine's bailout on January 18 and will hold fresh talks with Kiev over potentially adding to its existing $17 billion aid package. The country was given an initial $3 billion in May at the height of the turmoil, but now appears to need more money to stay afloat, amid rampant inflation and the near-halting of economic activity in regions where there is still military conflict. The IMF aid is dependent on the government implementing broad-based economic reforms and an anti-corruption drive. However, European political leaders now need to step to the plate, according to Soros, and treat the country like it would do Greece or Ireland. They must tap into the large unused borrowing capacity of the EU and find other unorthodox sources, he stressed. He estimated that funds from the Union would bring the total aid to fifteen times Ukraine's current IMF quota.


    SOROS IS INSANE...OR HE FELL INTO THE KOOLAID. IF THE EUROZONE WON'T BAIL OUT GREECE, WHICH IS A MEMBER, WHY SHOULD IT BAIL OUT UKRAINE, A FAILED STATE IN A CIVIL WAR AND NOT A EUROZONE MEMBER?
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    21. US to Provide $2 Billion Loan Guarantee to Ukraine
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 09:43 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/us-plans-loan-help-for-ukraine-but-conflict-claims-more-lives/2598071.html

    The United States plans to provide up to two billion dollars in loan guarantees to Ukraine this year. The U.S. Treasury Department announced the plan on Tuesday. The move is part of an international assistance package to support Ukraine. The country faces a financial crisis, partly because of tensions with Russia and separatists in the east.The U.S. Treasury said the loan guarantees would be tied to Ukraine’s government enacting economic reforms. The International Monetary Fund proposed the reform measures. IMF officials are in Kyiv this week. They are negotiating the details of an addition to a deal, which was said to be worth billions of dollars. The U.S. Treasury Undersecretary has been meeting separately with Ukrainian officials.

    Four nation summit on Ukraine is cancelled

    Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France have cancelled plans for talks this week on the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The nations did so because of a lack of progress in a truce agreement signed in September. The summit between Ukrainian, Russian, German and French leaders was to take place in Kazakhstan on Thursday. However, fighting between Ukrainian government forces and separatists is continuing. Many people believe Russia is actively supporting the separatists. There is no sign that high-level talks on Ukraine will begin soon...The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France did hold talks in Berlin on Monday. However, they said “further work needs to be done” in holding the ceasefire agreement known as the Minsk Protocol before officials can meet.

    MORE
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    5. Why Are Gas Prices So Low? THE ONION KNOWS!
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 06:20 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-are-gas-prices-so-low,37779/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=Pic:3 efault

    The average price of a gallon of gas is at its lowest level since April 2009, giving rise to speculation about why the cost of oil continues to drop and how long consumers can expect the trend to last. Here are answers to common questions about the low price of gas:

    Why are gas prices so low?

    Jesus, why can’t you just enjoy this for a minute and not worry about that?

    How long will gas prices remain low?

    Forever.

    Who benefits from the price drop?

    Anyone who’s alive to enjoy low prices but dead before the full consequences of fossil fuel usage are felt.

    Where does oil come from?


    The decomposing remains of long-dead environmental regulations.

    I own an electric or hybrid car. How does this affect me?

    It means you wasted your fucking money.

    Where is gasoline cheapest?

    Definitely go to the Shell down off exit 17, it’s like six cents cheaper than the Sunoco right there.

    Where does this put green technology?

    Oh, we don’t need that anymore.


    Does it get any better than this, folks?

    No.


    Isn’t it bad to increasingly rely on chemical fracking processes that have a negative impact on the environment and still unknown effects on human health?


    Oh, my God, have you heard it could go even lower than $2.00? Seriously, it could happen. Think of all the money you could save! It’s like stuffing bills right in your pocket.

    I love the way gasoline smells. Frankly, I find it arousing. Are there others like me, who’d be open to meeting up and exploring this interest?

    I can be reached at home most weeknights: 312-555-4381.

    Is there anything we can do to help out the energy companies that are losing money due to the decline in the price of oil?

    Yes. Donation information can be found on the home pages of BP, ExxonMobil, Gazprom, and other oil and gas conglomerates’ websites.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    7. Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar By Tyler Durden
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 06:51 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-14/russia-just-pulled-itself-out-petrodollar

    Back in November, before most grasped just how serious the collapse in crude was (and would become, as well as its massive implications), we wrote "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed", because for the first time in almost two decades, energy-exporting countries would pull their "petrodollars" out of world markets in 2015. This empirical death of Petrodollar followed years of windfalls for oil exporters such as Russia, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Much of that money found its way into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, through so-called petrodollar recycling. We added that in 2014 "the oil producers will effectively import capital amounting to $7.6 billion. By comparison, they exported $60 billion in 2013 and $248 billion in 2012, according to the following graphic based on BNP Paribas calculations."



    The problem was compounded by its own positive feedback loop: as the last few weeks vividly demonstrated, plunging oil would lead to a further liquidation in foreign reserves for the oil exporters who rushed to preserve their currencies, leading to even greater drops in oil as the viable producers rushed to pump out as much crude out of the ground as possible in a scramble to put the weakest producers out of business, and to crush marginal production. Call it Game Theory gone mad and on steroids. Ironically, when the price of crude started its self-reinforcing plunge, such a death would happen whether the petrodollar participants wanted it, or, as the case may be, were dragged into the abattoir kicking and screaming. It is the latter that seems to have taken place with the one country that many thought initially would do everything in its power to have an amicable departure from the Petrodollar and yet whose divorce from the USD has quickly become a very messy affair, with lots of screaming and the occasional artillery shell.

    As Bloomberg reports Russia "may unseal its $88 billion Reserve Fund and convert some of its foreign-currency holdings into rubles, the latest government effort to prop up an economy veering into its worst slump since 2009." These are dollars which Russia would have otherwise recycled into US denominated assets. Instead, Russia will purchase even more Rubles and use the proceeds for FX and economic stabilization purposes. "Together with the central bank, we are selling a part of our foreign-currency reserves,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in Moscow today. “We’ll get rubles and place them in deposits for banks, giving liquidity to the economy." Call it less than amicable divorce, call it what you will: what it is, is Russia violently leaving the ranks of countries that exchange crude for US paper.

    More:

    Russia may convert as much as 500 billion rubles from one of the government’s two sovereign wealth funds to support the national currency, Siluanov said, calling the ruble “undervalued.” The Finance Ministry last month started selling foreign currency remaining on the Treasury’s accounts.

    The entire 500 billion rubles or part of the amount will be converted in January-February through the central bank, according to Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev. The Bank of Russia will determine the timing and method of the operation.

    The ruble, the world’s second-worst performing currency last year, weakened for a fourth day, losing 1.3 percent to 66.0775 against the dollar by 3:21 p.m. in Moscow. It trimmed a drop of as much as 2 percent after Siluanov’s comments. The ruble’s continued slump this year underscores the fragility of coordinated measures by Russia’s government and central bank that steered the ruble’s rebound from a record-low intraday level of 80.10 on Dec. 16. OAO Gazprom and four other state-controlled exporters were ordered last month to cut foreign-currency holdings by March 1 to levels no higher than they were on Oct. 1. The central bank sought to make it easier for banks to access dollars and euros while raising its key rate to 17 percent, the emergency level it introduced last month to arrest the ruble collapse.

    Today’s announcement “looks ruble-supportive, as together with state-driven selling from exporters it would support FX supply on the market,” Dmitry Polevoy, chief economist for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States at ING Groep NV in Moscow, said by e-mail. “Also, it will be helpful for banks, while there might be some negative effects related to extra money supply and risks of using some of the money on the FX market for short-term speculations.


    Bloomberg's dready summary of the US economy is generally spot on, and is to be expected when any nation finally leaves, voluntarily or otherwise, the stranglehold of a global reserve currency. What Bloomberg failed to account for is what happens to the remainder of the Petrodollar world. Here is what we said last time:

    Outside from the domestic economic impact within EMs due to the downward oil price shock, we believe that the implications for financial market liquidity via the reduced recycling of petrodollars should not be underestimated. Because energy exporters do not fully invest their export receipts and effectively ‘save’ a considerable portion of their income, these surplus funds find their way back into bank deposits (fuelling the loan market) as well as into financial markets and other assets. This capital has helped fund debt among importers, helping to boost overall growth as well as other financial markets liquidity conditions.

    This year, we expect that incremental liquidity typically provided by such recycled flows will be markedly reduced, estimating that direct and other capital outflows from energy exporters will have declined by USD253bn YoY. Of course, these economies also receive inward capital, so on a net basis, the additional capital provided externally is much lower. This year, we expect that net capital flows will be negative for EM, representing the first net inflow of capital (USD8bn) for the first time in eighteen years. This compares with USD60bn last year, which itself was down from USD248bn in 2012. At its peak, recycled EM petro dollars amounted to USD511bn back in 2006. The declines seen since 2006 not only reflect the changed global environment, but also the propensity of underlying exporters to begin investing the money domestically rather than save. The implications for financial markets liquidity - not to mention related downward pressure on US Treasury yields – is negative.


    Considering the wildly violent moves we have seen so far in the market confirming just how little liquidity is left in the market, and of course, the absolutely collapse in Treasury yields, with the 30 Year just hitting a record low, this prediction has been borne out precisely as expected. And now, we await to see which other country will follow Russia out of the Petrodollar next, and what impact that will have not only on the world's reserve currency, on US Treasury rates, and on the most financialized commodity as this chart demonstrates...



    ... but on what is most important to developed world central planners everywhere: asset prices levels, and specifically what happens when the sellers emerge into what is rapidly shaping up as the most illiquid market in history.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    8. "financial market illiquidity"
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 07:10 PM
    Jan 2015

    Isn't that a sanitized way of saying

    YOUR PAPER ASSETS AREN'T WORTH THE PAPER THEY ARE PRINTED ON!

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    11. Russia Cuts Off Ukraine Gas Supply To 6 European Countries By Tyler Durden
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 07:34 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-14/russia-cuts-ukraine-gas-supply-6-european-countries

    Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian state energy giant Gazprom to cut supplies to and through Ukraine amid accusations, according to The Daily Mail, that its neighbor has been siphoning off and stealing Russian gas. Due to these "transit risks for European consumers in the territory of Ukraine," Gazprom cut gas exports to Europe by 60%, plunging the continent into an energy crisis "within hours." Perhaps explaining the explosion higher in NatGas prices (and oil) today, gas companies in Ukraine confirmed that Russia had cut off supply; and six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas. The EU raged that the sudden cut-off to some of its member countries was "completely unacceptable," but Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller later added that Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey; and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak stated unequivocally, "the decision has been made."

    As Bloomberg reports,

    Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey, a surprise move that the European Union’s energy chief said would hurt its reputation as a supplier.

    The decision makes no economic sense, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s vice president for energy union, told reporters today after talks with Russian government officials and the head of gas exporter, OAO Gazprom, in Moscow.

    Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural gas supplier, plans to send 63 billion cubic meters through a proposed link under the Black Sea to Turkey, fully replacing shipments via Ukraine, Chief Executive Officer Alexey Miller said during the discussions. About 40 percent of Russia’s gas exports to Europe and Turkey travel through Ukraine’s Soviet-era network.
    ...
    Sefcovic said he was “very surprised” by Miller’s comment, adding that relying on a Turkish route, without Ukraine, won’t fit with the EU’s gas system.

    Gazprom plans to deliver the fuel to Turkey’s border with Greece and “it’s up to the EU to decide what to do” with it further, according to Sefcovic.


    Which, as The Daily Mail reports, has led to a major (and imminent) problem for Europe...

    Russia cut gas exports to Europe by 60 per cent today, plunging the continent into an energy crisis 'within hours' as a dispute with Ukraine escalated.

    This morning, gas companies in Ukraine said that Russia had completely cut off their supply.

    Six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas shipped via Ukraine today, in a sharp escalation of a struggle over energy that threatens Europe as winter sets in.

    Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments from Russia through Ukraine.


    As Bloomberg goes on to note, Gazprom has reduced deliveries via Ukraine after price and debt disputes with the neighboring country that twice in the past decade disrupted supplies to the EU during freezing weather.

    “Transit risks for European consumers on the territory of Ukraine remain,” Miller said in an e-mailed statement. “There are no other options” except for the planned Turkish Stream link, he said.

    “We have informed our European partners, and now it is up to them to put in place the necessary infrastructure starting from the Turkish-Greek border,” Miller said.

    Russia won’t hurt its image with a shift to Turkey because it has always been a reliable gas supplier and never violated its obligations, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters today in Moscow after meeting Sefcovic.

    “The decision has been made,” Novak said. “We are diversifying and eliminating the risks of unreliable countries that caused problems in past years, including for European consumers.”


    * * *

    That helps to explain today's epic meltup in NatGas futures...

    * * *

    "They [the Russians] have reduced deliveries to 92million cubic metres per 24 hours compared to the promised 221million cubic metres without explanation," said Valentin Zemlyansky of the Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz.

    "We do not understand how we will deliver gas to Europe. This means that in a few hours problems with supplies to Europe will begin."


    * * *

    Check to you Europe (i.e. Washington)... Because it's getting mighty cold in Europe...(and bear in mind the consequences of cold, pissed off Europeans in the past).
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    12. EXCELLENT SUMMARY FROM THE COMMENTS
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 07:38 PM
    Jan 2015

    FROM Latina Lover

    Suck it EU, suck the USSA ass really hard, because this is the only gas you will get, out of obamas ass.

    For readers who need a history lesson, Imagine the situation... A mere year ago.. Ukraine was a calm and peaceful nation, it had extremely good gas deals with Russia, buying the cheapest gas in Europe, it was about to get a 19 billion dollar loan and it was going to join the Eurasian economic zone.. All was well..

    But then the democratically elected president dared to oppose the will of USA.. And within months he was overthrown by a violent antidemocratic coup that installed pro-USA Nazis and oligarchs as the new junta government, the people of Crimea took their chance and seceded while the unconstitutional pro-USA junta was still new in power... And the Donbass region took the chance and voted for more self-rule... At which the pro-USA coup government responded to by sending armed Nazi battalions and forced conscripts.. Starting the Ukrainian civil war.

