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STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 1 March 2013
Last edited Fri Mar 1, 2013, 09:45 AM - Edit history (1)
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 1 March 2013[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 28 February 2013
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 28 February 2013
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Dow Jones 14,054.49 -20.88 (-0.15%)
S&P 500 1,514.68 -1.31 (-0.09%)
Nasdaq 3,160.19 -2.07 (-0.07%)
[font color=green]10 Year 1.87% -0.01 (-0.53%)
[font color=black]30 Year 3.10% 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
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
[/center][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.
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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]
49 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
No one wants these cuts now, so just delay them.
That'll scare them enough to stifle it.
Nobody knows what a 'sequester' is anyway. 
http://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/02/28/africom-china-49060/
In 2004 the US military began to expand into Africa. In 2007 they created Africa Command (Africom). Since then they’ve accelerated and expanded operations. Africa has great natural resources, but why more interest now?
Here is one possible explanation: the great game. A rival great power expands its reach and things of no interest to us suddenly become worth contesting. China has become a major importer from many African nations, and the US replies to this challenge in the only way it knows how.
?w=600&h=382
Note the contrast between US and Chinese grand strategy. China expands its influence through commercial ties. Development loans, usually at below-market rates, in exchange for contracts to sell resources. The US provides arms, military training, and strike forces. It’s a different way of seeing the world.
Whose grand strategy seems more likely to produce peace and prosperity for them, and for the world?
In 2004 the US military began to expand into Africa. In 2007 they created Africa Command (Africom). Since then they’ve accelerated and expanded operations. Africa has great natural resources, but why more interest now?
Here is one possible explanation: the great game. A rival great power expands its reach and things of no interest to us suddenly become worth contesting. China has become a major importer from many African nations, and the US replies to this challenge in the only way it knows how.
?w=600&h=382
Note the contrast between US and Chinese grand strategy. China expands its influence through commercial ties. Development loans, usually at below-market rates, in exchange for contracts to sell resources. The US provides arms, military training, and strike forces. It’s a different way of seeing the world.
Whose grand strategy seems more likely to produce peace and prosperity for them, and for the world?
Or has Tansy started a "Find the Typo" Contest for our amusement and challenge?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/sequestration-cuts-crisis-makes-me-want-to-strangle-both-sides-20130226#ixzz2M7jlraBf
If you can get past how horrifying it is, the looming "sequestration cuts" crisis is fascinating. It's like watching a bunch of gambling addicts play craps by throwing dice into a four-dimensional wormhole. There are so many variables that neither side can possibly know the true outcome of a failure to make a deal – which means the only certainty is that what we're watching is irresponsibility on an epic scale, wherein both of our major political parties seem to prefer government by random outcome over one managed by sensible compromise.
Obviously, most of the problem was originally driven by the intractability of a Republican Party energized politically by its Tea Party base, which preferred the nuclear option of a default or a government shutdown to increased debt and/or new taxes. These fine folks taped sticks of dynamite to their chests and threatened to blow the government, its credit rating and our entire budget mechanism to the moon if we didn't make massive spending cuts – a wild ploy that may not have made a ton of patriotic sense given the catastrophic possibilities of, say, a default, but certainly helped the party solidify its relationship with its base...This "let's blow up the American credit rating" ploy impressed hardcore anti-spending types in the same way. It was crazy, but maybe only slightly more crazy than both of the parties have consistently been for most of the last 20 years, when the two sides have continually failed to hammer out workable budgets and instead have mostly just let the national airplane fly mindlessly forward using the laziness-enabling autopilot mechanism of a continuing resolutions, or CRs. Despite the fact that working out budgets is mostly what we hire members of Congress to do, they seem to have a terrible time doing it on time, and instead routinely rely upon the CR process (in which the two sides basically agree to put things off until later) to keep funding levels static for some ludicrously short-term period like six months.
The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term. It's an incredibly stupid way of doing business and if these people weren't on television so often, ranting and raving like baseball managers arguing a safe call at the plate and playing to the home crowd by pointing fingers at the other side, they would probably just do what members of Congress traditionally did in the pre-mass-media age, which is quietly and (mostly) sensibly work things out, getting as much as they could for their own constituents without crossing the line into antipatriotic acts of self-destruction – like a national default, for instance...
In agreeing to this crazy deal a year and a half ago – a deal they were, admittedly, forced into – the Dems banked on the notion that the Republicans would never countenance deep cuts to the Pentagon and in that way leave themselves exposed politically to accusations of making the country less safe. But the Republicans – humorously if you can still find humor in this – have not yet blinked here, which is why the Obama administration is shamelessly rolling Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano out this week to make sure Americans everywhere know that terrorists will be crawling through their children's bedroom windows as early as next week if the Republicans don't back down on this budget thing. ("I don't think we can maintain the same level of security . . . with sequester," she said, adding that the impact will grow over time, like "a rolling ball."
