STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 3 May 2013

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 3 May 2013[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 2 May 2013

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 2 May 2013
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Dow Jones 14,831.58 +130.63 (0.89%)
S&P 500 1,597.59 +14.89 (0.94%)
Nasdaq 3,340.62 +41.49 (1.26%)


[font color=green]10 Year 1.62% -0.02 (-1.22%)
30 Year 2.82% -0.02 (-0.70%)[font color=black]


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

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


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.










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

[Tansy_Gold]

1. Am I the only one

who thinks we're witnessing total insanity?

[Warpy]

2. I came to that conclusion in 1980

when Reagan actually got elected.

Nothing since then has changed my opinion.

[Fuddnik]

4. I finished a book recently called "Subversives", by Seth Rosenfeld.

It's about the '60s, UC Berkely, The Free Speech Movement, J. Edgar Hoover and Ronald Reagan.

Reagan and Ed Meese were probably the two biggest pricks to win an office in California, and then move to Washington.

Well worth a read for a lot of detailed info.

[DemReadingDU]

12. I heard a segment on NPR Fresh Air last year

It was very enlightening, about the dirty tricks

8/21/12 Student 'Subversives' And The FBI's 'Dirty Tricks'

In 1964, students at the University of California, Berkeley, formed a protest movement to repeal a campus rule banning students from engaging in political activities. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover suspected the free speech movement to be evidence of a Communist plot to disrupt U.S. campuses. He "had long been concerned about alleged subversion within the education field," journalist Seth Rosenfeld tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. So Hoover ordered his agents to look into whether the movement was subversive. When they returned and said that it wasn't, Hoover not only continued to investigate the group but also used "dirty tricks to stifle dissent on the campus," according to Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld's new book, Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power, details how the FBI employed fake reporters to plant ideas and shape public opinion about the student movement; how they planted stories with real reporters; and how they even managed — with the help of then-Gov. Ronald Reagan — to get the UC Berkeley's President Clark Kerr fired. To research the book, Rosenfeld pored over 300,000 pages of records obtained over 30 years from five lengthy Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the FBI. The records "show that during the Cold War, the FBI sought to change the course of history by secretly interceding in events, by manipulating public opinion and taking sides in partisan politics," Rosenfeld says. The book also details how the FBI influenced Reagan's politics as president of the Screen Actors Guild, governor of California and finally as president. Rosenfeld, a freelance journalist based in San Francisco, was a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle for 25 years and is a winner of the George Polk Award.

Click link for the audio, appx 30 minutes
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/21/159373688/student-subversives-and-the-fbis-dirty-tricks


and Matt Taibbi wrote a review of the book that appeared in the New York Times

10/7/12 The Hunters and the Hunted by Matt Taibbi
‘Subversives,’ by Seth Rosenfeld
America never got over the ’60s. The deep social divisions that emerged during that decade remain, for the most part, the divisions that define modern American politics. The battle lines are still so painfully visible that 50 years after the beginning of the Vietnam War and the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, the presidential race this year will come down to a contest between a former community organizer pilloried for supposed ties to ’60s radicals and a former Stanford student who protested against campus antiwar demonstrations.
It’s important to try to ignore all of this background when reading “Subversives,” the journalist Seth Rosenfeld’s electrifying examination of a newly declassified treasure trove of documents detailing our government’s campaign of surveillance of the Berkeley campus during the ’60s. Rosenfeld spent 30 years fighting to compel the government to release more than 300,000 pages of documents about the illegal spying program, an effort the F.B.I. spent almost a million dollars opposing.
Rosenfeld’s decades of hard-fought research into the romanticized, rapidly receding past of the ’60s era produce a relevant warning. Domestic intelligence forces will tend to use all the powers they’re given (and even some that they’re not) to spy on people who are politically defenseless, irrelevant from a security standpoint and targeted for all the wrong reasons. And policemen who abuse their powers don’t just ruin innocent lives and undermine our faith in the law. They miss the real threats.

more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/books/review/subversives-by-seth-rosenfeld.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&

[Fuddnik]

18. Reagan's union members came to him seeking protection from communist accusations.

They were unaware that he had already turned them in.

Ed Meese, a prosecutor and Army Intelligence reservist said that innocent bystanders shot and killed during a police crackdown at Peoples Park deserved to die.

