August 23, 2014

Bank Settlement Grade Inflation: High Bullshit to Cash Ratio in $17 Billion Bank of America Deal

from Naked Capitalism:


Bank Settlement Grade Inflation: High Bullshit to Cash Ratio in $17 Billion Bank of America Deal
Posted on August 21, 2014 by Yves Smith


Over the last year, the Administration has entered into a series of bank settlements over various types of mortgage misconduct. The sudden rush to generate headlines from misdeeds that have been covered in the media in lurid detail during and after the crisis looks an awful lot like an effort to stem continuing criticism over the abject failure to punish banks and more important, their execs for blowing up the global economy for fun and profit, particularly since the Dems are at serious risk of losing control of the Senate in the Congressional midterms.

But as much as the media dutifully amplifies the multibillion headline value of these pacts, we’ve reminded readers again and again that all of these agreements have substantial non-cash portions which are ludicrously treated as if they have the same value as cold, hard cash. As we’ve reminded readers often, it’s critical to keep your eye on the real money, since the rest of the total is almost without exception things the bank would have done anyhow (or even better, giving banks credit for costs actually borne by others, like modifying mortgages that the bank merely services, meaning the bank gets a credit for a writedown imposed on an investor).

A telling trend in this rash of deal-making is that the bullshit to cash ratio has been rising. Notice the pattern:

November 2013 JP Morgan settlement of FHFA, other Federal, and certain state mortgage claims. $13 billion headline value. $9 billion in cash. Bullshit to cash ratio: 44.4%

July 2014 Citigroup mortgage settlement over misrepresenting residential mortgage backed securities. $7 billion headline value. Cash portion $4.5 billion. Bullshit to cash ratio: 55.6%

August 2014 Bank of America settlement. $17 billion headline value. Cash portion $9 billion. Bullshit to cash ratio: 88.9%

Now admittedly, none of these approach the mother of all bullshit settlements, namely, the Federal/49 state mortgage settlement of early 2012, whose real purpose was to take pesky state attorneys generals out of the business of getting too inquisitive about mortgage chain of title issues, which Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin more colorfully called “securitization fail”. The totals kept moving around prior to the filing of the settlements with each bank, and by then, the media had lost interest in the particulars. Since these pacts are really all about managing public perception rather than punishing bank crimes, the rough and ready figures touted at time of the initial announcement are most germane.

February 2012, Federal/49 state mortgage settlement. $25 billion headline value. “Less than $5 billion” in cash, so charitably call it $5 billion. Bullshit to cash ratio: 400%. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/high-bullshit-to-cash-ratio-in-17-billion-bank-of-america-deal.html

August 23, 2014

Vultures Circling Argentina, Disconnect At The Fed

from the Working Life blog:


Vultures Circling Argentina, Disconnect At The Fed
Posted on 20 August 2014


It might look these events are completely unrelated but there is a tie between the extortion underway of Argentina courtesy of a hedge fund, on the one hand, versus the cluelessness at the Federal Reserve Board about what is actually happening to real people.

The vulture is Paul Singer, the hedge fund billionaire who runs Elliott Management. The very short story is that he won’t take a discount on bonds he holds from Argentina’s defaulted bonds–contrary to just about all the rest of the claimants who negotiated a deal with Argentina that would still hand them a nice tidy 300 percent profit.

Argentina is trying to get some legislation passed in the U.S. to help out but certainly this sums it up:

Argentina has refused to pay the holdouts, calling them vultures whose actions are akin to extortion, comments which were repeated by Mr. Kicillof on Wednesday. Both sides failed to reach a court-mediated settlement last month, and on July 30, Argentina slipped into a default after a $539 million interest payment to other bondholders was blocked.

On Wednesday, Mr. Kicillof said the government would extend the option to swap the original bonds with those to be issued under Argentine law to its holdout investors who did not participate in previous debt restructurings.

