Weekend Economists Profiles in Courage...and Tenacity...and Grit! June 21-23,2013

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I was strolling through the web when I was captured by this:



Portrait of Susan B. Anthony
by Francis Benjamin Johnston

Susan Brownell Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President. She also co-founded the women's rights journal, The Revolution. She traveled the United States and Europe, and averaged 75 to 100 speeches per year. She was one of the important advocates in leading the way for women's rights to be acknowledged and instituted in the American government. Her birthday, on February 15, is commemorated as Susan B. Anthony Day in the U.S. states of Florida and Wisconsin.

Susan B. Anthony was born to Daniel Anthony (1794–1862) and Lucy Read (1793–1880) and raised in West Grove, Adams, Massachusetts. She was the second-oldest of seven children; her siblings were Guelma Penn (1818–1873), Hannah Lapham (1821–1877), Daniel Read (1824–1904), Mary Stafford (1827–1907), Eliza Tefft (1832–1834), and Jacob Merritt (1834–1900). She grew up as a Quaker who believed in hard work and a simple life. Her publisher brother Daniel would become active in the anti-slavery movement in Kansas and her sister Mary became a teacher and a women's-rights activist. Anthony remained close to her sisters throughout her life.
Parents of Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony's birthplace

Her earliest American ancestors were the immigrants John Anthony (1607–1675), who was from Hempstead, Essex, and his wife, Susanna Potter (c. 1623 - 1674), who was from London, Middlesex.

Anthony's father Daniel was a cotton manufacturer and abolitionist, a stern but open-minded man who was born into the Quaker religion. He did not allow toys or amusements into the household, claiming that they would distract the soul from the "inner light." Her mother, Lucy, was a student in Daniel's school; the two fell in love and agreed to marry in 1817, but Lucy was less sure about marrying into the Society of Friends (Quakers). Lucy attended the Rochester women’s rights convention held in August 1848, two weeks after the historic Seneca Falls Convention, and signed the Rochester convention’s Declaration of Sentiments. Lucy and Daniel Anthony enforced self-discipline, principled convictions, and belief in one's own self-worth.

Susan was a precocious child, having learned to read and write at age three. In 1826, when she was six years old, the Anthony family moved from Massachusetts to Battenville, New York. Susan was sent to attend a local district school, where a teacher refused to teach her long division because of her gender. Upon learning of the weak education she was receiving, her father promptly had her placed in a group home school, where he taught Susan himself. Mary Perkins, another teacher there, conveyed a progressive image of womanhood to Anthony, further fostering her growing belief in women's equality.

In 1837, Anthony was sent to Deborah Moulson's Female Seminary, a Quaker boarding school in Philadelphia. She was not happy at Moulson's, but she did not have to stay there long. She was forced to end her formal studies because her family, like many others, was financially ruined during the Panic of 1837. Their losses were so great that they attempted to sell everything in an auction, even their most personal belongings, which were saved at the last minute when Susan's uncle, Joshua Read, stepped up and bid on them in order to restore them to the family.

In 1839, the family moved to Hardscrabble, New York, in the wake of the panic and economic depression that followed. That same year, Anthony left home to teach and pay off her father's debts. She taught first at Eunice Kenyon's Friends' Seminary, and then at the Canajoharie Academy in 1846, where she rose to become headmistress of the Female Department. Anthony's first occupation inspired her to fight for wages equivalent to those of male teachers, since men earned roughly four times more than women for the same duties.

In 1849, at age 29, Anthony quit teaching and moved to the family farm in Rochester, New York. She began to take part in conventions and gatherings related to the temperance movement. In Rochester, she attended the local Unitarian Church and began to distance herself from the Quakers, in part because she had frequently witnessed instances of hypocritical behavior such as the use of alcohol amongst Quaker preachers. As she got older, Anthony continued to move further away from organized religion in general, and she was later chastised by various Christian religious groups for displaying irreligious tendencies. By the 1880s, Anthony had become agnostic.

In her youth, Anthony was very self-conscious of her appearance and speaking abilities. She long resisted public speaking for fear she would not be sufficiently eloquent. Despite these insecurities, she became a renowned public presence, eventually helping to lead the women's movement.

We may have thought that Susan B. did the hard stuff, and we had reached the Promised Land. Not so. I expect any day now, some idiot in Texas will devise "Math for Girls" just because he can...

And while this Greater, Never-Ending Depression is hard, it could have been (and for centuries was) so much harder.

So screw your courage to the sticking point, and let us manufacture a NEW new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men AND women are created equal...

and entitled to equal pay and benefits and career opportunities.....and honest banks!

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1. No Bank Failures As Of 7:30 PM EDT

but keep checking!

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2. Checking Out By TIMOTHY EGAN LET'S ALL BE WALLY!

Last edited Sat Jun 22, 2013, 01:28 AM - Edit history (1)

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/checking-out/?_r=0

...a duplicitous boss... had granted me a night off to attend a family event. Don’t worry, she said, I’ll get somebody to fill in for you. When that somebody failed to show up for work, I was fired. It still hurts — the betrayal, the cold lie, how easily I could be tossed despite my dedication..I thought of this black mark on my résumé while reading an exhaustive and depressing new study of the American workplace done by the Gallup organization. Among the 100 million people in this country who hold full-time jobs, about 70 percent of them either hate going to work or have mentally checked out to the point of costing their companies money — “roaming the halls spreading discontent,” as Gallup reported. Only 30 percent of workers are “engaged and inspired” at work. At first glance, this sad survey is further proof of two truisms. One, the timeless line from Thoreau that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The other, less known, came from Homer Simpson by way of fatherly advice, after being asked about a labor dispute by his daughter Lisa. “If you don’t like your job,” he said, “you don’t strike, you just go in there every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”

THAT EXPLAINS OUR RECENT RUN OF PRESIDENTS, DOESN'T IT?


The American way, indeed. Gallup’s current survey, covering two years, is a follow-up to an earlier poll that found much the same level of passive discontent from 2008 to 2010. Even in an improving economy, people are adrift at work, complaining about a lack of praise, with no sense of mission, and feeling little loyalty to their employer. (THE FEELING IS MUTUAL) You would think the usual suspects were to blame for this sea of seething in the cubicles of America. While productivity per worker has soared over the last two decades, pay has remained flat or gone down. The gulf between those at the very top and those who do all the heavy lifting has never been greater. Too many corporations, especially in a tight job market, promote a view that everyone is replaceable; the workers are mercenaries with bottom-of-the-bin benefits. Take it or leave it...All of that is certainly at play. But here’s the surprise: the main factor in workplace discontent is not wages, benefits or hours, but the boss. Yes, that cretin from Kentucky Fried Chicken, in countless forms. The survey said there was consistent anger at management types who failed to so much as ask employees about their opinion of the job. Ever.

“The managers from hell are creating active disengagement costing the United States an estimated $450 billion to $550 billion annually,” wrote Jim Clifton, the C.E.O. and chairman of Gallup.

Regular praise, opportunity for growth, and the occasional question from a higher-up of a lower-down about how to improve things would go a long way toward getting the checked-out to check back in, the study found. Among those who loathe their jobs most, 57 percent said they were ignored at work, and 41 percent said they couldn’t even say what their company stood for. As such, there’s no mystery why customer service is so bad, or being farmed out to robots. Another surprise is the age and educational level of the most discontented workers. College graduates, now more than ever, earn far more than those with just a high school diploma. But the grumpiest, least happy people in the workplace are college graduates and baby boomers. Yes, millions of people would love to have those jobs held by the unhappy. (A point that corporations always make, by way of prompting further discontent.) More than 11 million Americans are unemployed, and 10 million more are underemployed, meaning they want more work but can’t get it. Millennials, the boomers’ kids, are living in their own workplace hell of intern nation, and perhaps that is why they are most likely to say they would leave a job within the next 12 months for something better. It’s even worse in Europe, where many young adults have given up hope entirely of ever starting a meaningful career.

Sad to say, there are two great tragedies in professional life: not having a job, and having a job you hate.

MORE

[bread_and_roses]

5. Oh goddess ....

... maybe I can post more later; am whipped, and that about did me in.

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6. Me too

Barely got the thread up, then crashed for 4 hours' nap.

It was a hard week, and ended on a heatwave.

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3. Mercurial Mortgage Rates to Stabilize Soon, Analysts Say

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/business/mercurial-mortgage-rates-to-stabilize-soon-analysts-say.html

It looks like the great American mortgage sale is finally coming to an end. While rates on home loans are likely to remain modest by traditional standards, the ultralow borrowing costs that encouraged millions of homeowners to refinance and helped revive the moribund housing market are quickly becoming a memory. As yields on 10-year government bonds rise amid signs that the economy is improving and that the Federal Reserve will reduce bond purchases, mortgage rates have quickly followed. Rates on 30-year fixed mortgages hit 4.25 percent on Thursday, up from 4.12 percent on Wednesday morning before the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, signaled the central bank might begin easing back on stimulus efforts later this year. As recently as May, the average interest rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage stood at 3.5 percent, close to the lowest in decades.

While mortgage rates are moving higher, rates on other forms of credit like car loans, home equity loans and credit cards are not expected to budge. They are either already set at relatively high levels, like most credit card borrowing costs, or tied to short-term interest rates, which the Fed has indicated will not rise before 2015. For example, the rate on a five-year car loan currently is just over 4 percent, about where it was in mid-May. Similarly, a fixed-rate home equity loan carries a rate of 6.1 percent, not far from where it was a month ago. But the fact that the Fed is keeping the short-term bank lending rate it controls at close to zero also means that savers will not see any improvement in the paltry interest paid on savings accounts at banks, money market accounts and short-term certificates of deposit, which are also tied to short-term rates. By contrast, long-term rates are rising because the central bank’s current program of purchasing $85 billion a month in Treasury securities and mortgage bonds is expected to start tapering off later this year, if the economy continues to recover. Despite the sudden jump in long-term borrowing costs, some experts say it is unlikely that government bond rates will keep spiking from current levels, and could actually ease slightly...Nor should holders of adjustable-rate mortgages panic. “Someone who already has one doesn’t have to worry until the Fed starts raising short-term rates,” Mr. McBride said...


WHAT'S THAT SKIMMING LOW, OVER THE HORIZON...COULD IT BE; I THINK IT IS; YES! IT'S A BLACK SWAN! FOLLOWED BY SEVERAL BLACK TURKEYS!

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28. Charles Hugh Smith - mortgage rates

Here is a chart of mortgage rates since 1970. Rates were pushed to 17+% to snuff inflation in the early 1980s, and they've dropped over the past 30 years to historic lows: the rate for a fixed-rate 30-year conventional mortgage was about 3.5% a few weeks ago. It has now risen above 4%.

direct link for chart
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MORTG

In the golden age of growth from 1991 to 2002, mortgages rates bounced between about 7% and 9%. The band from 1970 to 1979 was about 7.5% to 10%.

In other words, in eras of strong growth and low inflation, mortgage rates have been around 7% to 9%. So what happens to the monthly payments when the mortgage rate doubles from 4% to 8%? The payments double, too. And what happens to the price of houses when rates double? They fall to the point that households borrowing money at 7.5% - 8% can afford to buy a house, i.e. a price much lower than today's Housing Bubble 2.0 prices.

more...
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun13/yields-rise6-13.html


Many younger people don't realize that mortgage rates haven't normally been under 4%. When we bought our 3 houses, the rates were 7.5%, in 1971, also in 1977, and in 1992.

