STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 15 January 2016

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 15 January 2016[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 14 January 2016

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 14 January 2016
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Dow Jones 16,379.05 +227.64 (1.41%)
S&P 500 1,921.84 +31.56 (1.67%)
Nasdaq 4,615.00 +88.94 (1.97%)


[font color=red]10 Year 2.09% +0.01 (0.48%)
30 Year 2.89% +0.03 (1.05%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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(click on link for latest updates)
Market Updates
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts
08/03/15 Former City (London) trader Tom Hayes found guilty of rigging global Libor interest rates. Each fo eight counts carries up to 10 yr. sentence.
08/21/15 Charles Antonucci Sr, former pres. Park Ave. Bank sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and attempt to steal $11MM in TARP bailout funds, as well as $37.5MM fraud on OK insurance company. To pay $54MM in restitution and give up additional $11MM.
09/21/15 Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn apologizes for VW cheating on air quality standards with emission testing avoidance device. Stock drops 20%, fines may total $18B.
09/22/15 Stewart Parnell, CEO Peanut Corp. of America, sentenced to 28 years in prison for selling salmonella-tainted peanut butter that killed nine.
12/17/15 Martin Shkreli, former CEO Turing Pharmaceuticals and notorious price gouger, arrested on securities fraud charges. Posted $5M bail, resigned as CEO.




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

[Proserpina]

1. What’s Your Threat Score? By Sarah Burris

Yves here. Pre-crime has arrived. And if you think it’s hard getting your credit record corrected, it’s a piece of cake compared to fixing errors in your threat score. Plus it’s not hard to imagine how threat scores can be used to deter certain types of activity, say like visiting certain parts of the world, or watching deemed-to-be-radical documentaries...

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/whats-your-threat-score

Police have found a new way to legally incorporate surveillance and profiling into everyday life. Just when you thought we were making progress raising awareness surrounding police brutality, we have something new to contend with. The Police Threat Score isn’t calculated by a racist police officer or a barrel-rolling cop who thinks he’s on a TV drama; it’s a computer algorithm that steals your data and calculates your likelihood of risk and threat for the fuzz. Beware is the new stats-bank that helps officers analyze “billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and…social-media postings” to ultimately come up with a score that indicates a person’s potential for violence, according to a Washington Post story. No word yet on whether this meta data includes photos and facial recognition software. For example would an ordinary person, yet to commit a crime, be flagged when seen wearing a hoodie in a gated Florida community. The company tries to paint itself as a savior to first responders, claiming they want to help them “understand the nature of the environment they may encounter during the window of a 911 event.” Think of it like someone pulling your credit score when you apply for a job. Except, in this instance you never applied for the job and they’re pulling your credit score anyway because they knew you might apply. It’s that level of creepiness.

Remember the 2002 Tom Cruise movie Minority Report? It’s set in 2054, a futuristic world where the “pre-crime” unit arrests people based on a group of psychics who can see crimes before they happen. Only, it’s 2016 and we’re not using psychics, we’re using computers that mine data. According to the Post piece, law enforcement in Oregon are under federal investigation for using software to monitor Black Lives Matter hashtags after uprisings in Baltimore and Ferguson. How is this new software any different? In fact, this is the same kind of technology the NSA has been using since 9/11 to monitor online activities of suspected terrorists—they’re just bringing it down to the local level.

According to FatalEncounters.org, a site that tracks deaths by cop, there were only 14 days in 2015 in which a law enforcement officer did not kill someone. So, leaving judgment up to the individual hasn’t been all that effective in policing. But is letting a machine do it any better? Using these factors to calculate a color-coded threat level doesn’t seem entirely practical. Suppose a person doesn’t use social media or own a house but was once arrested when he was 17 for possession of marijuana. The absence of data might lend itself to a high threat level. The same can be said for online meta data that might filter in extracurricular interests. Could a person who is interested in kinky activity in the bedroom be tagged as having a tendency toward violence?

The Fresno, Calif. police department is taking on the daunting task of being the first to test the software in the field. Understandably, the city council and citizens voiced their skepticism at a meeting. “One council member referred to a local media report saying that a woman’s threat level was elevated because she was tweeting about a card game titled ‘Rage,’ which could be a keyword in Beware’s assessment of social media,” the Post reported...While you might now be rethinking playing that Mafia game on Facebook, it isn’t just your personal name that can raise a flag. Fresno Councilman Clinton Olivier, a libertarian-leaning Republican, asked for his name to be run through the system. He came up as a “green” which indicates he’s safe. When they ran his address, however, it popped up as “yellow” meaning the officer should beware and be prepared for a potentially dangerous situation. How could this be? Well, the councilman didn’t always live in this house; someone else lived there before him and that person was likely responsible for raising the threat score.

