Weekend Economists Escape to Cuba March 15-17, 2013

[Demeter]

If I were to slavishly follow the calendar, this weekend we would rhapsodize on St. Patrick and Ireland and such. I'll save it for a year that seems more whimsical, or needs that spirit.

Instead, since it is still going down to single digits around Michigan at night, let's imagine we are basking in the Carribean, where temps. today are ranging between 70 and 82F and humidity is only 50%...in Cuba!





Cuba would also be the logical follow up to the death of Chavez. Chavez sought help there for his cancer. Why?

Maybe because he felt no one would try to take him out, there. The USA considered him a major impediment to our growing Corporate Kleptocracy. The relations between the US and Cuba are complicated, and worth exploring. After all, there may be another state funeral soon, with the Castro brothers both advanced in age...

Post what you have!

[Demeter]

1. After Sinkhole Death, a Frenzy (Experts Say Unwarranted) Ensues

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/us/after-sinkhole-death-experts-say-unwarranted-frenzy-has-ensued.html

The recent bizarre death of a man who vanished into a huge sinkhole that opened beneath his home in suburban Tampa, Fla., unleashed a wave of sympathy, and not a little fear, among fellow Floridians. This is the so-called sinkhole season in Florida, a time when homes, cars and — rarely — people can drop into the abyss without warning. But for fans of sinkholes, of which there are more than one might think, this is a very good time, indeed.

Since the Florida tragedy, word has spread of another Tampa sinkhole and sinkholes in Allentown, Bethlehem and the suburban Philadelphia borough of Rockledge, Pa. The hole in Rockledge swallowed a creek and drained a duck pond (“Boom! It was gone overnight,” the town’s grounds manager was quoted as saying). There was a nine-acre sinkhole in Assumption Parish, La., that drew a visit from the environmental activist Erin Brockovich. The University of Delaware’s student newspaper, The Review, seized on the media frenzy to deliver comforting news: No sinkholes are likely in Delaware. (“Geologists unconcerned,” the headline read.) Just as sinkhole madness was starting to die down, a sinkhole no bigger than a manhole opened up last Friday on the 14th hole at Annbriar Golf Course in Waterloo, Ill., swallowing whole a 43-year-old mortgage broker. He was hauled out with what was initially reported to be a dislocated shoulder. But on Wednesday his friend and business partner, C.A. Schmidt, disclosed on Facebook that his shoulder actually had been broken in two places. “He’s pretty bummed — no golf the rest of the year for him,” Mr. Schmidt said in an e-mail exchange. There followed a sinkhole on Tuesday in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and a 17-foot-deep sinkhole discovered on Wednesday morning in Holyoke, Mass. Suddenly, it seemed that sinkholes were popping up, or down, on a daily basis. “The devil is taking down one person per day ... It could be you,” one poster on Twitter warned on Wednesday. According to geologists, this is because sinkholes have opened up on a daily basis for as long as anyone can remember. The difference is that nobody paid them much heed until now.

“I don’t believe we’re having any more today that we’ve had before,” Randall Orndorff, director of the Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center at the United States Geological Survey, said in an interview. “They happen all the time.”

Of course, he noted, there are sinkholes, and then there are man-made sinkholes. Real sinkholes occur when rain naturally transformed into weak carbonic acid eats away particularly susceptible underground rock like limestone or gypsum — also known as karst — creating underground holes. Man-made sinkholes are made the same way, only quicker. The Louisiana sinkhole is above a salt dome being mined by a brine-making company. All this is of intense interest to sinkhole enthusiasts. There is, for instance, thesinkhole.org, a Web site that bills itself as “the world’s largest collection of sinkholes” and posts breezy accounts, replete with photographs, of holes in the ground. There is also the Thirteenth Multidisciplinary Conference on Sinkholes and the Engineering and Environmental Impacts of Karst, known by insiders as the Sinkhole Conference, which is coming up in May. As many as 150 experts will be there presenting papers, holding discussions and looking for ways to reduce the possibility of man-made sinkholes. The conference includes a tour of a radioactive waste pilot plant inside a New Mexico salt mine. It also includes extensive tours of real and mostly untouched natural New Mexico sinkholes, which, for some attendees, could be a refreshing change of pace.

“Every time I’m in the country and see a sinkhole in an agricultural area, it almost always has an old refrigerator, an old washing machine or an old junk pickup truck that someone didn’t want to haul off to the salvage yard,” said Lewis Land, a New Mexico government karst hydrologist who is a conference organizer. “A sinkhole on a farmer’s property is almost like God has gifted him with a naturally occurring landfill.”

[Demeter]

2. After the Flimflam By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/opinion/krugman-after-the-flimflam.html?_r=0

It has been a big week for budget documents. In fact, members of Congress have presented not one but two full-fledged, serious proposals for spending and taxes over the next decade. Before I get to that, however, let me talk briefly about the third proposal presented this week — the one that isn’t serious, that’s essentially a cruel joke.

Way back in 2010, when everybody in Washington seemed determined to anoint Representative Paul Ryan as the ultimate Serious, Honest Conservative, I pronounced him a flimflam man. Even then, his proposals were obviously fraudulent: huge cuts in aid to the poor, but even bigger tax cuts for the rich, with all the assertions of fiscal responsibility resting on claims that he would raise trillions of dollars by closing tax loopholes (which he refused to specify) and cutting discretionary spending (in ways he refused to specify). Since then, his budgets have gotten even flimflammier. For example, at this point, Mr. Ryan is claiming that he can slash the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, yet somehow raise 19.1 percent of G.D.P. in revenues — a number we haven’t come close to seeing since the dot-com bubble burst a dozen years ago. The good news is that Mr. Ryan’s thoroughly unconvincing policy-wonk act seems, finally, to have worn out its welcome. In 2011, his budget was initially treated with worshipful respect, which faded only slightly as critics pointed out the document’s many absurdities. This time around, quite a few pundits and reporters have greeted his release with the derision it deserves.

And, with that, let’s turn to the serious proposals.

Unless you’re a very careful news reader, you’ve probably heard about only one of these proposals, the one released by Senate Democrats. And let’s be clear: By comparison with the Ryan plan, and for that matter with a lot of what passes for wisdom in our nation’s capital, this is a very reasonable plan indeed. As many observers have pointed out, the Senate Democratic plan is conservative with a small “c”: It avoids any drastic policy changes. In particular, it steers away from draconian austerity, which is simply not needed given ultralow U.S. borrowing costs and relatively benign medium-term fiscal projections. True, the Senate plan calls for further deficit reduction, through a mix of modest tax increases and spending cuts. (Incidentally, the tax increases still fall well short of those called for in the Bowles-Simpson plan, which Washington, for some reason, treats as something close to holy scripture.) But it avoids large short-run spending cuts, which would hobble our recovery at a time when unemployment is still disastrously high, and it even includes a modest amount of stimulus spending. So we could definitely do worse than the Senate Democratic plan, and we probably will.

It is, however, an extremely cautious proposal, one that doesn’t follow through on its own analysis. After all, if sharp spending cuts are a bad thing in a depressed economy — which they are — then the plan really should be calling for substantial though temporary spending increases. It doesn’t. But there’s a plan that does: the proposal from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, titled “Back to Work,” which calls for substantial new spending now, temporarily widening the deficit, offset by major deficit reduction later in the next decade, largely though not entirely through higher taxes on the wealthy, corporations and pollution...MORE... Mr. Ryan’s efforts are finally starting to get the derision they deserve, while progressives seem, at long last, to be finding their voice. Little by little, Washington’s fog of fiscal flimflam seems to be lifting.

[Demeter]

5. Paul Ryan’s budget: Social engineering with a side of deficit reduction Posted by Ezra Klein

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/12/paul-ryans-budget-isnt-about-the-deficit/

Here is Paul Ryan’s path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor and some combination of education, infrastructure, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. The Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts remain, but the military is spared, as is Social Security. There’s a vague individual tax reform plan that leaves only two tax brackets — 10 percent and 25 percent — and will require either huge, deficit-busting tax cuts or increasing taxes on poor and middle-class households, as well as a vague corporate tax reform plan that lowers the rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

But the real point of Ryan’s budget is its ambitious reforms, not its savings. It turns Medicare into a voucher program, turns Medicaid, food stamps, and a host of other programs for the poor into block grants managed by the states, shrinks the federal role on priorities like infrastructure and education to a tiny fraction of its current level, and envisions an entirely new tax code that will do much less to encourage home buying and health insurance.

Ryan’s budget is intended to do nothing less than fundamentally transform the relationship between Americans and their government. That, and not deficit reduction, is its real point, as it has been Ryan’s real point throughout his career.



MORE

[Hugin]

47. Antistimulus Watch: Does this budget make me look like a big ass? Edition.

Was going to be my title for the former Sequestration Watch I planned on posting this week.

But, in reading articles elsewhere on DU, it would seem the sequestration cuts have all been accepted by the Corporate Media and therefore the masses. Plus, the shiny thing of the Inflated Equities Market has everyone distracted. So, I've decided to discontinue the feature.

I'm glad Krugman at least touched on the sad sad SAD budget proposals rolling out of the Dome.

[Demeter]

73. I love that title!

Maybe you can recycle it later. It's not like they are going to start hiring honest, dedicated professionals any time soon.

I am also dismayed by the blase attitude to Sequestration. I expect it will take a couple months for the layoffs to hit home...and the rising energy costs....climate change....etc.

[Demeter]

3. Time to Break Up the Telecom Industry

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15084-time-to-break-up-the-telecom-industry

... Yesterday, the Mexican government announced a sweeping new proposal to crack down on the telecom monopolies and tycoons like Carlos Slim. The bill, which is part of Mexico’s most ambitious economic reform package in a generation, would establish a telecom industry regulator, with a wide array of powers to curb companies’ control of markets, while opening more room for competition in the marketplace. Thanks to Slim’s Mexican telecom monopoly, competition in that marketplace has been killed, driving up the prices for Mexican consumers. America Movil, Slim’s pan-American telecom provider, controls nearly 70 percent of the cellphone market in Mexico. Under the new proposal, the regulating body of the telecom industry could classify any company with more than 50 per cent of the market share as “dominant”. “Dominant” companies would then be subject to a variety of sanctions, including fines, pricing regulations and forced asset sales...But why is this happening now? Why have lawmakers in Mexico finally decided to chip away at Carlos Slim’s empire? It’s because they’ve realized that Libertarian capitalism, left unchecked, inevitably leads to monopoly. Slim’s telecom takeover was left unchecked, and he ended up gaining a virtual monopoly in the industry, at the expense of the Mexican people.

Unfortunately, here in the U.S., we’ve allowed our telecom industry to turn into a virtual duopoly, with AT&T and Verizon having a stranglehold on the market.
As a result, Americans are being squeezed dry when it comes to their cell phone plans. With AT&T, a cellphone plan with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 5GB of data costs about $140. On Verizon, a similar plan would run you around $130 per month. Meanwhile, across the pond in Europe, lawmakers and citizens caught on to the monopolistic tendencies of the telecom industry, and enforced the European version of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. As a result, there is plenty of competition in the cellular market in Europe, which means lower costs for the consumer. In the United Kingdom, a plan comparable to the AT&T and Verizon plans that cost well over $100 is just under $70 per month on Orange, one of Europe’s larger cellphone carriers. And, even if you were to increase the amount of data in your plan on Orange, you would still being paying less than on AT&T or Verizon. And on continental Europe, the cost could be as low as $20 a month.

As of 2009, American cell phone customers paid, on average, $635 per year for service. Compare that to an unbelievable $131 per year in the Netherlands and Finland, and $137 per year in Sweden. In France, the average citizen pays about $33 per month, for what the New York Times described as, “Internet service twice as fast as what you get on Verizon or Comcast, bundled with digital high-definition television, unlimited long distance and international calling to 70 countries and wireless Internet connectivity for your laptop or smartphone throughout most of the country.” So, Europe caught on to monopolies in the telecom industry and did something about it. And now Mexico is trying to do the same thing, to help ensure more competition in the marketplace and lower prices for consumers. Isn’t it about time that we did the same thing? I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of paying hundreds of dollars for cell phone service, when dozens of nations throughout the developed world are paying far less.

In an effort spearheaded by Richard Nixon, we used the Sherman Act to break up AT&T’s Bell System into seven different companies, known as the “Baby Bells”.
This left the market open for new players to jump in offering new services and new prices. AT&T was broken up, and in the end, it was good to all the investors involved. In fact, the value of AT&T and all its former subsidiaries tripled after the break-up. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan functionally stopped enforcing the Sherman Act, monopolies and oligopolies began to return with the “M&A Mania” of the 1980s, and the “Baby Bells” that had been successfully broken up began merging together yet again, forming bigger and bigger telecom companies. If we were to give the telecom and internet oligopolies the same treatment today that Richard Nixon gave AT&T in the 1970's, then maybe we Americans could enjoy the same super-fast internet speeds and super-cheap rates that most of the rest of the developed world enjoys. It’s time to break up the telecom industry once again, and this time, make sure it sticks.