What is the uproar that rates jumped from 3.5% to 4.12% to 4.25%!

edit to correct rate number

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4. EU to decide who pays when banks fail

http://news.yahoo.com/eu-decide-pays-banks-fail-085030515.html

...The European Union sought on Friday to forge rules to force losses on large savers of failed banks, a taboo that was broken in this year's bailout for Cyprus. Finance ministers in Luxembourg are trying to resolve one of the most difficult questions posed by Europe's banking crisis - how to shut failed banks without sowing panic or burdening taxpayers.

The talks follow Cyprus's March financial rescue in which it had to close down one of its banks, impose losses on savers and introduce capital controls to stop a bank run. Although some politicians have tried to portray Cyprus as a one-off, it could mark a dramatic change in how Europe deals with troubled banks, to spare taxpayers who have been on the hook for previous bailouts. Some countries have grave reservations about taking such an approach and want the freedom to soften any such EU-wide rules...

"The fact that the euro zone countries are trying to push a solution is very dangerous for the rest of us," Sweden's Finance Minister Anders Borg told reporters.

The European Union spent the equivalent of a third of its economic output on saving its banks between 2008 and 2011, using taxpayer cash but struggling to contain the crisis and - in the case of Ireland - almost bankrupting the country. But countries are divided over how strict the new rules should be, with some worried that imposing losses on depositors could prompt a bank run while others argue the rules of the game must be made clear from the start....

TONS OF BLATHER AT LINK

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7. G-8 pledge on economy rings hollow

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/g-8-pledge-on-economy-rings-hollow-2013-06-21?siteid=YAHOOB

It’s hard to imagine a declaration that could ring hollower than the statement on the global economy emerging from this week’s G-8 summit in Northern Ireland.

“Promoting growth and jobs is our top priority,” the government chiefs declared in the final communiqué. “We agreed to nurture the global recovery by supporting demand, securing our public finances and exploiting all sources of growth.”

In fact, with draconian austerity in Europe, a damaging sequester in the United States, and only grudging acceptance of Japanese efforts to stimulate its economy, it looks as if employment and growth are anything but the top priority for the summiteers. Not that anyone was paying attention — news coverage was devoted to the Syrian debate at the summit and buried on the inside pages — but this kind of talk was even worse than what we have come to expect from the annual summit.

The G-8, it’s worth recalling, originated in 1975 to cope with the parlous economic situation at that time, but the group, which continues to exclude China, the world’s second-largest economy, may have outlived its usefulness. It is absurd to have German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for instance, declare unemployment her top priority when she seems unconcerned about Germany’s 5.4% jobless rate and appears willing to accept double-digit unemployment in the rest of Europe to preserve a common currency on terms that significantly favor her country...For President Barack Obama, it is simply another pledge to add to those he has made over the years as he has consistently yielded ground to deficit hawks and acceded to measures that have dampened the economy and slowed job growth instead of stimulating it. Although the G-8 summit was just part of a busy few days for the president, the hollow communiqué was in line with other comments this week about administration economic policies that often are not what they seem.

The summit, for instance, marked the formal launch of negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a trade deal championed by Obama that we are told is to be a centerpiece of his second term. Many Americans already are wary of the benefits of “free trade” and globalization, which seem to mean U.S. companies invest and create jobs overseas rather than at home. And this new trade deal may have less to do with creating American jobs and more to do with extending patent and copyright protections for American firms overseas and watering down environmental and labor regulations.

MORE GOOD JABS AT LINK--MY KIND OF COMMENTATOR!

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8. "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." George Orwell

They hate us for our freedoms, in other words, "They" being the US Government and the 1%.

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9. Obama taps former IMF official as national security deputy

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-taps-former-imf-official-national-security-deputy-172432394.html

President Barack Obama on Friday appointed Caroline Atkinson, a former journalist who has worked at the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Bank of England, to be deputy national security adviser for international economics.

Atkinson will take the position vacated by Michael Froman, who became the U.S. trade representative. She will serve as the president's senior international economic adviser, the White House said in a statement.

Atkinson is currently special assistant to the president on international economic affairs, a job she took in August 2011. She has played a key role in the administration's response to the European economic crisis and in U.S. interactions at Group of Eight and Group of 20 summits of industrialized nations and emerging market economies, the White House said.

"Caroline is respected around the world for her understanding of how the global economy works, her tireless efforts to promote strong, balanced and sustainable growth and her experience in managing international financial crises," Obama said in a statement.

Atkinson was head of external affairs at the IMF, and previously worked on international monetary and financial policy at the Treasury and regulatory policy at the British central bank.

In her career as a journalist, Atkinson worked at the Washington Post, the Economist, and the Times of London, the White House said.

A JOURNALIST! NO, SERIOUSLY, A JOURNALIST?

WHAT KIND OF 1%ER IS SHE?

Biographical Information--IMF WEBSITE

Caroline Atkinson assumed her current position as Director of External Relations (EXR) at the International Monetary Fund on November 1, 2008. During her IMF career, Ms. Atkinson, a U.S. national, has worked on a wide cross-section of countries as well as on policy issues in the European, Western Hemisphere, and Policy Development and Review Departments. Prior to becoming Director of EXR, she was Deputy Director of the Western Hemisphere Department.

Outside the Fund, she has held high-level positions in key official and private sector organizations, including at the Bank of England, the United States Treasury, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Stonebridge International. Ms. Atkinson has also worked as a journalist for the Washington Post, the Economist, and the Times of London.

Ms. Atkinson graduated with a Bachelor's degree with honors in Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University.


I'M SORRY, THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR PUBLIC SERVICE...BUT I'M NOT COMING UP WITH MORE.

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10. Feds Charge NSA Leaker With Spying, Theft

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/21/194369059/feds-charge-nsa-leaker-with-spying-theft?ft=1&f=1001

WAPO reports that federal prosecutors have charged Edward Snowden — the former NSA contractor who leaked classified information on secret U.S. electronic surveillance operations — with espionage, theft and conversion of government property.

Three sources have told NPR's Carrie Johnson that a criminal complaint has been filed against Snowden, who is reported to be in hiding in Hong Kong after his identity was revealed by The Guardian newspaper last week.

The complaint was filed Friday in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is located.

The Post says:

"There was never any doubt that the Justice Department would seek to prosecute Snowden for one of the most significant national security leaks in the country's history. The Obama administration has shown a particular propensity to go after leakers and has launched more investigations that any previous administration.

"Justice Department officials had already said that a criminal investigation of Snowden was underway and was being run out of the FBI's Washington field office in conjunction with lawyers from the department's National Security Division.

"By filing a criminal complaint, prosecutors have a legal basis to make the request of the authorities in Hong Kong. Prosecutors now have 60 days to file an indictment, probably also under seal, and can then move to have Snowden extradited from Hong Kong for trial in the United States.

"Snowden, however, can fight the U.S. effort to have him extradited in the courts in Hong Kong. Any court battle is likely to reach Hong Kong's highest court and could last many months, lawyers in the United States and Hong Kong said."

UPDATE

On All Things Considered, Carrie tells host Robert Siegel that charging Snowden under the Espionage Act is going to be controversial.

"This is a World War I-era law that dates all the way back to 1917. The Obama administration has charged more individuals under this law than any other administration in history. And the law is not as flexible as it could or should be because it's so old. So it's quite clear there's gonna be a legal fight."

Carrie says the law is also "opening up the door to possibly charging the recipients of those leaks, which would be news organizations — The Guardian and The Washington Post." But, she adds:

"Attorney General Eric Holder has already been under fire for overly aggressive treatment of reporters, and he has said he does not want to criminalize the act of reporting."

WELL, HELL! THAT'S MIGHTY WHITE OF HIM!

Update at 7:55 p.m. ET. Hong Kong Government Reaction:

A U.S. government source tells Carrie there is "every indication" that Snowden is still in Hong Kong. The source tells her there is a history of cooperation between the U.S. and Hong Kong, but that authorities there "want to make sure every I is dotted and T is crossed before they do anything."

Meanwhile, an Iceland businessman says he has a private plane ready to whisk Snowden away from his hideout: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=194217623

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14. Leaker Vows Details on NSA Access to Tech Servers By Doug Stanglin

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/17/nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-online/2430451/

Edward Snowden takes extraordinary precautions in a "live chat."... NSA leaker Edward Snowden, answering questions Monday in a live blog on his revelations about the top-secret agency, denied charges he was spying for China and vowed to release more details on the NSA's "direct access" to the tech companies' servers

"Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped," Snowden said, according to The Guardian, which held the "live chat" on its website. He said the U.S. government "is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me."

Snowden, a former NSA contractor who fled the United States after revealing top-secret details on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, has said he "does not expect to see home again." Snowden, who took immediate refuge in Hong Kong, also denied any plans to give information to China in exchange for asylum.

Former vice president Dick Cheney told Fox News Sunday that he thinks Snowden is a "traitor" and warned that the analyst may be spying for the Chinese government.

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American," Snowden responded, "and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, (Sen. Dianne) Feinstein, and (Rep. Peter) King, the better off we all are."

He called Cheney "a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up" for the war in Iraq.

" Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now," he said.

Snowden did not elaborate on when he would reveal more information, but said, "the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc., analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on -- it's all the same." SIGINT refers to "Signals Intelligence," or the collected communciations data. He said the restrictions to getting such data is "policy-based, not technically based, and can change at any time."

In response to a question as to why he fled to Hong Kong, Snowden said the U.S. government "immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home" and declared him guilty of treason. "That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it," he wrote. He also suggested that it was easier to go to Hong Kong rather than risk being intercepted and arrested on the way to Iceland, another potential safe haven...

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15. When it starts hitting USA Today, a story has LEGS!

and it might actually cross the consciousness of the Joe Six-Pack and Suzy Christian Homemaker...

[Demeter]

11. At Long Last, Stocks Get a Jolt By WILLIAM D. COHAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/opinion/at-long-last-stocks-get-a-jolt.html

THE Dow Jones industrial average has nose-dived more than 500 points, or over 3 percent, since the Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s somewhat upbeat, if ambiguous, statement on the economy on Wednesday. Hurrah! Many interpreted his remarks — which followed a two-day meeting of the Fed’s policy-making committee and which noted, among other things, that the Fed expected the unemployment rate to decline to around 7 percent next summer, from its current perch of 7.6 percent — as signaling the beginning of the end for the controversial program known as quantitative easing, or Q.E., now in its third round. That program, in which the Fed has purchased tens of billions of dollars of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities a month, has kept interest rates at rock bottom since 2008, and helped propel stock and bond prices to their recent heights.

But since Mr. Bernanke’s remarks, the dominant market sentiment hasn’t been euphoria, but fear. What happened to change the mood so dramatically, so quickly? Is the panic selling justified — or is it just the first glimmer of hope that the Fed will finally take the metaphorical morphine drip out of the arm of the capital markets and allow the forces of supply and demand to set long-term interest rates?