    Now the Ukrainian economy is ruined.
    20,000+ Ukrainian soldiers are dead.
    Ukraine pays normal gas prices.
    Ukraine is moments away from default.
    Ukraine's relationship with its brother Russia is ruined.
    The Donbass region is in revolt and Crimea is lost forever.
    Even if Donbass was taken back with military violence there would be partisan warfare there forever due to all the acts of terror and genocide committed by the pro-USA forces (Starvation, cluster-bombing, terror)
    And now Ukraine is about to loose its biggest source of income, the oil/gas pipelines to Europe.

    Ukraine's situation has gone from positive to hell in a mere couple of months. Just like the situation in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, where USA meddled as well.


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


    The only thing that is more dangerous than being America's enemy, is being America's friend.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    15. Gazprom warns EU to link to Turkey pipeline or lose Russian gas
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 08:08 PM
    Jan 2015
    https://news.yahoo.com/gazprom-warns-eu-turkey-pipeline-lose-russian-gas-212440234.html

    Russia's Gazprom giant on Wednesday urged the European Union to link up to its planned energy pipeline to Turkey or lose the gas that now transits Ukraine. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller reminded the new European Commissioner for Energy Union, Maros Sefcovic that the South Stream project to deliver gas to Europe through Ukraine has been scrapped.

    Hence, "the Turkish Stream is the only route along which 63 billion cubic metres of Russian gas can be supplied, which at present transit Ukraine. There are no other options," he said.


    As relations between the European Union and Russia sank to a new low since the Cold War over Moscow's role in the Ukraine conflict, President Vladimir Putin in December said the South Stream project had been scrapped. The South Stream pipeline would have bypassed Ukraine and flowed underneath Turkey's waters in the Black Sea and through the Balkans, crossing Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia and then Austria to connect with the main European pipeline network. Instead, Russia now plans to build a new gas pipeline to Turkey, which it already supplies through an existing pipeline called Blue Stream, turning Turkey into a key transit centre for Russian gas. Turkey is the second-largest European importer of Russian gas after Germany.

    "Our European partners have been informed of this and now their task is to create the necessary gas transport infrastructure from the Greek and Turkish border," said Miller, according to a Gazprom statement.

    "They have a couple of years at most to do this. It's a very, very tight deadline. In order to meet the deadline, the work on building new trunk gas pipelines in European Union countries must start immediately today," Miller warned.

    "Otherwise, these volumes of gas could end up in other markets."


    Moscow blamed the European Union for the cancellation of the South Stream project, saying Brussels imposed conditions that building the pipeline impossible, such as demanding that Gazprom allow other producers to use its pipelines. Russia is seeking to diversify its gas exports away from its current markets of the former Soviet Union and Europe and last year Gazprom signed its first contract with China, which it is due to start supplying in 2018.

    The European Union is Gazprom's main client outside Russia and a major portion of Russian gas flows through Ukraine.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    40. I wanted to be sure you saw them!
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:31 AM
    Jan 2015

    The paint is peeling fast off this counterfeit work of art...

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    14. Down the Plughole 40 Years of Economic Policy in One Chart By Mike Whitney
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 08:03 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/15/40-years-of-economic-policy-in-one-chart/



    Growth of Real Hourly Compensation for Production/Nonsupervisory Workers and Productivity, 1948–2011

    Is America in the throes of a class war? Look at the chart and decide for yourself. It’s all there in black and white, and you don’t need to be an economist to figure it out. But, please, take some time to study the chart, because there’s more here than meets the eye. This isn’t just about productivity and compensation. It’s a history lesson too. It pinpoints the precise moment in time when the country lost its way and began its agonizing descent into Police State USA. That’s what it really means...It all began in the 1970s, that’s when everything started going down the plughole. Once wages detached from productivity, the rich progressively got richer. They used their wealth to reduce taxes on capital, role back critical regulations, break up the unions, install their own lapdog politicians, push through trade agreements that pitted US workers against low-paid labor in the developing world, and induce their shady Central Bank buddies to keep interest rates locked below the rate of inflation so they could cream hefty profits off gigantic asset bubbles. Now, 40 years later, they own the whole f*cking shooting match, lock, stock and barrel. And it’s all because management decided to take the lion’s share of productivity gains which threw the whole system off-kilter undermining the basic pillars of democratic government. Here’s how FDR summed it up:

    “The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies.,” April 29, 1938. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.

    Are we there yet?

    Pretty close, I’d say. The only way to preserve democracy is by keeping one hand firmly clasped around the windpipe of every rich bastard in the country. If you can’t keep your tycoons in check, you’d might as well throw in the towel and accept a life of indentured servitude now, because that’s where you’re headed anyway. Here’s a short rundown of the changes that took place in the ’70s by economist Lawrence Mishel:

    “Productivity in the economy grew by 80.4 percent between 1973 and 2011 but the growth of real hourly compensation of the median worker grew by far less, just 10.7 percent…. The pattern was very different from 1948 to 1973, when the hourly compensation of a typical worker grew in tandem with productivity. Reestablishing the link between productivity and pay of the typical worker is an essential component of any effort to provide shared prosperity and, in fact, may be necessary for obtaining robust growth without relying on asset bubbles and increased household debt.

    It is hard to see how reestablishing a link between productivity and pay can occur without restoring decent and improved labor standards, restoring the minimum wage to a level corresponding to half the average wage (as it was in the late 1960s), and making real the ability of workers to obtain and practice collective bargaining.” (The wedges between productivity and median compensation growth, Lawrence Mishel, EPI)


    When was the last time you heard Obama talk about “improving labor standards” or “collective bargaining”? Don’t make me laugh. It’s not even on his radar. Did you know that inequality has actually gotten worse under Obama? Much worse. It’s true. He might proclaim his determination to “tax millionaires” in one of his blustery orations, but it’s all just rhetorical fakery. The fact is, the 1 percenters have done better under Obama than they did under Bush. Check this out from Naked Capitalism:



    Yup, under Bush, the 1% captured a disproportionate share of the income gains from the Bush boom of 2002-2007. They got 65 cents of every dollar created in that boom, up 20 cents from when Clinton was President. Under Obama, the 1% got 93 cents of every dollar created in that boom. That’s not only more than under Bush, up 28 cents. In the transition from Bush to Obama, inequality got worse, faster, than under the transition from Clinton to Bush. Obama accelerated the growth of inequality.” (Growth of Income Inequality Is Worse Under Obama than Bush, Matt Stoller, Naked Capitalism)


    93 cents of every buck has gone to the 1 percenters under Obama. And you wonder why Wall Street loves this guy? It’s because he’s bent over backwards to make them richer, that’s why. Just look:



    Graph (4) above: the blue line across the bottom of the graph represents the wealth of the bottom 90% of U.S. households. The red line represents the wealth of the richest 0.1%. Source: Emmanuel Saez (The Climate Crisis is Capitalism, Rob Urie, CounterPunch)

    The rich are making money hand over fist, and it’s all due to President Twoface and his dodgy friends at the Federal Reserve. Of course, Obama would like everyone to think that he’s really rooting for the little guy, doing his best to boost wages, create more jobs and raise living standards for ordinary working people.

    Right. Check out this speech he gave in 2013:

    “The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral claim that I’m making here. There are practical consequences to rising inequality and reduced mobility.”


    Got that? Obama is all about closing the gap between the rich and the poor. Just don’t look at his record or you might notice a slight discrepancy between what he says and what he does...The fact is, stocks have surged under Obama as have corporate profits which “have doubled since he took office in 2009?. At the same time, he’s overseen the slowest recovery in the postwar era, stood idle while middle class incomes were shaved by nearly $5,000 annually, and refused to intervene when over 700,000 public sector jobs were slashed in the early days of his administration. And we won’t even mention the health care debacle, the endless spying, the perennial warmongering, targeted assassinations or Gitmo.

    But as bad as Obama may be, the problem didn’t start with him. It goes back decades as the first chart indicates. The steady erosion of workers bargaining power, changes in the tax code favoring capital, anti-worker trade agreements, deregulation, loosey-goosy monetary policy and, of course, the “biggie”, financialization, have all contributed to the evisceration of the middle class which now appears to be hanging by a thread. Check out this clip from authors John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff who researched the roots of financialization and wrote about it in an article in The Monthly Review titled “Financial Implosion and Stagnation”:

    “It was the reality of economic stagnation beginning in the 1970s, as heterodox economists Riccardo Bellofiore and Joseph Halevi have recently emphasized, that led to the emergence of “the new financialized capitalist regime,” a kind of “paradoxical financial Keynesianism” whereby demand in the economy was stimulated primarily “thanks to asset-bubbles.” Moreover, it was the leading role of the United States in generating such bubbles—despite (and also because of) the weakening of capital accumulation proper—together with the dollar’s reserve currency status, that made U.S. monopoly-finance capital the “catalyst of world effective demand,” beginning in the 1980s. But such a financialized growth pattern was unable to produce rapid economic advance for any length of time, and was unsustainable, leading to bigger bubbles that periodically burst, bringing stagnation more and more to the surface.

    A key element in explaining this whole dynamic is to be found in the falling ratio of wages and salaries as a percentage of national income in the United States. Stagnation in the 1970s led capital to launch an accelerated class war against workers to raise profits by pushing labor costs down. The result was decades of increasing inequality.” (Financial Implosion and Stagnation, John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, Monthly Review)


    Let me get this straight: Persistent stagnation paved the way for financial engineering and asset bubbles where investors could make beaucoup dough regardless of the (abysmal) condition of the underlying economy? Is that it? Sounds a lot like today, doesn’t it; where corporations are minimizing their capital expenditures, laying off workers, and reducing revenues, but still making record profits by goosing stock prices with buybacks which add absolutely nothing to productivity. But, then again, why expand your business if you can make piles of moolah by just loading up on your own shares? It’s madness, and it’s all the result of 6 years of zero rates and QE which has lured investors further and further out on the risk curve. The system is so deluged with liquidity that people are taking chances they never would have otherwise....But where do we see “the falling ratio of wages and salaries as a percentage of national income in the United States” that the authors mention in their article? Is there any real proof of a class war or is it just more leftist folderol?

    Graph: Compensation of Employees, Received: Wage and Salary Disbursements/Gross Domestic Product



    It sure looks like class war to me.

    MASSIVE EDIT--SEE LINK

    So, is America in the throes of a class war or not?

    Indeed, it is. But only one side is fighting.

    Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    16. U.S. attorney general bans asset seizure by local police
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 08:29 PM
    Jan 2015
    https://news.yahoo.com/u-attorney-general-bans-asset-seizure-local-police-195542428.html

    State and local police in the United States will no longer be able to use federal laws to justify seizing property without evidence of a crime, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Friday. The practice of local police taking property, including cash and cars, from people that they stop, and of handing it over to federal authorities, became common during the country's war on drugs in the 1980s.

    Holder cited "safeguarding civil liberties" as a reason for the change in policy.


    The order directs federal agencies who have collected property during such seizures to withdraw their participation, except if the items collected could endanger the public, as in the case of firearms.

    Holder said the ban was the first step in a comprehensive review the Justice Department has launched of the program.



    SON OF A GUN--THE MAN ISN'T A STUFFED DUMMY! OOOH--THEY MUST HAVE NAILED SOMEBODY WITH CONNECTIONS!


    Justice Department Ends Role in Controversial Seizure Practice
    New Policy Bars Participating in So-Called Federally Adopted Forfeitures
    By
    Devlin Barrett


    http://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-ends-role-in-controversial-seizure-practice-1421438753?mod=WSJ_myyahoo_module

    WASHINGTON—The Justice Department will no longer participate in certain types of controversial asset seizures by local police agencies under a new directive issued Friday by Attorney General Eric Holder.

    The new policy bars the department from participating in what officials call federally adopted forfeitures—when a local police agency seizes property and requests a federal agency take the seized asset and forfeit it under federal...
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    19. WAPO: Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 09:31 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/holder-ends-seized-asset-sharing-process-that-split-billions-with-local-state-police/2015/01/16/0e7ca058-99d4-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html

    Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proving that a crime occurred. Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

    Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing. The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. The program allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of the adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

    “With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement.

    Holder’s decision allows some limited exceptions, including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, a small fraction of the total. This would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the program. While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, the federal program was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police departments. Many states require seized proceeds to go into the general fund.

    [blockquote]A Justice official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the attorney general’s motivation, said Holder “also believes that the new policy will eliminate any possibility that the adoption process might unintentionally incentivize unnecessary stops and seizures.”

    Holder’s decision follows a Washington Post investigation published in September that found that police have made cash seizures worth almost $2.5 billion from motorists and others without search warrants or indictments since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Post found that local and state police routinely pulled over drivers for minor traffic infractions, pressed them to agree to warrantless searches and seized large amounts of cash without evidence of wrongdoing. The law allows such seizures and forces the owners to prove their property was legally acquired in order to get it back. Police spent the seizure proceeds with little oversight, in some cases buying luxury cars, high-powered weapons and military-grade gear such as armored cars, according to an analysis of Justice Department data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

    News of Holder’s decision stunned advocates who have for a long time unsuccessfully sought to reverse civil asset forfeiture laws, arguing that they undermine core American values, such as property rights and due process.

    MUCH MUCH MORE AT LINK--FOR ONCE, THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, ERIC HOLDER AND THE WASHINGTON POST HAVE ACTUALLY DONE THEIR JOBS.

    TOO BAD IT TOOK THIS LONG. LEGACY, BABY, THAT'S WHERE IT'S AT.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    20. America's Dirtiest Cops: Cash, Cocaine and Corruption on the Texas Border
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 09:35 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/americas-dirtiest-cops-cash-cocaine-texas-hidalgo-county-20150105



    TOO BAD TOM LEHRER ISN'T UP TO WRITING A LITTLE DITTY ABOUT BEATING UP A COP OR A POLICE DEPT. OR THE WHOLE JUSTICE SYSTEM....

    kickysnana

    (3,908 posts)
    26. That ought to cheer them up.
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 03:41 AM
    Jan 2015

    Yesterday we had another officer involved shooting. Nowadays first reports are sketchy to begin with but the TV station immediately asked somebody in the community about it and the quote was that they "hoped that there would be an independent investigation."

    Today, in response to that quote, a uniformed police spokesperson I had never seen and said it was determined that the man had threatened to kill someone which is why the police were called and indeed he have a gun and was threatening, at the time of the shooting. The spokesperson was not looking at the camera, was definitely defiant, and acting like he was being persecuted for something.