[Demeter]

4. Key players affected by Mexico's telecoms reform

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/11/us-mexico-telecoms-players-idUSBRE92A15S20130311

Mexico's government presented a major telecommunications reform bill on Monday that aims to loosen Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim's hold over the phones sector, and prize open top broadcaster Televisa's grip of the airwaves.

Below are a list of key players affected by the reform:

AMERICA MOVIL: Controlled by Carlos Slim, the world's richest man, America Movil (AMXL.MX) (AMX.N) has 70 percent of Mexico's mobile market and 80 percent of its fixed phone lines. The luster of Slim's flagship telecoms company has begun to fade of late as increased competition, disappointing investments and new regulations have dealt a blow to the one-time investor darling as it has trailed Mexico's benchmark IPC index. America Movil shares are down more than 10 percent for the year. Weaker-than-expected fourth quarter profit knocked an estimated $4 billion off Slim's $73 billion fortune. It remains to be seen what effect the reform will have on the company's bottom line as regulators seek to cut the fees the company can charge competitors to connect to its network, while allowing rivals to charge America Movil more in a process known as asymmetric regulation. America Movil reported revenue of 775 billion pesos ($60 billion) and a profit of 91.4 billion pesos in 2012.

TELEVISA: Mexican broadcaster Televisa (TLVACPO.MX), controlled by media mogul Emilio Azcarraga, is the world's biggest producer of Spanish-language content and one of the companies in regulators' crosshairs. Televisa has said it controls about 60 percent of Mexico's broadcasting market, with rival TV Azteca (AZTECACPO.MX) controlling most of the rest. Televisa has competed with TV Azteca since its smaller rival was privatized by the government about 20 years ago, forcing Televisa to trim costs and improve broadcasting quality. Televisa has said it supports the reform, which will open up the playing field in the narrow television sector. The telecoms shakeup should open the door for Televisa's mobile-phone business Iusacell, which has a roughly 6 percent share of the Mexican market, to thrive. The broadcaster reported revenue of 69.3 billion pesos and a profit of 10.1 billion pesos in 2012.

TV AZTECA: Owned by Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas, TV Azteca is the other main player in Mexico's TV market, and joined forces with Televisa investing in Iusacell.

TELEFONICA: Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica (TEF.MC) is a big potential winner of the reform. The company is trying to loosen Slim's grip over Latin American markets, and raise its 20 percent share in Mexico.

[bread_and_roses]

6. I haven't been here all week ...

... missed everybody. I'll try to get caught up sometime this weekend and join the party .... icy cold here, too, and now I have to go walk dog .... world going to hell in a handbasket, as usual, but Market has been merry this week - the 1% is happy.

[Demeter]

12. I doubt that...the 1% are NEVER happy

It's a psychological failing that they will NEVER be satisfied, and the source of all conflict.

[bread_and_roses]

55. No doubt you are right on that. I haven't posted anything because ...

everything I've read worth reading so far this weekend is so ferociously critical, so bordering on raging contempt of President Mellifluous that it might not get just me banned but the whole thread shut down.

That's why I have never and will never donate[ed] to this site. I detest censorship in all its forms. If something is evil, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and if it's simply wrong, well illumination is the best corrective. It's one thing to ban trolls and flamers - that is banning for behavior, not for heresy. It's quite another to get knickers in a twist and ban people for posting something that appears on reputable progressive sites.

I enjoy this little haven of ours, and while I'd risk my own status, TPTB made its status clear with the new format, and I will not pose a risk to others.

[hamerfan]

7. Musical Interlude

Havana Daydreamin' by Jimmy Buffett:

I just wanna see something bloom, I am so sick of this winter. A Dandelion, anything!

[Demeter]

10. I know what you mean

My poor snowdrops have been attacked by yet another inch or two of snow last night...

[hamerfan]

79. Huh?

This may wind up being my next car:

[Demeter]

80. Very practical!

Love the chains! So Goth!

[xchrom]

8. JPMorgan bullied bank regulators, report says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/jpmorgan-bullied-bank-regulators-documents-and-testimony-show/2013/03/15/bb189da0-8d9f-11e2-9838-d62f083ba93f_story.html


Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG - Ina Drew, former chief investment officer with JPMorgan Chase, arrives to a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing. JPMorgan Chase compensated chief investment office traders in a way that encouraged risk-taking before the unit amassed losses exceeding $6.2 billion, a Senate committee said.

When bank regulators wanted daily profit and loss statements from JPMorgan Chase’s investment division, the bank initially refused.

When examiners issued recommendations the bank didn’t like, executives yelled and called the federal officials “stupid.”

At one point, the top brass at the prestigious bank ambushed a junior bank examiner, becoming “loud and combative” when he disclosed disputed results of an exam.

Those incidents are part of a rare and detailed look into the interactions between Washington regulators and Wall Street, described in congressional testimonies Friday and a Senate report on a massive trading loss at JPMorgan.

[Demeter]

9. Natural gas: commodity market’s ‘sleeping giant’

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/natural-gas-commodity-markets-sleeping-giant-2013-03-15

As the winter season draws to a close and the energy market readies for a slowdown in the need for heating fuels, natural-gas prices should be falling. They’re not. Instead, prices have climbed over 9% month to date, with the market betting on a tighter supply and demand situation following a cold winter season, signs of a recovery in the U.S. economy, a drop in drilling rigs, growing uses for the fuel, and a shift away from coal-fired plants.

“Demand on a massive scale is coming,” said Kevin Kerr, president and chief executive offer of Kerr Trading International.

“Supplies are getting tighter and demand is increasing,” he said, and that’s likely to happen dramatically in the next five years as new technology and usage comes online. “Natural gas is like a sleeping giant, waiting to be awakened.”

On Thursday, prices got a good shake, with April natural gas NGJ13 +1.31% jumping nearly 4% to $3.81 per million British thermal units, the highest settlement since Nov. 27. The United States Natural Gas Fund UNG +0.62% , an exchange-traded fund that tracks movements in natural-gas prices, has rallied 9.7% month to date.

The rally followed a U.S. Energy Information Administration report showing a bigger-than-expected 145 billion-cubic-foot drop in weekly natural-gas supplies, which took total supplies below 2 trillion cubic feet for the first time since mid-May 2011. Inventories are down 440 billion cubic feet from the year-ago level...

[Demeter]

17. Energy stocks gain more than 1% on week

http://articles.marketwatch.com/2013-03-15/markets/37733031_1_energy-stocks-valero-energy-corp-patriot-coal-corp

Energy stocks edged lower Friday, but pulled off a weekly gain of nearly 1.2%, making it the sector the third-best performer this week in the S&P 500 index after financial stocks and utilities...

SPECIFIC STOCK PERFORMANCES AT LINK

[xchrom]

11. SAC affiliates to pay $616 million to settle insider-trading case

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sac-affiliates-to-pay-614-million-to-settle-insider-trading-case/2013/03/15/4de851c4-8d9c-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html


STEVE MARCUS/REUTERS - Hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen, founder and chairman of SAC Capital Advisors.

SAC Capital Advisors agreed to pay $616 million to resolve two civil lawsuits involving affiliates accused of insider trading, a massive settlement from the legendary and beleaguered hedge fund run by billionaire Steven A. Cohen.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday that CR Intrinsic Investors will pay $602 million, a record sum for an insider-trading case. The other affiliate, Sigma Capital Management, settled for nearly $14 million. Neither entity admitted nor denied wrongdoing, and their agreements await court approval.

For years the government has suspected SAC of profiting from illegal trading tips. At least five people have been accused of insider trading while they worked for the hedge fund. Federal authorities have never charged Cohen, but the government’s persistent scrutiny of his firm has sullied his mythical status in the hedge fund world.

The most damaging case was the one involving CR Intrinsic and one of its former portfolio managers, Mathew Martoma, who was charged by the government with running the most lucrative insider-trading scheme ever while working closely with Cohen.

[xchrom]

13. JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon showed too much hubris and too little humility

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/15/jp-morgan-jamie-dimon-heidi-moore

You could tell the exact moment when Ina Drew decided she had nothing left to lose.

Drew, who ran JP Morgan's $350bn investment office, testified in front of the Senate today about the infamous London Whale trading debacle that racked up $6.2bn in losses for JP Morgan last year. She began her testimony by recounting her decades at JP Morgan "through seven mergers," talked about managing her job and her kids in a search for work-life balance, and gave credit to the "great CEOs" she had worked under, including current chief executive Jamie Dimon.

But Drew did not step up to take responsibility herself. She talked of trusting her deputies. She insisted that JP Morgan had provided its regulators with a daily account of the profits and losses in the bank's investment office – despite Senate documentation to the contrary and the testimony of a regulator who later directly said she was wrong, and that the bank only provided the daily account after the whole debacle blew up in May. When Drew was asked if she knew one key and obvious fact – whether JP Morgan had skipped a crucial yearly check on its trading limits – she demurred that she couldn't recall.

Drew, however, was one of the villains in the bank's own account of what went wrong, and you could see the pressure building up in her mind as she declined to answer, paused, or claimed lack of recall. She ran the office that racked up the losses, and according to the Senate report, she applauded traders for risky bets on American Airlines.

[Demeter]

14. I feel so sorry for Ina---not!

Good morning, X! You are up early....Daylight Saving Time got you all confused, too?

[xchrom]

18. i think i'm not feeling so good.

its upset my sleep -- which was never good any way.

[Demeter]

19. JPMorgan Faulted on Controls and Disclosure in Trading Loss

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/jpmorgan-faulted-on-controls-and-disclosure-in-trading-loss/

JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s biggest bank, ignored internal controls and manipulated documents as it racked up trading losses last year, while its influential chief executive, Jamie Dimon, briefly withheld some information from regulators, a new Senate report says.

The findings by the Congressional investigators shed new light on the multibillion-dollar trading blunder, which has claimed the jobs of several top executives and prompted an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The 300-page report, released a day before a Senate subcommittee plans to question bank executives and regulators at a hearing, will escalate the debate over how to police complex risk-taking on Wall Street. It may also foreshadow a criminal case against employees at the heart of the troubled wager.

A spokeswoman for the bank said on Thursday, “While we have repeatedly acknowledged significant mistakes, our senior management acted in good faith and never had any intent to mislead anyone.”

OF COURSE NOT! THERE, THERE, IT WILL ALL BE SMOOTHED OVER....

[Demeter]

15. Federal court rejects CIA's denial of drone strikes as 'fiction'

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-court-cia-drone-20130315,0,1257923.story

A federal appeals court said Friday that it will no longer accept the “fiction” from the Obama administration’s lawyers that the CIA has no interest or documents that describe drone strikes.

“It is neither logical nor plausible for the CIA to maintain that it would reveal anything not already in the public domain to say the Agency at least has an intelligence interest in such strikes,” said Chief Judge Merrick Garland. “The defendant is, after all, the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The decision gave a partial victory to the American Civil Liberties Union in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that seeks documents on the government’s still-secret policy on drone strikes. The three judges did not say any particular documents must be released, but they rejected the administration’s position that it could simply refuse to “confirm or deny” that it had any such documents.

A federal judge had rejected the ACLU’s suit entirely, but the three-judge appeals court revived the suit. The agency’s non-response does not pass the “straight face” test, Garland concluded. He cited public statements from President Obama, new CIA Director John Brennan and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that discussed the use of drone strikes abroad. In the past, the courts have sometimes allowed government agencies in sensitive cases to refuse to say whether they have certain documents in their files.

“In this case, the CIA has asked the courts to stretch that doctrine too far — to give their imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible,” Garland wrote in ACLU vs. CIA.

ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer called the decision a victory. “It requires the government to retire the absurd claim that the CIA’s interest in targeted killing is a secret,” he said. “It also means that the CIA will have to explain what records it is withholding and on what grounds it is withholding them.

“We hope that this ruling will encourage the Obama administration to fundamentally reconsider the secrecy surrounding the drones program,” said Jaffer, a deputy legal director for the ACLU.

IF DENIABILITY IS GONE..CAN WAR CRIMES BE FAR BEHIND?

[Demeter]

16. FBI's 'National Security Letters' Demands Ruled Unconstitutional

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/15/174445155/federal-judge-rules-the-fbis-secret-demands-of-data-are-unconstitutional?ft=1&f=1001

A federal judge in California ruled today that the FBI cannot secretly demand data from banks and phone companies in national security cases. The judge said orders that keep those requests secret violate the First Amendment.