Before answering those questions, it might be useful to review what exactly Mr. Bernanke said. First, he said that there should be no immediate change to the stimulus program. He said the economy looked as if it was slowly improving, that Fed officials saw signs that employment was picking up and that the inflation rate was hovering below the Fed’s target of 2 percent... He said that if these encouraging economic trends continued, then it might be appropriate to begin easing up a bit on the Fed’s $85 billion monthly bond purchases. He said that nothing was set in stone and that all depended on what the economic data revealed in the months to come. He made the analogy to driving a car. “Any slowing in the pace of purchases will be akin to letting up a bit on the gas pedal as the car picks up speed, not to beginning to apply the brakes,” he said.

But the fact that the bond and stock markets panicked in the wake of these relatively innocuous statements is a testament to how off-kilter things have gotten: the market has become addicted to the Fed’s artificial stimulus and the mere thought of its ending has brought on the ugly symptoms of withdrawal....The good news is that, finally, the artificial high might just be coming to an end. No addiction is healthy and this one is no exception. Weaning ourselves off the Fed’s cheap money will hurt. Between the sudden collapse of bond prices and the sharp drop in the stock market, investors are now feeling some pain. Good. A healthy economy demands that the price of borrowed money be set by the market to correspond with risk, not be distorted by a half-decade’s worth of interventions from a central bank. As we saw throughout much of 2007 and 2008, when markets badly misprice risk it can have disastrous consequences for economies throughout the world. The sooner we get clean, the better.

William D. Cohan, a former Wall Street banker, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, Wall Street and the Power of the Elite.”

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12. I'd like to mention my own personal relief

I feel much less crazy, now that the markets are much less crazy.

It shouldn't have made any difference what a bunch of silly computers and geeks do in the bit buckets of Wall St., but my sense of Reality was mightily offended.

Why should we plebes be forced to deal with the factual details of life: cleaning, taking out trash, changing diapers or the oil in the car, while they get to bounce improbable numbers off the ceiling and get HANDSOMELY paid for their efforts?

Did you know a home help care worker gets paid a munificent $8.50/hr by the State of Michigan, and then pays taxes on it?

That's what I mean by crazy.

[Demeter]

13. 7 ways to spot a market top: Key signals chart watchers use to find the peaks

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/7-ways-to-spot-a-market-top-2013-06-24?siteid=YAHOOB


WOULD A 500 POINT DROP IN A STOCK INDEX BE ONE OF THEM? SHEESH! TALK ABOUT "BAD TIMING"!

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16. The Rational Market Myth: Armageddon without nukes By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35370.htm

THE WHOLE ARTICLE IS WORTH READING, BUT I'LL JUST EXCERPT FROM THE CONCLUSION:

How is this going to play out? I suspect that the recovery, although officially a weak one, does not really exist. However, thanks to statistical artifacts that understate inflation and unemployment and overstate GDP growth, the Fed and the markets think that a recovery of sorts is in process and that the unprecedented money printing by the Fed will succeed in shifting the economy into high gear.

No such thing is likely to happen. Instead, as 2013 progresses, a further downturn will become visible through the orchestrated statistics. This time the Fed will have to get the printed money past the banks and into the economy, and inflation will explode. The dollar will collapse, and import prices--as globalism has turned the US into an import-dependent economy--will turn high inflation into hyperinflation. Disruptions in food and energy deliveries will become widespread, and a depreciated currency will cease to be used as a means of exchange.

I wouldn’t bet my life on this prediction, but I think it is as likely as the Fed’s prediction of a full recovery that allows the Fed to terminate its bond purchases and money printing by June 2014.

Americans, who have been on top of the world since the late 1940s, are not prepared for the adjustments that they are likely to have to make. And neither is their government.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

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17. The Big Plunge: What's Really Driving the Crashing Markets? By Mike Whitney

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35377.htm

Normally, stocks don’t fall off a cliff unless the economic data suddenly turns south or there are signs of an emerging crisis, like a run on the shadow banking system or threat to Middle East oil supplies. But neither of these played a part in this week’s equities massacre where the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunged 560-plus points in just two sessions and indices around the globe dipped deep into the red. What triggered this week’s selloff was an announcement from the Federal Reserve that it was planning to scale down it’s asset purchases (QE) in the latter part of 2013, and probably end the program sometime in the middle of 2014. Here’s the offending paragraph in the FOMC’s statement that lit the fuse:

“If the incoming data are broadly consistent with this forecast, the Committee currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the monthly pace of purchases later this year. And if the subsequent data remain broadly aligned with our current expectations for the economy, we would continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending purchases around midyear. In this scenario, when asset purchases ultimately come to an end, the unemployment rate would likely be in the vicinity of 7%, with solid economic growth supporting further job gains, a substantial improvement from the 8.1% unemployment rate that prevailed when the committee announced this program.” (FOMC)

Now–unless you think that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is a complete idiot–(WELL, I THINK HE IS! DEMETER) then you can assume that he knew what the reaction on Wall Street would be. After all, stock prices have more than doubled in the last 4 years mainly due to the Fed’s lavish liquidity spree. So any announcement that the program is “going away” was sure to send traders racing for the exits. Which it did. Traders were not having a “hissy fit” as many in the financial media have said. They were acting rationally. Absent the Fed’s turbo-charged monetary stimulus, stocks will go down, there’s no question about it. Current prices do not reflect fundamentals nor do they reflect the true health of the economy. They reflect a couple trillion dollars worth of UST and MBS purchases that have goosed stock prices dramatically. Traders know this, which is why they cashed in and walked away when Bernanke announced the prospective end of the program. They acted rationally. But why would Bernanke want to throw a bucket of cold water on the markets now? Is it because he really believes that the economy is gaining momentum and the labor market is steadily improving?

Hell no, that’s pure baloney. Again, Bernanke is not a moron. He sees what everyone else sees, that the headline unemployment number (7.6%) is rubbish that doesn’t reveal the rot beneath the surface; the abysmal participation rate, the sharp uptick in part-time workers, and the lousy starvation-wage positions that have replaced the good paying jobs. Trust me on this; Bernanke knows how to read a freaking jobs report. He knows the economy is crap and that people still can’t find work. Just look at this clip from the SF Fed’s own report on the condition of the economy. It will help you see that Bernanke really doesn’t believe the green shoots hype at all:

“Federal fiscal policy during the recession was abnormally expansionary by historical standards. However, over the past 2½ years it has become unusually contractionary as a result of several deficit reduction measures passed by Congress. During the next three years, we estimate that federal budgetary policy could restrain economic growth by as much as 1 percentage point annually beyond the normal fiscal drag that occurs during recoveries….

CBO projections and our estimate based on the countercyclical history of fiscal policy suggest that federal budget trends will weigh on growth much more severely over the next three years. The federal deficit is projected to decline faster than normal over the next three years, largely because tax revenue is projected to rise faster than usual. …The rapid decline in the federal deficit implies a drag on real GDP growth about 1 percentage point per year larger than the normal drag from fiscal policy during recoveries.” (“Fiscal Headwinds: Is the Other Shoe About to Drop?”, FRBSF)

See? So things are bad and they’re going to get worse. This isn’t a secret. Fiscal policy is DESIGNED to make things worse. It’s deliberate! It’s all there in black and white, read it again. So what’s really going on here? Why is Bernanke pretending that the future is looking so rosy, when the exact opposite is closer to the truth? Why is he announcing the end of a program that may never end? Just look at the rate of inflation, fer chrissakes! We are in a deflationary cycle. Inflation has been dropping for 3 straight months and–according to Bloomberg–” is at 53-year low, the lowest inflation since JFK was in office.” That means that the Fed will not hit its 2.5% inflation target and the bond buying will continue indefinitely. Guaranteed. Now, no matter how stupid or incompetent you may feel Bernanke is, I assure you, the Fed watches inflation like a hawk, and when the arrow starts to point down, they do everything in their power to get things going in the right direction again. They are always looking for the sweet spot because that’s the rate at which their constituents can rake in the biggest profits. In other words, they take inflation (or deflation) seriously.

But if that’s so, then why did Bernanke hardly mention inflation in the FOMC’s announcement?

He didn’t mention it because he’s trying to buffalo investors into thinking that QE is going to end sometime in the near future. But how can he end it, after all, unemployment is still high (and likely to go higher when the budget cuts kick in), GDP and output are weak, wages are flatlining, capital investment is non existent, corporations and financial institutions have money piled up around their eyeballs with nothing to invest in, middle class households have seen nearly half their wealth wiped out in the last five years, and the banks have a couple trillion more in deposits than loans because no one in their right mind is borrowing money in the middle of an effing Depression. If any of this sounds like an economic rebound, then maybe Bernanke is actually telling the truth and really plans to terminate QE next year. But I think that’s pretty bad bet, all things considered.

So let’s cut to the chase: The reason Pavlov Bernanke took away the punch bowl on Thursday and put markets into a tailspin, was because stocks are overheating and because his goofy printing operations have generated all kinds of risky behavior. Keep in mind, that it was Bernanke who said that he thought that goosing stock prices would create the “wealth effect” that would lead to a broader recovery in the real economy. Just as it was Bernanke who signaled that he would keep stocks from breaking lower. (The “Bernanke Put”). In other words, investors have just been following their Master’s lead, which is why they loaded up on stocks to begin with. And that’s why junk bond yields dropped to record lows. And that’s why margin debt climbed to record highs. And that’s why all the big corporations have been buying back their own shares hand over fist. And that’s why the financial markets are riddled with bubbles. It’s because Bernanke tacitly implied that he would support rising stock prices with lavish infusions of funny money NO MATTER WHAT. Well, guess what? Now Bernanke is worried. He’s worried that the real economy is still in the doldrums while bubbles are popping up everywhere in the financial markets; in stocks and bonds, CLOs, CDOs, MBS and every other dodgy debt instrument, derivative or swap. It’s all getting very frothy thanks to the Bernanke.

So, how does the Fed chair intend to “contain” the emergent asset bubble until he retires at the end of the year and returns to blissful academia? He’s going to keep doing what he’s doing right now; cherry-picking the data so he can rattle Wall Street’s cage every so often and keep stocks from zooming too far into the stratosphere. That’s the plan. Of course, he could just tell the truth–that QE has been great for Wall Street but done jack for anyone else. But I wouldn’t count on that.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. Whitney’s story on declining wages for working class Americans appears in the June issue of CounterPunch magazine. He can be reached at [e-mail].

[Demeter]

18. The Real State Of The Union Is Bleak By James Kunstler FROM FEBRUARY STATE OF UNION TIME

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33929.htm

The fog of chatter about Federal Reserve money-printing shenanigans, currency wars, fiscal intransigence, exchange rates, and alphabetized rescue operations conceals the central reality of the historical moment: that all industrial economies now face epic contraction, even rip-roaring China in its absurd and spectacular bid to become the latest drive-in utopia. The so-called advanced nations of the world are all sliding toward something less than they wish to be, and the so-called developing nations will backslide further into poverty and anarchy where development will never happen. The implacable contraction underway is the simple result of growing scarcity of cheap oil, the master resource.