[Fuddnik]

3. Oh no. I've been saying that for a long time now.

We've got a totally dysfunctional government. It's populated by whiny, pouty, self-serving blowhards. We have Dear Leader, who couldn't find his ass with both hands, a coon hound, and a GPS. Yet, he's a cult leader.

The constitution is obsolete at best, or irrelevant at worst. States, and states rights are obsolete. They serve no purpose anymore, except as another conduit for graft and fraud.

You've got illiterate superstitious fundies running the South. I could go on and on. We haven't even gotten to the economy yet. That's where it gets really crazy.

[Fuddnik]

5. You want insanity? Check this thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022786386

The nutz are out in full force.

[Demeter]

6. Pretty depressing

Saw a lot of the people I considered putting on Ignore, except I think they are too dangerous to ignore....If I wanted to take the people I DO ignore because they are idiots off my Ignore list, I wonder if they would be beating up the OP, too.

Thanks for taking over the Weekend, doc. I need the break.

[Fuddnik]

8. Enjoy yours. Celebrate Cinca de Meow with the cats.

[Demeter]

7. Colorado Weighs Reopening Psychiatric Hospital For Homeless

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/05/02/180603733/colorado-weighs-reopening-a-psychiatric-hospital-to-serve-the-homeless?ft=1&f=1001

Last summer's mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., led Gov. John Hickenlooper to call for stricter gun control and big new investments in mental health care. Several significant gun bills passed, and a package of mental health reforms is moving forward. But there may not be enough support to win funding for 300 new inpatient psychiatric beds. That proposal by the Democratic governor would bring mentally ill and addicted homeless people to Ft. Lyon, at one time a psychiatric hospital for veterans and then a prison. The facility, near the tiny town of Las Animas, has been closed for two years. Under the plan, people would leave the streets of the cities where they live now and voluntarily come to Fort Lyon. And the town would welcome the jobs that reopening the facility would create.

Jack Simms, who's been homeless in Colorado Springs for a decade, says it's needed.

"I see it, man. They need to open some beds somewhere, at a mental health facility or something," says Simms, who says he struggles with depression and smokes pot to cope. "I can survive out here, [but] these mentally ill people, it's rough. They just walk up and down the paths. They look like zombies. I'd be a guinea pig. I'd try it out."

Kathleen Tomlin used to work as an administrative assistant at the old psychiatric hospital, a veterans facility. It's several miles past Las Animas' one stoplight. Dozens of empty buildings surround an old parade ground, giving it the feel of an empty college campus.

"When I started, there were over 600 employees," says Tomlin as she tours the building she used to work in. "That was in 1973."

"This was a good place because it was soothing," she adds. "It was relaxing. It wasn't like a big city, metro area. Patients loved it and they would get attached. And some of them still see me and they say, 'Oh, I miss Fort Lyon.' "

But the movement to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill meant jobs dwindled at Fort Lyon, and businesses closed in Las Animas. Tomlin says people here used to take pride in working at Fort Lyon and they would like to see the hospital and the jobs come back. She's cautiously optimistic now that state lawmakers like Joann Ginal, a Democrat from Fort Collins, are backing the governor's bill to reopen it. "I can't think of a better use for a historic campus, and also a place that is going to help improve the lives of many people," Ginal said.

Hickenlooper's idea is that the homeless mentally ill people who volunteer to come to Fort Lyon will get housing vouchers they can use to live elsewhere when they complete treatment. But not everyone thinks that this plan is going to do a lot of good.

"Having someone in transitional housing teaches people how to manage living in transitional housing,..But then they have this huge hurdle, the re-entry problem." Tsemberis says that renting apartments for homeless, mentally ill people in the neighborhoods where they are, and getting them treatment there, works better than shipping them off someplace. "You could skip all that transitional stuff, and go right to graduation from the street," Tsemberis says. "Give the support services, and you wouldn't have to go home by way of Fort Lyon."

There's value to that approach, says , John Parvensky, head of Colorado's Coalition for the Homeless. He's worked for years to get local housing and treatment programs funded. But he supports Fort Lyon reopening, because prior to the governor's proposal nobody was talking about pouring millions of dollars into any help for people living on the streets. "It's not really a question of either-or: Should the state support community-based options or should they support Fort Lyon?" says Parvensky. "They really should be doing both, but historically they've been doing neither." MORE AT LINK

[xchrom]

9. Here's The Official Projection For How Much The Cyprus Economy Is Going To Get Crushed This Year

http://www.businessinsider.com/cyprus-economy-expected-to-shrink-by-87-percent-this-year-2013-5

After a bailout that decimated the country's banking system, the EU has just put out an official projection for what the Cypriot economy is expected to do this year.
The projection is part of a bigger set of projections, which can be found here.
As for Cyprus, look for shrinkage of just under 9%.