NPR's Carrie Johnson filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"The demands known as 'national security letters' became a quick and popular tool for the FBI to gather information without a judge's pre-approval in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"The letters give counter terrorism agents the power to get information without notifying the targets of their investigations.

"But U.S. District Judge Susan Illston says those gag orders run afoul of the freedom of speech and the separation of powers.

"The judge stayed her ruling to give the Justice Department time to appeal.
"A Justice spokesman said the department is reviewing the decision."

The Wall Street Journal has a bit more background:

"National security letters date back to the 1980s and were strengthened under the USA Patriot Act, the counterterrorism law put into place after Sept. 11. The letters allow the FBI to get data on phone, financial and electronic records without a judge or grand jury, as long as the head of an FBI field office certifies that the records would be relevant to a counterterrorism investigation. They typically come with strict secrecy orders, barring the recipient from acknowledging the case to anyone but attorneys."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the unnamed telecommunications company that challenged the national security letters statute, said they were "pleased that the court recognized the fatal constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute."

EFF's Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman added:

"The government's gags have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools. Our client looks forward to the day when it can publicly discuss its experience."

Wired explains that when the EFF first brought the suit representing the telecom company, "the Justice Department took its own extraordinary measure and sued the company, arguing in court documents that the company was violating the law by challenging its authority."

Wired frames the decision as a "stunning defeat for the Obama administration's surveillance practices." They report:

"Illston found that although the government made a strong argument for prohibiting the recipients of NSLs from disclosing to the target of an investigation or the public the specific information being sought by an NSL, the government did not provide compelling argument that the mere fact of receiving an NSL served national security interests.

"A blanket prohibition on disclosure, she found, "creates too large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted."

"She noted that 97 percent of the more than 200,000 NSLs that have been issued by the government were issued with nondisclosure orders."

SO GLAD THERE'S FINALLY SOME PUSHBACK ON BOTH THESE ROGUE AGENCIES. I'M THINKING THEY ARE OVERDUE FOR MAJOR CUTBACKS AND REORGANIZATION.

[Demeter]

20. 5 ways Warren Buffett invests that you don’t

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-ways-warren-buffett-invests-that-you-dont-2013-03-14?siteid=YAHOOB

BUYING WHOLE COMPANIES...ECONOMIES OF SCALE....GREAT POLITICAL CONNECTIONS...PREFERENTIAL TAX TREATMENT...I SUPPOSE I COULD READ THE ARTICLE TO FIND OUT WHAT THEY SUPPOSEDLY ARE, BUT WHY BOTHER?

[xchrom]

22. it's hard to imagine all the advantages 1 can have with that kind of wealth

and buying power some one like a buffet has.

just another 1 of those things that makes the wealthy so very different from you and me.

[xchrom]

21. Break Up the Behemoth Banks

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/15-11

***SNIP

Senator Brown explains, “The four largest behemoths, now ranging from $1.4 trillion to $2.3 trillion in assets, are the result of thirty-seven banks merging thirty-three times. In 1995, the six biggest US banks had assets equal to 18 percent of GDP. Today, they are about 63 percent of GDP.”

In earlier eras, such a gross distortion of the economy would have prompted popular outrage, political campaigns for reform, then government legislation. In our time, the outrage is plentiful, but the political system is dead in the water. Despite the vast destruction produced by the concentrated banking system, neither party wants to embrace the remedy Brown proposes.

The Dodd-Frank reform law of 2010, incomplete though it was, has been utterly stymied by the billion-dollar lobbying campaign of the financial sector. Nearly three years later, fewer than half of the regulations needed to implement Dodd-Frank have been completed. The president’s proud boast that the law put an end to “too big to fail” banks has been twisted into Wall Street’s sick little inside joke.

“It’s not just the economic power these guys have, it’s the political power,” Brown says. “The inability to get these new rules in place is the result of these lobbying pressures from Wall Street.”

[Demeter]

23. 7 tips for the perfect boomer résumé

DON'T PATRONIZE THE BOOMERS!

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/7-tips-for-the-perfect-boomer-r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9-2013-03-14

For job seekers these days, crafting the perfect résumé may matter less than making key connections with the right people and ensuring a stellar online presence. But you still need your résumé to shine and the older you are the more you need to communicate the value of your experience...

For boomer job seekers, the key is to keep it simple, relevant and timely.

“Your résumé is not going to get you the job,” said Kerry Hannon, a Washington-based career expert and author of “Great Jobs for Everyone 50+.” “It’s the interview that gets you the job. Use the résumé as your calling card.”

MIGHT BE USEFUL...IF THERE WERE JOBS TO BE HAD...

[xchrom]

24. why we must raise the minimum wage

http://www.nationofchange.org/why-we-must-raise-minimum-wage-1363362758

Raising the minimum wage from the current rate of $7.25 an hour to $9 should be a no brainer. It's been eroding for years. If the minimum wage stayed even with inflation since 1968, it would now be $10.56 an hour. Raising the minimum wage is only fair that is roughly $18,000 earned per year, which is just above the poverty line for a family of three. And it would put more money into the hands of families that need it the most. It will allow them to buy more putting more money back into the economy and therefore, keeping people employed. So not only is it fair, but it is good for the economy.

[xchrom]

25. World’s Wealthiest Lose $18 Billion as Gates Chases Slim

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/world-s-wealthies-lose-18-billion-as-gates-chases-slim.html

The 100 wealthiest people on the planet dropped $17.9 billion from their collective net worth this week after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell short of hitting an all-time high.

Carlos Slim, the world’s richest person, lost $5 billion during the week, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Mexican lawmakers announced legislation Monday that threatens to rein in the country’s telecommunications monopolies, raising the possibility of a breakup for Slim’s America Movil SAB (AMXL).

The stock plunged to its lowest price in almost four years. The 73-year-old is worth $67.8 billion -- $184 million ahead of Bill Gates. The wealth gap between the billionaires is the closest it’s been since the index debuted in March 2012.

“It looked like we were oh-so-close. We didn’t make it and gave up some ground,” said Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, who helps manage $17 billion at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama. “It’s a given that we’re going to get a new high on the S&P. The question is: What happens after that?”

[xchrom]

26. Euro Ministers Push for Cyprus Deal After Merkel Demand

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/merkel-demands-cyprus-action-amid-clashes-on-haircuts.html

Euro-area finance ministers pushed through the night toward a Cyprus rescue deal after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe must act to support Cyprus after nine months of bailout talks.

Policy makers began meeting at 5 p.m. yesterday in Brussels in a hastily convened gathering, seeking to trim the amount of aid, overcome differences on losses for investors and decide on a role of the International Monetary Fund.

Making way for the currency bloc’s 17 finance ministers, Merkel said that while euro countries won’t provide assistance “under any conditions,” the currency union needed to prevent Cyprus from lurching toward insolvency.

“Simply to leave Cyprus alone and see what happens would be, in my view, irresponsible,” Merkel told reporters in the Belgian capital after a two-day European Union summit. In her wake, the finance officials arrived, along with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and IMF chief Christine Lagarde, for the Cyprus talks.

[xchrom]

27. Why We Should Rip the Banks in Two

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/why-we-should-rip-the-banks-in-two.html

What banks do -- sell short-term debt (like deposits) to fund long-term loans -- is inherently risky. In theory, shareholders bear this risk. In practice, much of it is dumped on citizens, even though they've no claim on the returns associated with the risk-taking.

The problem is that banks have too little capital to absorb losses without going bust. Even the new, stronger Basel III rules mandate a bare minimum ratio of bank equity to bank assets of just 3 percent. This means that a bank that loses more than 3 percent of its portfolio becomes insolvent.

Aside from this sliver of equity, banks fund themselves by issuing what some scholars call "money-like" debts. In addition to government-guaranteed deposits, these include commercial paper sold to money-market mutual funds, cash-management accounts offered to pension funds and corporations, and "repo" (the sale of a security with the promise to repurchase it later).

Rightly or wrongly, owners of these bank obligations generally treat them as if they were riskless. Deposits are insured up to a limit but the other liabilities aren’t. Savers who come to doubt that they’ll get back 100 cents on the dollar generally try to convert their money-like debts into something that has absolutely no risk of default, like a T-bill. (Inflation is a risk for T-bills, but the bank obligations are no better protected in that respect.)

[Demeter]

28. Can we see China through our veil of propaganda? OR CUBA, FOR THAT MATTER?

http://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/03/16/china-real-estate-49440/

Summary: Our newspapers coverage of the world consists to a large extent of propaganda. Nations appear as either allies, enemies, and wilderness. And rivals are often portrayed as enemies, no matter ow much spin or outright fabrication required. Here we look at China, attempting to see through the fog...

(1) China the evil militarist

China dares to seek regional hegemony, just like the US did early in our history. They date to seek military strength proportionate to their new rank among the world’s great powers. Our government — echoed by its courtiers and the press — portrays these things as evidence of China’s malevolent intentions to disturb world peace.

What China should say to the world:

It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers.

We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between China and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt by other nations to extend their influence to any portion of East Asia as dangerous to our peace and safety.

We could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing our neighbors, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward China. It is the policy of China to leave our neighbors to themselves, in hope that other powers will pursue the same course.

— A slightly altered version of the key lines of Monroe’s speech in December 1823

(2) China the cyberattacker

“Mr. President, if that’s what you want there is only one way to get it. That is to make a personal appearance before Congress and scare the hell out of the country.”
— Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s advice to Truman about how to start the Cold War.

On 12 March 1947 Truman did exactly that. From Put yourself in Marshall’s place, James P. Warburg (1948); in 1941 Warburg helped develop our wartime propaganda programs.

Lately the news media have overflowed with allegations of cyberattacks by China. This joins together two streams of propaganda.

First, threat exaggeration is the foundation of US national security strategy, building support for our massive military. Bomber gap, missile gap, the Tonkin Gulf incident, the Team B warnings of the Red Peril, Libyan hit teams roaming America, Saddam’s WMDs, jihadists and commie sleeper cells in every community, and now Chinese cyberwar … Is there is no threat Americans’ will not tremble in fear before, no matter how often they are proved exaggerated — or false?

Second, computer security firms like Mandiant have a long history of exaggerating (sometimes fabricating) cyber-threats. For obvious motives.

As for the latest scary story: few of the news stories mention the difficulty (often impossibility) of determining the source of cyberattacks. As Marcus Ranum wrote in Cyberwar: About Attribution (identifying your attacker):

The media embarrass themselves whenever they try to tackle attribution of cyberattacks. The FBI or CIA say “it came from an IP address in China” to which anyone who understands cybersecurity can only respond “so does approximately 1/2 of all the traffic on the planet!”

If an attacker wanted to arrange it so that their attack came from a Chinese IP address block, it would take about 10 minutes to set that up. Or, would you prefer it to come from Luxembourg? Also 10 minutes.

To give you an idea: in 1997 I was involved with backtracking an attacker who was physically in the UK, but was laundering his connection through a server in Amsterdam that gave him access to a university computer in the US, from which he was dialing into a corporate system and then attacking another corporation through the first’s firewall. If the IP addresses were how the attack were attributed, it would have looked like a major investment bank was attacking a web hosting firm. Backtracking and attributing the attack required a month of work from several high-level experts and – most importantly – two glaring errors on the part of the hacker.

A professional intelligence officer with hacking experts at their disposal and time to set up a covert operation could, literally, make it look like it came from anywhere, with the investment of a relatively small increment of work. When it comes to cyberweaponry, everything you think you know has to be thrown out the window, every time, so your investigation has to start at square one. You’re not just in a wilderness of mirrors; you’re in a wilderness that is made entirely out of mirror.

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[DemReadingDU]

29. Detroit Kevyn Orr connected to Columbus National Century Financial

3/16/13 Detroit’s emergency manager: Who is Kevyn Orr?
Kevyn Orr, who was named Thursday by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder as emergency manager over the city of Detroit, is a wealthy Washington DC attorney specializing in bankruptcy law. A native of Florida, Orr graduated from the University of Michigan law school. He will be paid $275,000 a year for his job as financial dictator of the city of Detroit. A new state law soon to take effect will give him sweeping powers to rip up labor agreements, sell city assets and privatize services.

In accepting the appointment he declared, “I’m prepared to be the most hated man for a period of time.” Indeed. Orr’s background demonstrates that he is a ruthless defender of corporate interests and a bitter enemy of working people.

Orr, who says he is a lifelong Democrat, played a role in the presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Barack Obama. He took part in the Obama administration’s forced bankruptcy and restructuring of the auto industry in which tens of thousands of jobs were eliminated, retiree health benefits slashed and new-hire pay cut by half.