Thus, in a world where fantasy has replaced analysis, the propaganda channels brim with false news of America's coming "energy independence" and the rebirth of domestic manufacturing, the coming electric car fleet, and space tourism. There is also chatter among the paranoid that an imagined elite has deliberately engineered American collapse for fun and profit, with sideshows about the Department of Homeland Security promoting social upheaval in order to make a show of putting it down. This is all b.s. concealing the futile machinations of people so unfortunate as to hold political office in an unraveling they can't control. Where control is no longer possible, paranoid fantasies fill the vacuum of wishing for control. One thing you can be sure of: the current sociopolitical weather will change. A front will blow through and sweep the fog away. So many circles of hazard are spinning around events that some fast-turning object will come off its axis and start smashing all the fantasies. When that happens, it will be every community for itself, and where there are no real communities -- for instance, the vast matrix of suburban noplaces that America emergently composed itself out of in a tragic quest to become its own televised fantasy -- we'll discover the dark side of the "liberty" that so-called conservatives endlessly invoke, in all its screaming eagle iconography.

Not since the Civil War (1861 - 65) has anything bad of this scale happened within the United States itself and the public is unprepared despite our total immersion in the on-screen ersatz heroics of avatars such as Dwayne Johnson. The terrible convulsion of the 1860s was preceded by a political time much like ours is now, with figures (calling them leaders is inaccurate) of no conviction backpedaling furiously toward strife....You can have plenty of economic activity -- especially if you re-form (literally) the systems we depend on, such as farming, commerce, medicine, and transportation -- but it won't be expressed favorably in the GDP stats or the balance sheets of CitiGroup and Morgan Stanley. At the core of this contraction is the disappearing act of real capital -- that is, accumulated wealth -- for the excellent reason that we are squandering what remains of it in the futile effort to keep living the way we do. But it will be vanishing fast, contrary to the view of such fantasists as David Leonhardt, Washington bureau chief of The New York Times -- catch him on the current Slate Political Gabfest -- who thinks that the Growth Fairy is about to land on the south lawn of the White House...Our economic system is burning down. Nobody wants to talk about the system that will have to replace it, which I call a world made by hand.

The fortunate few will be those who have already established themselves in an authentic community of helping hands, who have some tools -- and I don't mean Adobe Photoshop or the latest iPhone app -- and laid in some bits of silver and gold.

James Kunstler is the editor of www.Kunstler.com

[xchrom]

19. Emerging Markets Are Getting Crushed By A Double-Squeeze From China And The US

http://www.businessinsider.com/emerging-markets-are-getting-crushed-by-a-double-squeeze-from-china-and-the-us-2013-6

Short-term borrowing rates in China have soared to record highs as credit seizes up, prompting fears that the country’s liquidity squeeze may be spinning out of control.

The Shibor overnight lending rate in Shanghai spiked violently to 29pc, with wild moves in seven-day and one-month money. The central bank refused to intervene to calm markets, apparently determined to purge excess from the credit system.

China Securities Journal, a voice of the regulators, said: “We cannot use a fast money supply growth as in the past, or even faster, to promote economic growth.”

“I am extremely concerned about China,” said Lars Christensen from Danske Bank. “They are overdoing it and are on the verge of making the same mistake as the Fed and the European Central Bank before the Lehman crisis in 2008, when they failed to see how much the economy was slowing.”



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/emerging-markets-are-getting-crushed-by-a-double-squeeze-from-china-and-the-us-2013-6#ixzz2WwOURISK

[xchrom]

20. Edward Snowden Charged Under The Espionage Act

http://www.businessinsider.com/report-espionage-charges-filed-against-edward-snowden-2013-6

The U.S. government has filed a sealed criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, charging him with violations under the espionage act — including theft and unauthorized communications, according to the Washington Post.
The U.S. has also asked Hong Kong authorities to arrest him.

The Post cites "U.S. officials" as the source of its report.

The three charges are all felonies, each carrying a maximum of 10 years in prison: Theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/report-espionage-charges-filed-against-edward-snowden-2013-6#ixzz2WwOzq5Cw

[DemReadingDU]

25. The 7th case under Obama

The charges against Mr. Snowden, first reported by The Washington Post, are the seventh case under President Obama in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media. Under all previous presidents, just three such cases have been brought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/us/snowden-espionage-act.html?smid=tw-share

[xchrom]

26. +1

[DemReadingDU]

29. Actually, 8th

Snowden is the eighth person to be charged under the Espionage Act under Obama. This is more than all previous presidential administrations combined.

NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake was charged for espionage in April 2010 after he communicated information on surveillance programs to a Baltimore Sun reporter.

For disclosing classified information on FBI wiretaps to a blogger, FBI translator named Shamai Leibowitz was charged under the Espionage Act.

Pfc. Bradley Manning was charged with multiple violations of the Espionage Act in July 2010 after disclosing US government information to WikiLeaks.

Stephen Kim, a former State Department contractor, was charged in August 2010 for revealing classified information on North Korea to Fox News reporter James Rosen. (Rosen was labeled an “aider, abettor and co-conspirator” in the leak.)

In December 2010, a former CIA officer, Jeffrey Sterling, was charged under the Espionage Act after he communicated with New York Times reporter James Risen about Iran’s nuclear program in the 1990s. (The Obama Justice Department has fought in the courts to have a judge require Risen to testify against Sterling.)

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, was charged under the Espionage Act in January 2012 after he shared information related to a rendition operation with reporter Matthew Cole.

A much lesser-known individual, James Hitselberger, a former Navy linguist, was charged with violating the Espionage Act for providing classified documents to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

edit to add
just 3, under all previous presidents...

The three individuals charged under the Espionage Act prior to the eight under Obama were Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower charged under President Richard Nixon, Samuel T. Morison, a Navy civilian analyst who was charged under President Ronald Reagan and Lawrence Franklin, a Pentagon analyst charged under President George W. Bush.Morison leaked photographs of Soviet ships to alert America to what he perceived as a new threat. Franklin leaked information on Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

more background info...
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/06/21/snowden-becomes-eighth-person-to-be-indicted-for-espionage-by-the-obama-justice-department/

[xchrom]

21. Heart - These Dreams

[xchrom]

22. Brazilian mass protests change country’s happy-go-lucky image

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/21/brazilian-mass-protests-change-countrys-happy-go-lucky-image/



In a matter of days, Brazil’s image as the emerging economic power to watch, and a fun-loving one to boot, has given way to that of an angry, noisy giant as seas of protesters fill the streets.

After the intoxicating giddiness and visions of a limitless future that came with being chosen to host the World Cup next year and the 2016 Olympic Games, a painful and sobering reality has sunk in: for many people, life has not changed very much.

Stop just about anybody taking part in nationwide street protests that broke out 10 days ago — more than a million marched Thursday — and the gripes sound similar.

Sure, 15 minutes of global limelight are nice, but Brazil’s public schools are lousy, and so are public transport and the health system, the protesters say. And politicians are still seen as useless and corrupt.

[xchrom]

23. Brazil's president pledges to hold dialogue with protesters

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/22/uk-brazil-protests-idUKBRE95K0JW20130622


(Reuters) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff promised on Friday to hold a dialogue with members of a protest movement sweeping the country, but also said she would do whatever is necessary to maintain order in the wake of widespread vandalism and looting.

"We cannot live with this violence that shames Brazil," she said in a nationally televised address. "All institutions and public security forces should prevent, within the limits of the law, every form of violence and vandalism."

Rousseff spoke even as new demonstrations broke out on Friday, including one that for several hours blocked most passengers from entering or leaving the country's busiest international airport, outside Sao Paulo.

The protests have come out of seemingly nowhere over the past week. More than 1 million people took to the streets on Thursday in the biggest demonstrations in Brazil in 20 years.

[xchrom]

24. Tens of thousands march in Rome against unemployment

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/22/uk-italy-unemployment-protest-idUKBRE95L06O20130622


(Reuters) - Thousands of workers and unemployed people marched in Rome on Saturday to protest against record unemployment and call on Enrico Letta's two-month-old government to deliver more than empty rhetoric on the issue.

The rally, organised by the country's three largest union confederations, CGIL, CISL and UIL, was the first major protest since Letta's broad, left-right coalition took office following an inconclusive election in February.

Italian unemployment hit 12 percent in April, the highest level on record, and joblessness among people under 24 is at an all-time high above 40 percent.

Union chiefs, speaking before a flag-waving crowd estimated at more than 100,000 by the organisers, criticised Letta for what they called a lack of action on an urgent problem.

[xchrom]

27. 'Bigger and brighter supermoon' to light up night sky

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23013393

The night sky is set to be illuminated later by what will appear to be a much bigger and brighter Moon.

The so-called "supermoon" occurs when the Moon reaches its closest point to earth, known as a perigee full moon.

The effect is to make the Moon seem 30% bigger and 14% brighter than when it is furthest from the planet.

Skywatchers who miss the phenomenon this weekend because of cloudy skies will have to wait until August 2014 for the next one.

[Fuddnik]

30. Went to hear George Packer last night.

His is a profile in Dweebage.

He wrote a nice story in a book, but you can't pin him down on any positions.

He mentioned a wave of right-wing ideology starting in the seventies, and Newt Gingrich poisoning the atmosphere in Washington, and I brought up Chris Hedges thoughts in "Death of the Liberal Class", and he tried to let it pass. I brought up a point that all the institutions, that supported the middle class were pre-empted with status and access, and when he couldn't get away, just mumbled that "I agree with him on some things".

I didn't get a chance to get him when he said that David Brooks was trying to give him advice on how to write his book. I wanted to shout, "Why would you give that clueless asshole the time of day, anyway"?

Overall, it was a good little evening out. I was going to buy his book anyway, so, at least I got it signed. But, I won't put it next to my signed editions of Amy Goodmans works.

[Demeter]

31. Analysis: After the Fed shock, markets set for more turmoil

http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-fed-shock-markets-set-more-turmoil-120416046.html

Fasten your seatbelts. And expect lots of turbulence. If that was the message Ben Bernanke was trying to deliver when he said the Federal Reserve could soon start scaling back its massive stimulus program for the U.S. economy, it's safe to say investors received it loud and clear. In fact, the sell-off in stocks, bonds and commodities that rippled around the globe after Bernanke's remarks looks to some like the dawn of a new period of volatile, disorderly trade - a stark change from the calm that prevailed since the Fed began its most recent bond-buying program last autumn.

"When market regimes shift, they rarely do so in an orderly fashion - look at equity prices collapsing at the end of the dot-com bubble or the height of the financial crisis," said Stephen Sachs, head of capital markets at exchange-traded fund issuer ProShares in Bethesda, Maryland. "It usually gets violent. We're going to face that in interest rates now."

Indeed, the bond market is at the epicenter of the financial market earthquake that Bernanke unleashed. Benchmark yields, which Fed easing had driven to record lows, surged to near two-year highs and are expected to keep climbing as traders come to grips with the prospect of the Fed ending bond purchases by mid-2014. The aftershocks have rattled markets from Tokyo to Sao Paulo, and assets that had been top performers plunged. U.S. credit markets were hammered, with the gap between junk bond yields and Treasuries hitting their widest so far this year, while global equity markets lost $1 trillion on Thursday alone. The brute force of the decline caught some by surprise, since Bernanke warned in late May that the Fed could slow its bond buying later this year. Even so, watching long-term interest rates rise 0.4 percentage points for the week - the biggest move in more than 10 years - after trading for months near record lows was a wake-up call.

"People live in denial all the time," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at investment management firm Fort Pitt Capital in Pittsburgh. "The thinking part of people's brains understood that rates would have to go up sometime. But they weren't ready to be told that reality starts now."

