STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 26 April 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Thursday, 26 April 2012[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 25 April 2012

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 25 April 2012
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Dow Jones 13,090.72 +89.16 (0.69%)
S&P 500 1,390.69 +18.72 (1.36%)
Nasdaq 3,029.63 +68.03 (2.30%)


[font color=green]10 Year 1.98% -0.01 (-0.50%)
[font color=black]30 Year 3.15% 0.00 (0.00%) [font color=black]


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

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - 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
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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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[div]
Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = [/font][font color=red]12[/font]
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



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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]

[Demeter]

1. Talk About Wish Fulfillment! Cute Cartoon

[Tansy_Gold]

7. He's so done

the meat should be fallin' off the bones.




Tansy Gold, who is Not A Nice Person but got a tiny bit of revenge today

[DemReadingDU]

8. Loved the toon!

[Roland99]

9. Those forks are done, too

melt them down as that's the only way to kill the germs off those things now

[Fuddnik]

18. Bend over Noot.

I want to fit you for one last fork.

Don't go away mad son, just go away.

[Demeter]

2. Fed sees US economy recovering gradually

Federal Reserve officials left monetary policy unchanged as they delivered minor changes to their US economic outlook, toning down its description of labour market improvements and noting the recent pick-up in inflation.

A recent batch of soft economic data – including weaker payroll growth in March and rising jobless claims – has stoked some concern that the US may be hitting a new soft patch in its economic recovery.

But Fed officials have been reluctant to proceed with any shifts in policy – such as a new round of asset purchases, also known as QE3 – without much more evidence that
the economy has taken a sharp turn for the worse.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/8P1R88/VLD8T6/52KB7/5VDU3Y/ORMLZ9/VU/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=25

TOTAL VIOLATION OF THE FIRST RULE AND THE SECOND RULE OF HOLES...

[Demeter]

3. Flowers leaves US for London

Christopher Flowers, the veteran private equity investor, has moved to London from the US, seeing a shift in the balance of investment opportunities to Europe

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/A1TNOO/SPWBPR/SUO9T/YB7SQ4/KQ23AZ/UP/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=25

WHERE IS HOMELAND SECURITY WHEN A FINANCIAL TERRORIST ENTERS THE COUNTRY?

[Demeter]

4. Half of College Grads Under 25 are Unemployed or Underemployed

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/908305/half_of_college_grads_under_25_are_unemployed_or_underemployed/#paragraph4

Recent projections have job prospects improving for 2012's college graduates. But there's a lot more room for improvement than we're likely to see:

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

http://news.yahoo.com/1-2-graduates-jobless-underemployed-140300522.html

That means 100,000 waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers with bachelor's degrees, plus 125,000 cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives and 163,000 receptionists and payroll clerks. That's a reflection of the job categories that are growing these days:

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.

It's the growth of inequality in action. Relatively few jobs pay a middle-class income, and competition for them grows fiercer. It's not enough to have a bachelor's degree; at a minimum you have to have one in the right field from the right school—and it sure helps if you've been able to afford to do an unpaid internship in your field while in school. But a graduate degree is even better. Too bad if that means thousands of dollars of added debt, but you don't want to be waiting tables for the rest of your life, do you? And if you score one of those precious, rare good jobs, chances are you won't be leaving, at least not of your own accord, not while you have all those student loans to pay off and there are so few other good jobs out there. Meanwhile, jobs that don't require a college education are growing more quickly, but the fact that they don't require a college education is increasingly used as the rationale for driving down wages (and benefits? forget about benefits), because why would we pay decent wages for these jobs that just anyone can do? So goes the accelerating rationale of an economy by and for the 1 percent.

Congress can keep one small piece of this from getting worse, by acting now to keep federal student loan interest rates from doubling on July 1. Tell House Republicans to keep student loan rates low: http://campaigns.dailykos.com/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=126

SEE ALSO: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jobs-20120319,0,2615381.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Flocal+%28L.A.+Times+-+California+|+Local+News%29

[Demeter]

5. Why the United States Isn't Europe

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/why-the-united-states-isnt-europe/256289/

THE ABC'S OF THE EUROZONE VS THE EMPIRE

[Demeter]

6. Medicare and Social Security: Fact Vs. Myth By Richard (RJ) Eskow

http://www.nationofchange.org/medicare-and-social-security-fact-vs-myth-1335369381

In the coming days and weeks we'll be hearing a lot of misinformation about the Trustees Report from the Social Security Administration. It's time to separate the myths from the realities:



Myth: "Social Security and Medicare have a cost problem."