    I partially blame the single officer programs for making all of them feel unsafe all the time. Another bad "new" idea.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    17. Regional U.S. mortgage agency settles lawsuits with banks
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 08:33 PM
    Jan 2015
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/regional-u-mortgage-agency-settles-163558750.html

    The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco said on Thursday it reached a settlement worth $459 million with certain banks it sued after buying mortgage-backed securities that soured following the housing bust.

    The banks sued included JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Countrywide Securities, UBS Group AG, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America, which acquired Countrywide. A San Francisco FHLB spokeswoman declined to identify which banks agreed to a settlement.

    The lawsuits, filed by the federal mortgage finance agency in 2010, covered 134 bond issues that the regional FHLB paid more than $19.1 billion for from mid-2004 to 2008.

    "The Bank's litigation continues against various issuers, dealers and underwriters," San Francisco FHLB said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    18. Ruin Is Our Future By Paul Craig Roberts 8 STEPS TO THE FUTURE
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 09:13 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40723.htm

    Neoconservatives arrayed in their Washington offices are congratulating themselves on their success in using the Charlie Hebdo affair to reunite Europe with Washington’s foreign policy. No more French votes with the Palestinians against the Washington-Israeli position. No more growing European sympathy with the Palestinians. No more growing European opposition to launching new wars in the Middle East. No more calls from the French president to end the sanctions against Russia. Do the neoconservatives also understand that they have united Europeans with the right-wing anti-immigration political parties? The wave of support for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists is the wave of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, and Germany’s PEGIDA sweeping over Europe. These parties are empowered by the anti-immigration fervor that was orchestrated in order to reunite Europeans with Washington and Israel.

    Once again the arrogant and insolent neoconservatives have blundered. Charlie Hebdo’s empowerment of the anti-immigration parties has the potential to revolutionize European politics and destroy Washington’s empire. See my weekend interview with King World News for my thoughts on this potential game-changer. http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-new-crisis-worse-russia-unleashing-black-swans-west/

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

    The reports from the UK Daily Mail and from Zero Hedge that Russia has cut off natural gas deliveries to six European countries must be incorrect. These sources are credible and well-informed, but such a cut-off would have instantly produced political and financial turmoil of which there is no sign. Therefore, unless there is a news blackout, Russia’s action has been misunderstood.

    We know something real has happened. Otherwise, EU energy official Maros Sefcovic would not be expressing such consternation. Although I am without any definite information, I believe I know what the real story is. Russia, tired of Ukraine’s theft of the natural gas that passes through the country on its way to delivery to Europe, has made a decision to route the gas to Turkey, thus bypassing Ukraine.

    The Russian energy minister has confirmed this decision and added that if European countries wish to avail themselves of this gas supply, they must put in place the infrastructure or pipeline to bring the gas into their countries.

    In other words, there is a potential for a cutoff in the future, but no cutoff at the present.

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

    These two events–Charlie Hebdo and the Russian decision to cease delivering gas to Europe via Ukraine–should remind us that the potential for black swans, and unintended consequences of official decisions that can produce black swans, always exist. Not even the American “superpower” is immune from black swans.

    There is as much circumstantial evidence that the CIA and French Intelligence are responsible for the Charlie Hebdo shootings as there is that the shootings were carried out by the two brothers whose ID was conveniently found in the alleged get-away car. As the French made certain that the brothers were killed before they could talk, we will never know what they had to say about the plot. The only evidence we have that the brothers are guilty is the claim by the security forces. Every time I hear government claims without real evidence, I remember Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” and Iran’s “nuclear weapons program.” If a US National Security Advisor can conjure up out of thin air “mushroom clouds over an American city,” Cherif and Said Kouachi can be turned into killers. After all, they are dead and cannot protest. If this was, and we will never know for certain, a false flag attack, it achieved Washington’s goal of reuniting Europe under Washington and Israeli auspices. But this success has an unintended consequence. The unintended consequence is to unify Europe under the anti-immigration policy of the right-wing parties, thus empowering the leaders of those parties. If this surmise is correct, Marie Le Pen and Nigel Farage will find their lives and/or reputations in danger as Washington will resist the rise of European governments that do not adhere to Washington’s line.

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

    The consternation caused by Russia’s decision to relocate its gas delivery to Europe is proof that Russia holds many cards that Russia could play that would bring down the political and financial structures of the Western World.

    China holds similar cards.

    The two countries are not playing their cards, because they do not think that they need them. Instead, the two powers are withdrawing from the Western financial system that serves Western hegemony over the world. They are creating all of the economic institutions that they need in order to be completely independent of the West. Therefore, the Russian and Chinese governments reason, “Why be provocative and slap down the Western fools. They might resort to their nuclear weapons, and the entire world would be lost. Let’s just walk away while they encourage us to depart with their provocations.”

    We can be thankful that Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the Chinese government are both intelligent and humane, unlike Western leaders. Imagine, for example, the dire consequences for the West if Putin were to become personally involved as a result of the numerous affronts to both Russia and Putin himself. Putin can destroy NATO and the entire Western financial system whenever he wants. All he has to do is to announce that as NATO has declared economic war against Russia, Russia no longer sells energy to NATO members. The NATO alliance would dissolve as Europe cannot survive without Russian energy supplies. Washington’s empire would end. Putin realizes that the insolent neoconservatives would have to push the nuclear button in order to save face. Unlike Putin, their egos are on the line. Thus, Putin saves the world from nuclear war by not being provocative.

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

    Now, imagine if the Chinese government were to lose its patience with Washington. To confront the “exceptional, indispensable, unipower” with the reality of its impotence, all China needs to do is to dump its massive dollar-denominated financial assets on the market, all at once, just as the Federal Reserve’s bullion bank agents dump massive uncovered gold contracts on the future’s market. In order to avoid US financial collapse, the Federal Reserve would have to print massive amounts of new dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings. As the Federal Reserve would protect US financial markets by purchasing the dumped Chinese holdings, the Chinese would lose nothing from the sale. It is the next step that is decisive. The Chinese government then dumps the massive holdings of dollars it has received from its selloff of dollar-dominated financial instruments.

    Now what happens? The Fed can print dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings, but the Fed cannot print foreign currencies with which to buy up the dumped dollars.

    The massive supply of dollars dumped in the exchange market by China would have no takers. The dollar’s value would collapse. Washington could no longer pay its bills by printing money. Americans living in an import-dependent country, thanks to jobs offshoring, would be faced with high prices that would seriously erode their living standard. The United States would experience economic, social, and political instability.

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

    Putting aside their brainwashing, their defensiveness and patriotic support of the regime in Washington, Americans need to ask themselves: How is it possible that the government of the United States, an alleged Superpower, is so unaware of its true vulnerabilities that Washington is capable of pushing two real powers until they have had enough and play the cards that they hold?

    Americans need to understand that the only thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity of the government. What other country would let a handful of Wall Street crooks control its economic and foreign policy, run its central bank and Treasury, and subordinate citizens’ interests to the interests of the one percent’s pocketbook? A population this insouciant is at the total mercy of Russia and China.

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

    Yesterday there was a black swan event, an event that could yet unleash other black swan events. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-16/largest-retail-fx-broker-stock-crashes-90-swiss-contagion-spreads The Swiss central bank announced an end to its pegging of the Swiss franc to the euro and US dollar. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-15/its-tsunami-swiss-franc-soars-most-ever-after-snb-abandons-eurchf-floor-macro-hedge-

    Three years ago flight from euros and dollars into Swiss francs pushed the exchange value of the franc so high that it threatened the existence of the Swiss export industries. Switzerland announced that any further inflows of foreign currencies into francs would be met by creating new francs to absorb the inflows so as not to drive up the exchange rate further. In other words, the Swiss pegged the franc.

    Yesterday the Swiss central bank announced that the peg was off. The franc instantly rose in value. Stocks of Swiss export companies fell, and hedge funds wrongly positioned incurred major hits to their solvency.

    Why did the Swiss remove the peg? It was not a costless action. It cost the central bank and Swiss export industries substantially.

    The answer is that the EU attorney general ruled that it was permissible for the EU central bank to initiate Quantitative Easing–that is, the printing of new euros–in order to bail out the mistakes of the private bankers. This decision means that Switzerland expects to be confronted with massive flight from the euro and that the Swiss central bank is unwilling to print enough new Swiss francs to maintain the peg. The Swiss central bank believes that it would have to run the printing press so hard that the basis of the Swiss money supply would explode, far exceeding the GDP of Switzerland.

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

    The money printing policy of the US, Japan, and apparently now the EU has forced other countries to inflate their own currencies in order to prevent the rise in the exchange value of their currencies that would curtail their ability to export and earn foreign currencies with which to pay for their imports. Thus Washington has forced the world into printing money.

    The Swiss have backed out of this system. Will others follow, or will the rest of the world follow the Russians and Chinese governments into new monetary arrangements and simply turn their backs on the corrupt and irredeemable West?

    The level of corruption and manipulation that characterizes US economic and foreign policy today was impossible in earlier times when Washington’s ambition was constrained by the Soviet Union. The greed for hegemonic power has made Washington the most corrupt government on earth. The consequence of this corruption is ruin.

    “Leadership passes into empire. Empire begets insolence. Insolence brings ruin.”

    Ruin is America’s future.


    Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    22. LET'S FINISH THE ELVIS STORY: Comeback (1968–73)
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 10:00 PM
    Jan 2015

    Presley's only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career. Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, and none higher than number 28. His forthcoming soundtrack album, Speedway, would die at number 82 on the Billboard chart. Parker had already shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra Timex show in 1960. He maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a Christmas special.

    Recorded in late June in Burbank, California, the special, called simply Elvis, aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the '68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small audience—Presley's first live performances since 1961. The live segments saw Presley clad in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock-and-roll days. Bill Belew, who designed this outfit, gave it a Napoleonic standing collar (Presley customarily wore high collars because he believed his neck looked too long), a design feature that he would later make a major trademark of the outfits Presley wore on stage in his later years. Director and co-producer Steve Binder had worked hard to reassure the nervous singer and to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC's highest rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, "There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock 'n' roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy." Dave Marsh calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance."

    By January 1969, the single "If I Can Dream", written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album broke into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man." Binder said of Presley's reaction, "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, 'Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in.'"



    Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio in eight years. As described by Dave Marsh, it is "a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement." The album featured the hit single "In the Ghetto", issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley's first non-gospel top ten hit since "Bossa Nova Baby" in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: "Suspicious Minds", "Don't Cry Daddy", and "Kentucky Rain".



    Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?" In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley, scheduling him to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley assembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and Sweet Inspirations.

    Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal, and he had neither forgotten nor forgiven that failure. To revise his approach to performances, Presley visited Las Vegas hotel showrooms and lounges, at one of which, that of the Flamingo, he encountered Tom Jones, whose aggressive style was similar to his own 1950s approach; the two became friends.

    Already studying karate at the time, Presley recruited Bill Belew to design variants of karatekas's gis for him; these, in jumpsuit form, would be his "stage uniforms" in his later years. Parker, who intended to make Presley's return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.

    Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, "Can't Help Falling in Love" (a song that would be his closing number for much of the 1970s). At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as "The King", Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll."

    The next day, Parker's negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million. Newsweek commented, "There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars." Rolling Stone called Presley "supernatural, his own resurrection." In November, Presley's final non-concert movie, Change of Habit, opened. The double album From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. "Suspicious Minds" reached the top of the charts—Presley's first U.S. pop number one in over seven years, and his last.

    Cassandra Peterson, later television's Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as a showgirl. She recalls of their encounter, "He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, 'Don't ever do that again.'" Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    23. Back on tour and meeting Nixon
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 10:14 PM
    Jan 2015

    Presley returned to the International early in 1970 for the first of the year's two month-long engagements, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage. In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record–breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome.

    In April, the single "The Wonder of You" was issued—a number one hit in Great Britain, it topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, as well. MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August for the documentary Elvis: That's the Way It Is. Presley was by now performing in a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live act. During this engagement, he was threatened with murder unless $50,000 was paid. Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge. The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts went off without incident.

    The album That's the Way It Is, produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson notes, "The authority of Presley's singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound. With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop—perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis." After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.

    Presley meets U.S. President Richard Nixon in the White House Oval Office, December 21, 1970



    On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and his contempt for the hippies, the growing drug culture, and the counterculture in general. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was therefore important he "retain his credibility".

    Presley told Nixon that the Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture. (Presley and his friends had had a four-hour get-together with the Beatles five years earlier.) On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he "felt a bit betrayed. ... The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him", a reference to Presley's death, hastened by prescription drug abuse.

    The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard".

    The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization.

    Three new, non-movie Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was Elvis Country, a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, "the truest statement of all", according to Greil Marcus. "In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of 'Merry Christmas, Baby,' a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. ... If Presley's sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life".

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    24. Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 10:26 PM
    Jan 2015

    MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year. His gospel album He Touched Me, released that month, would earn him his second Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance.

    A 14-date tour commenced with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in LP form a week later. Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden became one of Presley's biggest-selling albums. After the tour, the single "Burning Love" was released—Presley's last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart.

    "The most exciting single Elvis has made since 'All Shook Up'", wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. "Who else could make 'It's coming closer, the flames are now licking my body' sound like an assignation with James Brown's backup band?"

    Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of her moving into Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla.

    The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her. Priscilla relates that when she told him, Presley "grabbed ... and forcefully made love to" her, declaring, "This is how a real man makes love to his woman."

    Five months later, Presley's new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18. According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley's marriage "was a blow from which he never recovered."

    In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. Aired as scheduled on January 14, Aloha from Hawaii was the first global concert satellite broadcast, reaching millions of viewers live and on tape delay.

    Presley's costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely associated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, "At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure."

    The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States. It proved to be Presley's last U.S. number one pop album during his lifetime.

    At a midnight show the same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security men leapt to Presley's defense, and the singer's karate instinct took over as he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Mike Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, "There's too much pain in me ... Stone must die." His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication.

    After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, "Aw hell, let's just leave it for now. Maybe it's a bit heavy."
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    25. Health deterioration and death (1973–77)
    Fri Jan 16, 2015, 10:40 PM
    Jan 2015

    Medical crises and last studio sessions

    Presley's divorce took effect on October 9, 1973. He was now becoming increasingly unwell. Twice during the year he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. Toward the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semicomatose from the effects of Demerol addiction. According to his main physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley "felt that by getting drugs from a doctor, he wasn't the common everyday junkie getting something off the street."

    Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever. Despite his failing health, in 1974 he undertook another intensive touring schedule.

    Presley's condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers the singer's arrival at a University of Maryland concert: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.' He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?"

    Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. ... I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions".

    Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, Michigan, "I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, 'Boss, why don't you just cancel this tour and take a year off ...?' I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, 'It'll be all right. Don't you worry about it.'"

    Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. As cultural critic Marjorie Garber describes, he was now widely seen as a garish pop crooner: "in effect he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers."

    On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son's financial affairs—fired "Memphis Mafia" bodyguards Red West (Presley's friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to "cut back on expenses". Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggest the singer was too cowardly to face the three himself.

    Another associate of Presley's, John O'Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits. However, Presley's stepbrother David Stanley has claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley's drug dependency.

    Presley and Linda Thompson split in November, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden. He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again.

    RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974.

    Parker sold RCA on another concert record, Elvis: As Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. Recorded on March 20, it included a version of "How Great Thou Art" that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.)

    Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker's attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.

    For all the concerns of his label and manager, in studio sessions between July 1973 and October 1976, Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977).

    The story was similar with his singles—there were no major pop hits, but Presley was a significant force in not just the country market, but on adult contemporary radio as well. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. "My Boy" was a number one adult contemporary hit in 1975, and "Moody Blue" topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the adult contemporary chart in 1976. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his "apocalyptic attack" on the soul classic "Hurt". "If he felt the way he sounded", Dave Marsh wrote of Presley's performance, "the wonder isn't that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long."

    Final year and death

    Journalist Tony Scherman writes that by early 1977, "Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts."

    In Alexandria, Louisiana, the singer was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand". Presley failed to appear in Baton Rouge; he was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and the rest of the tour was cancelled. Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most touring commitments.

    In Rapid City, South Dakota, "he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk", according to Presley historian Samuel Roy, and unable to "perform any significant movement." Guralnick relates that fans "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Elvis, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books."

    A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes.

    "Way Down", Presley's last single issued during his lifetime, came out on June 6. His final concert was held in Indianapolis at Market Square Arena, on June 26.

    The book Elvis: What Happened?, cowritten by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley's years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers. By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments: glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated—and possibly caused—by drug abuse.

    Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour. That afternoon, Ginger Alden discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital.

    President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having "permanently changed the face of American popular culture". Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley's cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer '​s biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

    Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few days, "Way Down" topped the country and UK pop charts.

    Following an attempt to steal the singer's body in late August, the remains of both Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland's Meditation Garden on October 2.

    Since his death, there have been numerous alleged sightings of Presley. A long-standing theory among some fans is that he faked his death. Fans have noted alleged discrepancies in the death certificate, reports of a wax dummy in his original coffin and numerous accounts of Presley planning a diversion so he could retire in peace. Recent genetic analysis of his DNA suggests genetic variants that could have caused his glaucoma, migraines and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

    DemReadingDU

    (16,000 posts)
    48. The Elvis Presley coverup: What America didn’t hear about the death of the king
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 11:01 AM
    Jan 2015

    11/16/14 The Elvis Presley coverup: What America didn’t hear about the death of the king by Joel Williamson
    After Presley's death, an effort was launched to protect the reputation of the hospital that had treated him


    The call came to Memphis Fire Station No. 29 at 2:33 p.m. on Tuesday, August 16, 1977. The dispatcher indicated that someone at 3754 Elvis Presley Boulevard was having difficulty breathing. “Go to the front gate and go to the front of the mansion,” the voice directed. Ambulance Unit No. 6 swung out of the station onto Elvis Presley Boulevard and headed south, siren wailing, advertising a speed that the ponderous machine had not yet achieved.

    The two medics manning the ambulance recognized the address right away. The “mansion,” as the dispatcher called it, was Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland, three miles south of the fire station. They had been there often, to take care of fans fainting at the front gate and pedestrians injured by passing automobiles. Two years before, one of the medics, Charles Crosby, had come to assist Elvis’s father, Vernon Presley, after he suffered a heart attack. He thought it might be Vernon again.

    On this run Crosby was driving the ambulance. He was thirty-eight, stoutly built, dark-haired, and heavily mustached. His partner, Ulysses Jones, twenty-six, sat in the passenger seat. Members of the Memphis Fire Department, they had received eighty-eight hours of special training to become emergency medical technicians and had years of experience. On each call, they alternated between driving and riding in the back with the ill or injured. This time, Ulysses Jones would ride with the patient.

    Crosby expertly threaded the boxy white, blue, and orange vehicle through the thin midafternoon traffic with lights flashing. Heat waves shimmered up from the asphalt in front of him. During the day, the mercury had risen into the mid-90s and hovered there. In a city not yet fully air-conditioned, many working Memphians breathed the hot, damp air, mopped their brows, and thought fondly about getting home to an icy drink on their shady screened-in porches.

    As the ambulance crested a low hill and swooped down the broad six-lane boulevard toward Graceland, the gates swung open and the crowd milling around the entrance parted. Making a wide sweeping turn to the left, the vehicle bounced heavily across the sidewalk and hurtled through the entranceway, striking one of the swinging metal gates a clanging blow. One of the several musical notes welded to the gate fell off. Crosby accelerated up the curving drive toward the mansion. He braked hard in front of the two-story, white-columned portico. Climbing down from the ambulance, Crosby and Jones were met by one of Elvis’s bodyguards.

    “He’s upstairs,” the man exclaimed, “and I think it’s an OD.”

    Grabbing their equipment, the two medics rushed into the house and up the stairs. They pushed through Elvis’s bedroom, noticing the deep-pile red rug and the huge unmade bed facing three television consoles, one for each of the three major networks. Passing through a wide doorway, they entered Elvis’s enormous bathroom, what had been two rooms combined into a sitting room, dressing room, and bathroom. Ulysses Jones told a reporter later that day that he saw “as many as a dozen people huddled over the body of a man clothed in pajamas—a yellow top and blue bottoms.”

    At first sight Jones didn’t recognize Elvis. The man was stretched out on his back on the thick red rug with his pajama top open and his bottoms pulled down below his knees. Rolls of fat girded his belly. He was very dark, almost black. Jones thought that he might have been a black man. “From his shoulders up, his skin was dark blue,” he told a reporter for the Memphis Press-Scimitar. “Around his neck, which seemed fat and bloated, was a very large gold medallion. His sideburns were gray.” A young man was pressing Elvis’s chest rhythmically, while a middle-aged woman gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Jones knelt quickly to search for any sign of life in the prostrate form. He felt no pulse, and he saw no flicker of response when he flashed a penlight into his eyes. “Elvis was cold,” he said, “unusually cold.”

    lots more...
    http://www.salon.com/2014/11/16/the_elvis_presley_coverup_what_america_didnt_hear_about_the_death_of_the_king/?

    Excerpted from “Elvis Presley: A Southern Life” by Joel Williamson. Copyright © 2014 by Joel Williamson. Reprinted by arrangement with Oxford University Press, a division of Oxford University. All rights reserved.

    MattSh

    (3,714 posts)
    28. Ukraine’s Budget: Gas vs the Wall | Ukraina.ru
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 03:52 AM
    Jan 2015

    Funds spent on the punitive operation in Donbas, “Project Wall” and private initiatives by Ukrainian oligarchs could have paid the country’s gas debt to Russia.

    There is one thing that all those who support the Ukrainian authorities, all Russophobes and Bandera followers, all those who believe in “Russia’s weekly incursions” should do: print an image of the Great Ukrainian Wall and hang it on the wall so it keeps them warm throughout the cold season. They should do this because this wall will be built INSTEAD OF buying the natural gas that used to keep Ukrainian houses warm in the winter. That is until the adepts of European integration came to power.

    It goes without saying that this wall will never be built. Funds allocated to this effect have already been stolen. Mr Yatsenyuk is saying that additional resources are expected to be allocated, which tends to prove that the embezzlement will continue. In fact, why miss such a great opportunity to siphon off some cash!

    That said, the official price tag on this mediocre structure called “The Wall,” which can be regarded as a monument to the harmfulness of Russophobia (even though it is not expected to remain in place for long given how shabby the structure is), exceeds $4 billion. That would have been enough to pay off a large chunk of Ukraine’s gas debt. Just look at the image of the wall and imagine that your apartment is heated. Yatsenyuk is the person to thank for this, in case you were wondering.

    Complete story at - http://en.ukraina.ru/opinions/20141019/1010899950.html

    MattSh

    (3,714 posts)
    30. Parliament member recommends that Yatsenyuk ride a donkey | Ukraina.ru
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 03:57 AM
    Jan 2015

    Serhiy Kaplin, a member of the Petro Poroshenko bloc in the Verkhovna Rada, has recommended that Aresniy Yatsenyuk change his ride

    The deputy was enraged by the fact that the Ukrainian prime minister changed the tires on his service Mercedes with government money at an obviously inflated rate. Meanwhile, the wealth of most Ukrainian citizens is vanishing every day. In some regions, people are even starving.

    "You should ride a donkey while the country is going through such a crisis," the parliament member told Yatsenyuk.

    The state paid over $10,400 for the snow tires. Kaplin claims Yatsenyuk is no better in his spending habits than the unpopular ex-prime minister Mykola Azarov.

    "Just recently, Yatsenyuk bought winter tires for his Mercedes that used to belong to Azarov. One tire cost $2,655. It is a cold shot for the entire country where regular people can’t even afford to change their tires and have to use summer tires. And he did that on government money," Kaplin said on Ukrainian TV.

    The deputy believes all government officials must reduce their expenses during such difficult times, including government members, judges, prosecutors and their assistants. Also, the government should be more careful with its ministerial expenses.

    Complete story at - http://en.ukraina.ru/news/20141222/1011582487.html

    MattSh

    (3,714 posts)
    31. As young minds leave, industrialized eastern Ukraine faces brain drain | Al Jazeera America
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 04:03 AM
    Jan 2015
    NOTE: And it's not just East Ukraine either. A number of Kiev companies moved part or all of their operations out of Ukraine last year.

    DONETSK, Ukraine — When the fighting between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian forces moved closer to Donetsk’s city limits in June, one of the region’s leading software development companies made the difficult decision to relocate its 50 staffers to a safer city to wait out the war.

    The company, Binary Studio, chose the western city of Uzhgorod, about 900 miles west of Donetsk in the Carpathian Mountains. At an average age of 28, the company’s employees were young and mobile and saw the temporary move as an opportunity to continue working while exploring Ukraine’s mountains on the weekends.

    “We all wanted to go back to Donetsk as soon as the situation improved there,” said Kateryna Potanina, 24, Binary’s chief operating officer, in a phone interview. “But it was nice to feel safe and be far from what was happening in the east.”

    It’s now been five months since they set up shop in the west, and the move no longer feels temporary. The eastern conflict has claimed more than 4,300 lives, including at least 1,000 since a Sept. 5 cease-fire. The armed rebels of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic held their own elections on Nov. 2, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has retaliated by cutting off state budget and banking services to the rebel-held territories.

    Binary Studio’s workers are part of what is estimated to be more than 1 million people who have fled the eastern regions since April, according to the United Nations, when pro-Russian rebels took over government buildings and declared independence from the Ukrainian central government in Kiev across the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

    Complete story at - http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2014/11/donetsk-ukraine-dailylifebraindrain.html



    A building in Ilovaisk on Nov.16. The town on the outskirts of Donetsk was severely damaged in fighting between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatist fighters. Dmitry Beliakov for Al Jazeera America

    MattSh

    (3,714 posts)
    32. Ukrainian men are jumping the ship for the Russian shores ahead of mobilization deadline - Fort Russ
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 04:05 AM
    Jan 2015

    January 15, 2014
    Olga Talova - Antifaschist

    Translated from Russian by Kristina Rus

    My friend went to meet her parents, arriving from Germany, and was stunned: the international airport "Borispol" was overflowing with young men. She was able to park her car three miles from the terminal and the airport's parking lot and adjacent areas were clogged with cars and buses. These are her impressions:

    "Well, friends, what can I say? Had an epiphany today when I visited the airport "Borispol"! Now I'm glad we have been warned about the mobilization ahead of time and given a specific date - January 20th. At the airport there are scores of the departing! People of all stripes, with backpacks, bags, suitcases. The main contingent is men between 20 and 40 years old. Most - to Moscow! Others - to Turkey, Montenegro, Poland. That is, wherever is cheaper or no visas required. For this thanks to the idiots [in power]: our children are leaving their country, but at least they are not going to kill their brothers. But they will still come back! But you fascist rats, have nowhere to run! Although, I am told, all the deputies and members of the government have personal planes and reserved charters on standby. I hope not everyone will get to them in time..."

    Complete story at - http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/ukrainian-men-are-jumping-ship-for.htm

    MattSh

    (3,714 posts)
    33. Russia Leaves the European Commissioner for Energy Union out in the Cold
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 04:09 AM
    Jan 2015

    by Aleksei Kettunen

    GAZPROM–EU: 6–0

    Yesterday on Wednesday the EU negotiated with Gazprom in Moscow. The EU negotiators had three aims:

    • Pressure Russia into extending the special winter pricing on gas supplies to Ukrainian due to end in March,
    • Force Russia to further unilateral concessions by forcing all European energy purchases to happen through a new “European Energy Union”,
    • Pressure Russia to resurrect the canceled South Stream gas pipeline project and build it in accordance with the restrictive rules of the Third Energy Package.

    The Russian response was a cold shower.

    Firstly, Gazprom said there is no need for a special summer agreement on Ukrainian gas purchases, as a valid contract already exists.

    In practice, this means that all the concessions Kiev has received for the winter season are temporary and there is no space for negotiations. If the EU wants to ensure their gas transits through Ukraine then it must put pressure on Kiev to comply with existing agreements. If Kiev needs gas it cannot afford to pay – thus endangering transit deliveries to EU countries – it is not Russia's problem. The same applies to Kiev's gas debts; the EU will have to pay both the Ukrainian gas debts and any future gas purchases.

    Secondly, Gazprom announced that the South Stream gas pipeline project is dead and will not be realized. The project collapsed under US and EU pressure. The greatest obstacle turned out to be EU's Third Energy Package. It heavily restricts how Gazprom could use their own pipeline; Gasprom could only use 50% of South Stream's capacity and would be forced to offer the remaining 50% of the transportation capacity to third parties. Although all of the agreements between Gasprom and the various transit and consumer countries were made before the Third Energy Package entered into force, the European Commission now demands that it is applied retroactively.