“Mr. Singer can come here and show up at the counter and receive payment, obtaining a 300 percent profit,” Mr Kicillof said. But, he added, “that isn’t enough for Mr. Singer because he’s a vulture.”

.....(snip).....

The point is that, underneath both events, is the same problem: the financial mandarins still call the shots and are always looking for a way to fuck the regular person, whether s/he lives in Argentina or on Main Street U.S.A. ..............(more)

- See more at: http://www.workinglife.org/2014/08/20/vultures-circling-argentina-disconnect-at-the-fed/#sthash.5hmT5fQq.dpuf

August 21, 2014

What Happened to the Recovery?

from Dollars & Sense:


What Happened to the Recovery?
BY GERALD FRIEDMAN


Part I: Weak Employment, Stagnant Wages, and Booming Profits

The 2007-2010 recession was the longest and deepest since World War II. The subsequent recovery has been the weakest in the postwar period. While total employment has finally returned to its pre-recession level, millions remain out of work and annual output (GDP) is almost a trillion dollars below the economy’s “full-employment” capacity. This column explains how high levels of unemployment have held down wages, contributing to soaring corporate profits and a remarkable run-up in the stock market.

Output plunged and has not recovered. There was a sharp fall in output (GDP) at the onset of the Great Recession, down to 8% below what the economy could produce if labor and other resources were employed at normal levels (“full employment” capacity). Since the recovery began, output has grown at barely above the rate of growth in capacity, leaving the “output gap” at more than 6% of the economy’s potential—or nearly $1 trillion per year.



........(snip)........

Part II: Government Policy and Why the Recovery Has Been So Slow

The recovery from the Great Recession has been so slow because government policy has not addressed the underlying problem: the weakness of demand that restrained growth before the recession and that ultimately brought on a crisis. Focused on the dramatic events of fall 2008, including the collapse of Lehman Brothers, policymakers approached the Great Recession as a financial crisis and sought to minimize the effects of the meltdown on the real economy, mainly by providing liquidity to the banking sector. While monetary policy has focused on protecting the financial system, including protecting financial firms from the consequences of their own actions, government has done less to address the real causes of economic malaise: declining domestic investment and the lack of effective demand. Monetary policy has been unable to spark recovery because low interest rates have not been enough to encourage businesses and consumers to invest. Instead, we need a much more robust fiscal policy to stimulate a stronger recovery.

The Fed has kept interest rates unprecedentedly low. Determined not to repeat what orthodox economists saw as the main cause of the Great Depression—a “tight” money supply—the Federal Reserve responded very aggressively to the crisis in 2007 and 2008. The Fed drove its main target short-term interest rate, the federal funds rate, down to an unprecedented near-zero level. Even at interest rates below zero in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, however, effective demand has been so depressed and so much unused productive capacity has remained that banks have found few borrowers. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2014/0814friedman.html

August 21, 2014

Naomi Klein's new book explains the connections between capitalism and climate change

(In These Times) In her previous books The Shock Doctrine (2007) and No Logo (2000), Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein took on topics like neoliberal “shock therapy,” consumerism, globalization and “disaster capitalism,” extensively documenting the forces behind the dramatic rise in economic inequality and environmental degradation over the past 50 years. But in her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (due in stores Sept. 16), Klein casts her gaze toward the future, arguing that the dangers of climate change demand radical action now to ward off catastrophe. She certainly isn’t alone in pointing out the urgency of the threat, but what sets Klein apart is her argument that it is capitalism—not carbon—that is at the root of climate change, inexorably driving us toward an environmental Armageddon in the pursuit of profit. This Changes Everything is well worth a read (or two) in full, but we’ve distilled some of its key points here.

1. Band-Aid solutions don’t work.

“Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed.”