Fact: Medicare has a financial problem. As this chart shows, the cost of providing Social Security benefits is not out of control or skyrocketing. Social Security is on an even keel for the foreseeable future. Twenty years from now it's projected to be in a position to pay only 75 percent of benefits - but that's easily fixed by lifting the payroll tax cap.

Fact: That's a headline we saw repeated across the country in anticipation of the Trustees Report, but it's wrong. What's "straining" Social Security and Medicare today is the unequal distribution of income and a broken regulatory system for Wall Street that has put the entire economy under stress.

Social Security was actuarially stable after it was overhauled by the Greenspan Commission in the 1980s. The Baby Boomers were all alive and (mostly) working by then. So what really happened?

First, a radical upward shift in income toward the "1 percent" - and the "0.0001 percent" - meant that more and more of the nation's income was above the payroll tax cap threshold. That reduced the revenue for Social Security (and much of Medicare) from a projected 90 percent of national income to a figure that's closer to 83 percent.

Secondly, a financial crisis brought on by reckless and under-regulated Wall Street banks crashed the economy in 2008. For millions of Americans it has never come back. Joblessness, along with wage stagnation for the "99 percent," further depleted the programs' revenues.

Myth: We need to place limits on Medicare spending and cut its benefits.

Fact: That's like saying the way to end forest fires is by firing Smokey the Bear. Benefit cuts and spending caps won't solve our health cost problem. There has been an explosion of for-profit hospital chains in the last twenty years, along with profit-driven laboratories, imaging centers, and other types of health providers.

In addition, our system of reimbursing physicians provides an incentive for them to treat more and charge more for their services. That's costly - and it subjects patients to a lot of unnecessary tests. On top of that, the lion's share of our health economy is "managed" by for-profit insurance companies who have little motivation or skill when it comes to prudent fiscal management.

If we expand Medicare to our entire population we'd have a health system like that of all other industrialized countries - whose health costs are roughly 60 percent of our own and grow more slowly than our own. Medicare's cost problem would be solved.

By contrast, the solutions being floated in Washington wouldn't fix the problem - they'd just dump it onto the backs of seniors and the disabled.

Myth: We can't get our Federal deficits under control without cutting Social Security benefits - either by raising the eligibility age, placing gimmicky limits on cost-of-living adjustments, or all of the above.

Fact: Social Security is forbidden by law from contributing to the Federal deficit. It's an entirely self-sustaining program. If the day comes when it can't pay its full scheduled benefits, those benefits must and will be cut. This is a phony argument.

Myth: Too many millionaires are collecting Social Security and Medicare, so we should means-test and deny them these benefits.

Fact: The number of actual "millionaires" on Social Security and Medicare is tiny, by any objective measure. It wouldn't have any significant impact on their budgets to exclude them - although it would help a lot to tax them.

What's more, Medicare and Social Security are social insurance programs. By definition, insurance shouldn't be means-testing like welfare and other aid programs, because you've already paid your premiums. The "means-testing" argument is often used to mischacterize these programs as "welfare," instead of what they really are: Something people have paid into through the payroll tax throughout their working lives, and (in Medicare's case) which they've also supported through their taxes.

Myth: Social Security benefits are too generous. They need to be cut because we can't afford them.

Fact: Our Social Security benefits are lower than those of nations that are economically similar to the US. As we said, the current reductions in revenue were caused by 1) an upward distribution of wealth to the "1 percent" and 2) a financial crisis brought about by Wall Street greed and speculation.

That suggests two possible solutions to Social Security's twenty-year-from-now problem: 1) Lift the payroll tax cap, and/or 2) impose a small financial transactions tax on Wall Street and use it to make up the Social Security shortfall. Either of these approaches would solve the problem.

[xchrom]

10. rainy day

[Tansy_Gold]

31. Exactly how it looked here, except for the lake

Several heavy showers this morning, along with a little bit of hail. The clouds on the mountains are always dramatic.

[xchrom]

11. Hollande wants EU treaty reopened

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0426/breaking4.html

The leading candidate for the French presidency, François Hollande, has laid out plans to add new elements to the European Union fiscal treaty but left the door open to a compromise if he wins the election.

Mr Hollande, who leads president Nicolas Sarkozy in opinion polls 10 days before the run-off, said if elected he would not ratify the treaty unless a deal was agreed on measures to promote jobs and economic growth.