Orr played a leading role in convincing the bankruptcy court to allow Chrysler to close one quarter of its US dealerships, some 800 in total. The closings cost thousands of workers their jobs and dealt a heavy blow to the economies of many small towns across the United States. For his services with Chrysler, Orr reportedly charged $700 per hour.

In another major bankruptcy case, Orr represented National Century Financial Enterprises. Lance Poulsen, former National Financial CEO, pleaded guilty in 2008 to defrauding customers before the collapse of the health care financing company in 2002. Poulsen and six other high ranking executives of the firm were named in a 60-count indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in 2006.

more...
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/16/korr-m16.html



Link backwards to previous articles about Columbus, Ohio saga of National Century Financial Enterprises...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/111632224#post9

[Demeter]

38. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

In 1839 Alphonse Karr became editor of Le Figaro, to which he had been a constant contributor; and he also started a monthly journal, Les Guêpes, of a keenly satirical tone, a publication which brought him the reputation of a somewhat bitter wit.

His epigrams are frequently quoted, for example "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"—"the more it changes, the more it's the same thing", usually translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same," (Les Guêpes, January 1849)

[Demeter]

74. Detroit News: 4 Tax Liens On Kevyn Orr's Home Include 2 Still Outstanding

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/4136/detroit_news_4_tax_liens_on_kevyn_orr_s_home_include_2_still_outstanding

...Keyvn Orr, the attorney appointed to get Detroit financially straight, was hit with with four tax liens on his Maryland home in four years for income and unemployment taxes, Joel Kurth and Chad Livengood of The Detroit News found via online sleuthing.

They note that the situation is ironic "since Orr is tasked with improving tax collections."...

State records show Orr, who was appointed emergency manager on Thursday, has two outstanding liens on his $1-million home in Chevy Chase, Md., for $16,000 in unemployment taxes in 2010 and 2011. Two other liens of more than $16,000 in unemployment and income taxes were satisfied in 2010 and 2011, records show.

Orr said he didn't know anything about the liens when shown records of them Friday morning by The Detroit News.

"I don't know what they are," Orr said, as his new boss, Gov. Rick Snyder, sat next to him in The News' offices. "That's surprising to me, to be honest."

Quick damage control followed.

By late that afternoon, Snyder's spokeswoman said Orr would pay "in full ASAP." He blames the embarrassment on his tax accountant.

State backround checkers hadn't spotted the liens, Snyder's press secretary told The News.

Detroit's new EFM Kevyn Orr says he has taxen care of tax liens against his Maryland home

Read more: http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/detroit/detroits-new-efm-kevyn-orr-says-he-has-taxen-care-of-tax-liens-against-his-maryland-home#ixzz2No3ICMHe

....Orr is apologizing for the mix-up, saying it was just something that fell through the cracks. He also said the took care of the situation as soon as he became aware of it.
Orr was appointed Detroit's Emergency Financial Manager on Thursday. He will officially take charge of the city's finances on March 25.

[Demeter]

30. But we WERE going to Cuba this Weekend, Right?

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba ( Spanish: República de Cuba), is an island country in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, as well as the Isla de la Juventud and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. To the north of Cuba lies the United States (150 km or 93 mi away) and the Bahamas, Mexico is to the west, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica are to the south, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are to the southeast.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on and claimed the island now occupied by Cuba, for the Kingdom of Spain. Cuba remained a territory of Spain until the Spanish–American War ended in 1898, and gained formal independence from the U.S. in 1902.

A fragile democracy, increasingly dominated by radical politics eventually evolved, solidified by the Cuban Constitution of 1940, but was quashed in 1952 by former president Fulgencio Batista, who intensified and catalyzed already rampant corruption, political repression and crippling economic regulations.

Batista was ousted in January 1959 by the July 26 movement, and a new administration under Fidel Castro established, which had by 1965 evolved into a single-party state under the revived Communist Party of Cuba, which holds power to date.

Cuba is home to over 11 million people and is the most populous island nation in the Caribbean, as well as the largest by area. However, the population density is lower than in most Caribbean countries. Its people, culture, and customs draw from diverse sources, such as the aboriginal Taíno and Ciboney peoples, the period of Spanish colonialism, the introduction of African slaves and its proximity to the United States.

Cuba has a 99.8% literacy rate, an infant death rate lower than some developed countries, and an average life expectancy at birth of 78 years. According to data it provides to the United Nations, Cuba was the only nation in 2006, in the world which met the WWF's definition of sustainable development; having an ecological footprint of less than 1.8 hectares per capita and a Human Development Index of over 0.8 for 2007.

[Demeter]

32. Our story begins

The name Cuba comes from the Taíno language. The exact meaning of the name is unclear but it may be translated either as where fertile land is abundant (cubao), or great place (coabana). Authors who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese state that Cuba was named by Columbus for the ancient town of Cuba in the district of Beja in Portugal.

(Columbus was of course Italian; maybe he had a patron or a lady fair in Portugal?--Demeter)

Pre-Columbian era



Sketch of a Taíno woman, also known as the Arawak by the Spanish

Cuba was inhabited by Native American people known as the Taíno, also called Arawak by the Spanish, and Guanajatabey and Ciboney people before the arrival of the Spanish. The ancestors of these Native Americans migrated from the mainland of North, Central and South America several centuries earlier. The native Taínos called the island Caobana. The Taíno were farmers and the Ciboney were farmers, fishers and hunter-gatherers.

Spanish colonization

After first landing on an island then called Guanahani on October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on Cuba's northeastern coast near what is now Bariay, Holguin province on October 27 or 28. He claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named Isla Juana after Juan, Prince of Asturias. In 1511, the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, conquistador of Cuba, at Baracoa; other towns soon followed including the future capital of San Cristobal de la Habana which was founded in 1515. The native Taínos were working under the encomienda system, which resembled a feudal system in Medieval Europe. Within a century the indigenous people were virtually wiped out due to multiple factors, including Eurasian infectious diseases aggravated in large part by a lack of natural resistance as well as privation stemming from repressive colonial subjugation. In 1529, a measles outbreak in Cuba killed two-thirds of the natives who had previously survived smallpox.


On September 1, 1548, Dr. Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was appointed governor of Cuba. He arrived in Santiago, Cuba on November 4, 1549 and immediately declared the liberty of all natives. He became Cuba's first permanent governor who resided in Havana instead of Santiago, and he built Havana's first church made of masonry. After the French took Havana in 1555, the governor's son, Francisco de Angulo, went to Mexico.

Cuba remained a Spanish possession for almost 400 years (1511–1898), with an economy based on plantation agriculture, mining, and the export of sugar, coffee, and tobacco to Europe and later to North America. The work was done primarily by African slaves brought to the island.

The small land-owning elite of Spanish settlers held social and economic powers supported by a population of Spaniards born on the island (Criollos), other Europeans, and African-descended slaves. The population in 1817 was 630,980, of which 291,021 were white, 115,691 free black, and 224,268 black slaves.

Independence wars

In the 1820s, when the rest of Spain's empire in Latin America rebelled and formed independent states, Cuba remained loyal. Although there was agitation for independence, the Spanish Crown gave Cuba the motto La Siempre Fidelísima Isla ("The Always Most Faithful Island&quot . This loyalty was due partly to Cuban settlers' dependence on Spain for trade, their desire for protection from pirates and against a slave rebellion, and partly because they feared the rising power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish rule.

(The Ugly American is a long-standing tradition, it seems...Demeter)

[Demeter]

35. Cuba Libre!

Ten Years' War

Carlos Manuel de Céspedes is known as Father of the Homeland in Cuba, having declared the nation's independence from Spain in 1868...Independence from Spain was the motive for a rebellion in 1868 led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. De Céspedes, a sugar planter, freed his slaves to fight with him for a free Cuba. On 27 December 1868, he issued a decree condemning slavery in theory but accepting it in practice and declaring free any slaves whose masters present them for military service. The 1868 rebellion resulted in a prolonged conflict known as the Ten Years' War.

Two thousand Cuban Chinese joined the rebels. There is a monument in Havana that honours the Cuban Chinese who fell in the war, on which is inscribed: There was not one Cuban Chinese deserter, not one Cuban Chinese traitor.

The United States declined to recognize the new Cuban government, although many European and Latin American nations did so. In 1878, the Pact of Zanjón ended the conflict, with Spain promising greater autonomy to Cuba. In 1879–1880, Cuban patriot Calixto García attempted to start another war known as the Little War but received little support.

Period between wars

In Cuba, a sophisticated and prosperous sugar industry had employed chattel slavery until the final third of the 19th century. Cuba produced 720,250 metric tons of sugar in 1868, more than forty percent of cane sugar reaching the world market that year. Slavery had been maintained in Cuba, however, while abolition was underway elsewhere. Abolition in Cuba began the final third of the 19th century, and was completed in the 1880s.

War of 1895

An exiled dissident named José Martí founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in New York in 1892. The aim of the party was to achieve Cuban independence from Spain. In January 1895 Martí traveled to Montecristi and Santo Domingo to join the efforts of Máximo Gómez. Martí recorded his political views in the Manifesto of Montecristi. Fighting against the Spanish army began in Cuba on 24 February 1895, but Martí was unable to reach Cuba until 11 April 1895. Martí was killed in the battle of Dos Rios on 19 May 1895. His death immortalized him as Cuba's national hero.

Around 200,000 Spanish troops outnumbered the much smaller rebel army which relied mostly on guerrilla and sabotage tactics. The Spaniards began a campaign of suppression. General Valeriano Weyler, military governor of Cuba, herded the rural population into what he called reconcentrados, described by international observers as "fortified towns". These are often considered the prototype for 20th-century concentration camps. Between 200,000 and 400,000 Cuban civilians died from starvation and disease in the camps, numbers verified by the Red Cross and United States Senator and former Secretary of War Redfield Proctor. American and European protests against Spanish conduct on the island followed.

Spanish–American War

USS Maine

The U.S. battleship Maine arrived in Havana on 25 January 1898 to offer protection to the 8,000 American residents on the island, but the Spanish saw this as intimidation. On the evening of 15 February 1898, the Maine blew up in the harbor, killing 252 crew. Another eight crew members died of their wounds in hospital over the next few days. A Naval Board of Inquiry headed by Captain William T. Sampson was appointed to investigate the cause of the explosion on the Maine. Having examined the wreck and taken testimony from eyewitnesses and experts, the board reported on 21 March 1898 that the Maine had been destroyed by "a double magazine set off from the exterior of the ship, which could only have been produced by a mine."

The facts remain disputed today, although an investigation by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover published in 1976 established that the blast was most likely a large internal explosion. Rickover believes the explosion was caused by a spontaneous combustion in inadequately ventilated bituminous coal which ignited gunpowder in an adjacent magazine. The original 1898 board was unable to fix the responsibility for the disaster, but a furious American populace, fueled by an active press— notably the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst— concluded that the Spanish were to blame and demanded action. The U.S. Congress passed a resolution calling for intervention, and President William McKinley complied. Spain and the United States declared war on each other in late April.

Early 20th century

After the Spanish-American War, Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris (1898), by which Spain ceded Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam to the United States for the sum of $20 million. Under the same treaty, Spain relinquished all claim of sovereignty over Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt, who had fought in the Spanish-American War and had some sympathies with the independence movement, succeeded McKinley as U.S. President in 1901 and abandoned the treaty. Cuba gained formal independence from the U.S. on May 20, 1902, as the Republic of Cuba. Under Cuba's new constitution, the U.S. retained the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and to supervise its finances and foreign relations. Under the Platt Amendment, the U.S. leased the Guantánamo Bay naval base from Cuba.

Following disputed elections in 1906, the first president, Tomás Estrada Palma, faced an armed revolt by independence war veterans who defeated the meager government forces. The U.S. intervened by occupying Cuba and named Charles Edward Magoon as Governor for three years. Cuban historians have attributed Magoon's governorship as having introduced political and social corruption. In 1908, self-government was restored when José Miguel Gómez was elected President, but the U.S. continued intervening in Cuban affairs. In 1912, the Partido Independiente de Color attempted to establish a separate black republic in Oriente Province, but was suppressed by General Monteagudo with considerable bloodshed.

During World War I, Cuba exported considerable quantities of sugar to Britain. Cuba was able to avoid U-boat attacks by the subterfuge of shipping the sugar to Sweden. The Menocal government declared war on Germany very soon after the United States.

A constitutional government was maintained until 1930 when Gerardo Machado y Morales suspended the constitution. During Machado's tenure, a nationalistic economic program was pursued with several major national development projects which included the Carretera Central and El Capitolio. Machado's hold on power was weakened following a decline in demand for exported agricultural produce due to the Great Depression, attacks by independence war veterans, and attacks by covert terrorist organizations, principally the ABC.