Think what a disastrous situation that could be. A mother of a toddler could move into a new home with her family, not knowing that the house was once the location of an abusive patriarch. The American Medical Association has calculated that as many as 1 in 3 women will be impacted by domestic violence in their lifetimes, so it isn’t an unreasonable hypothetical. One day the child eats one of those detergent pods and suddenly the toddler isn’t breathing. Hysterial, the mother calls 911, screaming. She can’t articulate what has happened, only that her baby is hurt. Dispatch sends an ambulance, but the address is flagged as “red” for its prior decade of domestic violence calls. First responders don’t know someone new has moved in. The woman is giving CPR while her husband waits at the door for the ambulance. What happens when the police arrive?


the mind boggles. where is the 4th Amendment when we really need it?

[Proserpina]

2. Flint sending out 1,800 new notices for past-due water bills

that's for the poisoned water

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/11/flint_sending_out_first_discon.html



City employees and elected officials raise glasses of treated water from the Flint River during a toast in a ceremony stopping the intake of water from Detroit on Friday, April 25, 2014 at the Flint Water Treatment Plant. The city will use the Flint River as its primary water source as the Karegnondi Water Authority pipeline is built. Samuel Wilson | Mlive.com

The city says it will send out the first water shutoff notices since a judge's ruling temporarily halted the practice in August.

Finance Director Jody Lundquist said about 1,800 shutoff notices for past-due accounts are expected to be mailed to customers this week.

The new notices only account for debts from water bills that have been issued since the city rolled back water and sewer rates to comply with an injunction issued by Genesee Circuit Court Judge Archie Hayman.

City officials have said the injunction, issued in a class action lawsuit brought by Flint water customers, has caused an increasing number of overdue accounts because the order forbid shutoffs based on rates that the judge ruled were improperly adopted...


this should provide entertainment (and lawsuits) for years

[Proserpina]

3. Fear & Greed Index: What emotion is driving the market now?

http://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

only 18 points to go to reach Maximum Fear....see graphic at link

[Proserpina]

4. “VP of world’s richest country forced to consider selling home to pay medical bills of veteran son.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/11/politics/joe-biden-barack-obama-financial-help/index.html


a comment:

When you think about it, this story attempts to convey certain messages.

“They are just like you and me, with the same struggles and worries.”
“Obama is just such a swell guy.”

It also raises questions: if 0bamacare is so swell, how come the Bidens were threatened with financial ruin? After all, in terms of income, Beau was making six figures as the AG of Delaware. And I doubt he had a crappy 0bamacare plan in the first place, so what does that say about 0bama’s legacy?

“Hitch your wagon to a rich person and hope they throw you a scrap or two.”

Geez, it’s like a more depressing version of the trickle down.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/200pm-water-cooler-1132016.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

[Proserpina]

5. Davos is coming! Davos is coming!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-13/davos-set-to-provide-an-alpine-view-on-the-world-s-hot-spots

...The organizers of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland want attendees to focus on the challenges of the future: The theme of this year’s annual meeting is Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a catchall rubric that describes advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics. The problems of the here and now, though, are likely to be a more popular topic of discussion...

Here’s the list of everyone attending Davos

http://qz.com/592854/heres-the-list-of-everyone-attending-davos/

The World Economic Forum’s big annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, begins on Jan. 20. Back in 2013, when Quartz first published the names of all Davos attendees, it was still considered confidential. Since then, the forum has made the list public ahead of the conference. We used that official release to create the tool above.
Update (Jan. 14): The attendee list provided by the WEF isn’t comprehensive. Government officials such as US vice president Joseph Biden and UK prime minister David Cameron are among the attendees WEF has announced that aren’t included on the list...

[bread_and_roses]

21. ROFL - thought you were talking "Game of Thrones"

on edit - oh, wait - you ARE!

[Proserpina]

34. I am? Don't watch/read it

I don't have time to be a person of any background...sigh.

[bread_and_roses]

35. Take my word - it's apt

I won't even recommend either the book or the tv adaptation - even though both have enormous strengths, they both have enormous flaws and weaknesses as well.