He also indicated that the result of Ireland’s referendum should not be taken for granted.

Mr Sarkozy said.today there would be "no turning back" on Europe's targets to cut its budget deficits. The president, speaking on France Inter radio, said France has managed to cut its state deficit faster than targeted without austerity measures such as cutting civil servant pay or pension payments.

[xchrom]

12. Bailout of banks takes toll on Irish deficit

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0424/1224315103304.html


THE BAILOUT of AIB and Irish Life & Permanent in 2011 widened the deficit gap sharply between Ireland and the other members of the euro zone.

The news came on a day when turmoil returned to markets across the euro zone following the collapse of the Dutch government and demands for a renegotiation of Europe’s stability treaty from François Hollande, the Socialist frontrunner in the French presidential election.

EU statistics office Eurostat said Ireland’s headline deficit was 13.1 per cent last year. Some €5.8 billion or 3.7 per cent of GDP of this related to capital injected into the two State-controlled banks. Its inclusion in the deficit figure was a surprise.

Eurostat expressed a specific reservation that the banks’ restructuring plans have yet to be finalised and the office calculated €5.8 billion of the €15.4 billion injected into the two banks as a “deficit-increasing capital transfer”.

[bread_and_roses]

13. "Splitting the Difference Between Myth and Reality Is Not Good Economics"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/26-2

Published on Thursday, April 26, 2012 by Common Dreams
Splitting the Difference Between Myth and Reality Is Not Good Economics
Told You So – The UK's Double Dip Recession and Ours
by John Atcheson

So now can we run our country on facts, not myths?

... Somehow, government – after creating jobs – was found incapable of creating jobs.

Somehow, big corporations – after exporting jobs and sitting on over $2 trillion in profits instead of investing in job creating expansions –became the “job creators.”

Somehow, lower taxes became the solution to the problem they caused -- debt.

Somehow, like Lucy duping Charlie Brown, we bought into the whole trickle down idea again. It was as if we hadn’t noticed that it simply doesn't work. Never has.

... But in a political world dominated by myth, and with a press given to putting “balance” before accuracy, truth and reality, and with a Democratic Party whose main tactic seems to be preemptive capitulation, no one listens to facts, no one argues against myths and no one gets credit -- or credibility -- for being right.

But now we have Britain – a country which had no real debt crisis, and which had been experiencing a modest recovery until conservatives took over and imposed their magic elixir of extreme austerity to cut deficits – slipping into a double dip recession.

... Unfortunately, Obama and the Democrats have decided to split the difference between reality and myth.

[xchrom]

15. +1

[Fuddnik]

20. +11

How many times do you have to keep falling for the same trick, until you're declared clinically insane?

[Demeter]

32. Obama Creates His Own Reality

We call it Chaos and Poverty, though. Reality is ignored until it bites him in a tender spot.

[xchrom]

14. Deutsche Bank profits hit amid debt crisis

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17851185

Deutsche Bank has reported a sharp fall in profits, in part due to weaker performance in investment banking during the eurozone debt crisis.

Net income for the first three months of the year was 1.4bn euros ($1.9bn; £1.1bn), down 35% on the 2.1bn euros the bank made a year earlier.

Revenue was down 12% at 9.2bn euros.

The bank said although the business environment was "more stable" than at the end of last year, it was "far less favourable" than a year earlier.

[xchrom]

16. 'Economic unfairness' growing, says BBC poll

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17847372


A new poll for the BBC World Service has found widespread perceptions of economic unfairness.

The poll found that more than 50% of respondents in 17 out of 22 countries believe economic benefits and burdens are not fairly distributed in their own nation.

But there was also strong support for free market capitalism.

Among those holding that view, most thought it had problems that could be addressed through regulation.

The poll of developed and developing nations, which questioned almost 12,000 in 22 countries between December and February, found that a majority in most countries saw economic unfairness around them.

[AnneD]

29. Thank you...

Arab Spring and Greece.

[xchrom]

17. Ex-Morgan Stanley banker admits bribing China official

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17850305


A former Morgan Stanley executive, Garth Peterson, has pleaded guilty to bribing a Chinese official in exchange for business and personal gain.

US authorities alleged that Mr Peterson paid money to the official to win investments for the bank.

Mr Peterson, who was head of the bank's real estate investments division in China, is also accused of secretly acquiring valuable property in China.

He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 (£155,000).