[xchrom]

10. Is Australia About To Join The Currency War?

http://www.businessinsider.com/is-australia-about-to-join-the-currency-war-2013-5

The Australian: - China outperformed for a decade its own government's 8 per cent growth target, which was lowered to 7.5 per cent for last year and this year.

And Australia's budget planners were confident China's economy would keep surpassing the official target.

They forecast that China's economic growth, the core driver for Australian commodity sales and thus of our formerly burgeoning terms of trade, would bottom out at 8.5 per cent last year, rebounding higher this year. The current budget also was based on 2012 growth reaching 6.25 per cent in India and 2.25 per cent in Japan.

But China's growth for last year ended up at 7.8 per cent, India's at 4.5 per cent and Japan's at 2 per cent. The forecasts were thus overestimated by 8.3 per cent, 28.1 per cent and 8.9 per cent respectively.



And Australia's overall manufacturing index hit the lowest level since 2009, with the nation's manufacturing sector in full contraction.

[xchrom]

11. UKIP shakes Conservatives in local vote

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/uk-britain-politics-idUKBRE94202020130503

(Reuters) - The anti-European Union UK Independence Party made big gains in local elections, siphoning support from Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives in a vote that underlined the threat it poses to his re-election chances in 2015.

Early results showed UKIP had won 42 council seats - as many as Labour - after seven of 35 councils had been declared and that it had polled an average 26 percent of the vote, the best result by a fourth party since World War Two.

UKIP, which wants Britain to leave the European Union and an end to "open-door immigration", also pushed Cameron's Conservatives into third place in an election for a national parliamentary seat in northern England, a humiliating blow for the prime minister.

The results showed UKIP could split the centre-right vote at the next national election, making it harder for Cameron to defeat Labour, which leads his Conservatives by up to 10 percent in opinion polls as economic austerity persists.

[xchrom]

13. Exclusive - EU to propose duties on Chinese solar panels

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/uk-eu-china-solar-idUKBRE9420B920130503

(Reuters) - The EU's trade chief will recommend placing punitive import duties on billions of euros of solar panels from China, people close to the matter say, putting up a barrier to protect European producers but risking upsetting Beijing.

The case, the biggest the Commission has ever targeted, highlights the balancing act facing Brussels as Europe tries to protect against cheap imports while needing China, the EU's second largest trading partner, to help it emerge from recession.

Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht is expected to tell his fellow EU commissioners on Wednesday that Brussels should levy the tariffs to guard against Chinese production that quadrupled between 2009 and 2011 to more than the entire global demand.

"De Gucht is ready to go ahead," said one person close to the decision-making. "The Commission has a very solid case."

[xchrom]

14. EU PREDICTS EUROZONE RECESSION TO CONTINUE IN 2013

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-05-03-06-01-44BRUSSELS (AP) -- The recession in the euro area will be worse than expected with unemployment remaining at record levels, according to the latest economic forecast from the European Union.

In Friday's spring economic forecast, the EU said that gross domestic product in the 17 EU countries that use the euro will shrink by 0.4 percent this year, better than the 0.6 percent for 2012 but 0.1 percentage points worse than the EU had forecast back in February.

`'Grappling with the aftermath of a profound financial and economic crisis, the EU economy is set to pick up speed only very slowly in the course of this year," the report said.

Across the eurozone, the three-year crisis over too much government debt and the accompanying austerity measures are weighing on activity - even in some of the more prosperous countries. In Germany, the eurozone's largest economy, GDP growth is set to fall in 2013 from 0.7 percent in 2102 to 0.4 percent this year as demand from other struggling countries in Europe falls. France, meanwhile, is expected to fall into negative territory in 2013, with GDP dropping 0.1 percent in the year

[DemReadingDU]

15. Silver Coins, Money, Jewelry Discovered In Hidden Tennessee Safe

5/1/13 Silver Coins, Money, Jewelry Discovered In Hidden Tennessee Family Safe (PHOTOS)

Last week, a Tennessee family embarked on a treasure hunt straight out of the movies -- and their amazing discoveries were posted to Reddit last night.