Much of the conversation surrounding climate change focuses on what Klein dismisses as “Band-Aid solutions”: profit-friendly fixes like whizz-bang technological innovations, cap-and-trade schemes and supposedly “clean” alternatives like natural gas. To Klein, such strategies are too little, too late. In her drawn-out critique of corporate involvement in climate change prevention, she demonstrates how profitable “solutions” put forward by many think-tanks (and their corporate backers) actually end up making the problem worse. For instance, Klein argues that carbon trading programs create perverse incentives, allowing manufacturers to produce more harmful greenhouse gases, just to be paid to reduce them. In the process, carbon trading schemes have helped corporations make billions—allowing them to directly profit off the degradation of the planet. Instead, Klein argues, we need to break free of market fundamentalism and implement long-term planning, strict regulation of business, more taxation, more government spending and reversals of privatization to return key infrastructure to public control.

2. We need to fix ourselves, not fix the world.

“The earth is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the world, it is to fix ourselves.”

Klein devotes a full chapter of the book to geoengineering: the field of research, championed by a niche group of scientists, funders and media figures, that aims to fight global warming by altering the earth itself—say, by covering deserts with reflective material to send sunlight back to space or even dimming the sun to decrease the amount of heat reaching the planet. However, politicians and much of the global public have raised environmental, health and ethical concerns regarding these proposed science experiments with the planet, and Klein warns of the unknown consequences of creating “a Frankenstein’s world,” with multiple countries launching projects simultaneously. Instead of restoring an environmental equilibrium, Klein argues these “techno-fixes” will only further upset the earth’s balance, each one creating a host of new problems, requiring an endless chain of further “fixes.” She writes, “The earth—our life support system—would itself be put on life support, hooked up to machines 24/7 to prevent it from going full-tilt monster on us.”

3. We can’t rely on “well-intentioned” corporate funding.

“A great many progressives have opted out of the climate change debate in part because they thought that the Big Green groups, flush with philanthropic dollars, had this issue covered. That, it turns out, was a grave mistake.”

Klein strongly critiques partnerships between corporations and major environmental groups, along with attempts by “green billionaires” such as Bill Gates and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson to use capitalism to fighting global warming. When capitalism itself is a principal cause of climate change, Klein argues, it doesn’t make sense to expect corporations and billionaires to put the planet before profit. For example, though the Gates Foundation funds many major environmental groups dedicated to combating climate change, as of December 2013, it had at least $1.2 billion invested in BP and ExxonMobil. In addition, when Big Greens become dependent on corporate funding, they start to push a corporate agenda. For instance, organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, which have taken millions of dollars from pro-fracking corporate funders, such as Shell, Chevron and JP Morgan, are pitching natural gas as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17079/this_changes_everything_naomi_klein_lessons

August 21, 2014

Naomi Klein is back, telling it like it is about capitalism and climate change

(In These Times) In her previous books The Shock Doctrine (2007) and No Logo (2000), Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein took on topics like neoliberal “shock therapy,” consumerism, globalization and “disaster capitalism,” extensively documenting the forces behind the dramatic rise in economic inequality and environmental degradation over the past 50 years. But in her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (due in stores Sept. 16), Klein casts her gaze toward the future, arguing that the dangers of climate change demand radical action now to ward off catastrophe. She certainly isn’t alone in pointing out the urgency of the threat, but what sets Klein apart is her argument that it is capitalism—not carbon—that is at the root of climate change, inexorably driving us toward an environmental Armageddon in the pursuit of profit. This Changes Everything is well worth a read (or two) in full, but we’ve distilled some of its key points here.

1. Band-Aid solutions don’t work.

“Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed.”