    Russia's solution is as follows: Gazprom will build the pipeline to Turkey and extend it the Turkish-Greek border. The pipeline will end in a gas distribution hub near the EU border. If the EU wants to buy gas, it will have to build a pipeline to Turkey at its own expense. It will also need to expand the gas transport capacity between its South European member countries – and do so under the constraints imposed by its own Third Energy Package.

    The final punch to EU arrogance was Gazprom's declaration that after the completion of the gas hub and the Turkish pipeline Gazprom will end all gas transit through Ukraine. Russian gas will only be available through Turkey! The Ukrainian pipeline network will be used exclusively supply gas to Ukraine. Gazprom based its decision on Ukraine's instability and the high transit risks.

    Complete story at - http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/01/russia-leaves-european-commissioner-for.html

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    34. Energy Is Becoming Cleaner And More Plentiful — Whatever The Price Of Oil
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:02 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.businessinsider.com/energy-is-becoming-cleaner-and-more-plentiful--whatever-the-price-of-oil-2015-1

    A careful observer might note the chunky double glazing on the elegant windows and the heat pump whirring outside the basement entrance. From the outside the five-storey house in London's posh Notting Hill district looks like any other. Inside, though, it is full of new technologies that aim to make it a net exporter of power. They exemplify many of the shifts now under way that are making energy cleaner, more plentiful, cheaper to store, easier to distribute and capable of being used more intelligently. The house in Notting Hill is a one-off, paid for by its green multimillionaire owner. But the benefits of recent innovations can be reaped by everybody.

    That makes a welcome change from the two issues that have dominated the debate about energy in the past few decades: scarcity and concerns about the environment. Modern life is based on the ubiquitous use of fossil fuels, all of which have big disadvantages. Coal, the cheapest and most abundant, has been the dirtiest, contributing to rising emissions. Oil supplies have been vulnerable to geopolitical shocks and price collusion by producers. Natural gas has mostly come by pipeline--and often with serious political baggage, as in the case of Europe's dependence on Russia. Nuclear power is beset by political troubles, heightened by public alarm after the accident at Japan's Fukushima power station in 2011. Renewables such as wind and solar--beneficiaries of lavish subsidies--have so far played a marginal role. The main worries were whether enough energy would be available for power generation, transport, heating, cooling and industry; and if so, whether it would cook the planet.



    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/energy-is-becoming-cleaner-and-more-plentiful--whatever-the-price-of-oil-2015-1#ixzz3P4zHnqvL

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    35. The Swiss Franc Move Blew A Big Hole In Citigroup Too
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:06 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.businessinsider.com/citigroup-loses-over-150m-in-franc-move-2015-1

    Citigroup lost most than $150 million when the Swiss government decoupled its currency from the euro this week, Bloomberg reports. The head of European investors sales and foreign exchange is said to leave the bank as well.

    The problem here is that the Swiss Franc decision was sudden and violent. Some small brokerages were completely eviscerated by the move, while large firms like Deutsche Bank (said to have lost $150 million) and Barclays (said to have lost tens of millions) were also impacted.

    Reports also indicate that Jefferies may be in talks to buy FXCM, the largest retail currency broker in the US.

    This is not a good time for Citi to lose money. The bank just reported dismal earnings due, in one part, to legal fees, and in another part to a slump in trading. Trading revenue overall was down 14% in the fourth quarter of 2014 from the same time last year.



    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/citigroup-loses-over-150m-in-franc-move-2015-1#ixzz3P50Glnzl

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    36. BUCK UP, PROFITS DOWN: HIGH DOLLAR DENTS US COMPANY EARNINGS
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:10 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_STRONG_DOLLAR_CORPORATE_EARNINGS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-16-13-14-32

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- The victims vary: Fast-food colossus McDonald's. Technology giant Oracle. Medical device maker Cooper Cos.

    The culprit's the same: A surging U.S. dollar

    A symbol of American economic might, the rising dollar is denting the earnings of U.S. companies that operate overseas. The damage started showing up in results for the July-September period, and the picture will likely get uglier as companies report earnings for the final three months of 2014.

    "It's clearly a drag on corporate profits," says David Kelly, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds.

    A few months ago, Kelly notes, analysts had expected a double-digit annual rise in corporate profits in the fourth quarter. Now, in part because the dollar is carving into earnings, they're forecasting just 4.6 percent overall earnings growth for companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    37. OIL-COMPANY RALLY SNAPS 5-DAY LOSING STREAK
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:26 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-16-17-16-54

    NEW YORK (AP) -- A surge in oil and gas companies pulled the stock market out of a five-day slump on Friday, as the price of crude swung higher.

    Oil prices jumped after the International Energy Agency predicted drillers would cut production this year. Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other energy companies led all 10 sectors of the Standard & Poor's 500 index to gains, climbing 3 percent. Oil's seven-month slide had cut its price by more than half.

    "Lower oil prices on the whole are supportive of economic growth worldwide," said Jason Pride, director of investment strategy at Glenmede Trust. "They're very helpful for Japan, Europe, China and India. It's clearly a good thing."

    The S&P 500 index gained 26.75 points, or 1.3 percent, to finish at 2,019.42.

    The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 190.86 points, or 1.1 percent, to close at 17,511.57, and the Nasdaq rose 63.56 points, or 1.4 percent, to 4,634.38.

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    38. SWISS FRANC'S STAGGERING ASCENT TO BE FELT FAR AND WIDE
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:28 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_SWITZERLAND_FRANC_GLOBAL_IMPACT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-16-16-59-31

    LONDON (AP) -- A 30 percent swing in a blink of an eye is not uncommon in the stock market. In the world of currencies, it can seem as rare as Halley's Comet.

    But that's what happened to the Swiss franc on Thursday - a stunning move that is likely to hurt the Swiss economy, inject uncertainty in financial markets and even darken the global outlook.

    Within minutes of the Swiss National Bank's announcement it was ditching a policy to limit the rise of the currency, the franc had rocketed by about a third against the euro and the dollar. Unprecedented, said analysts.

    Though it has since shed some of those gains, the Swiss franc remains sharply higher and that spells a host of problems.

    SWISS SIDE EFFECTS

    The stock market said it all. Shares on the Zurich exchange have fallen another 6 percent Friday following the previous day's 9 percent slump. That's a clear indication investors have taken fright at the worsening outlook for Switzerland's exporters and economy.

    The higher franc makes Swiss products, like chocolate, pharmaceuticals, and watches more expensive in the international marketplace.

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    39. US REGULATORS CLOSE SMALL FLORIDA BANK
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:31 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BANK_CLOSURES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-16-19-03-08

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators have closed a small lender in Florida, making it the first U.S. bank failure of 2015 following 18 closures last year.

    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Friday that it has taken over First National Bank of Crestview, in Crestview, Florida.

    The bank operated three branches and had $78.7 million in assets and $78.6 million in deposits as of Sept. 30.

    First NBC Bank, based in New Orleans, agreed to assume all of First National Bank of Crestview's deposits and to buy about $62 million of the failed bank's assets.

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    41. POSTAL SERVICE PROPOSES SMALL PRICE INCREASES ON POSTAGE
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:33 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POSTAL_PRICES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-16-03-53-46

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday proposed slight increases for mailing postcards and international letters - but wants to leave first-class "Forever" stamps at their present 49 cents.

    Under a filing with the Postal Regulatory Commission, letters to international destinations would rise from $1.15 to $1.20. Postcards would rise from 34 cents to 35 cents.

    The increases being proposed would become effective April 26, if the requests are granted.

    On first-class mail, every ounce over 1 ounce would cost an additional 22 cents, up from 21 cents. And letters to all international destinations would go from $1.15 to $1.20.

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    42. DISNEY CEO IGER'S PAY PACKAGE SURGED 27 PERCENT IN 2014
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:35 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DISNEY_EXECUTIVE_COMPENSATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-16-18-44-57

    NEW YORK (AP) -- Disney Chairman and CEO Robert Iger's compensation jumped to $43.7 million in 2014 as the company had a blockbuster year.

    Iger's pay package was up 27 percent from 2013, when he received $34.3 million in compensation. The change came in the form of a larger bonus: $22.8 million, up 68 percent from the year before.

    The company disclosed the compensation package Friday in its annual proxy statement filed with regulators.

    The Burbank, California, company's net income rose 22 percent to $7.5 billion in its fiscal year that ended Sept. 27, aided by strong performance for films including "Frozen," "Maleficent," and Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."

    DemReadingDU

    (16,000 posts)
    43. Tavis Smiley: The Hidden Dr. King
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:47 AM
    Jan 2015

    I heard this on Alternative Radio this morning, very interesting...

    9/30/14 Tavis Smiley: The Hidden Dr. King

    Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr has been shrink-wrapped and formatted to be innocuous and non-threatening. Dream speeches, desegregation, voting rights, and Selma marches could be accommodated. But when he articulated a critique of the system as a whole then he became a danger to the establishment. That Dr. King has been largely obscured. At Riverside Church in New York he said the Vietnam War was “a symptom of a far deeper malady.” And then he added, “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” By giving that speech Dr. King basically signed his own death warrant.

    appx 1 hour
    http://www.alternativeradio.org/collections/latest-programs/products/smit001


    Tavis Smiley is the well known PBS and public radio talk show host. He is the author of many books including Death of a King:The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's Final Year.



    edit
    What a bummer, there is no podcast to hear unless one pays for it.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    47. Thanks for starting off the MLK portion of the weekend
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 10:01 AM
    Jan 2015

    I've exhausted myself for today. There's only so much bad news I can handle...and I didn't know just how awful parts of Elvis' life story were.

    I'm thinking of going to see "Selma" this weekend. I can't figure out if it's appropriate for the Kid, though. I like to get her historical information...but would it traumatize? A lot of that goes right over her head, though...

    Markets are closed Monday, so we have time to do MLK justice, too.

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    44. Steepest Oil-Rig Drop Shows Shale Losing Fight to OPEC
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:57 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-16/drillers-idle-55-oil-rigs-pushing-six-week-drop-to-209.html

    U.S. drillers have taken a record number of oil rigs out of service in the past six weeks as OPEC sustains its production, sending prices below $50 a barrel.

    The oil rig count has fallen by 209 since Dec. 5, the steepest six-week decline since Baker Hughes Inc. (BHI) began tracking the data in July 1987. The count was down 55 this week to 1,366. Horizontal rigs used in U.S. shale formations that account for virtually all of the nation’s oil production growth fell by 48, the biggest single-week drop.

    Analysts including HSBC Holdings Plc say the decline shows that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is winning its fight for market share and slowing the growth that’s propelled U.S. production to the highest in at least three decades. OPEC’s decision not to curb its output amid increasing supplies from the U.S. and other countries has driven global oil prices down 58 percent since June.

    “OPEC’s strategy is working, and it will be obvious in U.S. production by midyear when growth from shale plays will come to a halt,” James Williams, president of energy consulting company WTRG Economics in London, Arkansas, said by telephone Friday. “You can imagine the impact on any industry from a 50 percent impact on sales.”

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    45. One Thing Migrant Smugglers Can't Do Without: Big U.S. Banks
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 09:00 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-16/one-thing-gangs-smuggling-latin-migrants-over-the-border-can-t-do-without-big-u-s-banks.html

    Dionisio Diaz takes a seat inside the Evangelical Christian Assembly Church at an office park in Doraville, an Atlanta suburb. It’s been another six-day week working for a landscaping crew, mowing lawns and pruning shrubs. The 37-year-old undocumented immigrant from Guatemala clutches a Bible and joins dozens of worshipers belting out a hymn in Spanish.

    As the Saturday evening service in late October ends, Diaz, wearing a black suit, rises to greet the pastor.

    “My dream is to be up there, spreading the Gospel, just like you,” Diaz says, a smile widening across his face. “I’ve been blessed by God to get here.”

    Diaz has also been helped on his journey to the U.S. by more earthly powers: He hired a gang of human smugglers, or coyotes, who got him across the U.S. border to a stash house in Mesa, Arizona, and then on to Georgia, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its February issue. Diaz paid for part of the trip using one of America’s biggest banks, Wells Fargo & Co.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    46. The Women He Left Behind--Elvis Lives!
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 09:12 AM
    Jan 2015


    Lisa Marie Presley (born February 1, 1968) is an American singer-songwriter. She is the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley. As sole heir to her father's estate, Presley is the owner of Graceland, the Memphis mansion where her father lived, now a major tourist attraction. She has conducted a long career in the music business and has issued several albums and videos. Her work as a vocalist and lyricist has ranged across rock, country, blues and folk.

    Presley has been married four times. In 1988, she married musician Danny Keough, with whom she had a son and a daughter. She was then married to pop singer Michael Jackson and briefly to actor Nicolas Cage, before marrying music producer Michael Lockwood, father of her twin girls. In 2010, they moved to 'Coe's Hall', Rotherfield, East Sussex, in the United Kingdom.

    Early life

    Lisa Marie Presley was born at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, exactly nine months after her parents' wedding. She lived with her mother, after her parents had divorced. Lisa went between homes in LA with her mother (Priscilla Presley) and in Memphis with her father (Elvis) or on tour with him in various cities.

    When her father died, 9 year old Lisa Marie became joint-heir to his estate with her grandfather Vernon Presley and her great-grandmother Minnie Mae Presley. Following the deaths of Vernon in 1979 and Minnie Mae in 1980, Lisa became the sole heir and inherited Graceland. In 1993, on her 25th birthday, Lisa Marie inherited Elvis' estate, which, thanks largely to the stewardship of her mother, Priscilla, had grown to an estimated $100 million. In 1998, Lisa became more closely involved with the management team of the Elvis Presley Trust and its business entity, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc.(EPE). She was owner and Chairman of the Board until February 2005, when she sold 85% of the estate's business holdings to CKX, Inc., excluding Graceland itself and the property within it.

    Lisa Marie Presley continues to be involved, as does her mother Priscilla. Lisa Marie Presley retains 100% sole personal ownership of Graceland Mansion itself and its over 13-acre original grounds and her father's personal effects – meaning costumes, wardrobe, awards, furniture, cars, etc. She has made the mansion property and her father's personal effects permanently available for tours of Graceland and for use in all of EPE's operations.