Just over a week ago, Reddit user evilenglish posted that he'd discovered a 'secret safe' in his grandparents' old farmhouse in Tennessee. The poster was helping his family clear out the house to prepare it for sale when he noticed a block of concrete on the floor of a closet below the staircase.

"This was very out of place since all of the downstairs flooring is hardwood," he wrote in his first post. "I pushed the carpet back further and saw a round cap with a circle indentation on it. I pulled off the cap and... A Secret Safe!"

Unable to open it, he decided to contact a locksmith as soon as his schedule would allow and post his findings, whatever they might be, for the thousands of Reddit users who had since begun following the story.

The poster also shared that both his grandparents were collectors. "My Grandfather was an avid sportsman and enjoyed collecting various firearms. My Grandmother was a collector of coins and other antiques and curiosities," he wrote. He stated that he had previously found remnants of his grandfather's pistol collection in another hidden safe last year.

When a locksmith was finally brought in to complete the gnarly task of cracking this corroded old safebox, the family discovered a veritable treasure trove.

more...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/tennessee-safe-unlocked-treasures-discovered_n_3195237.html?icid=maing-grid10|htmlws-main-bb|dl5|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D307702


pictures!
http://imgur.com/a/1cT5r

[xchrom]

17. hmmmmmmph! confirming i needed a different grandma. nt

[Hugin]

26. Thanks for posting, DRDU!

Very interesting. His Grandma was quite the collector.

[xchrom]

16. India cuts interest rates for third time this year

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22394212

India has cut interest rates for the third time this year in an attempt to revive growth in its sluggish economy.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lowered its key rate to 7.25% from 7.5%.

India's growth rate has dipped, amid a slowdown in key sectors such as manufacturing, prompting the government to lower growth forecasts.

As a result, the central bank has been under pressure to take steps to help stimulate a fresh wave of economic growth in Asia's third-largest economy.

[Fuddnik]

19. More unfounded allegations, and viscious rumors come true. Only it's worse than we thought.

Not only did Obama nominate anti-labor, criminal bankster, billionaire, Penny Pritzker to head the Commerce Dept., he threw in Robert Rubin's former Chief of Staff as head trade negotiator.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/02/18019257-obama-nominates-major-fundraiser-to-run-commerce-department?lite


Obama nominates major fundraiser to run Commerce Department
By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

At the White House Thursday, President Obama announced that he is nominating Chicago real estate investor Penny Pritzker to head the Commerce Department.

“Penny is one of our country’s most distinguished business leaders—she’s got more than 25 years of management experience in industries including real estate, finance, and hospitality,” Obama said. “She’s built companies from ground up and she knows from experience that no government program alone can take the place of a great entrepreneur.”

Noting that Thursday is Pritzker’s birthday, Obama joked, “For your birthday present, you get to go through (Senate) confirmation.”

Obama also announced that he is nominating Mike Froman to be the chief U.S. trade negotiator. Froman was a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama and the president said “he was much smarter than me then – he continues to be smarter than me now.”

Froman is now Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs. He served in the Clinton administration as Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's chief of staff and later worked with Rubin at Citigroup.

(snip)

[xchrom]

20. +1

[xchrom]

21. Lucrative Fees Behind Property Management Spark Fights

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-03/lucrative-fees-behind-property-management-spark-fights.html

CommonWealth REIT (CWH) owns office buildings throughout the U.S., yet employs no one. Cole Credit Property Trust III Inc. (0283899D), which leases about a thousand stores around the country to retailers such as CVS, Lowe’s and Wal- Mart, also had no workers until a recent acquisition.

Instead, both real estate investment trusts have been run by outside managers who are paid to choose properties to buy and at what prices, and which ones to sell and when. That has raised criticism from some investors, who say a management company may make decisions for its own benefit -- decisions not necessarily right for REIT shareholders.

“It’s a good business if you can get it,” said Jim Sullivan, a managing director at Green Street Advisors Inc., a Newport Beach, California-based research company. “The adviser does well if the REIT gets bigger, but the shareholders may not be well-served by the REIT getting bigger.”

That conflict has been at the heart of two of the biggest REIT fights this year. CommonWealth, based in Newton, Massachusetts, is battling an attempt by its second-biggest investor to remove its board. Phoenix-based Cole Credit had to fend off a rival’s buyout offer after announcing plans to purchase the firm that oversaw its properties

[xchrom]

22. Draghi Mulls Negative Campaign as Economy Struggles

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-02/draghi-mulls-negative-campaign-as-economy-struggles.html

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is signalling he may go negative in his campaign to rescue the euro-area economy.