Much of the conversation surrounding climate change focuses on what Klein dismisses as “Band-Aid solutions”: profit-friendly fixes like whizz-bang technological innovations, cap-and-trade schemes and supposedly “clean” alternatives like natural gas. To Klein, such strategies are too little, too late. In her drawn-out critique of corporate involvement in climate change prevention, she demonstrates how profitable “solutions” put forward by many think-tanks (and their corporate backers) actually end up making the problem worse. For instance, Klein argues that carbon trading programs create perverse incentives, allowing manufacturers to produce more harmful greenhouse gases, just to be paid to reduce them. In the process, carbon trading schemes have helped corporations make billions—allowing them to directly profit off the degradation of the planet. Instead, Klein argues, we need to break free of market fundamentalism and implement long-term planning, strict regulation of business, more taxation, more government spending and reversals of privatization to return key infrastructure to public control.

2. We need to fix ourselves, not fix the world.

“The earth is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the world, it is to fix ourselves.”

Klein devotes a full chapter of the book to geoengineering: the field of research, championed by a niche group of scientists, funders and media figures, that aims to fight global warming by altering the earth itself—say, by covering deserts with reflective material to send sunlight back to space or even dimming the sun to decrease the amount of heat reaching the planet. However, politicians and much of the global public have raised environmental, health and ethical concerns regarding these proposed science experiments with the planet, and Klein warns of the unknown consequences of creating “a Frankenstein’s world,” with multiple countries launching projects simultaneously. Instead of restoring an environmental equilibrium, Klein argues these “techno-fixes” will only further upset the earth’s balance, each one creating a host of new problems, requiring an endless chain of further “fixes.” She writes, “The earth—our life support system—would itself be put on life support, hooked up to machines 24/7 to prevent it from going full-tilt monster on us.”

3. We can’t rely on “well-intentioned” corporate funding.

“A great many progressives have opted out of the climate change debate in part because they thought that the Big Green groups, flush with philanthropic dollars, had this issue covered. That, it turns out, was a grave mistake.”

Klein strongly critiques partnerships between corporations and major environmental groups, along with attempts by “green billionaires” such as Bill Gates and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson to use capitalism to fighting global warming. When capitalism itself is a principal cause of climate change, Klein argues, it doesn’t make sense to expect corporations and billionaires to put the planet before profit. For example, though the Gates Foundation funds many major environmental groups dedicated to combating climate change, as of December 2013, it had at least $1.2 billion invested in BP and ExxonMobil. In addition, when Big Greens become dependent on corporate funding, they start to push a corporate agenda. For instance, organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, which have taken millions of dollars from pro-fracking corporate funders, such as Shell, Chevron and JP Morgan, are pitching natural gas as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17079/this_changes_everything_naomi_klein_lessons

August 21, 2014

California Drought Stings Bees And Honey Supplies

LOS BANOS, Calif. (AP) — California's record drought hasn't been sweet to honeybees, and it's creating a sticky situation for beekeepers and honey buyers.

The state is traditionally one of the country's largest honey producers, with abundant crops and wildflowers that provide the nectar that bees turn into honey. But the lack of rain has ravaged native plants and forced farmers to scale back crop production, leaving fewer places for honeybees to forage.

The historic drought, now in its third year, is reducing supplies of California honey, raising prices for consumers and making it harder for beekeepers to earn a living.

"Our honey crop is severely impacted by the drought, and it does impact our bottom line as a business," said Gene Brandi, a beekeeper in Los Banos, a farming town in California's Central Valley. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/california-drought-bees_n_5697008.html?utm_hp_ref=green

August 21, 2014

Apocalypse of the "Happy Meal": The Cathedral of Cholesterol

(Truthout) No one needs to eat livestock to survive. Yet meat is almost universally the focus of the Western diet. When you go to a restaurant and the waiter asks you what you'll have, you respond with the meat or fish entree. You don't say, "the asparagus" or "the rice" or the "mixed veggies." Everything else on the menu is known as a "side dish," or is even regarded as an afterthought. Arby's even advertises "Mega Meat Stacks" and "Meats Upon Meats Upon Meats." And this is pure insanity - on a global scale.

The average American eats between two and five times more protein than they actually need. Basically, we eat animals because we want to, or because we're duped into it by the Big Ag Empire.