That goes for companies who now face higher funding costs and investors who had borrowed money cheaply to trade. Investors had been funding trades in riskier markets by borrowing in the stable, low-interest-rate U.S. debt market. But the cost to borrow rises with higher rates and with increased volatility - both of which appear to be here to stay, at least for now. Dan Fuss, vice chairman of investment management firm Loomis Sayles & Co, which manages $191 billion in funds, said: "Leverage is coming out of the market. These market moves reflect that, but when you get sharp moves like this a lot of people get nervous. That can contribute to more selling."

Bond investors hoping to play "follow the Fed" forever face an even more frightening reality. As Zane Brown, a fixed income strategist at asset manager Lord Abbett & Co noted, a return to a more normal level of interest rates would result in a zero total return over the next five years for investors benchmarked to the popular Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. Investors pulled $15.1 billion out of taxable bond funds in the first three weeks of June, according to Lipper, a Thomson Reuters service. That is the biggest three-week outflow from the funds since October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis.

"HYPER-SENSITIVE"

All of this has left traders and investors scrambling to protect themselves in anticipation of a volatile summer. Trading in interest-rate futures contracts spiked to a record in late May when Bernanke first broached the subject of winding down stimulus. It soared again this week, when some 12.8 million contracts changed hands on Thursday, according to CME Group, well above May's daily average of 7.9 million. Volume in S&P 500 index options rose to 2.3 million contracts on Thursday, a new one-day record, while overall options volume of 33.3 million contracts made it the busiest day since August 9, 2011, four days after Standard & Poor's stripped the United States of its top credit rating.

Since Bernanke has insisted that winding down bond purchases depends on continued economic improvement, traders now have to assume nearly every economic data release will have the potential to whipsaw financial markets.

"Across the board, we have seen people paying up for insurance in the options market," said J.J. Kinahan, chief strategist at online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. "The market is going to be hyper-sensitive to anything that the Fed says, and the three major reports on employment, retail sales and housing will continue to dominate the eyes of the market."

The CBOE Volatility Index, a gauge of anxiety on Wall Street, jumped 23 percent on Thursday to 20.49, the first time this year it has exceeded 20, an often-used dividing line between calm and stressed markets. It closed at 18.90 on Friday. Signs of concern about high-flying assets like emerging markets can be seen in the options market, where more than 1.35 million contracts in the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund traded on Thursday - 82 percent of which were put options, generally used to protect against losses. The Merrill Lynch MOVE Index, a measure of expected volatility in the U.S. Treasury market, rose to 103.7 on Friday; that index sat at 50 in early May, a multi-year low. The uncertainty the Fed has sowed by telling markets they are on their own means the days of almost uninterrupted gains that have prevailed since late last year are over. And that brings problems of its own for investors and the market. For one thing, violent price swings make investors more vulnerable to big losses, prompting them to sell assets simply to reduce their value-at-risk (VaR) levels, a statistical method for quantifying portfolio risk over a given period of time. Rack up enough of these forced liquidations and it is not hard to see how a sell-off in one market can spread quickly to other assets and other parts of the world. Bob Lynch, head of G10 FX strategy at HSBC, said this was a factor driving the bond and equity sell-off in late May "and could be an important input driving financial assets lower in the current environment."

"It is too early to tell if the market reaction to the Fed is just noise or the beginning of a greater sell-off in U.S. equities," said Mike Tosaw, portfolio manager at RCM Wealth Advisors, an investment advisory firm in Chicago.

"Over the course of the last month, we have been taking money off the table in the stock market and keeping the cash for the time being. Early next week, we plan to evaluate if this is a buying opportunity in stocks or if we need to run for the hills."

[Demeter]

32. Sorry to be MIA...I've been playing dialing for a human voice

When my cell phone experienced the white screen of death, and became much less useful than it was, I went searching for sensible and economical ways to replace it.

HAH!

Thanks to DU people's advice, I decided to go to Tracfone. The first attempt was a total bust. Radio Shacks teeny-boppers couldn't manage it.

Then my Sis and I went to (the horrible, evil, shudder) Walmart, which seemed to have a very understandable product. So I bought a phone, for a reasonable amount. (DOUBLE_HAH! A phone should not break, they didn't used to be so unreliable).

Then began the ordeal of transferring the old cell phone (Verizon) number. This took more hours than it was worth, but it's finally done.

I'm now learning the bells and whistles on this new phone. As much as my frayed patience can stand at any one time.

And then, there was trying to close out the Verizon bill...with their system not working on line, and the automatic payment plan wasn't going to work, because that was with the account formerly known as INGDirect, which I closed last week...

But it appears that Some Progress has been made. I'm just waiting for their Customer Serivce questionnaire about why I switched. I'll be sure to mention IN VERY LOUD VOICE: NSA.

[Fuddnik]

33. I got a new phone a couple of weeks ago.

Smartphones show you who the smart one is in the equation. And it's not me.

Hopefully I'll figure this thing out before it breaks.

[Demeter]

35. I went for a dumb phone...well, dumber

My first cell phone, the Motorola brick, was a really dumb phone. All you could do was dial and answer. And take out muggers with it.

Of course, it lasted 10 years...until I couldn't get new battery pack.

[xchrom]

38. my tv remote shows me who's boss. nt

[Demeter]

41. Well, Don't Leave Us in Suspense!

Who IS the boss, chez X?

Good morning, by the way (any day I have enough papers is a GOOD day. If it weren't so humid, it would be a GREAT day--but the pool will open in an hour....)

[xchrom]

42. my tv remote outsmarts me every damn time!

so far the humidity hasn't been so bad -- but it is starting to heat up.

have fun at the pool -- i'm jealous!

[kickysnana]

61. Comcast went out with the storm

So I had to hook up the broadcast receiver boxes with bunny ears for two TV's. Managed to easily get in 50% of the broadcast channels both VHF and UHF without fine tuning. The biggest problem was emptying the VHS tape drawer on the media center so I could pull it out and retrieve the remote that had fallen back there last year. Comcast was out about 15 hours, not bad as there are still over 500k homes without power. It was the biggest loss of power ever here, 100% bigger than the biggest previously.

Two huge cottonwood trees went down on the far side of the rear parking lot from straight-line winds and it managed to flood the west wall AC unit to the point of dripping out the front during the first huge storm. That has never happened before.

FYI. I dutifully got my tetanus and whooping cough booster on Thursday but I still think that the current laws in the wrong hands, could be used to wipe out a large portion of the population legally. But hey you could apply to the fund for compensation, no?

[DemReadingDU]

37. A couple years ago, my previous phone got a BSOD

Blue Screen of Death


It actually still worked, but I couldn't see who was calling me. And I could still call out, just couldn't see the numbers I was inputting.

I tried taking out the battery and putting the battery back in. I tried freezing the entire phone. But the screen was unrecoverable, so I got a different phone, a Pantech. It has a built–in music player for the MP3. It worked well, but it wore down the battery very quickly. It's just a basic phone now, which is really all I need.

[Demeter]

34. U.S. Seemingly Unaware of Irony in Accusing Snowden of Spying by Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The United States government charged former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden with spying on Friday, apparently unaware that in doing so it had created a situation dripping with irony.

At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face.

“These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”

Seemingly not kidding, the spokesman went on to discuss another charge against Mr. Snowden—the theft of government documents: “The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”

“Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy,” added the spokesman, apparently serious.

[Demeter]

40. Go Ed Go! Hong Kong: Snowden Has Left The Country

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/23/194787357/hong-kong-snowden-has-left-the-country?ft=1&f=1001

A former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for revealing two highly classified surveillance programs has been allowed to leave for a "third country" because a U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with Hong Kong law, the territory's government said Sunday.

A statement from the government did not identify the country, but the South China Morning Post, which has been in contact with Edward Snowden, reported that he was on a plane for Moscow, but that Russia was not his final destination. Snowden, who has been in hiding in Hong Kong for several weeks since he revealed information on the highly classified spy programs, has talked of seeking asylum in Iceland. Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency, citing an unidentified Aeroflot official, said Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then take a flight to Caracas, Venezuela.

Snowden's departure came a day after the United States made a formal request for his extradition and warned Hong Kong against delaying the process of returning him to face trial in the U.S. The Hong Kong government said Snowden left "on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel." It acknowledged the U.S. extradition request, but said U.S. documentation did not "fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law." It said additional information was requested from Washington, but since the Hong Kong government "has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong." The statement said Hong Kong had informed the U.S. of Snowden's departure. It added that it wanted more information about alleged hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies which Snowden had revealed.

Snowden's departure eliminates a possible fight between Washington and Beijing at a time when China is trying to deflect U.S. accusations that it carries out extensive surveillance of American government and commercial operations. Hong Kong, a former British colony, has a high degree of autonomy and is granted rights and freedoms not seen on mainland China, but under the city's mini constitution Beijing is allowed to intervene in matters involving defense and diplomatic affairs. Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the U.S., but the document has some exceptions, including for crimes deemed political. The Obama administration on Saturday warned Hong Kong against delaying Snowden's extradition, with White House national security adviser Tom Donilon saying in an interview with CBS News, "Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States in law enforcement matters, and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case."

Snowden's departure came as the South China Morning Post released new allegations from Snowden that U.S. hacking targets in China included the nation's cellphone companies and two universities hosting extensive Internet traffic hubs. He told the newspaper that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." It added that Snowden said he had documents to support the hacking allegations, but the report did not identify the documents. It said he spoke to the newspaper in a June 12 interview. With a population of more than 1.3 billion, China has massive cellphone companies. China Mobile is the world's largest mobile network carrier with 735 million subscribers, followed by China Unicom with 258 million users and China Telecom with 172 million users. Snowden said Tsinghua University in Beijing and Chinese University in Hong Kong, home of some of the country's major Internet traffic hubs, were targets of extensive hacking by U.S. spies this year. He said the NSA was focusing on so-called "network backbones" in China, through which enormous amounts of Internet data passes.

The Chinese government has not commented on the extradition request and Snowden's departure, but its state-run media have used Snowden's allegations to poke back at Washington after the U.S. had spent the past several months pressuring China on its international spying operations. A commentary published Sunday by the official Xinhua News Agency said Snowden's disclosures of U.S. spying activities in China have "put Washington in a really awkward situation...Washington should come clean about its record first. It owes ... an explanation to China and other countries it has allegedly spied on," it said. "It has to share with the world the range, extent and intent of its clandestine hacking programs."

HOW DOES IT FEEL...TO BE ON YOUR OWN...OBAMA?

[Demeter]

36. Nicaragua gives Chinese firm contract to build alternative to Panama Canal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nicaragua-china-panama-canal

Project will reinforce China's growing influence on global trade and weaken US dominance over a key shipping route...Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The president of the country's national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40bn (£26bn) project, which will reinforce Beijing's growing influence on global trade and weaken US dominance over the key shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The name of the company and other details have yet to be released, but the opposition congressman Luis Callejas said the government planned to grant a 100-year lease to the Chinese operator.