[xchrom]

19. Spanish banks ‘vulnerable’ and may need public help, says IMF

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/spanish-banks-vulnerable-and-may-need-public-help-says-imf/2012/04/25/gIQArSgbhT_story.html

Spain, already struggling to contain its public debts, may need to pump more taxpayer money into its ailing banks to clear away tens of billions of dollars in bad real estate loans, the International Monetary Fund reported on Wednesday.

In an overview of the country’s financial system, the IMF said that despite extensive restructuring, Spain’s banking sector “remains vulnerable.” It needs more capital and a strategy for quickly clearing away the legacy of a collapsing property bubble.

Spanish officials have shut down or forced the merger of most of the country’s “cajas” — the savings banks that lent heavily for real estate projects. But the level of bad loans continues to grow, and is now a $185 billion burden weighing on the capacity of banks to make loans to households and businesses.

The ability of banks to absorb those losses on their own may be limited, the IMF said, and “greater reliance on public funding may be needed.”

[xchrom]

21. David Cameron accused of idiocy over austerity mantra

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2012/apr/25/david-cameron-accused-of-idiocy-austerity


Calling David Cameron a moron is a talking point. And I suppose that is what Business Insider, the US news website, wanted when it reported the prime minister's comments at Question Time as representing "the height of idiocy".

Staff writer Joe Weisenthal, choking on his morning muesli, accused Cameron of sounding like a moron when he said Britain's low interest rates demonstrate it has credibility.

"OMG! Your economy is going into a double-dip recession! That's why your government borrowing rates are plunging. It's got nothing to do with 'credibility'. It's the fact that when your economy is going down the tubes, there's nothing appealing to invest in, and so they just park their cash in risk-free government debt," he wrote on Wednesday afternoon after Cameron was mauled by opposition MPs over the economy and the Leveson inquiry.

"Low rates in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, are the surest signals of long-term decline. What on earth are you bragging about?," he added.

[xchrom]

22. Britain's economy sinks into longest depression for 100 years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/26/britain-long-depression-100-years

Britain's economy has sunk into recession for the second time in three years after a dramatic slump across the financial services and construction sectors and a poor start to the year on the high street.

Official figures showed the economy contracted in the first three months of the year after a poor performance before Christmas. This meant it registered two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the standard definition of a recession. The economy is now in its longest depression for 100 years, with little sign of regaining its previous record output before 2014.

A silver lining was provided by a CBI survey of the manufacturing sector that pointed to a recovery in sales and confidence, albeit from one of its worst slumps on record in January. And a survey by the British Retail Consortium found an increasing willingness by shop owners to hire workers. More than 3,000 jobs were created, mainly by large supermarkets opening new stores.

But HSBC, Britain's largest bank, offset this news when it announced plans to shed 2,000 staff in its UK retail division over the next year as part of a worldwide redundancy programme. Banks have cut thousands of jobs in the past few years to reduce costs and cope with a sharp slowdown in business caused by the financial crisis and subsequent drop in lending.

[xchrom]

23. AIG May Not Be as Healthy as It Looks

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-26/aig-may-not-be-as-healthy-as-it-looks

American International Group (AIG) has come a long way since its record $182 billion government bailout in the financial crisis. It has been buying back its stock from the Department of the Treasury, helping to reduce Washington’s stake in the company to 70 percent from a peak of 92 percent. It posted a profit of $21.5 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, a showing that helped push the stock price up 40 percent this year through April 24, to $32.40 a share. Analysts for Wells Fargo (WFC) and Bernstein Research (AB) are recommending the shares to investors as the company nears what they believe will be a complete exit from government ownership within a year.

Still, AIG may not be as healthy as it seems. Critics including Neil Barofsky and Elizabeth Warren, who helped oversee the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, contend AIG is benefiting from favorable treatment from Washington that amounts to a “stealth bailout,” in Warren’s words. And some analysts, including Morningstar’s (MORN) Jim Ryan, say the insurer’s underlying businesses are struggling.

One point of contention is Treasury’s decision to allow AIG—along with TARP recipients Citigroup (C) and Ally Financial—to use operating losses from previous years to eliminate taxes on current income. The allowance, which typically does not apply to bankrupt or acquired companies, added $17.7 billion to AIG’s fourth-quarter earnings and will allow the company to shield profits from taxes for many years to come. “It’s important to remember that a substantial portion of AIG’s recent earnings were attributable to Treasury’s unilateral decision to preserve AIG’s net operating losses,” says J. Mark McWatters, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who was a Republican appointee to the TARP oversight committee.