In the last 50 years worldwide meat consumption per capita has doubled, primarily because of corporate advertising. Karl's Jr. puts a scantily clad, super model eating a monster hamburger and dripping it all over herself, and subconsciously men think that eating a hamburger will lead to sex with that super model. Women think, just as absurdly, that eating that hamburger will make them look like that super model. McDonald's spends about $1.4 billion a year trying to convince us to worship at their cathedral of cholesterol. The rest of the meat and dairy industries also spend vast sums of money in television and magazine advertising every year to convince Americans that the key to happiness is eating huge amounts of cow meat, cheese, milk, eggs, chicken and other assorted animal products.

.........(snip).........

Virtually all feedlot-raised cattle are administered growth hormones and antibiotics like penicillin and tetracycline. In fact, about 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States go to livestock. The antibiotics are used not only for bacterial protection given the putrid conditions livestock are kept in, but also because they act to fatten them up. That should prompt the question in your mind about what those antibiotics do to you when you eat those same livestock. In fact numerous experiments on humans dating back to the 1950s have shown that humans also gain weight when fed a steady diet of antibiotics.

This has potential implications for the worldwide obesity epidemic, and should provide "food for thought" next time you order a "thick and juicy Karl's Jr." and expect that to be your ticket to becoming a super model. No one seems to have studied whether the residual low doses of antibiotics in livestock meat are enough to make you gain weight, but there is evidence that those doses are sufficient to disrupt the normal composition of your gut bacteria, increasing your susceptibility to infections. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25682-apocalypse-of-the-happy-meal-the-cathedral-of-cholesterol

August 21, 2014

Juan Cole: What Do Iraq’s Sunni Arabs Have in Common with Ferguson, Mo. African-Americans?

What Do Iraq’s Sunni Arabs Have in Common with Ferguson, Mo. African-Americans?

Posted on Aug 21, 2014
By Juan Cole


If prime minister-designate Haidar al-Abadi in Iraq is to hope to defeat the so-called “Islamic State” (actually a kind of mafia made up of serial murderers and marauders), he must find a way to re-incorporate Iraq’s Sunni Arabs into the government, which has been dominated by Shiite religious parties since 2005, partly because of Neoconservative U.S. preference for Arab Shiite rule under the Bush occupation.

Al-Abadi has succeeded in getting a pledge from the largely separatist Sunni Kurds to hold off on leaving Iraq and to participate in his government at the cabinet and parliamentary level in Baghdad. (Kurdistan is an ethnic super-province a little like French-speaking Quebec in Canada, but with much more autonomy from the central government; Kurdistan president Masoud Barzani has threatened to hold a referendum within six months on complete secession and independence).

A Sunni Arab political bloc, al-Hall (“Solution”), led by Jamal al-Karbuli has sent a letter to al-Abadi detailing their demands. Al-Karbuli (or al-Karbouli) had led a faction within the old Iraqiya party coalition which has been the main vehicle of Sunni parliamentary politics in recent years. He blames Iraq violence and bombings on Shiite Iran.

They want the thousands of Sunni Arab detainees (accused of anti-government activity by outgoing prime minister Nouri al-Maliki) given an amnesty;

They want a fair distribution of cabinet seats and government jobs (the only kind of reliable jobs there really are in Iraq) with regard to the Sunni Arabs, tens of thousands of which were fired in the past decade and replaced with Shiites; ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_do_iraqs_sunni_arabs_share_with_ferguson_mo_african-americans_20140821

August 21, 2014

The Neocons’ Grim ‘Victory’ in Iraq

from Consortium News:


The Neocons’ Grim ‘Victory’ in Iraq
August 20, 2014

The neocons who plunged the U.S. into the disastrous Iraq War never say they’re sorry. Instead, it’s all about how their idea was great but President Bush bungled the implementation or how the war was “won” but President Obama chose defeat. Still, the real neocon “victory” could be their success in inflicting endless chaos on the Middle East, as JP Sottile observes.

