Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Economy
Related: About this forumSTOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 17 September 2013
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 17 September 2013[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 16 September 2013
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 16 September 2013
[center][font color=green]
Dow Jones 15,494.78 +118.72 (0.77%)
S&P 500 1,697.60 +9.61 (0.57%)
[font color=red]Nasdaq 3,717.85 -4.33 (-0.12%)
[font color=green]10 Year 2.87% -0.02 (-0.69%)
30 Year 3.81% -0.02 (-0.52%)[font color=black]
[center][/font]
[HR width=85%]
[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
[center]
[/center]
[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
[/center]
[center]
[/center]
[/center]
[HR width=95%]
[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
[center]
Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
[/center]
[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
[center]
The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
Wall Street on Parade
[/center]
[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
[center]
Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout
[/center]
[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
[center]
LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
[center]
Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
[/center]
[div]
[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
[HR width=95%]
[center]
[HR width=95%]
[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
41 replies, 11857 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (13)
ReplyReply to this post
41 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 17 September 2013 (Original Post)
Tansy_Gold
Sep 2013
OP
Demeter
(85,373 posts)1. Those damn, childproof caps!
I hate them, hate them, hate them....
anybody who leaves medication where children can get it.....
ditto, anyone who lets the GOP hold the American people hostage.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)2. If I didn't suspect it was all phony, High Freqency Trading Programming
I'd point out that the stock market seems happy that Summers is out.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)3. We've Got a Billionaire Bailout Society—And the 99% May Never Recover From It In Our Lifetimes
http://www.alternet.org/economy/weve-got-billionaire-bailout-society-and-99-may-never-recover-it-our-lifetimes?akid=10936.227380.oVnE0R&rd=1&src=newsletter896912&t=6
The odds are that we in the bottom 99 percent may never see a recovery in our lifetimes. That's because our nation has evolved into something entirely new: a billionaire bailout society. We are entering a disastrous new era in which all the economic gains go to the top 1 percent, according to data from economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. They report that, "Top 1% incomes grew by 31.4% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.4% from 2009 to 2012. Hence, the top 1% captured 95% of the income gains in the first three years of the recovery.... In sum, top 1% incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99% incomes have hardly started to recover." (In 2012, $394,000 is the cutoff to make it into the top 1 percent.)
We see in vivid detail what the new American order looks like. The top 1 percent live in another economic universe of high finance that sucks the wealth from the rest of us. In their world, banks (owned by and for the top 1%) are able to grow larger and larger so there is no chance they will be allowed to fail, even after these same banks took down the economy. (In 1965 they had assets equal to 17% percent of the U.S. economy. Today it's more than 65% percent.) Free from any meaningful controls, financial gambling (called proprietary trading in polite circles) is now the dominant activity within our largest banks. In fact, in these too-big-to-fail banks, more money goes to financial gambling than to loans for businesses and consumers. These are not banks—they are rigged casinos for the rich. The upside from these corrupt pursuits are kept by the top fraction of the 1 percent, while the 99 percent hold the bag when those phony bets crash the economy. And who among us doesn't think that will happen again?
Regulation is hapless as billions of dollars slosh through the political troughs. Serious enforcement is virtually non-existent because the enforcers fear that the entire financial system will fail should these criminal banks be prosecuted. Every national policy from the bailouts to "quantitative easing" has further funneled money to the super-rich. Meanwhile, the rest of us are told to plod along until jobs miraculously appear and our incomes finally rise. Dream on. In sum, our new economic era is characterized by the supremacy of financial capital which vacuums up the productive wealth of the nation, and then uses the nation's wealth as an insurance policy to pay for its inevitable losses.
Entering Uncharted Territory
The billionaire bailout society is quite different than previous gilded ages. This can be seen clearly in comparing the aftermath of the recent Great Recession to what took place during the Great Depression. We need to remember that after the crash of 1929, America went on a crusade to rescue the economy by controlling Wall Street, supporting unions, and fundamentally rebuilding our physical and educational infrastructure. As Harvard economist Claudia Golden put it, a Great Compression took place during which the gap between the rich and the rest of us came down—not by destroying wealth but by making sure working people got their fair share. In 1929, the top 1% grabbed 23 percent of the nation's income. By the late 1960s it was below 9 percent. During the Great Compression we had our feet planted firmly on the neck of Wall Street. Financial gambling was held to a minimum. Incomes were no higher on Wall Street than in the productive economy. Finance and production more or less were in balance. But after deregulation set in the late 1970s, the income gap began to accelerate yet again, returning to the unconscionable levels of the late 1920s....There is no Great Compression emerging this time around. We're not heading toward greater income equality. We're not building up the middle class or supporting unionization. We're not eradicating poverty and hunger. We're not expanding educational opportunity. We're not rebuilding infrastructure. Nothing we're doing looks anything like the society we built from the New Deal through the 1960s. We're not doing any of the things that would lead to a more stable and just economy. In fact, we're doing just the opposite, which means the billionaire bailout society will become even more firmly entrenched.