During a general strike in which the Communist Party sided with Machado, the senior elements of the Cuban army forced Machado into exile. The Party then installed Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, son of Cuba's founding father (Carlos Manuel de Céspedes), as President. During 4–5 September 1933, a second coup overthrew Céspedes which led to the formation of the first Ramón Grau government. Notable events in this violent period include the separate sieges of Hotel Nacional de Cuba and Atares Castle. This government lasted 100 days but engineered radical socialist changes in Cuban society, including the abolishment of the Platt Amendment and instating of womens' suffrage in Cuba. In 1934, Grau was ousted in favor of Carlos Mendieta, the first in a series of puppet presidents subordinate to the army and its young chief of staff, Fulgencio Batista.

Fulgencio Batista was democratically elected President in the elections of 1940, so far the only non-white Cuban endorsed for the nation's highest office. His government carried out major social reforms. Several members of the Communist Party held office under his administration and established numerous economic regulations and pro-union policies, as well as the Cuban Constitution of 1940, which engineered radical progressive ideas, including the right to labour and health care. Batista's administration formally took Cuba to the Allies of World War II camp in World War II. Cuba declared war on Japan on December 9, 1941, then on Germany and Italy on December 11, 1941. Cuban armed forces were not greatly involved in combat during World War II, although president Batista suggested a joint U.S.-Latin American assault on Francoist Spain in order to overthrow its authoritarian regime.

Ramón Grau, who lost in 1940 to Batista, finally returned in the 1944 elections by defeating Batista's preferred successor, Carlos Saladrigas Zayas. In 1948, his Revolutionary Authentic Party won again when Carlos Prío Socarrás won, the last person elected to the presidency by free and fair elections. The two terms of the Auténtico Party saw an influx of investment fueled a boom which raised living standards for all segments of society and created a prosperous middle class in most urban areas.

The 1952 election was a three-way race. Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxos party led in all the polls, followed by Dr. Aurelio Hevia of the Auténtico party, and Fulgencio Batista, seeking a return to office, as a distant third. Both Agramonte and Hevia had decided to name Col. Ramón Barquín to head the Cuban armed forces after the elections. Barquín, then a diplomat in Washington, DC, was a top officer. He was respected by the professional army and had promised to eliminate corruption in the ranks. Batista feared that Barquín would oust him and his followers. When it became apparent that Batista had little chance of winning, he staged a coup on 10 March 1952. Batista held on to power with the backing of a nationalist section of the army as a "provisional president" for the next two years.

In March 1952 Justo Carrillo informed Barquín in Washington that the inner circles knew that Batista had plotted the coup. They immediately began to conspire to oust Batista and restore democracy and civilian government in what was later dubbed La Conspiracion de los Puros de 1956 (Agrupacion Montecristi). In 1954, Batista agreed to elections. The Partido Auténtico put forward ex-President Grau as their candidate, but he withdrew amid allegations that Batista was rigging the elections in advance.

In April 1956 Batista ordered Barquín to become General and chief of the army, but Barquín decided to move forward with his coup to secure total power. On 4 April 1956, a coup by hundreds of career officers led by Barquín was frustrated by Rios Morejon. The coup broke the back of the Cuban armed forces. The officers were sentenced to the maximum terms allowed by Cuban Martial Law. Barquín was sentenced to solitary confinement for eight years. La Conspiración de los Puros resulted in the imprisonment of the commanders of the armed forces and the closing of the military academies.

Cuba had Latin America's highest per capita consumption rates of meat, vegetables, cereals, automobiles, telephones and radios, though about one third of the population was considered poor and enjoyed relatively little of this consumption. In 1958, Cuba was a relatively well-advanced country by Latin American standards, and in some cases by world standards. Cuba attracted more immigrants, primarily from Europe, as a percentage of population than the U.S. The United Nations noted Cuba for its large middle class. On the other hand, Cuba was affected by perhaps the largest labor union privileges in Latin America, including bans on dismissals and mechanization. They were obtained in large measure "at the cost of the unemployed and the peasants", leading to disparities.

Between 1933 and 1958, Cuba extended economic regulations enormously, causing economic problems. Unemployment became a problem as graduates entering the workforce could not find jobs. The middle class, which was comparable to the United States, became increasingly dissatisfied with unemployment and political persecution. The labor unions supported Batista until the very end.

[Demeter]

36. The Cuban Revolution

At the beginning of 1959 United States companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands – almost all the cattle ranches – 90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions – 80 percent of the utilities – practically all the oil industry – and supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports.
— U.S. President John F. Kennedy, 1960

On 25 November 1956 a party of 82 people on the yacht Granma departed Tuxpan, Veracruz, Mexico. They landed in Cuba a week later on the Playa Las Coloradas, Municipality of Niquero, in what is now Granma Province (after the vessel), but was then part of the larger Oriente Province. The boat was off course and under attack from Batista's forces, who had been anticipating their arrival. Fewer than 20 of the men on the ship survived. Batista's men claimed to have killed Castro yet could not produce a body.

Months later New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews would publish the first in a series of articles that proved Castro was very much alive and made him a legend:

"Fidel Castro, the rebel leader of Cuba's youth, is alive and fighting hard and successfully in the rugged, almost impenetrable fastness of the Sierra Maestra, at the southern tip of the island."

The party, led by Fidel Castro, had the intention of establishing an armed resistance movement in the Sierra Maestra. While facing armed resistance from Castro's rebel fighters in the mountains, Fulgencio Batista's regime was weakened and crippled by a United States arms embargo imposed on 14 March 1958. By late 1958, the rebels broke out of the Sierra Maestra and launched a general popular insurrection. After the fighters captured Santa Clara, Batista fled from Havana on 1 January 1959 to exile in Portugal. Barquín negotiated the symbolic change of command between Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara, Raúl Castro, and his brother Fidel Castro after the Supreme Court decided that the Revolution was the source of law and its representatives should assume command.

Fidel Castro's forces entered the capital on 8 January 1959. Shortly afterward, a liberal lawyer, Dr Manuel Urrutia Lleó became president. He was backed by Castro's 26th of July Movement because they believed his appointment would be welcomed by the United States. Disagreements within the government culminated in Urrutia's resignation in July 1959. He was replaced by Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, who served as president until 1976. Castro became prime minister in February 1959, succeeding José Miró in head of the state.

In its first year, the new revolutionary government expropriated private property with little or no compensation, nationalized public utilities, tightened controls on the private sector, and closed down the mafia-controlled gambling industry. The CIA conspired with the Chicago mafia in 1960 and 1961 to assassinate Fidel Castro, according to documents declassified in 2007. (Birds of a feather flock together--Demeter)

Some of these measures were undertaken by Fidel Castro's government in the name of the program outlined in the Manifesto of the Sierra Maestra. The government nationalized private property totaling about USD $25 billion, of which American property made up around USD $1 billion.

From 1959 to 1966 Castros' troops fought a six-year rebellion in the Escambray Mountains by Cuban insurgents. The insurgency was eventually crushed by the governments use of vastly superior numbers. The rebellion lasted longer and involved more soldiers than the Cuban Revolution.

By the end of 1960, the coletilla made its appearance, and most newspapers in Cuba had been expropriated, taken over by the unions, or had been abandoned. All radio and television stations were in state control. Moderate teachers and professors were purged. In any year, about 20,000 dissenters were imprisoned. Some homosexuals, religious practitioners, and others were sent to labor camps where they were subject to political "re-education". The U.S. State Department estimates that 3,200 people were executed from 1959 to 1962. Other estimates for the total number political executions range from 4,000 to 33,000.

The Communist Party strengthened its one-party rule, with Castro as ultimate leader. Fidel's brother, Raúl Castro, became the army chief. Loyalty to Castro became the primary criterion for all appointments. In September 1960, the revolutionary government created a system known as Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), which provided neighborhood spying.

In the 1961 New Year's Day parade, the administration exhibited Soviet tanks and other weapons. Eventually, Cuba built up the second largest armed forces in Latin America, second only to Brazil. Cuba became a privileged client-state of the Soviet Union.

By 1961, hundreds of thousands of Cubans had left for the United States. The 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion (La Batalla de Girón) was an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Cuban government by a U.S.-trained force of Cuban exiles with U.S. military support. The plan was launched in April 1961, less than three months after John F. Kennedy became the U.S. President. The Cuban armed forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the exiles in three days. Cuban-American relations were exacerbated the following year by the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Kennedy administration demanded the immediate withdrawal of Soviet nuclear missiles placed in Cuba placed in response to U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey and the Middle East. The Soviets and Americans soon came to an agreement. The Soviets would remove Soviet missiles from Cuba and the Americans would remove missiles from Turkey and the Middle East. Kennedy also agreed not to invade Cuba in the future. Cuban exiles captured during the Bay of Pigs Invasion were exchanged for a shipment of supplies from America.

In January 1962, Cuba was suspended from the Organization of American States (OAS), and later the same year the OAS started to impose sanctions against Cuba of similar nature to the US sanctions.

By 1963, Cuba was moving towards a full-fledged Communist system modeled on the USSR. The U.S. imposed a complete diplomatic and commercial embargo on Cuba and began Operation Mongoose, a program of covert CIA operations.

In 1965, Castro merged his revolutionary organizations with the Communist Party, of which he became First Secretary; Blas Roca was named Second Secretary. Roca was succeeded by Raúl Castro, who, as Defense Minister and Fidel's closest confidant, became and remained the second most powerful figure in Cuba until his brother's retirement. Raúl's position was strengthened by the departure of Che Guevara to launch unsuccessful insurrections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967.

During the 1970s, Fidel Castro dispatched tens of thousands of troops in support of Soviet-supported wars in Africa, particularly the MPLA in Angola and Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia.

The standard of living in 1970s was "extremely spartan" and discontent was rife. Fidel Castro admitted the failures of economic policies in a 1970 speech. By the mid-1970s, Castro started economic reforms.

In 1975 the OAS lifted its sanctions against Cuba, with the approval of 16 member states, including the U.S. The U.S., however, maintained its own sanctions.

[xchrom]

31. Cyprus Bank Deposits to Be Taxed in $13 Billion Bailout

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-16/euro-area-takes-aim-at-depositors-in-cyprus-bailout.html

Euro-area finance ministers agreed to tax bank deposits in Cyprus in an unprecedented measure to forge a 10 billion-euro ($13 billion) rescue plan.

Cyprus will impose a levy of 6.75 percent on deposits of less than 100,000 euros -- the ceiling for European Union account insurance -- and 9.9 percent above that. The measures will raise 5.8 billion euros in addition to the emergency loans, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who leads the group of euro-area ministers, told reporters early today after 10 hours of talks in Brussels.

The European Central Bank will make funds available to the region’s banks as needed to counter potential bank runs. Depositors will receive bank equity as compensation. Finance Minister Michael Sarris said the plan was the “least onerous” of the options Cyprus faced to stay afloat.

“It’s not a pleasant outcome, especially of course for the people involved,” Sarris said in Brussels at 4:55 a.m.

[Demeter]

37. A "Revolutionary" Development

I hope it bites the banksters, hard and soon and often...

[DemReadingDU]

45. Karl Denninger: Cyprus Nails DEPOSITORS?!

OMG


3/16/13 Karl Denninger: Cyprus Nails DEPOSITORS?!

If there was ever a reason to hang some banksters from the nearest light pole, you've now seen it:

BRUSSELS—Depositors in Cypriot banks will be hit with a one-off tax on their savings, as part of a €10 billion ($12.96 billion) bailout for the Mediterranean island from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund.

The deal, announced early Saturday, marks the first time in the euro zone's five-year-old financial crisis that depositors in bloc's banks will lose money. Accounts with more than €100,000 will be taxed at 9.9%, those with less at 6.75%, raising an expected €5.8 billion for the near-bankrupt nation.


Taxed? Like hell that's a tax. That's direct confiscation of the funds of people who did nothing wrong!
Oh, and if you think this is something you can get around? Think again:


Mr. Sarris said the Cypriot Parliament would adopt the taxes over the weekend and the money would be extracted from accounts before banks take up business Tuesday. Monday is a public holiday.

They have blocked electronic transfers over the weekend too.

Now let's see if the Cypriots go for it, or if there is an instant uprising. The EU, of course, claims this is a "special situation." Like hell it is, never mind that this is basically imposed from the outside. And they have the balls to call it a "contribution."

I call it what it is -- theft for the purpose of "making whole" those who did wrong, while they skate on their offenses. Those who were in a regulatory role and should have put a stop to it (like Bernanke over here, or for that matter the OCC when it comes to the London Whale) while the people get screwed to the wall.

The argument for this "action" is that Cyprus, which is a whopping 0.2% of the Eurozone economy, is of "systemic importance" to the whole. Therefore when someone (or a few someones) do something outrageously risky and blow up their banks, it is the people, not the malefactors, who take it up the chute.