    Music career

    On April 8, 2003, Presley released her debut album, To Whom It May Concern. It reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and was certified gold in June 2003. Presley wrote all the lyrics (except "The Road Between", which was co-written with Gus Black) and co-wrote every melody. To promote it, she presented a concert in the UK. The album's first single, "Lights Out", reached No. 18 on the Billboard Hot Adult Top 40 chart and No. 16 on the UK charts. Presley collaborated with Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins for a co-written track called "Savior", which was included as the B-side.

    Los Angeles Times critic Robert Hilburn reviewed Presley's debut album. He said, "The music on her new album has a stark, uncompromising tone" and "Presley's gutsy blues-edged voice has a distinctive flair."

    Her second album, released April 5, 2005, Now What, reached No. 9 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Presley co-wrote 10 songs and recorded covers of Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" (the album's first single, which hit No. 36 on the Billboard 100 AC singles chart), and the Ramones' "Here Today and Gone Tomorrow". The song "Idiot" is a jab towards different men in her life. Unlike her first album, Now What included a Parental Advisory sticker. Presley covers Blue Öyster Cult's "Burnin' for You" as a B-side. Pink makes a guest appearance on the track "Shine".

    Her third album, Storm & Grace, was released on May 15, 2012. She said: "It's much more of a rootsy record, organic record, than my previous work." It is produced by Oscar and Grammy winner T-Bone Burnett.

    Allmusic offered this view: "On her first two albums, Lisa Marie Presley wanted to be a pop star with a difference; on Storm & Grace, she clearly would rather be an artist, and if she's still working her musical shortcomings out of her system, this is a stronger, more mature, and more effective work than one might have expected. Nearly ten years into a recording career she may or may not have wanted, Presley is finally developing a musical personality that truly suits her."

    Spinner.com observed: "Presley has made the strongest album of her career in the upcoming Storm & Grace. It's a moody masterpiece, exploring the demons and angels of her life to the tune of country-spiced downbeat pop."

    Entertainment Weekly praised the "smoky, spooky" single "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet".

    *******

    In August 2007, the single "In the Ghetto" was released. Elvis Presley had originally released the single in 1969. In the new version, Lisa "duets" with her father. The video, simultaneously released with the single, reached No. 1 on the iTunes sales and No. 16 on Billboard '​s Bubbling Under Hot 100 singles chart. The song was recorded to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of her father's death. Lisa Marie said she decided not only to sing, but to sing with him. "I wanted to use this for something good," she told Spinner, so she filmed the video in New Orleans. Proceeds from the video and single benefited a new Presley Place Transitional Housing Campus there. Lisa Marie appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to perform the song with the Harlem Gospel Choir, using vintage footage of her father.

    &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

    Priscilla Ann Presley (née Wagner; born May 24, 1945) is an American actress and business magnate. She is the ex-wife of the late singer Elvis Presley as well as co-founder and former chairwoman of Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), the company that turned Graceland into one of the top tourist attractions in the United States. In her acting career, Presley starred with Leslie Nielsen in the three successful Naked Gun films, and played the role of Jenna Wade on the long-running television series Dallas.

    Ancestry and early life

    Priscilla Presley's maternal grandfather, Albert Henry Iversen (born in 1899 in Egersund, Norway), emigrated to the United States. He married Lorraine (who was of Scots-Irish and English descent). Their daughter, Anna Lillian Iversen, was born in March 1926. Later she was called – or her name was changed to – Ann. At the age of 19, she gave birth to Priscilla. They both still have cousins in Norway. In a letter to the City Hall of Egersund, Ann asked for information about their relatives, and wrote that Priscilla was interested in knowing about them; Priscilla's parents then visited family members in Norway in 1992.

    Priscilla has a square named after her in Egersund – Priscilla Presleys plass. The area is in the street outside the house where her grandfather was born and lived. Priscilla and her family were invited by the Lord Mayor of Egersund to the opening ceremony of Priscilla Presleys plass, which took place August 23, 2008, but were unable to go due to Lisa Marie being pregnant.

    Priscilla's biological father was US Navy pilot James Wagner. His parents were Kathryn and Harold Wagner of German descent. On August 10, 1944, at the age of 23, he married Priscilla's mother; they had been dating for more than three years. He was killed in a plane crash while returning home on leave when Priscilla was six months old. When Priscilla discovered this "family secret" while rummaging through an old wooden box of family keepsakes, she was encouraged by her mother to keep it from the other children as she feared it would "endanger our family closeness".

    In 1948, her mother met a United States Air Force officer named Paul Beaulieu, from Quebec, Canada. The couple were married within a year. Beaulieu took over the raising of Priscilla, and was the only father she would ever know. Over the next few years Priscilla grew up quickly, helping to care for the growing family as her father's Air Force career moved them from Connecticut to New Mexico to Maine. In her own words, she described herself during this period as "a shy, pretty little girl unhappily accustomed to moving from base to base every two or three years". Priscilla later recalled that she felt uncomfortable moving so often because she never knew if she could make friends for life, or even if she would fit in with the new people she met on each move.

    In 1956, the Beaulieus moved to and settled in Austin, Texas, but soon her father was transferred to Wiesbaden, Germany. Priscilla was "crushed" by this news, and after finishing Junior High her fears of leaving her friends behind and making new ones were once again at the forefront of her mind.

    Life in Germany

    Initially the Beaulieus stayed at the Helene Hotel when they arrived in Germany, but after three months, living there became too expensive and they looked for a place to rent. The family settled in a large apartment in a "vintage building constructed long before World War I". Soon after moving in, the Beaulieus realized that it was a brothel, but due to scarce housing, they were forced to remain there.

    Feeling like an outsider once again due to her lack of understanding of the German language, Priscilla frequented the Eagles Club; a place where American families would gather to have dinner and be entertained. It was "within walking distance" of their apartment, and proved to be an important discovery for Priscilla. She would go there "every day after school" and listen to the jukebox while writing letters back home to her friends in Austin.

    At the Eagles Club, Priscilla met Currie Grant, a young American Air Force recruit whose Commanding Officer knew Priscilla's father. Through Grant, she came to meet Elvis Presley. Grant stated that he was a good friend of the singer and that he and his wife would visit him quite often.

    Priscilla states that Grant offered to introduce her to Elvis, but being cautious and skeptical of such a claim about his friendship with Presley, she said she would have to ask her parents. Currie Grant states that it was Priscilla who asked him to introduce her, as she was curious about meeting Presley.

    However, over the next two weeks Grant met with Priscilla's parents and assured them that she would be well chaperoned.

    Life with Elvis

    Elvis and Priscilla met on September 13, 1959, during a party at Elvis' home in Bad Nauheim, Germany, while he was serving in the army. Despite her being 14 years old, she made a huge impression on Elvis with her much older appearance. Elvis allegedly regressed to acting like an "awkward, embarrassed" boy-next-door figure in front of her. However, by the end of the evening he had managed to compose himself.

    Despite Priscilla's parents being angered by her late return home during that first meeting and insisting that she would never meet Elvis again,his eagerness for another meeting, and his promise never to bring her home late again, led them to relent. They were frequently together until Elvis left Germany in March 1960. After Elvis left Germany, Priscilla was inundated with requests for interviews from media outlets around the world. She received fan mail from Elvis fans, some nice and some not so nice, as well as mail from "lonesome G.I.'s". Convinced she would never see Elvis again, and with rumors of his ongoing relationship with Nancy Sinatra flying around the gossip magazines, Priscilla resigned herself to the belief that her whirlwind romance was over.

    Move to Graceland

    After Elvis' return to America, the couple stayed in contact over the phone, though they would not see each other again until the summer of 1961, when Priscilla's parents agreed to let her visit for two weeks. Priscilla's parents allowed her to go only if Elvis would pay for a first-class round trip, arrange for her to be chaperoned at all times, and that she write home every day. Elvis agreed to all these demands and Priscilla flew to Los Angeles. Elvis told her that they were going to Las Vegas and, to throw her parents off the scent, he had Priscilla write a postcard for every day they would be gone so that they could be mailed from Los Angeles by a member of his staff.

    It was during this visit, while on a trip to Las Vegas, that Priscilla first took amphetamines and sleeping pills to keep up with Elvis' lifestyle. After another visit at Christmas, Priscilla's parents finally let her move to America for good in March 1962. Part of the agreement was that she would attend an all-girls Catholic school, the Immaculate Conception High School in Memphis, Tennessee, and live with Elvis' father and his stepmother in a separate house on the Graceland estate until she graduated from high school in 1963. Part of the agreement also was that they would eventually marry. However, after a few weeks, she was moved into Graceland to be with Elvis, although her parents did eventually agree to her living there if Elvis promised to marry her. Priscilla later said, "The move was natural. I was there all the time anyway."

    Priscilla was always keen to go to Hollywood with Elvis, but he kept telling her that he was too busy for that and she was made to stay in Memphis. During the filming of Viva Las Vegas, Elvis began an affair with his co-star Ann-Margret. When Priscilla read of these reports in the press, she confronted Elvis. He told her that they were simply rumors to promote the film and that she should not believe everything that she read in the press. For the next few years, Elvis would have intimate relationships with many of his leading ladies and co-stars, all the while denying their existence to Priscilla. Eventually she was allowed to visit him in Hollywood, but her visits were kept short.

    Marriage and pregnancy

    Shortly before Christmas 1966, Elvis proposed to Priscilla. Accounts suggest that Priscilla threatened to take her story to the press if Elvis refused to marry her, and that her father threatened to have Elvis charged under the Mann Act; "taking a minor across state lines for sexual purposes". Colonel Parker, Elvis' manager, also attempted to encourage him to marry by reminding him about his RCA "morals clause" within his record contract. Priscilla suggested in a 1973 interview with Ladies' Home Journal that she and Elvis were quite happy to just live together, but "at that time it wasn't nice for people to just live together". Accounts by Elvis' cook, Alberta, claim that he was so upset about the wedding that she caught him crying about it one day. When she asked why he didn't just cancel the wedding if it upset him so much, he replied "I don't have a choice." Marty Lacker, a close friend to Elvis, has also spoken about Elvis' reluctance to marry, while others such as Joe Esposito have asserted that Elvis was excited to marry Priscilla.

    They got married on May 1, 1967, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The wedding, arranged by Parker to maximize publicity, featured very few guests and was over in only eight minutes. It was followed by a quick press conference and a $10,000 breakfast reception, attended by friends, family, and business associates from MGM, RCA, and the William Morris Agency. The wedding caused rifts between Elvis and several of his closest friends who were not invited to the actual wedding ceremony.[ Red West, especially, was furious about the situation. He and his wife had been personally invited by Elvis to Las Vegas for the wedding, had dressed for the occasion, and at the last minute were told that they would not be present. For Red, who had been with Elvis since the beginning of his rise to fame and had given Elvis the role of best man at his own wedding, this was enough of an insult that he decided to quit his job working for Elvis. Many other friends of Elvis were also disappointed and held resentment towards him for many years to follow, although they mainly blamed Parker for their exclusion rather than Elvis himself.

    Following the reception, Elvis and Priscilla boarded a private jet and enjoyed a short honeymoon in Palm Springs. On May 4, they flew back to Memphis and retreated to their private ranch, just over the Mississippi state line, for a three-week break. Many of Elvis' inner circle joined them, although for the most part the couple were left alone and were able to enjoy each other's company without the intrusion of the Memphis Mafia. Priscilla reveled in her chance to be a proper wife; cooking, cleaning, and washing for her husband. "I loved playing house" she later remarked, adding "Here was an opportunity to take care of him myself. No maids or housekeepers to pamper us." In an attempt to heal rifts, Elvis and Priscilla held another reception at Graceland on May 29 for the friends and family who were unable to attend the original ceremonies.

    Soon after, Priscilla found out that she was pregnant. She was upset at such an early pregnancy, certain that it would destroy the closeness she had finally found with Elvis. She had asked him earlier if she could take birth control pills, but Elvis had insisted they weren't perfected yet. She considered abortion, and even discussed it with Elvis at one point, but both decided they could not live with themselves if they had gone through with it. Their only child, Lisa Marie, was born exactly nine months after their wedding, on February 1, 1968.

    Priscilla wrote in 1985 autobiography, Elvis and Me, that around the time Elvis was filming Live a Little, Love a Little (1968) she began taking private dance lessons. She found herself deeply attracted to the instructor, known simply as Mark in the book, and she confesses to having a short affair. She implies regret, however, saying "I came out of it realizing I needed much more out of my relationship with Elvis."

    THERE'S SO MUCH MORE....NOT A FAIRY-TALE STORY, TO BE SURE.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Presley

    Despite Priscilla's affair and Elvis' on-and-off relationships with his co-stars and leading ladies, the first few years they were married seemed a happy time for the couple. However, when Elvis' career took off again after his 1968 television special, he was constantly touring and playing in Las Vegas. Elvis had also been seeing other women on and off, often leaving Priscilla at home with Lisa Marie. Due to Elvis' being away so often, the marriage soured.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    49. Ukraine Faces Default Risk as Russia Puts Neighbor on Notice
    Sat Jan 17, 2015, 07:23 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-15/ukraine-faces-default-specter-as-russia-puts-neighbor-on-notice.html

    The economic pressure being applied by Russia is threatening to push Ukraine to the brink of default, putting the burden on the U.S. and its allies to keep the war-ravaged nation afloat. The question of Russia calling a $3 billion bond, which Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev this week said will “soon” be decided, is pushing the government in Kiev toward debt-restructuring talks with other creditors, according to economists from London to New York. Such a request by the Kremlin would trigger a sovereign default for Ukraine, said Regis Chatellier, a strategist at Societe Generale SA (GLE) in London. Medvedev’s comments highlight the economic front in the conflict as the fighting in Ukraine’s easternmost regions flares up and policy makers in Moscow struggle to contain a currency crisis in Russia. As Ukrainian government bonds trade below 60 cents on the dollar, the Kremlin’s latest weapon is the debt that Russia bought as part of a 2013 rescue package signed with the nation’s then-leader, Viktor Yanukovych.

    The prospect of Russia demanding early redemption “could be the catalyst” for a wider debt overhaul, Nicholas Spiro, managing director at Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, said by e-mail. “Restructuring of some sort is practically a foregone conclusion given the severity of the deterioration in the financial and economic environment.” Bonds Slump...Bondholders may be saddled with losses of as much as 70 percent in a restructuring, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a Jan. 12 report.