The national assembly will debate two bills on the project, including an outline for an environmental impact assessment, on Friday. Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, said recently that the new channel would be built through the waters of Lake Nicaragua. The new route will be a higher-capacity alternative to the 99-year-old Panama Canal, which is currently being widened at the cost of $5.2bn. Last year, the Nicaraguan government noted that the new canal should be able to allow passage for mega-container ships with a dead weight of up to 250,000 tonnes. This is more than double the size of the vessels that will be able to pass through the Panama Canal after its expansion, it said. According to a bill submitted to congress last year, Nicaragua's canal will be 22 metres deep and 286 km (178 miles) long - bigger than Panama and Suez in all dimensions. Under the initial plans for the project, the government was expected to be the majority shareholder, with construction taking 10 years and the first ship passing through the canal within six years. It is unclear if this is still the case.

Two former Colombian officials recently accused China of influencing the international court of justice to secure the territorial waters that Nicaragua needs for the project. In an op-ed piece for the magazine Semana, Noemí Sanín, a former Colombian foreign secretary, and Miguel Ceballos, a former vice-minister of justice, said a Chinese judge had settled in Nicaragua's favour on a 13-year-old dispute over 75,000 square kilometres of sea. They said this took place soon after Nicaraguan officials signed a memorandum of understanding last September with Wang Jing, the chairman of Xinwei Telecom and president of the newly established Hong Kong firm HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company, to build and operate the canal.

Nicaragua has accused Colombia and Costa Rica, which has a claim on territory likely to be used by the new canal, of trying to prevent the project going ahead.

[xchrom]

39. Special report: How community spirit pays a dividend

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/special-report-how-community-spirit-pays-a-dividend-8669751.html



Alston, England's highest market town, sitting in north-east Cumbria, is so remote that it will take you 20 minutes to reach it from the nearest big town. Its parish is deemed so rural that big companies refuse to supply it with high-speed broadband.

But this community made up of 2,100 people will make its mark on British history this week. Alston Moor will become Britain's first certified "Social Enterprise Town". The former mining hub, famous as a stop-off for cyclists on their tour of the Pennines, is being heralded as a "trailblazer" for a "new era of social innovation in Britain."

The parish – made up of Alston town and the villages of Garrigill and Nenthead – lost its lead mines in the 1950s. Thirty years later, the largest employer in the area – a foundry employing more than 200 – closed its doors. It is noted as having "high" socio-economic needs, made worse by the fact that the town is virtually cut off from the rest of the country during bad winters; even in summer, buses are few and far between.

But it has a trump card: its community. When BT refused to provide up-to-date internet without government subsidies, Alston Moor set up its own community-owned co-operative, Cybermoor, to provide broadband. Residents bought shares in the company and local labour dug up the roads to install the fibre cable needed. In the next month, it is hoped 300 homes will have high-speed broadband.

[Demeter]

43. The Great Disconnect By ROSS DOUTHAT

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-great-disconnect.html?_r=0

THIS January, as President Obama began his second term, the Pew Research Center asked Americans to list their policy priorities for 2013. Huge majorities cited jobs and the economy; sizable majorities cited health care costs and entitlement reform; more modest majorities cited fighting poverty and reforming the tax code. Down at the bottom of the list, with less than 40 percent support in each case, were gun control, immigration and climate change.

Yet six months later, the public’s non-priorities look like the entirety of the White House’s second-term agenda. The president’s failed push for background checks has given way to an ongoing push for immigration reform, and the administration is reportedly planning a sweeping regulatory push on carbon emissions this summer. Meanwhile, nobody expects much action on the issues that Americans actually wanted Washington to focus on: tax and entitlement reform have been back-burnered, and the plight of the unemployed seems to have dropped off the D.C. radar screen entirely...

AND BLAME IT ON GRIDLOCK...SURE! THAT'S AN EVER-FAVORITE EXCUSE!

... After all, gun control, immigration reform and climate change aren’t just random targets of opportunity. They’re pillars of Acela Corridor ideology, core elements of Bloombergism, places where Obama-era liberalism overlaps with the views of Davos-goers and the Wall Street 1 percent. If you move in those circles, the political circumstances don’t necessarily matter: these ideas always look like uncontroversial common sense.

Step outside those circles, though, and the timing of their elevation looks at best peculiar, at worst perverse. The president decided to make gun control legislation a major second-term priority ... with firearm homicides at a 30-year low. Congress is pursuing a sharp increase in low-skilled immigration ... when the foreign-born share of the American population is already headed for historical highs. The administration is drawing up major new carbon regulations ... when actual existing global warming has been well below projections for 15 years and counting.


A MUST READ~DEBUNKS THE WHOLE IDEA OF A SECOND-TERM CURSE (UNLESS IT'S SELF-INFLICTED, WHICH THIS ONE IS!)

[Demeter]

44. Economy won’t shift into higher gear soon: Latest evidence likely to point to steady, lackluster

AND THAT'S ONLY IF YOU IGNORE THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN....

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/economy-wont-shift-into-higher-gear-soon-2013-06-23?siteid=YAHOOB

...The Fed’s forecast is notably more optimistic than the estimates of most private-sector economists...And unfortunately, the central bank’s predictions haven’t been all that great. It has repeatedly overestimated growth.

“They’ve never really covered themselves in glory when it comes to forecasting,” Shapiro noted.

[Demeter]

45. World's largest Bitcoin exchange suspends US withdrawals

SO TAKE IT OUT IN A CURRENCY THAT'S WORTH SOMETHING...

http://rt.com/business/largest-bitcoin-exchange-suspends-withdrawals-094/

For the next two weeks Bitcoin users in the US will be unable to withdraw the virtual currency in dollars. Major exchange Mt. Gox cited an unusually high demand as the reason for the suspension, while customers worried the company has run out of cash.

Mt. Gox, based in Tokyo, Japan, handles approximately 80 per cent of Bitcoin transactions in the US and 70 per cent internationally. The popularity of the service, which allows customers to buy and sell items with relative anonymity, has led, indirectly, to the current transaction freeze.

“Over the past week Mt. Gox has experienced rising volumes of deposits and withdrawals from established and upcoming markets interested in Bitcoin,” a company statement explained. “This increased volume has made it difficult for our bank to process the transactions smoothly and within a timely manner, which has created unnecessary delays for our global customers. This is especially so for those in the United States who are requesting wire transfer withdrawals from their accounts.”

Users are still able to deposit into Mt. Gox and continue trading on other Bitcoin services, but the update has fueled speculation that the largest Bitcoin provider has grown too quickly and simply run out of cash, an allegation the company has not addressed publicly.

“We are currently making improvement to process withdrawals of the United States Dollar denominations, and as a result are temporarily suspending cash withdrawals of USD for the next two weeks,” the statement continued. “Please be reassured that USD deposits and transfers to Mt. Gox will remain unaffected, as will deposits and withdrawals in other currencies, and we will be resuming USD withdrawals once the process is completed.”

Recent estimates indicate the number of Bitcoins in circulation is at approximately 11 million, with the collective market value nearing $1.4 billion. The price of one Bitcoin was 107 Friday, after fluctuating wildly in recent months, according to bitcoincharts.com.

While economists admit Bitcoin could have a bright financial future, its instability has been a point of reluctance for would-be investors. The temporary withdrawal restriction will almost certainly be another reason for hesitancy.

“Without a safe infrastructure, a digital currency will never achieve widespread adoption by a mainstream audience,” wrote Mark Courtney, a product and services director at GBGroup, an identity intelligence company, for Wired. “The initial success of Bitcoin proves that there is appetite for a type of digital currency, but without making the service trustworthy, more trading floors will close.”

[Demeter]

46. U.S. Weighs Doubling Leverage Standard for Biggest Banks

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-21/u-s-weighs-doubling-leverage-standard-for-biggest-banks.html

U.S. regulators are considering doubling a minimum capital requirement for the largest banks, which could force some of them to halt dividend payments.

The standard would increase the amount of capital the lenders must hold to 6 percent of total assets, regardless of their risk, according to four people with knowledge of the talks. That’s twice the level set by global banking supervisors.

U.S. regulators last year proposed implementing the 3 percent international requirement for what’s known as the simple leverage ratio. Now the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., under pressure from lawmakers, are weighing increasing that figure for some of the biggest banks, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

“The 3 percent was clearly inadequate, nothing really,” said Simon Johnson, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. “Going up to five or six will make the rule be worth something. Having a lot of capital is crucial for banks to be sound. The leverage ratio is a good safety tool because risk-weighting can be gamed by banks so easily.”




MUCH MORE AT LINK, INCLUDING WHO THE LUCKY BANKSTERS ARE...THAT MIGHT BE A WAY TO CUT THE DAMN BONUSES!

[xchrom]

47. The Revolt of the Global Middle Class

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/the-revolt-of-the-global-middle-class/277125/


Brazilians hold a demonstration with a banner that reads, "Villainous politician. Lower your salary," in Sao Paulo on June 22, 2013. (Reuters)

Alper, a 26-year-old Turkish corporate lawyer, has benefited enormously from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rule. He is one of millions of young Turks who rode the country's economic boom to a lifestyle his grandparents could scarcely imagine.

Yet he loathes Erdogan, participated in the Taksim Square demonstrations and is taking part in the new " standing man" protests in Istanbul.

"The prime minister is continuing to blatantly lie about the demonstrations," said Alper, who asked that his last name not be used because he feared arrest. "People are actually scared that if they stop this momentum, then the government will feel free to exercise more force."

From Turkey to Brazil to Iran the global middle class is awakening politically. The size, focus and scope of protests vary, but this is not unfolding chaos -- it is nascent democracy. Citizens are demanding basic political rights, accountable governments and a fairer share of resources.

[Demeter]

48. IRS Sent $46,378,040 in Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens at 1 Atlanta Address

THE SOURCE IS SUSPECT...BUT THE ACCUSATION IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-sent-46378040-refunds-23994-unauthorized-aliens-1-atlanta-address

The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically used by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to “unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta.

The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.

Other locations on the IG’s Top Ten list for singular addresses that were theoretically used simultaneously by thousands of unauthorized alien workers, included an address in Oxnard, Calif, where the IRS sent 2,507 refunds worth $10,395,874; an address in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the IRS sent 2,408 refunds worth $7,284,212; an address in Phoenix, Ariz., where the IRS sent 2,047 refunds worth $5,558,608; an address in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where the IRS sent 1,972 refunds worth $2,256,302; an address in San Jose, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,942 refunds worth $5,091,027; and an address in Arvin, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,846 refunds worth $3,298,877.

Since 1996, the IRS has issued what it calls Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to two classes of persons: 1) non-resident aliens who have a tax liability in the United States, and 2) aliens living in the United States who are “not authorized to work in the United States.”

The IRS has long known it was giving these numbers to illegal aliens, and thus facilitating their ability to work illegally in the United States. For example, the Treasury Inspector General’s Semiannual Report to Congress published on Oct. 29, 1999—nearly fourteen years ago—specifically drew attention to this problem.

“The IRS issues Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to undocumented aliens to improve nonresident alien compliance with tax laws. This IRS practice seems counter-productive to the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s (INS) mission to identify undocumented aliens and prevent unlawful alien entry,” TIGTA warned in that long-ago report.

The inspector general’s 2012 audit report on the IRS’s handling of ITINs was spurred by two IRS employees who went to members of Congress "alleging that IRS management was requiring employees to assign Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) even when the applications were fraudulent.”

In an August 2012 press release accompanying the audit report, TIGTA said the report “validated” the complaints of the IRS employees.