Treasury explained its decision on the tax waiver in a March 1 statement: “The government reluctantly” invested large amounts “of taxpayer dollars to prevent corporate failures from causing a collapse of the financial system and resulting in even more severe harm to Americans. Allowing those companies to keep their net operating losses made them stronger businesses, helped attract private capital, and further stabilized the overall financial system.” Mark Herr, an AIG spokesman, said executives could not comment because the company is in a quiet period in advance of announcing earnings on May 3.


***3-2-1 til we hear official expressions of 'SURPRISE'.

[Tansy_Gold]

25. Well, duh.

It never even "looked" healthy to any of us maroons here.

BUT WHAT DO WE KNOW????


TG, too angry even to cut n paste the rubber stamp.

[AnneD]

30. We got out of AIG .....

in Dec. Hubby will be so happy. I still have one account with AIG...but for a reason. I went with them when I was in NM. It was a tiny account, but I soon realized exactly what crooks they were.....

They managed to work my $500 initial contribution to the 401B in 1999 down to $18.60, even when the year is good, that is it. I keep the account and statement as an annual reminder of how crooked these bastards are. It was tuition money well spent.

[dixiegrrrrl]

34. Congratulations!!!!

I had 18 years worth of retirement tied in AIG annuities
which fortunately I was able to pull out just before the crash in 2008.
Then I found out my bank had all my other retirement cds in ...Lehman!
Had not known that was where the darn cds ended up.
Got them all out in the nick of time also.
Pure luck and a little bit of instince..


I felt like Scarlett O'Hara fleeing the Atlanta fires...

[Demeter]

37. So, You must have a nice, fluffy mattress now

with all that extra stuffing.

It's better to be lucky and smart.

[dixiegrrrrl]

38. Let's just say I sleep much much better now..

[AnneD]

40. I can never be grateful enough.....

for the economic wisdom I have learned here.

First, I learned to trust my instincts-especially that red light with the klaxon going off every time another bankster walks free without any punishment.

I got into the BRIC countries before they took off. I stayed in the market after the dot com bust (I did not lose as much, but fired my first broker).

I pulled out of the US stock market before the 2008 crash, making back the dot com money I lost and then some.

I spent this Christmas Break getting the last of my financial house in order. I got out of Europe and clawed back half of the money that I had out in my IRA to use to build our retirement house.

I bought back into our state's retirement plan...one if the better funded in the nation. I will be able to retire early. At this point, I only work if I want to, not because I have to. That is real freedom.

I have been putting our extra money in precious metals, which even with the recent volatility, has done far better than I ever could have hoped for in the market, CD's, or any other vehicle.

I have renewed my love affair with my credit union, my local library, and my local mom and pop businesses and local chains. I try to buy American made.

But the biggest change is the knowledge that a big part of doing well is not just earning money, but saving money by not spending more than you have to. Interest on any loan is money that comes out of YOUR WALLET. And I'll be damned and go to hell if I ever let CITI bank get their hand in my wallet ever again. I save big by having a pantry, making my own laundry detergent, planning weekly menus, etc. We rent an inexpensive apartment while paying down our few loans even faster-saving more interest.

The SMW is my first stop, and I am so much wiser for the information I glean here. No matter how the economy has been turning, I too sleep soundly at night knowing I am as prepared as I can be.

[xchrom]

24. 'Europe Could Economize Itself to Death'

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,829936,00.html

Leaders across Europe continued to struggle Thursday with backlash against the largely German-driven austerity measures imposed as a result of the ongoing euro zone debt crisis.

In the Netherlands, where the ruling government coalition collapsed last weekend over failure to reach a deal on the country's budget, Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager told reporters that he had constructive talks with different political factions. "I cannot say there is the prospect of an agreement," De Jager told reporters on Thursday. "But I see reason to continue talks."
Government instability in the Netherlands has translated into shaky markets this week, and further signals indicated a growing level of popular resistance to austerity measures as a solution for the debt crisis. Large-scale protests over the financial crisis have been staged recently across Europe, including in the Czech Republic, where 100,000 people took to the streets in Prague over the weekend to oppose government reforms and cuts.

On Wednesday, European Central Bank (ECB) head Mario Draghi made headlines by calling for a "growth pact" to help Europe out of the financial crisis. French Presidential candidate Francois Hollande, who is leading in the polls in advance of his country's May 6 runoff election, jumped on the comments. Hollande has proposed renegotiating the euro zone's fiscal pact to add provisions for stimulating growth.