With the ECB cutting its benchmark interest rate to a record low yesterday as the euro-area recession deepens, Draghi said policy makers have an “open mind” on reducing their so- called deposit rate below zero for the first time.

Forcing banks to pay when parking cash at the central bank would be aimed at spurring them into lending rather than saving, yet economists say the step may backfire. That it’s even being considered highlights the weakness of the 17-nation economy and rekindles Draghi’s reputation for unorthodoxy.

“Draghi has shifted the ECB’s stance on the potential floor for interest rates,” said Marchel Alexandrovich, senior European economist at Jefferies International Ltd. in London. “A negative deposit rate is now a more distinct possibility.”

[Demeter]

27. He's crazy

Here I am at beautiful Farmington Hills...just checking up on the world. And kibitzing, of course.

[xchrom]

23. Buffett Supports Dimon’s Dual Roles 100% at JPMorgan

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-03/buffett-supports-dimon-s-dual-roles-100-at-jpmorgan.html

Warren Buffett, who has said he personally owns shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), is backing the bank’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon as shareholders vote this month on whether to split his roles.

“I’m 100 percent for Jamie,” Buffett told Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu yesterday in Omaha, Nebraska. “I couldn’t think of a better chairman.”

Calls for Dimon, 57, to relinquish the chairmanship have mounted since New York-based JPMorgan disclosed risk-control lapses on derivatives bets last year that fueled more than $6.2 billion of losses. In March, the company’s board urged investors to vote against naming a separate chairman at the May 21 meeting, saying that Dimon’s dual role remains the “most effective leadership model.”

Buffett said in November that Dimon would be the best candidate to lead the U.S. Treasury Department in a financial crisis. President Barack Obama eventually nominated Jacob J. Lew to the post vacated by Timothy F. Geithner.

[xchrom]

24. Billionaire Kaiser Exploiting Charity Loophole With Boats

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-03/billionaire-kaiser-exploiting-charity-loophole-with-boats.html

When Oklahoma energy billionaire George Kaiser opened the Northeast Gateway liquid natural gas terminal in 2008, the floating depot’s first delivery was shipped on the Excellence, a 909-foot supertanker that holds 138,000 cubic meters of LNG -- enough gas to meet more than 4 percent of daily U.S. demand.

The Excellence is owned by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, a charitable organization that also owned a 36 percent stake in Solyndra LLC, the Fremont, California-based solar system maker that went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving a $535 million U.S. Energy Department loan.

The nonprofit organization paid $110 million for the tanker in 2003. It later gave control of the vessel to Woodlands, Texas-based Excelerate Energy LP, a for-profit gas delivery company Kaiser owns with publicly traded German electric utility RWE AG, according to RWE’s 2012 annual report.

“It is an excellent investment,” Frederic Dorwart, a trustee of the foundation and longtime attorney for Kaiser’s various banking and energy companies, said in a telephone interview. “It pays out this year and we’ll still own the vessel.”

[xchrom]

25. Less Is More: Rogue Economists Champion Prosperity without Growth

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/critics-propose-economy-with-less-growth-and-environmental-damage-a-897550.html

Harald Welzer's career as a critic of growth began with a few simple reflections. Just how progressive is it, he asked himself, when millions of hectares of land are used elsewhere in the world so that we keep down the cost of meat? How modern is it when producing a kilogram of salmon in a supposedly sustainable way requires feeding the fish five to six kilograms (11 to 13 pounds) of other types of fish?

If everyone used up as much space and resources as we do, says the 54-year-old Berlin-based social psychologist, we would need three earths. In Welzer's eyes, this can hardly be called progress.

All of this made Welzer so angry that he wrote a book critical of equating this sort of progress with growth. The ruling class of economists, who he characterizes as "disdainers of reality" and "proponents of a world essentially limited by consumption," is responsible for compulsively tying these two concepts together, he argues. His treatise, "Selbst denken" ("Thinking for Ourselves&quot , is a manual for phasing out the "totalitarian consumerism" that gives people desires that, until recently, they didn't even suspect they would ever have.

Until a few months ago, Welzer specialized in studying the psyche of Nazi criminals. He has also written about climate wars. His current bestseller, "Selbst denken," has now made him the figurehead of a movement that radically questions the growth model of the Western economy.