Or, I guess I'll take the back to the degree that I can - almost without qualifications - rec the first book & the first season. After that, your on your own.

[Proserpina]

6. Saudi Life With $30 Oil

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/saudi-life-with-30-oil-shock-spending-cuts-and-even-smiles

Times are getting tougher in the Hathut household, so father Mohammad is looking for extra work and the three kids are being told to switch off the lights to cut his electricity bill. This is Saudi Arabia in 2016. It may be a familiar story to austerity-hit Europeans and Americans, but in a nation synonymous with conspicuous consumption, the belt-tightening has been unsettling. Unprecedented cuts to fuel and energy subsidies are forcing the kind of rigor never seen during the era of petrodollar-fueled wealth that quadrupled per-capita income since the late 1980s.

“A lot of things will change,” said Hathut, 30, who plans to supplement his income as a business-administration teacher at a Riyadh university with private training sessions. “But many youths are still in a state of shock. They haven’t processed the news and what to do.”

With oil having plunged to about $30 a barrel, signs of the tectonic shift taking place in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom are everywhere: from the royal palace where the nation’s founding family is contemplating the sale of its monopoly oil producer to the homes and businesses adjusting to the new economy.

Resurgent Youth

Those aged 15 to 34, who make up more than 40 percent of the 21 million Saudis, are at the forefront of the upheaval. No longer can they take for granted free health care, gasoline at 20 cents a liter and routine pay increases...

[Proserpina]

7. Pay Is a Battle Ground as Bankers Don't Accept Cuts, Thiam Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-12/pay-is-a-battle-ground-as-bankers-don-t-accept-cuts-thiam-says

Credit Suisse Group AG’s Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam said investment bankers are ready for a fight when it comes to compensation cuts.

“The battle ground is remuneration,” Thiam said at a conference in Paris on Tuesday. “The business is structurally quite profitable provided the pay can go up and down. It’s the ‘and down’ that they don’t accept,” he said, referring to bankers in the securities unit.

more

[Proserpina]

8. Populist Wilders Says EU Is Finished as He Leads Dutch Polls

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/dutch-populist-wilders-says-eu-finished-netherlands-must-leave

The European Union is teetering, and Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders wants to tip it over the edge.

Wilders, 52, whose party leads opinion polls with calls to close Dutch borders to refugees, pledged to immediately pull the Netherlands out of the 28-nation EU should he become prime minister in elections due in March next year. The EU is unraveling and that’s to be encouraged, he said, urging the U.K. to quit the bloc in its forthcoming referendum...

next year is an eternity in political time

[Proserpina]

9. Goldman Says It Will Pay $5.1 Billion in U.S. Mortgage Probe

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/goldman-says-it-will-settle-u-s-mortgage-probe-for-5-1-billion

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it agreed to settle a U.S. probe into its handling of mortgage-backed securities for about $5.1 billion, cutting fourth-quarter profit by about $1.5 billion and closing out a year of record legal and litigation costs.

The proposed deal, which the bank announced in a statement Thursday, would be the latest multibillion-dollar settlement resulting from the government’s push to hold Wall Street firms to account for creating and selling subprime mortgage bonds that helped spur the 2008 financial crisis.

Authorities have already penalized the three biggest U.S. banks -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. -- more than $37 billion in the form of cash and consumer relief. In those cases, the government said the banks misrepresented to investors the quality of mortgage loans they securitized into risky bonds.

New York-based Goldman Sachs will pay a $2.39 billion civil penalty, make $875 million in cash payments and provide $1.8 billion in consumer relief under an agreement in principle with a U.S. task force, according to its statement.

more

Goldman Sachs settlement on mortgage-backed bonds to hit earnings

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-settlement-idUSKCN0US2SI20160114

...The agreement resolves actual and potential claims from the U.S. Department of Justice, the New York and Illinois Attorneys General, the National Credit Union Administration and the Federal Home Loan Banks of Chicago and Seattle.

The hit to earnings comes after Goldman Sachs took a $1.45 billion provision in the second quarter in anticipation of a deal.

The settlement underscores how Wall Street has yet to shake off the legacy of the U.S. subprime crisis, when mortgages were sold to people who could not afford them and then repackaged for investors without an adequate explanation of how risky they were.