Now we shall see if any of the following two things happen:
Justice is imposed by the people so-assessed.
and
The people realize that this is not a "one-off" and it can happen to them -- and they act in a protective fashion up front rather than take the risk (how do you spell "bank run"?)

http://market-ticker.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=218812


Black swan?

[Demeter]

48. More Like a Nuclear Winter

They think we are all idiots, with no recourse.

Anyone care to debate this? Who will take PRO, and who will take CON?

[DemReadingDU]

53. I will take ATM

always good to have a bit of cash dollars in hand for an emergency

[DemReadingDU]

46. AutomaticEarth: Bank Run in Cyprus; Who's Next?

3/16/13 Bank Run in Cyprus; Who's Next?
posted by Ilargi


Overnight last night, the Eurogroup (Eurozone executive committee) negotiated a deal for a bailout of the banking system in Cyprus. As part of the deal, a one-time, one-off levy on depositors was agreed: deposits below €100,000 are subject to a 6.75% levy, while those over €100,000 are subject to a 9.99% "fine".

While none of the timing is surprising - late Friday, early Saturday is always the ideal time to push such measures down people's throats -, neither did it come as a surprise that a bank run ensued as soon as those few Cypriot banks that do business on Saturday mornings, opened their doors.

This had been foreseen, of course. And so capital controls had been set up beforehand. In this case, limited deposit withdrawals and a full suspension of internet banking. The justification for all this can be found in the large amounts of Russian - allegedly black market - deposits in Cyprus. But while that may be presented as justification, it's by no means not where the potential fall-out will halt.

After all, what's to say that what can be done to depositors in Cyprus' banks, cannot just as easily be repeated for Greek, Italian, Spanish ones? If the EU wasn't yet scared enough of Beppe Grillo and his still surging popularity, now would be a good time to start being afraid. While everyone's focus is on the Russian mob, nobody (just read the press reports today) talks about the law-abiding Cypriots who see their hard earned savings wealth forcibly taken from them. Nobody but the likes of Grillo, that is. Who said earlier this week that (northern) Europe would drop Italy like a stone once German, French and Dutch banks have shed their risky Italian assets.

Besides, if you think the Russian deposit holders are fatally wounded right now, think again. They've seen this coming for at least 6 months, they've had all the time they need to move assets around, and, if anything, will simply use this decision to launder a lot of capital, and happily pay a 10% fee for the honor.

more...
http://theautomaticearth.com/Finance/bank-run-in-cyprus-whos-next.html



edit to bold

[Demeter]

49. The Money Quote

$100 bills in your hand have just been declared to be worth somewhere between 7-10% more than those "deposited" and "stored" in a bank. May I ask the following pertinent and rather timely question: Where are yours?

Karl Denninger

http://market-ticker.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=218812

[Demeter]

50. Cyprus' savers bear brunt of unprecedented bailout

http://news.yahoo.com/savers-forced-bear-costs-cyprus-bailout-051941784.html

......

"I'm extremely angry. I worked years and years to get it together and now I am losing it on the say-so of the Dutch and the Germans," said British-Cypriot Andy Georgiou, 54, who returned to Cyprus in mid-2012 with his savings.

"They call Sicily the island of the mafia. It's not Sicily, it's Cyprus. This is theft, pure and simple," said a pensioner.

The levy breaks a euro zone taboo by hitting bank depositors with losses. It prompted Spain, considered the next most likely state to seek a sovereign rescue though supported in recent months by the ECB's debt promise, to deny savers in other countries risked being similarly penalized. The bailout was specific to Cyprus and its bloated banking sector and "could not be extrapolated to any other country," an economy ministry source said....

That and 5 Euros might get you a cup of coffee...Demeter

In return for emergency loans, Cyprus agreed to increase its corporate tax rate by 2.5 percentage points to 12.5 percent. This should boost revenues, limiting the size of the loan needed from the euro zone and keep down public debt.

...Cyprus originally estimated that it needed about 17 billion euros - almost the size of its entire annual output - to restore its economy to health. But because a loan of that magnitude would increase its debt to unsustainably high levels and call into question its ability ever to pay it back, policymakers sought to reduce it by finding more revenue sources in Cyprus itself. The Greek units of Cypriot banks were excluded from the deposit levy, Greek finance minister Yiannis Stournaras said.

THEY HAVE NO CONCERN FOR THE CYPRIOT "ECONOMY". THEY ARE JUST CONCERNED ABOUT THE CYPRIOT BANKSTERS!

[xchrom]

33. Europe Just Pissed Off A Whole Bunch Of Russian Mobsters And Oligarchs With Its Stunning Bailout Of

http://www.businessinsider.com/cyprus-bailout-russian-angle-2013-3

Europe Just Pissed Off A Whole Bunch Of Russian Mobsters And Oligarchs With Its Stunning Bailout Of Cyprus

In the early hours of the morning in Europe, the Eurozone and the IMF announced a $10 billion bailout for Eurozone member Cyprus, whose economy is tied closely to Greece's, and who was in a similarly dire state. The details are here.

A key angle here is the Russian angle.

You may remember that along the way during the crisis, Cyprus has sought aid from Russia, which is unusual. Well the reason for that is that (Island of) Cyprus is a place where Russians are believed to do a lot of money laundering, which involves marking cash in Cypriot banks.

What's stunning about Saturday's bailout is that depositors with over 100K EUR in a Cypriot bank will see a 10 percent tax instantly before banks reopen on Tuesday.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cyprus-bailout-russian-angle-2013-3#ixzz2NhUiwBGV

[xchrom]

34. afro cuban all stars

[Demeter]

39. Bad Policies Don't Die Around Here

Especially those instituted by the two Chicago Mafias and the CIA

[xchrom]

40. Self-Immolations in France: What Do They Mean?

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/self-immolations-in-france-what-do-they-mean/274059/


A flower lays on the pavement near the entrance at a branch of the Pole Emploi national employment agency in Nantes on February 14, 2013, the day after a jobless man self-immolated there. (Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

Fifty years ago, the Tibetan monk Quang Duc set himself ablaze in Saigon to protest the repression of his fellow Buddhists--an act that not only shocked the world, but also set a harrowing precedent. Since Quang Duc set a match to his gasoline-soaked robe, as many as 3,000 men and women, mostly in Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, have sought to turn themselves into human torches.

But the stage for this drama of extreme protest stretches beyond these regions into Europe, where a number of nations, ranging from Greece to Romania, now confront instances of self-immolation.

And then there is France. In the realms of cultural, diplomatic, linguistic or economic policies, the French have long and eloquently insisted on their nation's "exceptionalism." Yet a new form of exceptionalism, no less eloquent, though far more brutal, now burdens them: since 2011, France has seen at least a dozen men and women who have either set, or tried to set, themselves aflame.

The cradle of the Enlightenment, France now glimpses a very different light, one that makes visible the darkness of its economic and social malaise.

[xchrom]

41. Abe declares Japan will join TPP free-trade process

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/16/business/abe-declares-japan-will-join-tpp-free-trade-process/#.UURgpu1qP8s


TPP foe: A protester holds a sign reading 'We oppose Japan's participation in the TPP talks' during a Thursday rally in Tokyo against the Trans-Pacific Partnership accord. | AP

After taking time to lay the groundwork amid pressure from lobby groups and lawmakers from rural constituencies, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe formally announced Friday that Japan will join the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks.

Abe’s government also unveiled its estimate of the possible economic impacts of joining the trade initiative, showing Japan’s participation would drive up its gross domestic product by 0.66 percent, or around ¥3.2 trillion, but that production in the farm, fishery and forestry sectors could decrease by ¥3 trillion annually if all tariffs are abolished unconditionally.

“The TPP is turning the Pacific Ocean into an inland sea and a huge economic zone,” Abe told reporters at his office.

As 11 member countries have already spent the last three years deciding rules to free up trade, services and investment in the Pacific Rim, Japan needs to actively engage in the talks to make them as advantageous as possible for the country, Abe said.

[Demeter]

42. 'Lean In' All You Want, But If You Want a Better Job, Unionize! (What CEOS of FB, Yahoo! Won't Tell

THIS ONE IS FOR TANSY, WHO HAS READ THE BOOK, AND IS INCENSED (SEE NEXT POST FOR WHY SHE IS INCENSED)

http://www.alternet.org/labor/lean-all-you-want-if-you-want-better-job-unionize-what-ceos-facebook-and-yahoo-wont-tell-you?akid=10185.227380.-oizZg&rd=1&src=newsletter809408&t=7&paging=off

OK, Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg didn’t say “join a union.” But that’s the message the vast majority of working women should be considering this Women’s History Month. The best way for the most women to improve their working lives is through a union.

The new PBS documentary Makers: Women Who Make America shows how the women's movement changed the workplace for women, men and families. Two of the young Makers highlighted in the film, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook and Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, now dominate the news. Here's what neither of them tell you: union women earn more than non-union women and have better benefits and working conditions.

Women at Facebook and Yahoo should consider spending their time organizing to have a say in their workplace...

[Demeter]

43. New Study Finds That the Wealthy Are DIfferent Than Us (JUST LIKE PREVIOUS ONES, IMAGINE THAT!)

http://www.alternet.org/economy/new-study-finds-wealthy-are-different-us?akid=10191.227380.bunADK&rd=1&src=newsletter810180&t=9&paging=off

On average, high earners have a very different idea of what makes a just society...

“The very rich,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, “are different from you and me.”

It turns out he was right. According to a new study by the think-tank Demos (PDF), the affluent tend to hold a different vision of a just society than the public at large, and it is that vision which tops the political agenda in Washington and in state houses across the country.

The report, authored by David Callahan and J. Mijin Cha, found that “wealthy interests are keenly focused on concerns not shared by the rest of the American public, like keeping taxes low on capital gains, and often oppose policies that would foster upward mobility among low-income citizens, such as raising the minimum wage.”

The policy preferences of the wealthy (average income over $1 million annually) vary widely from those of the general public... [A recent] survey found that the general public is more open than the wealthy to a variety of policies designed to reduce inequality and strengthen economic opportunity, including: raising the minimum wage, increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, providing generous unemployment benefits, and directly creating jobs. For example, only 40 percent of the wealthy think the minimum wage should be high enough to prevent full-time workers from being in poverty while 78 percent of the general public holds this view. Affluent voters are also less supportive of labor unions and less likely to support laws that make it easier for workers to join unions—even as research shows that unions are crucial to enabling people to work their way into the middle class.




....The United States is not the first country to experience what the authors call a “self-reinforcing phenomenon” of increasing inequality and declining mobility.

Historically, prosperous societies tend to fall apart under the burden of widening inequality. But gaping disparities in wealth and income are rarely the cause of their unraveling, at least not directly. It's the nexus between economic and political inequality that ultimately tears at the social fabric of a nation....

[Demeter]

44. A BONUS ARTICLE FOR TANSY: Superheated American City Dealing with 110 Degrees for 33 Days -- Phoenix

Superheated American City Dealing with 110 Degrees for 33 Days -- Phoenix Confronts Apocalyptic Climate Change

http://www.alternet.org/superheated-american-city-dealing-110-degrees-33-days-phoenix-confronts-apocalyptic-climate-change?akid=10185.227380.-oizZg&rd=1&src=newsletter809408&t=9&paging=off

If cities were stocks, you’d want to short Phoenix.

Of course, it’s an easy city to pick on. The nation’s 13th largest metropolitan area (nudging out Detroit) crams 4.3 million people into a low bowl in a hot desert, where horrific heat waves and windstorms visit it regularly. It snuggles next to the nation’s largest nuclear plant and, having exhausted local sources, it depends on an improbable infrastructure to suck water from the distant (and dwindling) Colorado River. In Phoenix, you don’t ask: What could go wrong? You ask: What couldn’t?

And that’s the point, really. Phoenix’s multiple vulnerabilities, which are plenty daunting taken one by one, have the capacity to magnify one another, like compounding illnesses. In this regard, it’s a quintessentially modern city, a pyramid of complexities requiring large energy inputs to keep the whole apparatus humming. The urban disasters of our time -- New Orleans hit by Katrina, New York City swamped by Sandy -- may arise from single storms, but the damage they do is the result of a chain reaction of failures -- grids going down, levees failing, back-up systems not backing up. As you might expect, academics have come up with a name for such breakdowns: infrastructure failure interdependencies. You wouldn’t want to use it in a poem, but it does catch an emerging theme of our time. Phoenix’s pyramid of complexities looks shakier than most because it stands squarely in the crosshairs of climate change. The area, like much of the rest of the American Southwest, is already hot and dry; it’s getting ever hotter and drier, and is increasingly battered by powerful storms. Sandy and Katrina previewed how coastal cities can expect to fare as seas rise and storms strengthen. Phoenix pulls back the curtain on the future of inland empires. If you want a taste of the brutal new climate to come, the place to look is where that climate is already harsh, and growing more so -- the aptly named Valley of the Sun.