    Medvedev’s warning adds urgency to Ukraine’s efforts to obtain fresh funding after the European Union said the country needs $15 billion on top of a $17 billion International Monetary Fund program to stay afloat. Ukraine’s government is confident that it will obtain new credit to pay off debt and ensure the release of current bailout payments, Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said in a Jan. 8 interview. “We are indeed in a critical financial situation,” said Jaresko, a 49-year-old former chief executive officer of Kiev-based private equity company Horizon Capital LLC. Further aid will probably mean that a restructuring of debt held in foreign denominations won’t be necessary, she said. “We’re not currently looking at that.” Ukraine needs to overhaul its economy and finances faster that the IMF program requires, central bank Governor Valeriya Gontareva told lawmakers in Kiev today. Policy makers are considering raising their key interest rate after inflation accelerated to a six-year high of 24.9 percent in December, she said.

    U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk about “progress in assembling a broad package of international financing that will support Ukraine,” the White House said Jan. 14 in an e-mailed statement. The U.S. has pledged as much as $2 billion in loan guarantees as long as Ukraine’s government adheres to the IMF’s demands. International lenders will probably prevent a Ukrainian default by extending maturities on some of the nation’s debt, Eurasia Group analysts led by Alex Brideau said in an e-mailed report Jan. 13.

    MORE

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    50. A Hedge Fund With $830 Million In Assets Went Bust After The Swiss Franc Surge
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 08:49 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.businessinsider.com/r-large-everest-capital-hedge-fund-closing-after-swiss-franc-losses-bloomberg-2015-1

    Hedge fund manager Marko Dimitrijevic is closing his largest hedge fund, Everest Capital's Global Fund, having lost almost all its money after the Swiss National Bank (SNB) scrapped its three-year-old cap on the Swiss franc against the euro, Bloomberg news reported on Saturday.

    Citing a person familiar with the firm, Bloomberg said the fund had been betting that the Swiss franc would decline. The fund had about $830 million in assets at the end of 2014, according to a client report cited by Bloomberg.

    It said an Everest spokesman would not comment on the fund and Dimitrijevic did not return calls.

    Everest Capital, based in Miami and specializing in emerging markets, still manages seven funds with about $2.2 billion in assets, Bloomberg said.



    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-large-everest-capital-hedge-fund-closing-after-swiss-franc-losses-bloomberg-2015-1#ixzz3PB1XZS1G
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    52. Talk about a stupid longshot!
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 08:57 AM
    Jan 2015

    Good morning, X! Hope you are well.

    It's astonishingly warm, above freezing. How it's supposed to snow under such conditions, as forecast, is beyond me. The dampness from snowmelt is particularly clammy. I am hiding out in my condo, ignoring the greater world, reading fiction, dreaming of the day I can go out in less than ten pounds of clothing...it must be age catching up. Sigh.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    54. Oh no!
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 09:04 AM
    Jan 2015

    On the one hand, it could be the start of an indoor swimming pool,

    on the other, a great opportunity to get into black mold farming.

    I hope you are able to get it fixed without injury.

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    56. well i need to get some roto rooter type operation
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 09:17 AM
    Jan 2015

    to come.

    but i'm really not well so i'm not moving very fast on anything.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    58. Get some help, please!
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 09:56 AM
    Jan 2015

    Black mold can kill. Especially if you aren't feeling well to begin with. If you have homeowners insurance, they can be helpful, get the service in for you.

    Fuddnik

    (8,846 posts)
    73. Hit it with a 4-1 ratio of water to bleach.
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 12:55 PM
    Jan 2015

    Thats what mold removal companies use.

    Actually, I'd use liquid pool chlorine instead of bleach. Commercial bleach (i.e. Clorox) have lowered their chlorine content to make it more like bleach scented water.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    59. Hedge funds, speculators face big losses on Swiss franc rally
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 09:59 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/16/us-swiss-snb-shorts-idUSKBN0KO24320150116

    Currency speculators and global macro hedge funds with large short positions in the Swiss franc are staring massive losses in the face after the Swiss National Bank shocked markets on Thursday by removing a three-year-old cap on the currency.

    The move sent the safe-haven franc soaring against the euro and the U.S. dollar at a time when more than $3.5 billion was betting on more franc weakness, the largest such position in more than a year and a half.

    The damage from the Swiss franc's sharp moves comes as a blow for macro hedge fund managers nursing wounds from nearly four years of mediocre performance. Only days ago, the SNB termed the 1.20 francs per euro cap the cornerstone of its monetary policy.

    "You have these massive policies which forced all investors to invest with the policy and then they remove the policy and everyone is left high and dry," said Chris Morrison, strategist for the $550 million Omni Macro Fund, which profited from the move....MORE

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    51. The Swiss Franc Chaos Shows Why Negative Interest Rates Don't Work
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 08:56 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.businessinsider.com/why-negative-interest-rates-dont-work-2015-1

    So what happened?

    Well, the investment channel didn't exactly deliver. Data released in December showed Euro-area investment contracted for a second consecutive quarter, falling 0.2% in the three months to the end of September after a 0.6% fall over the previous period.

    But that was only one of the possible ways in which negative rates might be expected to boost growth. As the theory suggested, negative rates did have an effect on the currency, helping to force the euro down. Here's how it performed against the US dollar:



    The euro's precipitous fall against other major currencies did seem to have an effect. For example, Germany, Europe's largest and strongest economy, has been able to maintain a substantial trade surplus (meaning the value of exports has been greater than the value of imports), despite the ongoing weakness of some of its regional trading partners in Southern Europe as well as slowing growth in major emerging markets including China and Russia.



    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-negative-interest-rates-dont-work-2015-1#ixzz3PB3Ovxdm

    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-negative-interest-rates-dont-work-2015-1#ixzz3PB3CZO00
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    55. Financial Cheating Doesn't Pay
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 09:07 AM
    Jan 2015

    and when the Eurocrats finally accept and acknowledge that fact, there will be a recovery.

    But that would mean a German change of heart and policy....meaning, it's unlikely to happen in this Reality.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    57. Bernie Sanders Agrees With Goldman Sachs .. Sort Of
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 09:53 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/bernie-sanders-goldman-sachs-jpmorgan_n_6482702.html

    WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) doesn't often find common cause with Goldman Sachs. But when it comes to breaking up the world's biggest bank, Sanders is on the same page as a team of Goldman analysts.

    “Goldman Sachs is right," Sanders said Thursday in a statement provided to HuffPost. "J.P. Morgan should be broken up."


    Last week, Goldman's research department issued a report making the case that rival JPMorgan Chase would be more valuable to shareholders if it were broken into multiple banks. Since regulators have increased JPMorgan's mandated capital levels above that of some slightly smaller peers, Goldman analysts claimed the bank would be worth up to 25 percent more if it were split into as many as four separate entities. The smaller banks would have to hold less capital, since they would not pose as great a threat to the financial system in the event of failure, according to the analysis. Lower capital requirements would allow the smaller banks to profit more handsomely from riskier operations.

    "Our analysis suggests that a breakup -– into two or four parts -– could unlock value in most scenarios, although the range of outcomes we assessed is wide, at 5 - 25% potential upside," the report reads.


    Bank reform advocates have long proposed tough capital standards to encourage big banks to break up, but the levels contemplated are typically much higher than those currently imposed on JPMorgan. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and David Vitter (R-La.) introduced legislation in 2013 that would coax the breakup of big banks by dramatically raising their capital requirements. The legislation never came up for a vote.

    Goldman's report did not target all big banks, which are subject to more stringent capital rules than smaller banks. Instead, it focused on disparities between JPMorgan and other large banks, where it noted that JPMorgan faces more rigorous requirements than other behemoths. According to the Goldman report, regulators recently imposed tougher capital standards on JPMorgan, because it devotes an unusually large portion of its activities to risky businesses, including securities trading and derivatives operations. Goldman gave no indication in its note that the analysis was anything other than an evaluation of JPMorgan's stock potential.

    JPMorgan declined to comment. During a conference call to discuss the company's earnings on Wednesday, CEO Jamie Dimon said his bank was "under assault" from federal regulators. The bank has paid out billions in recent years to settle a broad array of allegations of wrongdoing, ranging from manipulating key interest rates to rigging energy markets for consumers, to ripping off homeowners on their mortgages.

    While the nation's biggest banks often enjoy the fruits of each others' lobbying efforts, the spoils from some Wall Street victories on Capitol Hill are sometimes distributed unevenly. In December, big banks slipped a government subsidy for derivatives trading into a critical bill funding the federal government. The measure, which repealed a tenet of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law known as "swaps push-out," allowed big banks to continue trading their riskiest derivatives from subsidiaries that accept government-insured deposits.

    Not every big bank was admitted to the party, however. JPMorgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo Bank of America gained much more from the swaps push-out provision than Goldman and Morgan Stanley did. That's because Goldman and Morgan Stanley have very modest deposit operations -- giving them much less taxpayer-backed money to fund their risky operations.

    The lopsided lobbying playbook repeated itself in January, when the House voted to delay a key part of the Volcker Rule until 2019. The measure would allow banks to continue holding and trading risky corporate debt packages known as collateralized loan obligations. The biggest beneficiary, by far, was JPMorgan -- which owns about $30 billion of a CLO market federal regulators value at between $84 and $105 billion. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have nothing close to such levels of CLO holdings. For many financial watchdogs off Wall Street, of course, such intra-Too-Big-To-Fail rivalries are unimportant. In his statement to HuffPost, Sanders argued for breaking up the six largest U.S. banks -- a list that includes Goldman itself.

    "Our biggest banks all need to be broken up," Sanders said. "Today, the largest banks in this country are much bigger than they were before taxpayers bailed them out. The top six banks today have over $9.8 trillion in assets, equivalent to almost 60 percent of the GDP of the United States … It's time to break up these behemoths."

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    60. Why a Grexit is more costly for Germany than a default inside the euro area
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 10:07 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.bruegel.org/nc/blog/detail/article/1542-why-a-grexit-is-more-costly-for-germany-than-a-default-inside-the-euro-area/

    Contrary to the IFO institute, we conclude that German losses on both official and private claims would be much higher if Greece exits the euro...A few days ago the influential IFO Institute published a short paper suggesting that a Greek default inside the euro-area would cost Germany €77.1 billion, while a default combined with an exit from the euro would cost €75.8 billion. The two numbers are about the same, yet unsurprisingly, media reports emphasised that a Grexit would be cheaper for Germany by €1.3 billion.

    We think that the publication of such numbers falsely suggests that direct losses can be calculated precisely. Even more importantly, we noticed that the calculation did not consider three major factors:

    the different haircuts likely under the two scenarios,
    private claims,
    other second round losses.

    All three factors suggest that direct losses for Germany would be much larger if Greece was to exit the euro.

    Before assessing the details of the calculations, let us make our view clear: we think that a Greek default and exit are neither likely nor necessary. It is definitely in the interests of both Greece and its euro-area partners to find a comprehensive agreement that would avoid default and exit, which would make everyone much worse-off. Greece would enter another deep recession, which would push unemployment up further and reduce budget revenues, necessitating another round of harsh fiscal consolidation. Euro-area creditors would lose a lot on their Greek claims and private claims on Greece would also suffer. The new depreciating Greek drachma may not revive the Greek economy that much (see on this Guntram Wolff’s recent post here and our 2011 post here). Furthermore, a Grexit would have many broader implications beyond economic issues. What are the prospects for a comprehensive agreement?

    Agreement on fiscal policy may not be that difficult either. Greece has suffered a lot in the past few years and has implemented major fiscal adjustments. Although the outlook is not too bright, by now the trough in economic activity has perhaps been reached and some economic growth is expected. This should help fiscal accounts and it is likely that no more fiscal adjustment will be necessary. In fact, the EU Commission expects that the cyclical adjusted primary budget surplus of Greece will decline from 8% of GDP in 2014 by about 1 percentage point in both 2015-16, suggesting a fiscal easing: exactly what Greek opposition parties demand. In other words, the new Greek government will be able to reap the benefits of the adjustments made in the past few years....

    MORE THEORIZING AT LINK
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    61. Money Dries Up for Oil and Gas, Layoffs Spread, Write-Offs Start
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 10:20 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/money-dries-up-for-oil-money-dries-up-for-oil-and-gas-layoffs-spread-write-offs-start-gas-layoffs-spread-write-offs-start.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

    By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street

    When money was growing on trees even for junk-rated companies, and when Wall Street still performed miracles for a fee, thanks to the greatest credit bubble in US history, oil and gas drillers grabbed this money channeled to them from investors and refilled the ever deeper holes fracking was drilling into their balance sheets. But the prices for crude oil, US natural gas, and natural gas liquids have all plunged. Revenues from unhedged production are down 40% or 50%, or more from just seven months ago. And when the hedges expire, the problem will get worse. The industry has been through this before. It knows what to do.

    Layoffs are cascading through the oil and gas sector. On Tuesday, the Dallas Fed projected that in Texas alone, 140,000 jobs could be eliminated. Halliburton said that it was axing an undisclosed number of people in Houston. Suncor Energy, Canada’s largest oil producer, will dump 1,000 workers in its tar-sands projects. Helmerich & Payne is idling rigs and cutting jobs. Smaller companies are slashing projects and jobs at an even faster pace.

    And now Slumberger, the world’s biggest oilfield-services company, will cut 9,000 jobs. It had had an earnings debacle. It announced that Q4 EPS grew by 11% year-over-year to $1.50, “excluding charges and credits.” In reality, its net income plunged 81% to $302 million, after $1.8 billion in write-offs that included its production assets in Texas. To prop up its shares, it announced that it would increase its dividend by 25%. And yes, it blew $1.1 billion in the quarter and $4.7 billion in the year, on share buybacks, a program that would continue, it said. Financial engineering works. On Thursday, its shares were down 35% since June. But on Friday, after the announcement, they jumped 6%.

    All these companies had gone on hiring binges over the last few years. Those binges are now being unwound. “We want to live within our means,” is how Suncor CFO Alister Cowan explained the phenomenon.

    Because now, they have to. Larger drillers outspent their cash flows from production by 112% and smaller to midsize drillers by a breathtaking 157%, Barclays estimated.