The agreement has been made in principle and has to be finalised with the regulators and other bodies involved. It was not clear how the civil penalty and cash payment would be divided among the different parties to the deal. (bit.ly/1SkSkoH)

The agreement relates to mortgage bonds sold between 2005 and 2007...

[Proserpina]

10. Apple May Be on Hook for $8 Billion in Taxes After Europe Probe

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-15/apple-may-be-on-hook-for-8-billion-in-taxes-after-europe-probe

...The world’s largest company could owe more than $8 billion in back taxes as a result of a European Commission investigation into its tax policies, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence. Apple, which has said it will appeal an adverse ruling, is being scrutinized by regulators who have accused the iPhone maker of using subsidiaries in Ireland to avoid paying taxes on revenue generated outside the U.S...

[Proserpina]

11. Initial Jobless Claims in U.S. Unexpectedly Increased Last Week

how can they say "unexpectedly" with a straight face? There is no mechanism in place for employing people, or for keeping them employed. Inertia/Momentum isn't doing the job that politics is supposed to address. And neither is Congress.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/initial-jobless-claims-in-u-s-unexpectedly-increased-last-week

The number of applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly increased last week, a sign labor market momentum may be starting to cool.

Initial jobless claims rose by 7,000 to 284,000 in the week ended Jan. 9, the second-highest level since July, a report from the Labor Department showed on Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a decline to 275,000.

Concerns that a slowdown in China and other emerging economies will limit prospects for U.S. growth have roiled equity markets and may make some employers more cautious about their staffing levels. A sustained pickup in the pace of dismissals that takes claims well above 300,000 will probably be needed to confirm demand for workers is waning.

“This time of the year claims are pretty volatile given the difficulty of trying to adjust for the various holidays and the start of the quarter,” said Kevin Cummins, an economist at RBS Securities Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut, whose forecast for claims was among the closest in the Bloomberg survey. “Our assumption is the labor market is going to remain healthy, just at a somewhat more moderate pace of job growth.”

more

[Proserpina]

12. Global Earnings Downgrades Haven't Been This Bad in Seven Years

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-15/global-earnings-downgrades-haven-t-been-this-bad-in-seven-years

Stocks are losing their last line of defense.

Amid a selloff that erased more than two years of gains -- about $14 trillion -- from global stocks now on the brink of a bear market, at least earnings stood as a potential bright spot. Those hopes are fading: analyst profit downgrades outnumbered upgrades by the most since 2009 last week, according to monthly data from a Citigroup Inc. index that tracks such changes.

Declines in oil and and other commodities, the withdrawal of Federal Reserve support, Europe’s fragile recovery and China slowdown fears are combining to jeopardize one of the few remaining stock catalysts after a global rally of as much as 156 percent since 2009. And profit growth estimates are still too high for this year and 2017, says Bankhaus Lampe’s Ralf Zimmermann.

“The momentum in the global economy is slowing down to such an extent that people are seriously talking about recession,” said Zimmermann, a strategist at Bankhaus Lampe in Dusseldorf. “This is not just China, it’s far more widespread. There are few places to hide. Even defensives will feel the pain.”

more

[Proserpina]

13. Hedge Funds Get Reality Check From Iceland PM Bracing for Exit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-15/investors-to-pay-fair-share-as-iceland-heads-for-exit-pm-says

Iceland’s prime minister expects hedge funds to pay their "fair share" as the country prepares to dismantle the final barriers to free capital flows.

After releasing $17 billion in cash for creditors in its failed banks, the government is preparing to free a further 290 billion kronur ($2.2 billion) trapped for bond investors in March. They will be given the option of swapping into foreign currency, exchanging into a long Eurobond or having the money placed in a non-interest bearing account.

The government anticipates that most investors will go through the auction and do this at a "reasonable price," Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson said in an interview Thursday in Reykjavik.

"Let’s not forget that these investors have also had substantial interest rates while they’ve had their funds here in Iceland," he said. "So, it’s not a question of taking something away from somebody. It’s a question of making it possible for them to get their investments with interest.”