In Phoenix, it’s the convergence of heat, drought, and violent winds, interacting and amplifying each other that you worry about. Generally speaking, in contemporary society, nothing that matters happens for just one reason, and in Phoenix there are all too many “reasons” primed to collaborate and produce big problems, with climate change foremost among them, juicing up the heat, the drought, and the wind to ever greater extremes, like so many sluggers on steroids. Notably, each of these nemeses, in its own way, has the potential to undermine the sine qua non of modern urban life, the electrical grid, which in Phoenix merits special attention.

If, in summer, the grid there fails on a large scale and for a significant period of time, the fallout will make the consequences of Superstorm Sandy look mild. Sure, people will hunt madly for power outlets to charge their cellphones and struggle to keep their milk fresh, but communications and food refrigeration will not top their list of priorities. Phoenix is an air-conditioned city. If the power goes out, people fry...

IF I'VE SAID IT ONCE, I'VE SAID IT A MILLION TIMES--GO SOLAR!

[Demeter]

51. Fed's Fisher: Too-big-to-fail banks are "crony" capitalists

NOT ONLY THAT, THEY ARE JET-SETTING, STATELESS 1% ELITERS AND THE TRULY USELESS EATERS OF THE PLANET.


http://news.yahoo.com/fisher-says-too-big-fail-banks-crony-capitalists-164642238--business.html

The largest U.S. banks are "practitioners of crony capitalism," need to be broken up to ensure they are no longer considered too big to fail, and continue to threaten financial stability, a top Federal Reserve official said on Saturday. Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, has been a critic of Wall Street's disproportionate influence since the financial crisis. But he was now taking his message to an unusual audience for a central banker: a high-profile Republican political action committee.

Fisher said the existence of banks that are seen as likely to receive government bailouts if they fail gives them an unfair advantage, hurting economic competitiveness.

"These institutions operate under a privileged status that exacts an unfair tax upon the American people," he said on the last day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
"They represent not only a threat to financial stability but to fair and open competition … (and) are the practitioners of crony capitalism and not the agents of democratic capitalism that makes our country great," said Fisher, who has also been a vocal opponent of the Fed's unconventional monetary stimulus policies.

Fisher's vision pits him directly against Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who recently argued during congressional testimony that regulators had made significant progress in addressing the problem of too big to fail. Bernanke asserted that market expectations that large financial institutions would be rescued is wrong.

But Fisher said mega banks still have a significant funding advantage over its competitors, as well as other advantages. To address this problem, he called for a rolling back of deposit insurance so that it would extend only to deposits of commercial banks, not the investment arms of bank holding companies.

"At the Dallas Fed, we believe that whatever the precise subsidy number is, it exists, it is significant, and it allows the biggest banking organizations, along with their many nonbank subsidiaries - investment firms, securities lenders, finance companies - to grow larger and riskier," he said.

Fisher argued Dodd-Frank financial reforms were overly complex and therefore counterproductive.

"Regulators cannot enforce rules that are not easily understood," he said.

[Demeter]

52. SEE ALSO

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dallas-fed-president-no-banks-too-large-to-fail-2013-03-16?siteid=YAHOOB

[Demeter]

54. The Cyprus Bank Bailout Could Be A Disastrous Precedent: They're Reneging On Government Deposit Insu

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/16/the-cyprus-bank-bailout-could-be-a-disastrous-precedent-theyre-reneging-on-government-deposit-insurance/

There’s a little detail in the just announced bailout of the Cypriot banks (and Cypriot economy as a whole) that could be setting an entirely disastrous precedent for the entire European banking system. Please note the “could be” here, it depends upon how people react next.

That Cyprus and its banks need bailing out is beyond doubt. The banking sector is absolutely vast as compared to the size of the economy (largely as a result of a couple of decades of use as a secure location for Russian deposits) and the banks are indeed bust. Largely because they were heavily invested in Greek Government bonds which then, as we all know, suffered two substantial haircuts.

So, something needed to be done. And something has been done. More money is being sent in to recapitalise the banks, Cypriot loans are being rescheduled, the government will sell off assets to help plug the gap and so on. However, there is this one further detail that could have seriously bad effects:

Euro-area finance ministers agreed to an unprecedented tax on Cypriot bank deposits as officials unveiled a 10 billion-euro ($13 billion) rescue plan for the country, the fifth since Europe’s debt crisis broke out in 2009.

Cyprus will impose a levy of 6.75 percent on deposits of less than 100,000 euros — the ceiling for European Union account insurance — and 9.9 percent above that.

There’s nothing particularly bad about making depositors carry some of the load of a bank failure. Indeed, it has something to recommend it: if it happens occasionally then people will take more care over where they put their money and what the banks do with it.

However, there’s a very great difference between allowing depositors without government insurance to take losses and actually reneging on the previously promised government insurance. And it’s that second that they’re actually doing here. Here’s the description of the Cypriot government deposit insurance scheme:

Participation in the DPS is compulsory for all banks authorised by the Central Bank of Cyprus, i.e. banks incorporated in the Republic of Cyprus, including their branches in other countries, and the Cyprus branches of foreign banks, incorporated outside the Republic of Cyprus or the Member-States of the European Union. The DPS does not cover deposits of branches of banks established in European Union Member States. These deposits are covered by the corresponding deposit protection scheme established in the country of incorporation.

The DPS is activated in the event a decision is reached that a member bank is unable to repay its deposits, or as a result of a Court’s order for the winding-up of a member bank. Where a bank is unable to pay its deposits, the relevant decision is adopted by the Central Bank of Cyprus or, where a member bank is incorporated in a country outside the Republic of Cyprus, by the competent supervisory authority of the country of incorporation.

The maximum level of compensation, per depositor, per bank, is €100.000.

Note that last number. Under the system until yesterday all depositors in Cypriot banks were insured up to the value of €100,000 with any one bank. Today that solemn and governmental promise has been shown to be false. And not even the European Union nor the European Central Bank are going to make them stick to it. Indeed, very much the other way around. The EU and ECB are insisting that the Cyprus authorities breach this deposit insurance provision...

[DemReadingDU]

56. Canary in the coal mine?

I think those elites are doing a test with Cyprus. If the Cypriots don't revolt, the elites will change the rules on more countries.

[Demeter]

57. We Live in Interesting Times

Curse the luck.

I'm going to bed. Sometime after paper route and before the birthday party the Kid is attending...I'll be back.

[Hugin]

58. This is essentially what Sequestration is doing as well...

Reaching into accounts and taking out 8.5% of what's there. It's only sneakier the way it's being done in the U.S.

[Demeter]

72. How do you figure that, Hugin?

The Sequestration takes the money out of the Economy, but it doesn't take it out of bank accounts.

Uncle Ben does that with his low, low interest rates....

[xchrom]

59. REPORT: Germany Told Cyprus They Could Tax Their Depositors, Or Leave The Eurozone

http://www.businessinsider.com/report-germany-told-cyprus-they-could-tax-their-depositors-or-leave-the-eurozone-2013-3

The drama out of Cyprus Saturday continues to get more interesting.
The country has been ailing for quite some time, and everybody knew that a bailout was coming.
But the big surprise is that depositors in banks will be subject to an instant one-off tax to raise nearly 6 billion euros.
The background is that because Cyprus has an enormous banking system -— and houses a lot of offshore Russian money — there was not much political appetite to bail it out, even though the amount of cash was minimal.
In fact it seems, Germany was comfortable letting Cyprus go completely.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/report-germany-told-cyprus-they-could-tax-their-depositors-or-leave-the-eurozone-2013-3#ixzz2Nn3zYYUF

[Demeter]

75. A form of "social Nazism"

Darwin is rolling in his grave.

[xchrom]

60. This Crazy Cyprus Deal Could Screw Up A Lot More Than Cyprus...

http://www.businessinsider.com/cyprus-bailout-risks-europe-bank-runs-2013-3


Bank run in New York in 1933.

***SNIP

The Eurozone powers-that-be (mainly, Germany) insisted that the depositors in Cyprus's banks pay part of the tab.

Not the bondholders.

The depositors. The folks who had their money in the banks for safe-keeping.

When Cyprus's banks reopen on Tuesday morning, every depositor will have some of his or her money seized. Accounts under 100,000 euros will have 6.75% of the funds seized. Accounts over 100,000 euros will have 9.9% seized. And then the Eurozone's emergency lending facility and the International Monetary Fund will inject 10 billion euros into the banks to allow them to keep operating.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cyprus-bailout-risks-europe-bank-runs-2013-3#ixzz2Nn9WPLRt

[xchrom]

61. CYPRUS PARLIAMENT DELAYS VOTE ON BANK DEPOSITS TAX

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_CYPRUS_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-03-17-04-54-53

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) -- An official says Cyprus' parliament had postponed the debate and vote on the controversial levy on all bank deposits that the country's creditors demanded in exchange for (EURO)10 billion ($13 billion) in rescue money.

Parliamentary official Antonis Koutalianos said the vote that was scheduled for Sunday afternoon has been pushed back to Monday, but the exact hour of the vote has yet to be fixed.

The decision to impose the one-time levy of 6.75 percent on all deposits under (EURO)100,000 and 9.9 percent over that amount, has triggered scorn from Cypriot politicians who condemned it as unfair, bringing in doubt its approval in parliament.

It marks the first time that the 17 eurozone countries and the IMF have dipped into people's savings to finance a bailout.

[xchrom]

62. UK: WE WILL COMPENSATE TROOPS HIT BY CYPRUS LEVY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_CYPRUS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-03-17-06-16-15

LONDON (AP) -- Britain's Treasury chief says the government will compensate U.K. troops who lose money to Cyprus's bailout tax.

About 3,500 British military personnel are based in Cyprus, which has announced a levy of 6.75 to 9.9 percent on all bank balances as part of a deal with creditors for (EURO)10 billion ($13 billion) in rescue money.

The announcement sent Cypriot depositors rushing to ATM machines to drain their accounts.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said Sunday that the government would compensate troops and civil servants affected by the bank levy. He said "anyone doing their duty for our country in Cyprus will be protected."

[xchrom]

63. Cambodian Workers Wrest Justice from Wal-Mart and H&M Supplier

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/16


Cambodian garment workers celebrate winning a settlement of as much as $200,000. (Photo from Community Legal Education Center)

After workers across the U.S. staged mini-strikes at Wal-Marts this winter, a small crowd of Cambodian garment workers caused a stir by camping in front of a shuttered Wal-Mart supplier in Phnom Penh. The workers were protesting a sudden closure of the Kingsland apparel factory, which robbed them of both their jobs and tens of thousands in wages. They staged creative direct actions, including attempts to physically block the removal of sewing equipment.

Now, the Cambodians' efforts to hold their former bosses accountable have paid off--in both money and political impact. Some two hundred Kingsland workers who produced clothing for H&M and Wal-Mart-affiliated brands for about $60 a month have won a settlement of an estimated $200,000.

The workers won the surprise victory against the global manufacturing Goliaths thanks in large part to savvy support from Cambodian and international labor groups. These allies helped spread the word globally by broadcasting the protestors' video testimonials and marching to present a letter to Rajan Kamalanathan, Walmart’s Vice President of Ethical Sourcing.

[xchrom]

64. No Exit? Greece's Ongoing Crisis

http://www.thenation.com/article/173329/no-exit-greeces-ongoing-crisis

When the New Year kicked off in Athens, a pall of smoke hung over the city. Steep hikes in fuel prices had pushed people to burn wood to stay warm, and even discarded Christmas trees were being fed into the fires. At the same time, a series of small explosions targeted the offices of the two major parties, New Democracy and Pasok, as well as the residences of several prominent journalists. Most shocking of all was a series of brutal beheadings across the capital that quickly became fodder for headlines, with the victims including a former central banker, a Dutch credit ratings executive and the CEO of a small debt collection agency. Well, not quite—the beheadings are described in Lixiprothesma daneia (Expiring Loans), the first novel in a new crisis trilogy by the leading Greek crime writer, Petros Markaris, whose detective hero, Inspector Costas Haritos, is as shrewd a reader of the mood in Athens as anyone. Greece is now sunk in its sixth straight year of recession, and with social and political disintegration reaching extremes not seen since World War II, it is no longer easy to separate fact from fiction.