“TIGTA’s audit found that IRS management has not established adequate internal controls to detect and prevent the assignment of an ITIN to individuals submitting questionable applications,” said Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George. “Even more troubling, TIGTA found an environment which discourages employees from detecting fraudulent applications.”

In addition to the 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 that the IRS sent to a single address in Atlanta, the IG also discovered that the IRS had assigned 15,796 ITINs to unauthorized aliens who presumably used a single Atlanta address.

The IRS, according to TIGTA, also assigned ITINs to 15,028 unauthorized aliens presumably using a single address in Dallas, Texas, and 10,356 to unauthorized aliens presumably living at a single address in Atlantic City, N.J.

Perhaps the most remarkable act of the IRS was this: It assigned 6,411 ITINs to unauthorized aliens presumably using a single address in Morganton, North Carolina. According to the 2010 Census, there were only 16,681 people in Morganton. So, for the IRS to have been correct in issuing 6,411 ITINS to unauthorized aliens at a single address in Morganton it would have meant that 38 percent of the town’s total population were unauthorized alien workers using a single address.

TIGTA said there were 154 addresses around the country that appeared on 1,000 or more ITIN applications made to the IRS.


ANYBODY HEARD ANYTHING FROM ANOTHER SOURCE ABOUT THIS?

[Fuddnik]

62. I'd say suspect.

Go to their home page. Brent Bozell, Pat Buchanan,.......

[Demeter]

49. White House Petition To Pardon Edward Snowden Passes 100,000

http://www.ibtimes.com/white-house-petition-pardon-edward-snowden-passes-100000-1318939



So, How Will The White House Respond To The 'Pardon Edward Snowden' Petition?

A petition filed on the White House’s website to pardon Edward Snowden passed more than 100,000 signatures on Saturday, a day after news broke that the whistle-blower was charged by the federal government....

“Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a full, free and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs,” the petition said.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD

The appeal, which garnered 100,529 signatures by 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, was created on June 9 and had a one-month deadline to gather the 100,000 names needed to elicit a response from the White House....

I CAN SEE THE RESPONSE NOW...A GENERAL ROUNDUP AND INCARCERATION OF ALL THE PETITION SIGNERS. IF YOU DON'T SEE ME POSTING, YOU'LL KNOW WHERE I AM...


...(SNOWDON) has said he wants to apply for asylum in Iceland, which exactly three years ago, under the advice of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, passed one of the world’s strongest press and whistle-blower protection laws. But the Icelandic government said earlier this week that it would only offer a haven to Snowden if he applied on its soil....

[Demeter]

50. Delusions of Power

[Demeter]

51. ALL WARS ARE BANKERS' WARS! By Michael Rivero

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php

I know many people have a great deal of difficulty comprehending just how many wars are started for no other purpose than to force private central banks onto nations, so let me share a few examples, so that you understand why the US Government is mired in so many wars against so many foreign nations. There is ample precedent for this.

The United States fought the American Revolution primarily over King George III's Currency act, which forced the colonists to conduct their business only using printed bank notes borrowed from the Bank of England at interest. After the revolution, the new United States adopted a radically different economic system in which the government issued its own value-based money, so that private banks like the Bank of England were not siphoning off the wealth of the people through interest-bearing bank notes.

"The refusal of King George 3rd to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the revolution." -- Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father

But bankers are nothing if not dedicated to their schemes to acquire your wealth, and know full well how easy it is to corrupt a nation's leaders. Just one year after Mayer Amschel Rothschild had uttered his infamous "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws", the bankers succeeded in setting up a new Private Central Bank called the First Bank of the United States, largely through the efforts of the Rothschild's chief US supporter, Alexander Hamilton. Founded in 1791, by the end of its twenty year charter the First Bank of the United States had almost ruined the nation's economy, while enriching the bankers. Congress refused to renew the charter and signaled their intention to go back to a state issued value based currency on which the people paid no interest at all to any banker. This resulted in a threat from Nathan Mayer Rothschild against the US Government, "Either the application for renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war." Congress still refused to renew the charter for the First Bank of the United States, whereupon Nathan Mayer Rothschild railed, "Teach those impudent Americans a lesson! Bring them back to colonial status!" The British Prime Minister at the time, Spencer Perceval was adamently opposed to war with the United States, primarily because the majority of England's military might was occupied with the ongoing Napoleonic wars. Spencer Perceval was concerned that Britain might not prevail in a new American war, a concern shared by many in the British government. Then, Spencer Perceval was assassinated (the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated in office) and replaced by Robert Banks Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who was fully supportive of a war to recapture the colonies. Financed at virtually no interest by the Rothschild controlled Bank of England, Britain then provoked the war of 1812 to recolonize the United States and force them back into the slavery of the Bank of England, or to plunge the United States into so much debt they would be forced to accept a new private central bank. And the plan worked. Even though the War of 1812 was won by the United States, Congress was forced to grant a new charter for yet another private bank issuing the public currency as loans at interest, the Second Bank of the United States. Once again, private bankers were in control of the nation's money supply and cared not who made the laws or how many British and American soldiers had to die for it.

Once again the nation was plunged into debt, unemployment, and poverty by the predations of the private central bank, and in 1832 Andrew Jackson successfully campaigned for his second term as President under the slogan, "Jackson And No Bank!" True to his word, Jackson succeeds in blocking the renewal of the charter for the Second Bank of the United States.

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!" -- Andrew Jackson, shortly before ending the charter of the Second Bank of the United States. From the original minutes of the Philadelphia committee of citizens sent to meet with President Jackson (February 1834), according to Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels

Shortly after President Jackson (the only American President to actually pay off the National Debt) ended the Second Bank of the United States, there was an attempted assassination which failed when both pistols used by the assassin, Richard Lawrence, failed to fire. Lawrence later said that with Jackson dead, "Money would be more plenty."

Of course, the public school system is as subservient to the bankers' wishes to keep certain history from you, just as the corporate media is subservient to Monsanto's wishes to keep the dangers of GMOs from you, and the global warming cult's wishes to conceal from you that the Earth has actually been cooling for the last 16 years. Thus is should come as little surprise that much of the real reasons for the events of the Civil War are not well known to the average American...

MORE AT LINK. ANOTHER MUST READ

[Demeter]

52. It’s the Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule the World By Ellen Brown

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32975.htm#idc-cover

In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system.

This hidden tribute to the banks will come as a surprise to most people, who think that if they pay their credit card bills on time and don’t take out loans, they aren’t paying interest. This, says Dr. Kennedy, is not true. Tradesmen, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all along the chain of production rely on credit to pay their bills. They must pay for labor and materials before they have a product to sell and before the end buyer pays for the product 90 days later. Each supplier in the chain adds interest to its production costs, which are passed on to the ultimate consumer. Dr. Kennedy cites interest charges ranging from 12% for garbage collection, to 38% for drinking water to, 77% for rent in public housing in her native Germany.

Her figures are drawn from the research of economist Helmut Creutz, writing in German and interpreting Bundesbank publications. They apply to the expenditures of German households for everyday goods and services in 2006; but similar figures are seen in financial sector profits in the United States, where they composed a whopping 40% of U.S. business profits in 2006. That was five times the 7% made by the banking sector in 1980. Bank assets, financial profits, interest, and debt have all been growing exponentially.

?w=600&h=440

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept12/cui-bono-Fed9-12.html

Exponential growth in financial sector profits has occurred at the expense of the non-financial sectors, where incomes have at best grown linearly.

?w=480&h=600

By 2010, 1% of the population owned 42% of financial wealth, while 80% of the population owned only 5% percent of financial wealth. Dr. Kennedy observes that the bottom 80% pay the hidden interest charges that the top 10% collect, making interest a strongly regressive tax that the poor pay to the rich....Exponential growth is unsustainable. In nature, sustainable growth progresses in a logarithmic curve that grows increasingly more slowly until it levels off (the red line in the first chart above). Exponential growth does the reverse: it begins slowly and increases over time, until the curve shoots up vertically (the chart below). Exponential growth is seen in parasites, cancers . . . and compound interest. When the parasite runs out of its food source, the growth curve suddenly collapses.

?w=600&h=580


MUCH MORE AT LINK--BOOKMARK AND SPREAD IT AROUND!

[Demeter]

53. Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/08/neoliberalism-financial-elite-governments-ransom?

The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe...The International Monetary Fund has admitted that some of the decisions it made in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis were wrong, and that the €130bn first bailout of Greece was "bungled". Well, yes. If it hadn't been a mistake, then it would have been the only bailout and everyone in Greece would have lived happily ever after.

Actually, the IMF hasn't quite admitted that it messed things up. It has said instead that it went along with its partners in "the Troika" – the European Commission and the European Central Bank – when it shouldn't have. The EC and the ECB, says the IMF, put the interests of the eurozone before the interests of Greece. The EC and the ECB, in turn, clutch their pearls and splutter with horror that they could be accused of something so petty as self-preservation.

The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece. Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity", have cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a suitably tragic mask.

Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the problem. They know the crash was a debt-bubble that burst. What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the merry days of reckless lending are never going to return; even if they do, the same thing will happen again, but more quickly and more savagely. The thing is this: the crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as the philosopher John Gray has said all along....

MORE

[Demeter]

54. How American Society Unravelled After Greedy Elites Robbed the Country Blind

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-american-society-unravelled?akid=10604.227380.BvNwCb&rd=1&src=newsletter858343&t=5





In or around 1978, America's character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

This unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left large numbers of Americans – black people and other minorities, women, gay people – out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress, courts, churches, schools, news organisations, business-labour partnerships. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a nonviolent mass uprising led by black southerners, but it drew essential support from all of these institutions, which recognised the moral and legal justice of its claims, or, at the very least, the need for social peace. The Roosevelt Republic had plenty of injustice, but it also had the power of self-correction.

Americans were no less greedy, ignorant, selfish and violent then than they are today, and no more generous, fair-minded and idealistic. But the institutions of American democracy, stronger than the excesses of individuals, were usually able to contain and channel them to more useful ends. Human nature does not change, but social structures can, and they did.

At the time, the late 1970s felt like shapeless, dreary, forgettable years. Jimmy Carter was in the White House, preaching austerity and public-spiritedness, and hardly anyone was listening. The hideous term "stagflation", which combined the normally opposed economic phenomena of stagnation and inflation, perfectly captured the doldrums of that moment. It is only with the hindsight of a full generation that we can see how many things were beginning to shift across the American landscape, sending the country spinning into a new era....

[Demeter]

55. Follow the Money: The Secret Heart of the Secret State By Chris Floyd

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35389.htm

No one, anywhere, has been writing about the deeper and wider implications of the Snowden revelations than Arthur Silber. (I hope you're not surprised by this.) In a series of powerful, insightful essays, Silber has, among other things, laid bare the dangers of the oddly circumscribed 'gatekeeper' approach of the journalistic guardians (at, ironically, the Guardian) of Snowden's secrets, particularly their slow drip-feed of carefully self-censored tidbits from the famous Powerpoint presentation that Snowden secreted from the bowels of the United Stasi of the American intelligent apparat. Eschewing the Wikileaks approach, the guardians at the Guardian have not let us judge the material for ourselves, opting instead to adopt, unwittingly, the same approach of the apparat: "we are the keepers of knowledge, we will decide what you need to know."