These investors were among those trapped as Iceland imposed controls on the krona in 2008 after its largest banks collapsed under an $85 billion debt mountain. Successive governments have since resurrected the economy, in part by shielding consumers from the financial turmoil...

more

[Mojorabbit]

36. Whether to join the euro or no was a big topic of conversation when I was there 2 yrs ago. nt

[Proserpina]

14. Gaius Publius: Wall Street Reviews What Sanders Plans for Wall Street

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2016/01/wall-street-reviews-sanders-plan-for.html

I can't do justice with an excerpt...go read at link

[Proserpina]

15. The Deeper, Uglier Side of TPP

[Proserpina]

16. Greece accepts IMF participation in bailout plan -Dijsselbloem

http://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-greece-imf-idUSL8N14Y3FY20160114

Greece accepts that the International Monetary Fund has to take part in its bailout programme under which Athens receives billions of euros in loans in exchange for economic reforms, the chairman of euro zone finance ministers said on Thursday.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in December that the participation of the IMF in the bailout, the third since 2010, was not necessary and that the programme could be handled by euro zone authorities alone.

But the participation of the IMF is a key condition for Germany, which believes the European Commission alone as the representative of creditors could be too soft on Athens when it comes to reform implementation.

&quot Greek Finance Minister Euclid) Tsakalotos confirmed to me that the Greek government accepts that the IMF needs to be part of the process," Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters before a ministerial meeting to discuss Greece's reform progress.

[Proserpina]

17. China’s Capital Flight

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/china-s-capital-flight

You don’t need to be a finance expert to know that something’s wrong when an interest rate reaches almost 70 percent. With China’s growth outlook darkening and capital flowing out of the country, speculators have been betting heavily against the yuan. The People’s Bank of China effectively declared war on them in early January, directing state banks to buy large sums of the currency in Hong Kong to support its value and burn the short sellers. With the yuan suddenly scarce in Hong Kong, the annualized cost of borrowing it overnight there hit 66.82 percent on Jan. 12—more than 10 times the usual interest rate. (It receded to 8 percent the next day.) Michael Every, head of financial markets research at Rabobank Group, called the rate spike “murderous” and predicted that things wouldn’t end well for Chinese authorities. Central banks “usually win a round like this, but lose in the end,” he told Bloomberg.

China’s central bank isn’t freestyling. It takes its instructions from the government, which means President Xi Jinping. Xi has shrewdly consolidated power since his ascension in 2012, but he seems befuddled by free markets, at times allowing them to operate and at times trying to throttle them—as with the circuit breakers that have failed to arrest the slide in stock prices.

One of the big questions for the global economy in 2016 is what Xi will do next to stop the flight of capital, which threatens to sap funds from China when growth is already weak. One option is to lure money back by making the country more inviting to both Chinese and foreign investors. That would involve decontrolling interest rates and halting directed lending to heavily indebted state-owned enterprises and local governments. But doing so would require loosening the Communist Party’s control over the economy and harm some powerful domestic constituencies, like long-favored companies and provincial chiefs. So the temptation to amp up command-and-control will be great. True, a clampdown would jeopardize China’s ambition to become an equal of the U.S. in global finance. But it would insulate China from the ungovernable swings of the global financial markets, which investor George Soros once memorably said are more a wrecking ball than a pendulum.

Some China watchers say the question of Xi’s direction is already being answered. “China will become increasingly closed to the rest of the world,” predicts Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia and the Pacific at Natixis Asia, a unit of Groupe BPCE, France’s second-largest banking company. “Xi Jinping’s mindset is one in which China is at the center of the world’s economy but not necessarily open to the rest of the world, or at least not vulnerable to it.”

[Proserpina]

18. Russia Breaking Wall St Oil Price Monopoly By F. William Engdahl

http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/09/russia-breaking-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly/

...In the period up until the end of the 1980’s world oil prices were determined largely by real daily supply and demand. It was the province of oil buyers and oil sellers. Then Goldman Sachs decided to buy the small Wall Street commodity brokerage, J. Aron in the 1980’s. They had their eye set on transforming how oil is traded in world markets.

It was the advent of “paper oil,” oil traded in futures, contracts independent of delivery of physical crude, easier for the large banks to manipulate based on rumors and derivative market skullduggery, as a handful of Wall Street banks dominated oil futures trades and knew just who held what positions, a convenient insider role that is rarely mentioned inn polite company. It was the beginning of transforming oil trading into a casino where Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and a few other giant Wall Street banks ran the crap tables.