[AnneD]

26. Morning Marketeers.....

and lurkers.

Economists have been able to trace the recent economic activity to a single source. Nurse Anne has been single handedly responsible for the most recent signs of recovery.



In a phone call to Nurse Anne, President Obama congratulated Nurse Anne for her quick actions to save his re-election chances by personally reviving the Houston economy. I still have more shopping to do she is quoted as saying. Where does Michelle get her gloves? Obama joked, “If you can’t find any, I am sure Michelle has a pair you can borrow.”



“Yes we have a 2 for 1 bra sales and folks may buy 2 bras-but she bought 6. Then she bought spanxs AND a summer jacket. IT made our sales quota for the month!” said a clerk at Lane Bryant.



“She came into my store. At first, I thought she saw just looking-I didn’t think she would buy ANYTHING. I mean, she was in scrubs-and old ones at that. But then she asked me to show her some summer hats. She tried several on. When she tried this cute antique looking black and white one she said…”This is it, thank goodness, I thought I was going to have to go to Neiman-Marcus or order out of New York to get a decent hat”. That’s when I knew she was a serious knowledgeable hat shopper. She looked at several hats and something we call a ‘fascinator’ model. If I had had a decent hat pin and gloves, I would have made an even bigger sale. I made sure to give her my card. You can bet I will drop what I am doing next time and give her my undivided attention. I will be able to feed my kids this week thanks to my sales commission.” said the sales woman.



“I don’t know what has happened”, said a visibly shaken husband, Srinivas. “This is the woman that scrapes the burnt off toast to keep from throwing it out. I mean, she puts the soap slivers on top of the new soap bars. I can’t prove it, but I think she uses the coffee grounds twice. She even makes her own laundry detergent. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was a mid life crisis. Every since I came back from my 6 weeks trip to India, she has been different. She knows my finances down to the penny. It is scary. We have been doing very well since she has been handling our household finances- but this is scary. She has paid cash for everything. I am afraid we might be placed on a terrorist watch list.”






Happy hunting and watch out for the bears.

[Fuddnik]

27. I'm doing my best to keep Europe from collapsing.

Namely the Heineken Brewery and a Polish distillery. And I figure I made substantial down payment on the foreclosure house my favorite barmaid bought last week.

[AnneD]

28. Way to go......

I am sure the IMF will be sending you a Christmas Card. I am expecting an invite to the 2nd Inaugural Ball.

[Demeter]

33. If you keep cutting a swathe like that

They're gonna beg to host it at your place. Be careful!

Give your hubby a popsicle for me--it's good for shock.

I put in a full 8 hours of work, and two were for me, even. Planted some flowers--that was flower power working.

Now it's off to The Board Meeting, Part 2.

[AnneD]

39. LOL....

I will make him some this evening. Yeah, I make my own Popsicles-they are cheaper and taste better. Found my forms last weekend.

The laundry experiment was a total success. I will never buy laundry detergent again. My stuff really does a better job. Cheese making is my summer project. I have done it before but I will be making different cheeses.

[dixiegrrrrl]

41. Would love to have your laundry detergent recipe.

Did you post it in Frugal Living group?
You can PM me with it if you would be so kind.

[tclambert]

35. It's Thursday! Initial claims and continuing claims numbers are out.

Initial claims: 388K
Continuing claims: 3.315M

"The initial claims level declined from an upwardly revised 389,000 (from 386,000) for the week ending April 14 to 388,000 for the week ending April 21. The Briefing.com consensus expected the initial claims level to fall to 373,000.

The continuing claims level increased modestly from 3.312 mln for the week ending April 7 to 3.315 mln for the week ending April 14. The consensus pegged the continuing claims level at 3.300 mln."

From: http://www.briefing.com/Investor/Calendars/Economic/Releases/claims.htm

So no big change up or down, just blah steady.

[tclambert]

36. Nasdaq above 3,000 and S&P 500 almost at 1400

and I'm still NOT RICH! GD it!

Still, my wealth (on paper) increased more than I earned by working my job today. I like it when that happens, but I wish it happened more often than lunar eclipses. In fact, I wish it would go up more often than it goes down. Is that so much to ask? (Somebody get on that, wouldja.)

[AnneD]

42. You are not paying the right people....

enough money-T! get wit the program