How do we dismantle the billionaire bailout society?
Here are some key facts we all should know about banks and public banks:
1. There is only one public state bank in the country—the Bank of North Dakota—and it's phenomenally successful. A relic from the Populist era, the BND invests in the people of North Dakota. It doesn't play with derivatives or high-risk mortgages so it didn't get burned during the crash. It doesn't pay its executives high salaries (which are lower than what chauffeurs get on Wall Street). It just builds the state's economy and returns a profit year after year to the people of North Dakota. As a result, the state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country (even after taking into account their oil boom). And this so-called socialist bank resides in one of the most conservative states in the country.
2. Right now, we taxpayers funnel over $1 trillion of our money into Wall Street banks when we pay our state and local taxes and fees. That money does not go into vaults in city hall or the state capital. It goes to Wall Street banks which at the moment are the only ones large enough to provide all the services required...except in North Dakota. There state revenues run through the state bank which in turns supports 80 community banks. If that happened in the other 49 states, we could create more than 10 million additional domestic jobs. Remember, a state bank invests in its state. Wall Street has no allegiance to any state or country.
3. State banks are the answer to funding infrastructure projects. Right now Wall Street preys upon state and local governments that need to borrow money to build schools, roads and other critical public projects. Those loans comes with enormous fees and interest rates that often double and triple the cost of these projects. Not so with public banks, whose job it is to build up the state rather than rip it off.
What will it take to win? READ IT AT THE LINK!
Les Leopold is the director of the Labor Institute in New York. His latest book is How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning off America's Wealth (Wiley 2013).
The odds are that we in the bottom 99 percent may never see a recovery in our lifetimes. That's because our nation has evolved into something entirely new: a billionaire bailout society. We are entering a disastrous new era in which all the economic gains go to the top 1 percent, according to data from economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. They report that, "Top 1% incomes grew by 31.4% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.4% from 2009 to 2012. Hence, the top 1% captured 95% of the income gains in the first three years of the recovery.... In sum, top 1% incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99% incomes have hardly started to recover." (In 2012, $394,000 is the cutoff to make it into the top 1 percent.)
We see in vivid detail what the new American order looks like. The top 1 percent live in another economic universe of high finance that sucks the wealth from the rest of us. In their world, banks (owned by and for the top 1%) are able to grow larger and larger so there is no chance they will be allowed to fail, even after these same banks took down the economy. (In 1965 they had assets equal to 17% percent of the U.S. economy. Today it's more than 65% percent.) Free from any meaningful controls, financial gambling (called proprietary trading in polite circles) is now the dominant activity within our largest banks. In fact, in these too-big-to-fail banks, more money goes to financial gambling than to loans for businesses and consumers. These are not banks—they are rigged casinos for the rich. The upside from these corrupt pursuits are kept by the top fraction of the 1 percent, while the 99 percent hold the bag when those phony bets crash the economy. And who among us doesn't think that will happen again?
Regulation is hapless as billions of dollars slosh through the political troughs. Serious enforcement is virtually non-existent because the enforcers fear that the entire financial system will fail should these criminal banks be prosecuted. Every national policy from the bailouts to "quantitative easing" has further funneled money to the super-rich. Meanwhile, the rest of us are told to plod along until jobs miraculously appear and our incomes finally rise. Dream on. In sum, our new economic era is characterized by the supremacy of financial capital which vacuums up the productive wealth of the nation, and then uses the nation's wealth as an insurance policy to pay for its inevitable losses.