In the aftermath of the 1973 rise in the price of OPEC oil by some 400% in a matter of months following the October, 1973 Yom Kippur war, the US Treasury sent a high-level emissary to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 1975 US Treasury Assistant Secretary, Jack F. Bennett, was sent to Saudi Arabia to secure an agreement with the monarchy that Saudi and all OPEC oil will only be traded in US dollars, not Japanese Yen or German Marks or any other. Bennett then went to take a high job at Exxon. The Saudis got major military guarantees and equipment in return and from that point, despite major efforts of oil importing countries, oil to this day is sold on world markets in dollars and the price is set by Wall Street via control of the derivatives or futures exchanges such as Intercontinental Exchange or ICE in London, the NYMEX commodity exchange in New York, or the Dubai Mercantile Exchange which sets the benchmark for Arab crude prices. All are owned by a tight-knit group of Wall Street banks–Goldman Sachs, JP MorganChase, Citigroup and others. At the time Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reportedly stated, “If you control the oil, you control entire nations.” Oil has been at the heart of the Dollar System since 1945...

this is a "must read" article! and it's long...

[Proserpina]

19. Hello, I must be going

I have abandoned Foxfire for Chrome...it just kept crashing on me and eating up RAM. I'm leery about the privacy, though....

We are above freezing, today...but only today. Back in the meatlocker tonight for the foreseeable future. It's a very dry winter; precious little snow, maybe 3 inches on ground.

Tonight is the David Bowie memorial WEE. Bring your offerings.
And next weekend, Alan Rickman. I'm losing all my favorites in one month. Life isn't fair!

[Fuddnik]

20. I've been having the same problems with Firefox for months.

Worse on some sites than others, but it's really been a pain.

I've been using Chrome a little. Maybe its just time to uninstall firefox.

[bread_and_roses]

22. Me too!

to be ungrammatical - I am really annoyed because I've used Firefox for years - it was always stable - and all my passwords etc are in it .... but it's become a real problem - constant freezing and crashing. I wonder what's happened.

[DemReadingDU]

24. I thought it was me, having too many tabs open

Is 50 too many?
lol!

[CountAllVotes]

25. Same here!

Crashes crashes non-stop. Have been blaming it on this piece o'crap laptop I have -- an HP EliteBook it is called. I am so not impressed!

Maybe Firefox is the culprit?

[Fuddnik]

26. Uh oh. I just picked up a refurbished Elitebook yesterday.

But I haven't installed Firefox on it.

But, Firefox kept crashing on my previous laptop, and my desktop.

I've been using it for years. Don't know what their problems are now.

[CountAllVotes]

30. EliteBook

The one I have is an 850 G1. It comes with no DVD/CD drive, something you'll have to buy on your own in order to install software.

I've had it since Sept. 2014 and I am not impressed with it. Crash and burn seems to be all it knows!

It has Windows 7 Pro. on it and the track point (I used to really like the track point but the one this thing has is a joke!).

I hope you have better luck with yours than I've had with mine! The cost was waaayyyy too much for this thing -- abt. $800+ it was by the time all was said and done w/it.

again just for the hell of it!

[Fuddnik]

31. I got this one refurbished on purpose. It had Win7 Pro

Didn't want Windows 8 or 10. Got it through Staples.com for $200. It's mainly for convenience and travel. Anything important is on my desktop.

[Ghost Dog]

27. Had that problem; installed NoScript,

lets you exclude scripts from sites you choose, per page. Problem alleviated.

Certain scripts make Firefox hang, deliberately?

[magical thyme]

23. chrome hasn't been too great lately. it freezes or really slows down...a lot.

I am migrating my favorites over from IE to Chrome, since I can't upgrade to the latest IE on my antique laptop.

I'm not thrilled with Chrome and was just thinking the other day maybe I should try Firefox instead.

Since they're all experiencing problems, I'm going to guess we're all being hijacked and/or spied on

[bread_and_roses]

29. Waves to agent Mike ....

You're probably right - just based on our user-names alone! You and Prosperina are obviously in some pagan cult, I'm obviously a radical agitator - Fud is just too damn irreverent, etc.

[Warpy]

32. GHostery can help with privacy concerns

Just be careful about shutting off widgets, some allow you to post comments and some allow you to see videos. It does do a decent job of blocking tracking software being installed on your computer. CCleaner is also a nice free program that allows you to clean cookies, trackers, and unused junk.

If it makes you feel any better, NM is getting snow flurries today. Look out downstream.

[DemReadingDU]

28. DOW down -451

[Warpy]

33. I know, must be more panicky people taking advice from the Royal Bank of Scotland

They predicted the end of life as we know it and suggested selling everything but high quality bonds last week.