Hard though it is to believe, around four years ago commentators and politicians were expressing relief that Greece, like the rest of Europe, had managed to escape the worst of the financial crisis. There were good reasons to be cautiously optimistic: the country’s ratio of debt to GDP had worsened a bit but not substantially, and levels of personal indebtedness were relatively low by international standards. There was no looming mortgage crisis on an American or even a Dutch or Irish scale. (The growth in housing prices in Greece between 1996 and 2008 was only 80 percent compared with 170 percent in Ireland, for instance.) Yet in the six months following the summer of 2009, everything unraveled with bewildering speed, catching the Greeks—and the rest of the world—by surprise. Following the elections that autumn, the incoming government of George Papandreou’s socialist Pasok party announced that the books had been cooked and the country’s plight far worse than anyone had foreseen. Then the credit ratings agencies piled in, downgrading Greek bonds and helping to send the government’s borrowing costs through the roof. As the panic spread, negotiations got under way among Greece, the European Union and the IMF, and the first in a series of bailouts was negotiated in exchange for the imposition of austerity.

Since then, Pasok has fallen from power and all but imploded. The government is now headed by the center-right party New Democracy; meanwhile Syriza, a coalition grouped around the old Euro-communist left (and once a happy member of the radical fringe), finds itself occupying the unaccustomed role of official opposition, and a thuggish neo-Nazi party called Golden Dawn sits third in the polls. Greece remains a member of the eurozone, but at an exorbitant cost: three years into the austerity regimen, the country’s unemployment is likely the highest in the EU at 27 percent, with youth unemployment exceeding 60 percent. Reports suggest that one out of three Greek households is living in poverty. Greece has become the epicenter of the worst crisis of capitalism since the interwar depression.

Rather in the spirit of Neville Chamberlain, who in 1938 expressed consternation at the prospect of a really important nation like Britain being plunged into a European war because of a “quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing,” commentators outside Greece have been alarmed that the debt problems of a country whose GDP makes up less than 3 percent of the entire eurozone could become an international issue of such consequence. But how could they have been surprised? What’s happening in Greece is the dark side of the extreme globalization of finance that began in the 1990s and accelerated in Europe with the creation of the euro. Their surprise is part of a more profound ignorance exposed by the crisis: as financial globalization has accelerated, our knowledge of the world and its interlocking parts—political, financial, economic—has failed to keep pace.

[xchrom]

65. WILL THE LONDON WHALE SWALLOW JAMIE DIMON?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/03/will-the-london-whale-swallow-jamie-dimon.html

“I approve.” With the discovery of those two words that Jamie Dimon, the chairman and C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, wrote in an email on January 23, 2012, the most prominent banker on Wall Street has been directly tied to the burgeoning “London Whale” trading scandal, which has returned to the headlines in sensational fashion. In a hearing in Washington Friday, the scandal took another twist, with a senior government official asserting that, in the months leading up to the bank losing billions of dollars, Dimon ordered his underlings not to give the bank’s regulators information they had requested.

The escalation in the scandal started with Thursday’s publication of a three-hundred page report by a Senate subcommittee, which said Dimon not only signed off on a strategy that understated the risks being taken by the bank’s traders, including Bruno Iksil, a derivatives trader known as the Whale, who worked out of the bank’s tower at Canary Wharf in east London. After Iksil’s losses were revealed, last April, the report said, Dimon misled investors and the public about their nature.

On Friday, the Times reported that a criminal probe of the Whale affair by the Justice Department and the F.B.I. has reached an advanced stage. While the Times report says Dimon isn’t himself suspected of any wrongdoing, there can be no doubt that his career is on the line. For years now, he has been Wall Street’s untouchable: the magazine-cover star who, when many of his rivals were crashing and burning during the financial crisis, guided his bank through it all, mostly unharmed. He’s been invited to the White House (several times); Warren Buffett said he would be an excellent Treasury Secretary; he’s even been (largely) forgiven for whining about people criticizing bankers and their humungous pay packages.

But he won’t necessarily get through this one. If the feds were to indict any senior JPMorgan executives on charges arising from the Whale’s trades, which generated more than six billion dollars in losses, Dimon’s position could rapidly become untenable.


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/03/will-the-london-whale-swallow-jamie-dimon.html#ixzz2NnJUsLsE

[Demeter]

76. Oh, please, please, please!

I'll be good, eat all my vegetables, clean the house, even the garage and car.....


Wouldn't be a nice touch, for generations to tell the grand kids about "Jonah" Dimon and the London Whale....

[xchrom]

66. BRICs Abandoned by Locals as Fund Outflows Reach 1996 High

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/brics-abandoned-by-locals-with-fund-outflows-highest-since-1996.html

The 2.5 million rupees ($45,984) Nirav Vora had in the Indian stock market six years ago have plunged by 72 percent. Now the 39-year-old father of two in Mumbai, who depends on investment income for his livelihood, is plowing money into government bonds.

“The confidence of small investors is rock bottom,” Vora said by phone on Feb. 26. “They have no faith in the markets.”

Vora’s exit from equities is being repeated across the biggest emerging markets as disappointing profits and growing state intervention cause stocks to trail global shares for a fourth year. Trading by Brazilian individuals has dropped to the lowest level since 1999, exchange data show. Russian mutual funds posted 16 straight months of outflows, the most since at least 1996, and withdrawals in India are the biggest in more than two years. Chinese investors emptied more than 2 million stock accounts in the past 12 months.

After amassing unprecedented wealth during 14 years of world-beating economic expansion, citizens of the so-called BRIC countries are losing their appetite for shares even as U.S. households return to stocks. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU) is trading at an all-time high, the MSCI BRIC (MXBRIC) Index remains 37 percent below its 2007 peak as economic growth disappoints investors and policy makers do little to improve the treatment of minority shareholders.

[xchrom]

67. SAC Criminal Probe May Speed Up With SEC Allegations

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-16/sac-criminal-probe-may-expand-on-sec-lawsuit-allegations.html

Jon Horvath, a former analyst at SAC Capital Advisors LP who pleaded guilty to passing illegal tips to one manager at the hedge fund, also funneled inside information to another supervisor, U.S. regulators said in a lawsuit that may help accelerate the massive criminal investigation of SAC and its founder, Steven A. Cohen.

A complaint against SAC’s Sigma Capital Management unit, filed March 15 by the Securities and Exchange Commission in Manhattan federal court, signals the FBI and prosecutors have probably added another target to their criminal probe of SAC fund managers suspected of insider trading at the $15 billion fund.

The Justice Department and the SEC previously identified only one SAC fund manager that they said received and traded on illicit tips from Horvath. Since the government’s five-year crackdown on insider trading began, at least six current or former SAC employees have been tied to allegations of insider trading. Four have pleaded guilty to federal charges.

SAC agreed last week to pay a record $616 million to settle SEC allegations that Sigma and another affiliate, CR Intrinsic Investors, made illegal trades using nonpublic information. SAC and the affiliates didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing in the accord. Cohen hasn’t been sued personally by the SEC.

[xchrom]

68. Euro Finance Ministers Grant Ireland, Portugal Eased Debt Terms

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-16/euro-finance-ministers-grant-ireland-portugal-eased-debt-terms.html

Euro-area finance ministers agreed to extend maturities on rescue loans to Ireland and Portugal, easing the terms on two recipients of European bailout aid in a show of support for their commitment to austerity.

The ministers gave no details on the extension. Those will be worked out by the so-called troika that oversees euro-area bailouts and the European Financial Stability Facility, the currency bloc’s temporary rescue fund, the finance chiefs said today. The details will be presented to euro ministers at the same time as the memorandum of understanding underlying a rescue program for Cyprus.

“The Eurogroup ministers are determined to support Ireland’s and Portugal’s efforts to regain full market access and successfully exit their well-performing programs, in the context of continued strong program implementation and compliance,” the group said in a statement in Brussels.

Ireland and Portugal have sought to return to the bond market after soaring yields prevented their governments from borrowing in 2010 and 2011. Ireland sold 10-year bonds this week for the first time since receiving its bailout assistance, marking a milestone in overcoming the debt crisis.

[xchrom]

69. Bulgaria suffers spate of self-immolations as dreams sour

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/17/world/bulgaria-suffers-spate-of-self-immolations-as-dreams-sour/#.UUWxGO1qP8s


SOFIA – Security cameras captured the moment when a Bulgarian man, disgusted by corruption in his provincial hometown, quietly doused himself in gasoline and then set himself ablaze. On Wednesday, another man — the fourth in less than a month — carried out the same act of desperation in front of the presidential headquarters in the capital.

The dramatic self-immolations, three of them fatal, bear a striking resemblance to events half a century ago in Eastern Europe when mostly young intellectuals rebelled against Soviet rule by setting themselves on fire, demanding freedom and democracy.

A quarter of a century after the fall of communism, dreams of prosperity have turned sour in the Balkan country, the poorest in the European Union. One in 5 Bulgarians lives below the poverty line, unemployment is at record levels, incomes are half the European average and bribe-taking, sleaze and a woefully inadequate justice system are part of daily life.

Plamen Goranov, a 36-year-old man protesting against graft in his hometown of Varna, died after pouring gasoline and setting himself on fire in front of a public building Feb. 20. The harrowing act was filmed by security cameras.

[bread_and_roses]

70. "the realities of political power ... a decaying right-wing junta with especially fancy uniforms"

I justify marginal topicality - is not Cuba often referred to as "godless?" So a tangential post on the new "Shepard" of the RCC

http://www.alternet.org/pope-francis-fraud

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Salon [1] / By Andrew O'Hehir [2]
Is Pope Francis a Fraud?
March 16, 2013 |

the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio emerges from a Jesuit order that has been largely purged of its independent-minded or left-leaning intellectuals ... after 40 years of internal counterrevolution under the previous two popes, during which a group of hardcore right-wing cardinals have consolidated power in the Curia and stamped out nearly all traces of the 1960s liberal reform agenda of Pope John XXIII [3] and Vatican II.

... Bergoglio, like Joseph Ratzinger and Karol Wojtyla before him, was part of the right-wing counterrevolution within the church that aggressively rolled back those changes, crushed dissident thought and reasserted the absolute power of the pope and his hierarchy. Pope Francis is a longtime ally of Communion and Liberation, [6] a fiercely conservative Catholic organization that insists on “total fidelity and communion” [7] with the church leadership and is devoted, among other things, to battling European socialism and Latin American liberation theology. In Italian politics, CL has been closely tied to the party of Silvio Berlusconi, and its founder was an intimate friend of Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Benedict XVI.

... we have the realities of political power, and a new pope with a soft spot for dictatorship and a hatred of gays at the reins of a decaying right-wing junta with especially fancy uniforms.

(bold emphasis added)

I am struck by the parallels between what happened to the RCC and what happened here in USA on the political/economic front after the flowering of "people power" in the '60's ... which was so dramatic that even Nixon at one time floated the notion of a "guaranteed national income" (something most people have forgotten). The backlash has been so successful that President Mellifluous - a good Old School Republican at best - can be painted a "Socialist" by a populace that has forgotten what words mean.

It can be argued - and I would not dispute - that the roots of the crushing defeat of all populist movements began much earlier, with the destruction of all "Left" organizations and repressions of all "Left" intellectuals under McCarthyism, but it seems to me that one must acknowledge that somehow those shackles were thrown off during the era of Vietnam protests and we had a brief era where so much seemed possible - the era of the Clean Air, Water, Voting Rights, etc .... there was even a "Welfare Rights" movement ... and then ...

I have said here before that TPTB saw what happened when large numbers of working class kids like myself got to go off to college, and began the transformations that would make it impossible for that to ever happen again ... and that, of course, is only one of the changes.

I don't follow Cuba closely, but I seem to recall murmurings from the new leadership of "Market friendly" changes ....

One hopes that Latin America being the new center of a more populist trend will negate that ...

[Demeter]

71. THAT Explains It

[Demeter]

77. I know I'm whining, but it's lunchtime, and only 15F windchill

[bread_and_roses]

78. Well, then, let's hope the talk of a "Grand Bargain" is over too, Boehner

http://gma.yahoo.com/john-boehner-talk-raising-revenue-over-145307471--abc-news-topstories.html

John Boehner: The 'Talk About Raising Revenue Is Over'
ABC News

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told ABC News' Martha Raddatz during an exclusive interview for "This Week" that talk of including revenue as part of an effort to strike a so-called "grand bargain" to address the $16 trillion debt of the United States was "over," leaving Democrats and Republicans where they have been for months - at loggerheads.

"The president believes that we have to have more taxes from the American people. We're not going to get very far," Boehner said. "The president got his tax hikes on January 1. The talk about raising revenue is over. It's time to deal with the spending problem."

I have no words for the depth of lies and hypocrisy displayed even in this short excerpt.

[Demeter]

81. I'm done, in any event

The Kid was invited to a birthday bash...what a party! I went as the taxi driver....

She had a good time, I got to prep for the board meeting, they fed us well.

But I am beat, now. Not A Party Animal.