Entering Uncharted Territory
The billionaire bailout society is quite different than previous gilded ages. This can be seen clearly in comparing the aftermath of the recent Great Recession to what took place during the Great Depression. We need to remember that after the crash of 1929, America went on a crusade to rescue the economy by controlling Wall Street, supporting unions, and fundamentally rebuilding our physical and educational infrastructure. As Harvard economist Claudia Golden put it, a Great Compression took place during which the gap between the rich and the rest of us came down—not by destroying wealth but by making sure working people got their fair share. In 1929, the top 1% grabbed 23 percent of the nation's income. By the late 1960s it was below 9 percent. During the Great Compression we had our feet planted firmly on the neck of Wall Street. Financial gambling was held to a minimum. Incomes were no higher on Wall Street than in the productive economy. Finance and production more or less were in balance. But after deregulation set in the late 1970s, the income gap began to accelerate yet again, returning to the unconscionable levels of the late 1920s....There is no Great Compression emerging this time around. We're not heading toward greater income equality. We're not building up the middle class or supporting unionization. We're not eradicating poverty and hunger. We're not expanding educational opportunity. We're not rebuilding infrastructure. Nothing we're doing looks anything like the society we built from the New Deal through the 1960s. We're not doing any of the things that would lead to a more stable and just economy. In fact, we're doing just the opposite, which means the billionaire bailout society will become even more firmly entrenched.
How do we dismantle the billionaire bailout society?
Here are some key facts we all should know about banks and public banks:
1. There is only one public state bank in the country—the Bank of North Dakota—and it's phenomenally successful. A relic from the Populist era, the BND invests in the people of North Dakota. It doesn't play with derivatives or high-risk mortgages so it didn't get burned during the crash. It doesn't pay its executives high salaries (which are lower than what chauffeurs get on Wall Street). It just builds the state's economy and returns a profit year after year to the people of North Dakota. As a result, the state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country (even after taking into account their oil boom). And this so-called socialist bank resides in one of the most conservative states in the country.
2. Right now, we taxpayers funnel over $1 trillion of our money into Wall Street banks when we pay our state and local taxes and fees. That money does not go into vaults in city hall or the state capital. It goes to Wall Street banks which at the moment are the only ones large enough to provide all the services required...except in North Dakota. There state revenues run through the state bank which in turns supports 80 community banks. If that happened in the other 49 states, we could create more than 10 million additional domestic jobs. Remember, a state bank invests in its state. Wall Street has no allegiance to any state or country.
3. State banks are the answer to funding infrastructure projects. Right now Wall Street preys upon state and local governments that need to borrow money to build schools, roads and other critical public projects. Those loans comes with enormous fees and interest rates that often double and triple the cost of these projects. Not so with public banks, whose job it is to build up the state rather than rip it off.
What will it take to win? READ IT AT THE LINK!
Les Leopold is the director of the Labor Institute in New York. His latest book is How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning off America's Wealth (Wiley 2013).
Demeter
(85,373 posts)4. Edison to pay U.S. $1.8 million to settle fire suit
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-edison-to-pay-us-1.8-million-to-settle-fire-suit-20130916,0,2704563.story
Southern California Edison Co. will pay the federal government $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit seeking damages from a 2007 wildfire that burned parts of the Sequoia National Forest. The lawsuit alleged that negligence by the Rosemead electric utility caused the blaze.
The blaze, known as the James Fire, burned 1,350 acres, mostly within the Sequoia National Forest in the central Sierra Nevada. The forest is best known for its 33 groves of giant sequoia trees that grow at lower elevations.
Edison, in agreeing to the legal settlement, did not admit any negligence, wrongful conduct or liability. In a statement Edison called the settlement "an appropriate resolution of this dispute." For its part, the government did not concede that its claims and allegations against Edison are not well founded Wagner stressed that "the settlement is a significant step toward compensating the public for the expense of fighting the fire and restoring public lands." In the last four years, Wagner said, the U.S. attorney's office has signed settlements in 17 wildfire cases that resulted in $228.3 million being paid to the federal government. The money will be used to restore the charred acres, the U.S. Forest Service said.
Southern California Edison Co. will pay the federal government $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit seeking damages from a 2007 wildfire that burned parts of the Sequoia National Forest. The lawsuit alleged that negligence by the Rosemead electric utility caused the blaze.
"Poorly maintained hardware on a power distribution line owned by Edison caused an electrical fault, and molten material fell to the ground below, igniting dry vegetation," said a statement issued by Benjamin B. Wagner, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento.
The blaze, known as the James Fire, burned 1,350 acres, mostly within the Sequoia National Forest in the central Sierra Nevada. The forest is best known for its 33 groves of giant sequoia trees that grow at lower elevations.