As Silber notes, this doesn't vitiate the worth of the revelations, but it does dilute their impact, leaving gaps that the apparat -- and its truly repulsive apologists all through the 'liberal media' -- can exploit to keep muddying the waters. He explores these ramifications, and others, in "In Praise of Mess, Chaos and Panic" and "Fed Up With All the Bullshit."

In his latest piece, "'Intelligence, Corporatism and the Dance of Death," he cuts to the corroded heart of the matter, the deep, dark not-so-secret secret that our secret-keepers are trying to obscure behind their blizzards of bullshit: it's all about the Benjamins.

After noting the gargantuan outsourcing of "intelligence" to private contractors like Booz Allen -- the very firm that employed Snowden -- Silber gives a quick precis of the essence of state-corporate capitalism (see the originals for links):

The biggest open secret all these creepy jerks are hiding is the secret of corporatism (or what Gabriel Kolko calls "political capitalism&quot :

There is nothing in the world that can't be turned into a huge moneymaker for the State and its favored friends in "private" business, at the same time it is used to amass still greater power. This is true in multiple forms for the fraud that is the "intelligence" industry.

The pattern is the same in every industry, from farming, to manufacturing, to every aspect of transportation, to the health insurance scam, to anything else you can name. In one common version, already vested interests go to the State demanding regulation and protection from "destabilizing" forces which, they claim, threaten the nation's well-being (by which, they mean competitors who threaten their profits). The State enthusiastically complies, the cooperative lawmakers enjoying rewards of many kinds and varieties. Then they'll have to enforce all those nifty regulations and controls. The State will do some of it but, heck, it's complicated and time-consuming, ya know? Besides, some of the State's good friends in "private" business can make a killing doing some of the enforcing. Give it to them! Etc. and so on.

Silber then goes on:

... But that's chump change. The real money is elsewhere -- in, for instance, foreign policy itself. You probably thought foreign policy was about dealing with threats to "national security," spreading democracy, ensuring peace, and whatever other lying slogans they throw around like a moldy, decaying, putrid corpse. The State's foreign policy efforts are unquestionably devoted to maintaining the U.S.'s advantages -- but the advantages they are most concerned about are access to markets and, that's right, making huge amounts of money. Despite the unending propaganda to the contrary, they aren't terribly concerned with dire threats to our national well-being, for the simple reason that there aren't any: "No nation would dare mount a serious attack on the U.S. precisely because they know how powerful the U.S. is -- because it is not secret."

MORE

[Demeter]

56. The Subjects of American Empire Are Joining in Solidarity By Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers

http://www.alternet.org/world/global-protest-against-american-power?akid=10610.227380.ouUdJP&rd=1&src=newsletter859151&t=18

The revolts in Turkey, Brazil, Europe, the Middle East and Asia – as well as in the United States – are all connected. We are all subjects of the American Empire. Whether we live in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East . . . we are all under the thumb of neo-liberal capitalism that puts concentrated corporate power in control of our lives. For decades, American Empire and wealthy elite have forced privatization of resources in developing countries and austerity measures on public programs. Now, we are also experiencing these same policies in wealthier nations like the US and Europe. All but the wealthiest are now members of the “Global South.” And, more and more people realize this. People from all over the world recognize that we must stand together in solidarity to challenge the tiny minority that dominates us. The revolts in Turkey, Brazil, Europe, the Middle East and Asia – as well as in the United States – are all connected.

These struggles share common messages that people are more important than profit, that human rights must be respected and that we want to live in peace with dignity. We see that capitalism is failing and that the people must take control to create the kind of world in which we want to live. The Afghan Peace Volunteers said this clearly in their recent open letter: “accomplishing these actions hinges on us, on climate change citizens, Arab Spring citizens, Occupy citizens and the ‘awakening’ citizens of every country to free ourselves from the unequal dominance of corporate governments with their laws and weapons of self-interest.”

And it’s happening. People from around the world are working in solidarity and protesting on behalf of others. Across the US, people are taking action to stop the drone warfare that kills innocent Afghans, Pakistanis and others. In Maine, they are taking a legislative approach along with protest and in Iowa, people are walking 195 miles to the Capital, Des Moines. The campaign to close Guantanamo stretches from the living rooms of US veterans to the Washington, DC to Yemen. Three veterans, Elliott Adams, Diane Wilson and Tarak Kauff are on a solidarity hunger strike with the prisoners. They are coming to Washington, DC next week to protest and invite you to join them. Codepink recently traveled to Yemen to learn from the families of the prisoners about the impact of Guantanamo on their families. People in Hong Kong marched in support of Edward Snowden and to oppose his extradition. Japanese railroad workers in Tokyo protested a lockout in Oregon, nearly 5,000 miles away, of American dockworkers who load grain ships headed for Asia.

Before the G8 Leaders met this week in the UK, protesters held a Carnival Against Capitalism. Last year, we protested the G8 in the US with an Occupy G8 Peoples Summit. President Obama traveled to Germany after the G8. His visit was preceded by a large march that looked like it could have taken place in the US. Protest signs had messages around issues of mass incarceration, Guantanamo, Bradley Manning and illegal spying with a play on Obama’s campaign message, “ Yes We Scan!” In fact, thanks to the courage and sacrifice of Edward Snowden, we are learning more about the extent of spying by the National Security State and that we are subjected to it, in the US and around the world. Author, Nafeez Ahmed writes that this is part of preparation by the government for a citizen’s revolt in case of a climate and energy crisis as well as economic collapse. This includes new powers claimed by the DoD to use the military “to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.” .....

MORE

[Demeter]

57. Big NYT Hacks David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Bill Keller Wish Snowden Had Just Followed Orders

http://www.alternet.org/media/nyt-hacks-david-brooks-tom-friedman-bill-keller-wish-snowden-had-just-followed-orders?akid=10610.227380.ouUdJP&rd=1&src=newsletter859151&t=16

Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the New York Times reported on Sunday, “have renewed a longstanding concern: that young Internet aficionados whose skills the agencies need for counterterrorism and cyberdefense sometimes bring an anti-authority spirit that does not fit the security bureaucracy.”

Agencies like the NSA and CIA, and private contractors like Booz Allen, can’t be sure that all employees will obey the rules without interference from their own idealism. This is a basic dilemma for the warfare/surveillance state, which must hire and retain a huge pool of young talent to service the digital innards of a growing Big Brother.

With private firms scrambling to recruit workers for top-secret government contracts, the current situation was foreshadowed by novelist John Hersey in his 1960 book The Child Buyer. When the vice president of a contractor named United Lymphomilloid, “in charge of materials procurement,” goes shopping for a very bright 10-year-old, he explains that “my duties have an extremely high national-defense rating.” And he adds: “When a commodity that you need falls in short supply, you have to get out and hustle. I buy brains.”

That’s what Booz Allen and similar outfits do. They buy brains. And obedience. But despite the best efforts of those contractors and government agencies, the brains still belong to people. And, as the Times put it, an "anti-authority spirit" might not fit “the security bureaucracy.” In the long run, Edward Snowden didn’t fit. Neither did Bradley Manning. They both had brains that seemed useful to authority. But they also had principles and decided to act on them...

MORE

[Demeter]

58. Meet the Elite Business and Think-Tank Community That's Doing Its Best to Control the World

http://www.alternet.org/occupy-wall-street/elite-business-and-think-tank-attempts-control-world?akid=10610.227380.ouUdJP&rd=1&src=newsletter859151&t=10

"The corporate-policy network is highly centralized, at both the level of individuals and that of organizations. Its inner circle is a tightly interwoven ensemble of politically active business leaders..." -- Academics William K. Carroll and Jean Philippe Sapinski

In an article titled "The Global Corporate Elite" in the journal International Sociology, William K. Carroll and Jean Philippe Sapinski examined the relationship between the corporate elite and the emergence of a “transnational policy-planning network,” beginning with its formation in the decades following World War II and speeding up in the 1970s with the creation of “global policy groups” and think tanks such as the World Economic Forum, in 1971, and the Trilateral Commission, in 1973, among many others. The function of such institutions was to help mobilize and integrate the corporate elite beyond national borders, constructing a politically “organized minority.” These policy-planning organizations came to exist as “venues for discussion, strategic planning, discourse production and consensus formation on specific issues,” as well as “places where responses to crises of legitimacy are crafted,” such as managing economic, political, or environmental crises where elite interests might be threatened. These groups also often acted as “advocates for specific projects of integration, often on a regional basis.” Perhaps most importantly, the organizations “provide bridges connecting business elites to political actors (heads of states, politicians, high-ranking public servants) and elites and organic intellectuals in other fields (international organizations, military, media, academia).”

One important industry association, according to researchers Carroll and Carson in the journal Global Networks (Vol. 3, No. 1, 2003), is the International Chamber of Commerce. Launched by investment bankers in 1919, immediately following WWI, the Paris-based Chamber groups roughly 7,000 member corporations together across 130 countries, adhering to largely conservative, “free market” ideology. The “primary function” of the ICC, write Carroll and Carson, “is to institutionalize an international business perspective by providing a forum where capitalists and related professionals... can assemble and forge a common international policy framework.”

Another policy group with outsized global influence is the Bilderberg group, founded between 1952 and 1954, which provided “a context for more comprehensive international capitalist coordination and planning.” Bringing together roughly 130 elites from Western Europe and North America at annual closed meetings, “Bilderberg conferences have furnished a confidential platform for corporate, political, intellectual, military and even trade-union elites from the North Atlantic heartland to reach mutual understanding.” As Valerie Aubourg examined in an article for the journal Intelligence and National Security (Vol. 18, No. 2, 2003), the Bilderberg meetings were organized largely at the initiative of a handful of European elites, with heavy financial backing from select American institutions including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the CIA. The meetings incorporate leadership from the most prominent national think tanks, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment and others from across the North Atlantic ‘community.’ Hugh Wilford, writing in the journal Diplomacy & Statecraft (Vol. 14, No. 3, 2003), identified major philanthropic foundations such as the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie foundations as not only major sources of funding but also providers for much of the leadership of the Bilderberg meetings, which saw the participation of major industrial and financial firms in line with those foundations (David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan is a good example). Bilderberg was a major force in helping to create the political, economic and strategic consensus behind constructing a common European market.

With the support of these major foundations and their leadership, the Bilderberg meetings became a powerful global tool of the elites, not only in creating the European Union but in designing the process of globalization itself. Will Hutton, a former Bilderberg member, once referred to the group as “the high priests of globalization,” and a former Bilderberg steering committee member, Denis Healey, once noted: “To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair...we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.”

AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING...

OBAMA WILL CRACK LIKE AN EGG WITH DEPLETED CALCIUM, AND MAY THE 1% DO THE SAME!

[Demeter]

59. Front Row Seats at the Collesium! All Hail the Victor, Edward Snowdon!

This is a weekend to remember.

Now if you need modern grit and courage, take Ed. And all his supporters and helpers around the world.

Obama is green with envy. There's a distinct difference between a public shill and a public figure. It takes a public figure to show just what Obama is made of.

The President has no excuses, either. He is a self-made failure in the Nixonian tradition.

[Demeter]

60. Delightful as it is, I must away

The Kid needs some time, too. Have a good week, everyone! Things truly ARE looking up, for once.

[Fuddnik]

63. You deserve a break every now and then.

Glad things are looking up.