In a comically blunt use of reverse race-baiting politics, Napolitano added that she would have to furlough 5,000 border patrol agents if the sequester cuts took place, essentially threatening Republican voters with an influx of immigrants from Mexico if a deal isn't reached...We hated it when George Bush threatened us with the specter of terrorist attacks to get what he wanted politically, so we ought to be hating this, too, although fortunately it hasn't gotten quite to Bush levels yet – I'm assuming we're still weeks away from Obama himself going out to the Rose Garden to tell reporters that unmanned terror drones will be spraying poison over New York City if the Republicans don't give him his budget deal. The Republicans, meanwhile, are banking on the notion that $85 billion in annual cuts isn't all that much (and considering that the Fed doled out more than that to Citigroup alone in just one month of 2009, their argument makes some sense) and the country will barely notice the damage if we have to go over this particular waterfall. The political capital they may lose with the Pentagon in (potentially) letting this happen is an interesting side issue, but one most Americans probably aren't losing much sleep over.
... the whole thing sucks. It's like being permanently stuck in the NFL lockout story. Do we really have to do this every three months for the rest of eternity?
GO READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE FOR THE COLORFUL METAPHORS THAT I EDITED OUT FOR BREVITY...QUITE ENTERTAINING AND INSIGHTFUL, IF COLORFUL...
If you can get past how horrifying it is, the looming "sequestration cuts" crisis is fascinating. It's like watching a bunch of gambling addicts play craps by throwing dice into a four-dimensional wormhole. There are so many variables that neither side can possibly know the true outcome of a failure to make a deal – which means the only certainty is that what we're watching is irresponsibility on an epic scale, wherein both of our major political parties seem to prefer government by random outcome over one managed by sensible compromise.
Obviously, most of the problem was originally driven by the intractability of a Republican Party energized politically by its Tea Party base, which preferred the nuclear option of a default or a government shutdown to increased debt and/or new taxes. These fine folks taped sticks of dynamite to their chests and threatened to blow the government, its credit rating and our entire budget mechanism to the moon if we didn't make massive spending cuts – a wild ploy that may not have made a ton of patriotic sense given the catastrophic possibilities of, say, a default, but certainly helped the party solidify its relationship with its base...This "let's blow up the American credit rating" ploy impressed hardcore anti-spending types in the same way. It was crazy, but maybe only slightly more crazy than both of the parties have consistently been for most of the last 20 years, when the two sides have continually failed to hammer out workable budgets and instead have mostly just let the national airplane fly mindlessly forward using the laziness-enabling autopilot mechanism of a continuing resolutions, or CRs. Despite the fact that working out budgets is mostly what we hire members of Congress to do, they seem to have a terrible time doing it on time, and instead routinely rely upon the CR process (in which the two sides basically agree to put things off until later) to keep funding levels static for some ludicrously short-term period like six months.
The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term. It's an incredibly stupid way of doing business and if these people weren't on television so often, ranting and raving like baseball managers arguing a safe call at the plate and playing to the home crowd by pointing fingers at the other side, they would probably just do what members of Congress traditionally did in the pre-mass-media age, which is quietly and (mostly) sensibly work things out, getting as much as they could for their own constituents without crossing the line into antipatriotic acts of self-destruction – like a national default, for instance...
In agreeing to this crazy deal a year and a half ago – a deal they were, admittedly, forced into – the Dems banked on the notion that the Republicans would never countenance deep cuts to the Pentagon and in that way leave themselves exposed politically to accusations of making the country less safe. But the Republicans – humorously if you can still find humor in this – have not yet blinked here, which is why the Obama administration is shamelessly rolling Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano out this week to make sure Americans everywhere know that terrorists will be crawling through their children's bedroom windows as early as next week if the Republicans don't back down on this budget thing. ("I don't think we can maintain the same level of security . . . with sequester," she said, adding that the impact will grow over time, like "a rolling ball."
In a comically blunt use of reverse race-baiting politics, Napolitano added that she would have to furlough 5,000 border patrol agents if the sequester cuts took place, essentially threatening Republican voters with an influx of immigrants from Mexico if a deal isn't reached...We hated it when George Bush threatened us with the specter of terrorist attacks to get what he wanted politically, so we ought to be hating this, too, although fortunately it hasn't gotten quite to Bush levels yet – I'm assuming we're still weeks away from Obama himself going out to the Rose Garden to tell reporters that unmanned terror drones will be spraying poison over New York City if the Republicans don't give him his budget deal. The Republicans, meanwhile, are banking on the notion that $85 billion in annual cuts isn't all that much (and considering that the Fed doled out more than that to Citigroup alone in just one month of 2009, their argument makes some sense) and the country will barely notice the damage if we have to go over this particular waterfall. The political capital they may lose with the Pentagon in (potentially) letting this happen is an interesting side issue, but one most Americans probably aren't losing much sleep over.
... the whole thing sucks. It's like being permanently stuck in the NFL lockout story. Do we really have to do this every three months for the rest of eternity?
GO READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE FOR THE COLORFUL METAPHORS THAT I EDITED OUT FOR BREVITY...QUITE ENTERTAINING AND INSIGHTFUL, IF COLORFUL...
To be posted later today. 