Edison, in agreeing to the legal settlement, did not admit any negligence, wrongful conduct or liability. In a statement Edison called the settlement "an appropriate resolution of this dispute." For its part, the government did not concede that its claims and allegations against Edison are not well founded Wagner stressed that "the settlement is a significant step toward compensating the public for the expense of fighting the fire and restoring public lands." In the last four years, Wagner said, the U.S. attorney's office has signed settlements in 17 wildfire cases that resulted in $228.3 million being paid to the federal government. The money will be used to restore the charred acres, the U.S. Forest Service said.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)5. JPMorgan expects to settle Whale probes for about $700 million
http://news.yahoo.com/jpmorgan-expects-settle-whale-probes-700-million-source-001529554--sector.html
JPMorgan Chase & Co is close to settling civil law investigations into its London Whale derivatives loss and expects to pay about $700 million, according to a source familiar with the matter. Completion of the deal depends on coordinating agreements with multiple government agencies, said the source who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. The source spoke after Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that JPMorgan has agreed with regulators on how much it will pay...
The settlements the company expects soon would be over civil law issues with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority, the source said. JPMorgan has been pushing for weeks to resolve the company's liability to regulators. News of an imminent settlement came on a day the company's board of directors planned to meet.
The bank is trying to mend its relationships with regulators after surprising them with the derivatives loss at a time when Chief Executive Jamie Dimon was complaining that the regulators were going too far with reforms to avert another financial crisis.
The company recently said it would record more than $1.5 billion of additional legal expenses in the third quarter.
JPMorgan shares rose 1 percent on Monday to close at $53.14. Last year, just before JPMorgan acknowledged that it was losing billions of dollars are on the derivatives, the stock traded around $41.
JPMorgan Chase & Co is close to settling civil law investigations into its London Whale derivatives loss and expects to pay about $700 million, according to a source familiar with the matter. Completion of the deal depends on coordinating agreements with multiple government agencies, said the source who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. The source spoke after Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that JPMorgan has agreed with regulators on how much it will pay...
The settlements the company expects soon would be over civil law issues with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority, the source said. JPMorgan has been pushing for weeks to resolve the company's liability to regulators. News of an imminent settlement came on a day the company's board of directors planned to meet.
The bank is trying to mend its relationships with regulators after surprising them with the derivatives loss at a time when Chief Executive Jamie Dimon was complaining that the regulators were going too far with reforms to avert another financial crisis.
The company recently said it would record more than $1.5 billion of additional legal expenses in the third quarter.
JPMorgan shares rose 1 percent on Monday to close at $53.14. Last year, just before JPMorgan acknowledged that it was losing billions of dollars are on the derivatives, the stock traded around $41.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)6. U.S. indicts ex-traders in JPMorgan 'London Whale' scandal
http://news.yahoo.com/u-indicts-two-ex-traders-jpmorgan-london-whale-231922032--finance.html
A U.S. grand jury has indicted two former JPMorgan Chase & Co traders at the center of the bank's "London Whale" scandal, court papers made public on Monday show. Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout were accused of hiding hundreds of millions of dollars of losses within JPMorgan's chief investment office in London by marking positions in a credit derivatives portfolio at inflated prices. Those losses were part of an overall $6.2 billion trading loss suffered by the bank centered on Bruno Iksil, the former trader known as the London Whale. Martin-Artajo supervised Iksil, while Grout worked for Iksil.
According to the indictment, Martin-Artajo and Grout from March to May of 2012 artificially inflated the value of securities "to hide the true extent of significant losses" in a trading portfolio. The indictment said both men did this to enhance their prospects for promotions and bonuses, while Martin-Artajo hoped to stop JPMorgan from moving the trading portfolio to another division, and Grout wanted to curry favor with his supervisor. Martin-Artajo and Grout were each charged by the grand jury with five criminal counts, including securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, making false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and falsifying books and records.
The government wants the men to forfeit proceeds traceable to their alleged offenses, including compensation from the largest U.S. bank. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan. JPMorgan is not a defendant in the criminal case...Iksil has not been criminally charged, and has been cooperating with U.S. authorities.
U.S. prosecutors charged Martin-Artajo and Grout last month. Grout sought to avert a formal indictment by portraying himself as an unwitting victim of manipulation by superiors, a person familiar with the matter said last week. Authorities in the United States needed an indictment against Martin-Artajo to proceed with his extradition from Spain, where he was arrested and released in August. Martin-Artajo is Spanish, while Grout is French.