    LOTS OF DETAIL ON SPECIFIC FIRMS HERE

    CONCLUSION:
    “We are not panicking,” is how a bank CEO responded to the fact that loans to energy companies made up 20% of the bank’s loan portfolio.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    62. AT&T estimates charges of $10 billion in fourth quarter
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 10:29 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/16/us-at-t-outlook-idUSKBN0KP2HW20150116?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

    AT&T Inc said it expected to record charges of about $10 billion for the fourth quarter but the non-cash losses would not affect operating results.

    The biggest U.S. telephone company said it would take a charge of $7.9 billion related to actuarial gains and losses on pension and post-employment benefit plans.

    Operating results will also include a $2.1 billion charge, as the company determined that copper assets would not be necessary to support future network activity.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    63. Older Job Seekers Find Ways to Avoid Age Bias
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 10:57 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/your-money/older-job-seekers-finds-ways-to-avoid-age-bias.html?_r=0

    JAMES S. KUNEN, 66, teaches English as a second language at the Center for Immigrant Education and Training at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. When he was let go as the director of corporate communications at Time Warner during a round of layoffs, Mr. Kunen confronted the core questions: What is it he could do? Where did his skills translate to a job, one that made him feel some sense of purpose? And who would hire him, given his age?

    Many older job seekers know age discrimination, although tough to prove, is a fact of life. But increasingly they are finding jobs at smaller organizations, including nonprofits, start-ups, small trade associations and niche educational programs. Typically, these are employers that operate with a spare staff and depend on the experience and expertise that comes with age...Before he was laid off, Mr. Kunen volunteered to teach immigrant teenagers to speak better English, but concluded that if he was going to do it right, and get paid for it, he needed some kind of certification. So he enrolled in a 160-hour course to earn a certificate to teach English as a Second Language for Adults.

    “When I initially sent out résumés to commercial language schools, the only school that responded was one run by a person as old as I was,” said Mr. Kunen, the author of “Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life.” “And I was interviewed by 30-year-olds who totally didn’t ‘get’ me,” he said. “You can sense it immediately; it’s like being on a bad blind date.”


    For Mr. Kunen, patience and persistence paid off. Today, he spends 16 hours a week in the classroom teaching two courses. “At this age and stage of my life, working with highly motivated immigrants gives me a sense of purpose and engagement with the world,” he said. “Going to work is spending time with friends. I feel appreciated.”

    The linchpin: “It also gives me an income that makes a significant difference when added to my pension and Social Security.”


    Like Mr. Kunen, even people with retirement savings see earning some income as a safety net as they age. “In my research, the first thing I hear from older workers looking for a job is that they need to work,” said Ofer Sharone, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, author of “Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences” and founder of the nonprofit Institute for Career Transitions.

    “They may be over 60 and very close to traditional retirement age, but they feel they don’t have the resources to retire. And many are feeling healthy. They’re at the top of their game and wanting to make a contribution,” Mr. Sharone said.

    But the older a person is, the harder it is to get a job. “With each decade the length it takes to get re-employed is longer,” he said. The average duration of unemployment for those over 55 is nearly a year, compared with seven months for someone younger.

    Employers hesitate for myriad reasons, and some of their assumptions may not be valid. “Most of these turn out not to be accurate when you do the research. But nonetheless they are tenaciously held,” Mr. Sharone said.


     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    64. Solar Jobs Report Shows Huge Growth
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 11:40 AM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/solar-jobs-growth-us_n_6490050.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

    The solar industry reports job growth 20 times higher than the rest of the U.S. economy, according to a new analysis.

    As of 2014, there were nearly 174,000 jobs in the solar industry, according to the report from the nonprofit Solar Foundation. That represents 86 percent employment growth since the organization began tracking job figures in 2010. By the end of 2015, companies said they expect to hire an additional 36,000 new solar workers.

    The solar industry installed 7,200 megawatts of new solar power last year, the foundation said.

    More than half of the solar industry jobs -– 55 percent -– involved installation, and 19 percent were in manufacturing. The report found those jobs pay an average of $20 to 24 an hour.

    "We can very definitely say that these solar jobs are good, well-paying jobs, which I think is important," Andrea Luecke, executive director of the Solar Foundation, said in an interview with The Huffington Post. "While the economy has improved since we started this census series in 2010, at the height of recession, there are still lots of people without college degrees looking for work. Solar provides that kind of work."


    The report found that 21.6 percent of workers in the solar industry were women. Latino workers made up 16.3 percent of the workforce, while Asian and Pacific islanders represented 7 percent. African-Americans made up 6 percent of solar staffers.

    Luecke said the recent growth is largely due the surge in solar installations.

    MORE SELF-CONGRATULATIONS
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    68. So, Davos is next week
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 12:21 PM
    Jan 2015

    I wonder if they will be serving cyanide-laced Koolaid, ala Jonestown?

    After this week, there would be a lot of demand for either a good fantasy (Koolaid in another form), or quick relief...

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    70. Russia may lift food import ban from Greece if it quits EU - Russian agriculture minister
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 12:32 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://itar-tass.com/en/economy/771688


    Russia may lift its ban on food imports from Greece in the event it quits the European Union, Russian Minister of Agriculture Nikolai Fyodorov told a news conference in Berlin on Friday. Fyodorov is leading an official Russian delegation to the International Green Week public exhibition for the food, agriculture, and gardening industry.

    “If Greece has to leave the European Union, we will build our own relations with it, the food ban will not be applicable to it,” he said.


    He said that European Union countries, which felt discomfort from the slump in proceeds from exports of foods to Russia, were asking Russia to cushion the impacts of the Russian food import ban by expanding other types of imports. “We are looking at such possibility,” he said, adding that these countries offer new formats of cooperation in those areas that are not covered by the Russian food sanctions.

    Meanwhile he stressed that Russia did not plan to toughen its sanctions. “As concerns possible new sanctions, we are not looking at any such proposals from any structures,” he added....MORE
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    71. In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 12:34 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042802560.html

    ... This prison is majority Muslim -- as is virtually every house of incarceration in France. About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country's prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country's population.

    On a continent where immigrants and the children of immigrants are disproportionately represented in almost every prison system, the French figures are the most marked, according to researchers, criminologists and Muslim leaders.

    "The high percentage of Muslims in prisons is a direct consequence of the failure of the integration of minorities in France," said Moussa Khedimellah, a sociologist who has spent several years conducting research on Muslims in the French penal system.

    In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about 3 percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry. Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim. In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found....
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    74. Attorney General Holder Announces Biggest Civil Rights Reform in Years BEST EXPLANATION YET
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 02:11 PM
    Jan 2015
    http://www.alternet.org/drugs/attorney-general-holder-biggest-asset-forfeiture-reform-years?akid=12695.227380.L0sZ-Q&rd=1&src=newsletter1030419&t=28

    By Phillip Smith

    Holder finally addresses the abusive police practice of seizing people's assets without charging them with a crime...Attorney General Eric Holder this morning issued an order that will bar federal agencies from participating in "adoptions" of assets seized by state and local law enforcement agencies. "Adoptions" occur when state or local law enforcement agencies seize cash or properties under state laws, but then ask that a federal agency takes the seized property and forfeit it under federal law. State and local law enforcement agencies routinely resort to "adoption" as a means of circumventing state laws that mandate seized assets go to designated programs, typically a state's general fund or education fund. When a seizure is "adopted" by the feds, the seizing agency gets to keep 80% of the proceeds, with the federal government getting the rest.

    "With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons," Holder said in a Friday statement. "This is the first step in a comprehensive review that we have launched of the federal asset forfeiture program. Asset forfeiture remains a critical law enforcement tool when used appropriately – providing unique means to go after criminal and even terrorist organizations. This new policy will ensure that these authorities can continue to be used to take the profit out of crime and return assets to victims, while safeguarding civil liberties."


    While much asset forfeiture activity is related to drug cases, they are not included in the list of exceptions to the new policy barring "adoptions." Those public safety exceptions include firearms, ammunition, explosives, and materials related to child pornography. The new policy does not impact asset forfeitures conducted by federal law enforcement, nor does it bar state and local law enforcement from conducting civil asset forfeiture under state law.

    Under the Justice Department's Equitable Sharing asset forfeiture "adoption" program, state and local law enforcement has made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property with a value of more than $3 billion since 2008. Holder's move Friday is the boldest step to roll back sweeping police powers to seize goods and property since federal asset forfeiture began as tactic in the war on drugs in the 1980s. The Justice Department adopted the Equitable Sharing program in 1993. Civil asset forfeiture—the seizure of goods or property without having obtained a criminal conviction—has come under increasing fire in recent years...Pressure mounted after a Washington Post investigative piece published in September found police had seized nearly $2.5 billion in cash from motorists without search warrants or indictments since September 11, 2001. In that investigation, the Post found that police routinely stopped drivers for minor traffic violations, then intimidated them into agreeing to warrantless searches and seized cash without evidence of criminal misconduct.

    Holder's move is likely to exacerbate already strained relations between the Obama administration and law enforcement agencies. Police groups have expressed unhappiness with remarks both Holder and Obama made about controversial police killings in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City. And now, the administration is in effect taking money out of their pockets. More than 7,500 of the nation's 18,000 state and local police departments and joint task forces have participated in the Equitable Sharing program. And hundreds of departments and sheriff's offices have seizure proceeds accounting for more than 20% of their budgets.

    The move will also hurt federal agencies that have been "adopting" the seizures, particularly the DEA and ICE. Federal law enforcement has pocketed $800 million under Equitable Sharing seizures without arrests or convictions since 2001.

    This is the second major asset forfeiture reform at the federal level. Spurred by reports of abuses of asset forfeiture in the late 1990s, Congress passed the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000. That bill originally contained a provision "ending the sharing of seizure proceeds between local police and federal agencies," but it was removed in the face of fierce opposition from police and prosecutors...The Equitable Sharing program and the aggressive interdiction techniques created what lawmakers a decade-and-a-half ago called "a perverse incentive" for police to concentrate more on seizing cash than seizing drugs. Now, Holder has butchered the cash cow.

    CONGRESSIONAL DIDDLING AT LINK
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    75. Martin Luther King...A Man for All Seasons
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 02:31 PM
    Jan 2015


    Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

    He was born Michael King, but his father changed his name in honor of the German reformer Martin Luther. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, and organized nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, that attracted national attention following television news coverage of the brutal police response. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

    On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. In 1965, he and the SCLC helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches and the following year, he took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include poverty and speak against the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam".

    In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of killing King, had been framed or acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the shooting. The jury of a 1999 civil trial found Loyd Jowers to be complicit in a conspiracy against King. The ruling has since been discredited and a sister of Jowers admitted that he had fabricated the story so he could make $300,000 from selling the story, and she in turn corroborated his story in order to get some money to pay her income tax.

    King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, and as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor. In addition, a county was rededicated in his honor. A memorial statue on the National Mall was opened to the public in 2011.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    77. Report: Every US State Tax System Is Fundamentally Unfair
    Sun Jan 18, 2015, 03:57 PM
    Jan 2015


    The 2015 Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All Fifty States (the fifth edition of the report) assesses the fairness of state and local tax systems by measuring the state and local taxes that will be paid in 2015 by different income groups as a share of their incomes.1 The report examines every state and the District of Columbia. It discusses important features of each state’s tax system and includes de­tailed state-by-state profiles that provide essential baseline data to help lawmakers understand the effect tax reform proposals will have on constituents at all income levels.

    The report includes these main findings:

    • Virtually every state tax system is fundamentally unfair, taking a much greater share of income from low- and middle-income families than from wealthy families. The absence of a graduated personal income tax and overreliance on consumption taxes exacerbate this problem.

    • The lower one’s income, the higher one’s overall effective state and local tax rate.Combining all state and local income, property, sales and excise taxes that Americans pay, the nationwide average effective state and local tax rates by income group are 10.9 percent for the poorest 20 percent of individuals and families, 9.4 percent for the middle 20 percent and 5.4 percent for the top 1 percent.

    • In the 10 states with the most regressive tax structures (the Terrible 10) the bottom 20 percent pay up to seven times as much of their income in taxes as their wealthy counterparts. Washington State is the most regressive, followed by Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Ari­zona, Kansas, and Indiana.

    • Heavy reliance on sales and excise taxes are characteristics of the most regressive state tax systems. Six of the 10 most regressive states derive roughly half to two-thirds of their tax revenue from sales and excise taxes, compared to a national average of roughly one-third . Five of these states do not levy a broad-based personal income tax (four do not have any taxes on personal income and one state only applies its personal income tax to interest and dividends) while four have a personal income tax rate structure that is flat or virtually flat.

    • State personal income taxes are typically more progressive than the other taxes that states levy (e.g property, consumption). Sales and excise taxes are the most regressive, with poor families paying almost eight times more of their income in these taxes than wealthy families, and middle income families pay­ing five times more. Property taxes are typically regressive as well, but less so than sales and excise taxes.

    • Personal income taxes vary in fairness due to differences in rates, deductions, and exemptions across states. For example, the Earned Income Tax Credit improves progressivity in 25 states and the District of Columbia, while nine states undermine progressivity by allowing taxpayers to pay a reduced rate on capital gains income, which primarily benefits higher-income households.

    • State consumption tax structures are highly regressive with an average 7 percent rate on sales and excise taxes for the poor, a 4.7 percent rate for middle-income people, and a 0.8 percent rate for the wealthiest taxpayers. Because food is one of the largest expenses for low-income families, taxing food is particularly regressive; five of the ten most regressive states tax food at the state or local level.

    • Taxes on personal and business property are a significant revenue source for both states and locali­ties and are generally regressive in their overall effect, particularly for middle-income households. A homestead exemption (exempting a flat dollar or percentage amount of property value from a property tax) lessens regressivity. A property tax circuit breaker that caps the amount a property owner pays in property taxes based on their personal income can also reduce regressivity; none of the 10 most regres­sive states offer this tax break to low-income families of all ages.

    • States commended as “low tax” are often high tax states for low- and middle-income families. The 10 states with the highest taxes on the poor are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, and Washington. Seven of these are also among the “terrible ten” because they are not only high tax for the poorest, but low tax for the wealthiest.



    https://www.popularresistance.org/report-every-us-state-tax-system-is-fundamentally-unfair/

    SOMEBODY NEEDS TO DO A STATE SUBSIDY CHART TO COMPLEMENT THESE TAX CHARTS....
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