By JP Sottile


Neocons do like to declare victory, especially regarding the Iraq War. So it came as no surprise that Paul Wolfowitz, apparently unimpressed by Iraq’s mounting crisis, regaled a recent panel discussion at the U.S.-Africa Summit with the blunt proclamation, “We have won it — in 2009.” Unsurprisingly, that’s when Team Bush left the White House — and approximately 150,000 troops behind in Iraq.

Perhaps also not surprisingly, war-weary Americans didn’t pay much attention to Paul’s pronouncement. No doubt they are as tired of Wolfowitz as they are of the war he helped to start. It probably rang as hollow as the faint echo of his earlier pitch for a quick, all-expenses-paid war against 2003’s Hitler of the Moment — Saddam Hussein.

But it’s not quite as simple as that. The issue got more complicated shortly after the Africa summit when President Barack Obama — who had pinned his legacy on extricating the United States from Iraq — suddenly found himself at a podium to announce limited, but open-ended military action to halt the dreaded march of The Islamic State (often called ISIS or ISIL) through the repeatedly rocked Cradle of Civilization.

Many have explained the organization’s plan for creating a fundamentalist caliphate and its reliance on shockingly brutal tactics that make ISIS something that even al-Qaeda could never be, nor perhaps ever wanted to be. Many others have prodded the dying corpse of Iraq to assign blame here, there and everywhere. But the most basic reason for more bombing is found right there in the self-aggrandizing quip by Paul Wolfowitz. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/20/the-neocons-grim-victory-in-iraq/

August 21, 2014

What Happened to the Recovery?

from Dollars & Sense:


What Happened to the Recovery?
BY GERALD FRIEDMAN


Part I: Weak Employment, Stagnant Wages, and Booming Profits

The 2007-2010 recession was the longest and deepest since World War II. The subsequent recovery has been the weakest in the postwar period. While total employment has finally returned to its pre-recession level, millions remain out of work and annual output (GDP) is almost a trillion dollars below the economy’s “full-employment” capacity. This column explains how high levels of unemployment have held down wages, contributing to soaring corporate profits and a remarkable run-up in the stock market.

Output plunged and has not recovered. There was a sharp fall in output (GDP) at the onset of the Great Recession, down to 8% below what the economy could produce if labor and other resources were employed at normal levels (“full employment” capacity). Since the recovery began, output has grown at barely above the rate of growth in capacity, leaving the “output gap” at more than 6% of the economy’s potential—or nearly $1 trillion per year.



........(snip)........

Part II: Government Policy and Why the Recovery Has Been So Slow

The recovery from the Great Recession has been so slow because government policy has not addressed the underlying problem: the weakness of demand that restrained growth before the recession and that ultimately brought on a crisis. Focused on the dramatic events of fall 2008, including the collapse of Lehman Brothers, policymakers approached the Great Recession as a financial crisis and sought to minimize the effects of the meltdown on the real economy, mainly by providing liquidity to the banking sector. While monetary policy has focused on protecting the financial system, including protecting financial firms from the consequences of their own actions, government has done less to address the real causes of economic malaise: declining domestic investment and the lack of effective demand. Monetary policy has been unable to spark recovery because low interest rates have not been enough to encourage businesses and consumers to invest. Instead, we need a much more robust fiscal policy to stimulate a stronger recovery.

The Fed has kept interest rates unprecedentedly low. Determined not to repeat what orthodox economists saw as the main cause of the Great Depression—a “tight” money supply—the Federal Reserve responded very aggressively to the crisis in 2007 and 2008. The Fed drove its main target short-term interest rate, the federal funds rate, down to an unprecedented near-zero level. Even at interest rates below zero in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, however, effective demand has been so depressed and so much unused productive capacity has remained that banks have found few borrowers. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2014/0814friedman.html