A U.S. grand jury has indicted two former JPMorgan Chase & Co traders at the center of the bank's "London Whale" scandal, court papers made public on Monday show. Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout were accused of hiding hundreds of millions of dollars of losses within JPMorgan's chief investment office in London by marking positions in a credit derivatives portfolio at inflated prices. Those losses were part of an overall $6.2 billion trading loss suffered by the bank centered on Bruno Iksil, the former trader known as the London Whale. Martin-Artajo supervised Iksil, while Grout worked for Iksil.
According to the indictment, Martin-Artajo and Grout from March to May of 2012 artificially inflated the value of securities "to hide the true extent of significant losses" in a trading portfolio. The indictment said both men did this to enhance their prospects for promotions and bonuses, while Martin-Artajo hoped to stop JPMorgan from moving the trading portfolio to another division, and Grout wanted to curry favor with his supervisor. Martin-Artajo and Grout were each charged by the grand jury with five criminal counts, including securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, making false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and falsifying books and records.
The government wants the men to forfeit proceeds traceable to their alleged offenses, including compensation from the largest U.S. bank. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan. JPMorgan is not a defendant in the criminal case...Iksil has not been criminally charged, and has been cooperating with U.S. authorities.
U.S. prosecutors charged Martin-Artajo and Grout last month. Grout sought to avert a formal indictment by portraying himself as an unwitting victim of manipulation by superiors, a person familiar with the matter said last week. Authorities in the United States needed an indictment against Martin-Artajo to proceed with his extradition from Spain, where he was arrested and released in August. Martin-Artajo is Spanish, while Grout is French.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)7. Making the World Safe for Banksters: Syria in the Cross-hairs by Ellen Brown
http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/making-the-world-safe-for-banksters-syria-in-the-cross-hairs/
Iraq and Libya have been taken out, and Iran has been heavily boycotted. Syria is now in the cross-hairs. Why? Here is one overlooked scenario.
In an August 2013 article titled “Larry Summers and the Secret ‘End-game’ Memo,” Greg Palast posted evidence of a secret late-1990s plan devised by Wall Street and U.S. Treasury officials to open banking to the lucrative derivatives business. To pull this off required the relaxation of banking regulations not just in the US but globally. The vehicle to be used was the Financial Services Agreement of the World Trade Organization. The “end-game” would require not just coercing support among WTO members but taking down those countries refusing to join. Some key countries remained holdouts from the WTO, including Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. In these Islamic countries, banks are largely state-owned; and “usury” – charging rent for the “use” of money – is viewed as a sin, if not a crime. That puts them at odds with the Western model of rent extraction by private middlemen. Publicly-owned banks are also a threat to the mushrooming derivatives business, since governments with their own banks don’t need interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, or investment-grade ratings by private rating agencies in order to finance their operations.
Bank deregulation proceeded according to plan, and the government-sanctioned and -nurtured derivatives business mushroomed into a $700-plus trillion pyramid scheme. Highly leveraged, completely unregulated, and dangerously unsustainable, it collapsed in 2008 when investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, taking a large segment of the global economy with it. The countries that managed to escape were those sustained by public banking models outside the international banking net. These countries were not all Islamic. Forty percent of banks globally are publicly-owned. They are largely in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—which house forty percent of the global population. They also escaped the 2008 credit crisis, but they at least made a show of conforming to Western banking rules. This was not true of the “rogue” Islamic nations, where usury was forbidden by Islamic teaching. To make the world safe for usury, these rogue states had to be silenced by other means. Having failed to succumb to economic coercion, they wound up in the crosshairs of the powerful US military. Here is some data in support of that thesis.
The End-game Memo
In his August 22nd article, Greg Palast posted a screenshot of a 1997 memo from Timothy Geithner, then Assistant Secretary of International Affairs under Robert Rubin, to Larry Summers, then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner referred in the memo to the “end-game of WTO financial services negotiations” and urged Summers to touch base with the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan Bank, for whom private phone numbers were provided. The game then in play was the deregulation of banks so that they could gamble in the lucrative new field of derivatives. To pull this off required, first, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 Act that imposed a firewall between investment banking and depository banking in order to protect depositors’ funds from bank gambling. But the plan required more than just deregulating US banks. Banking controls had to be eliminated globally so that money would not flee to nations with safer banking laws. The “endgame” was to achieve this global deregulation through an obscure addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization, called the Financial Services Agreement. Palast wrote:
WTO members were induced to sign the agreement by threatening their access to global markets if they refused; and they all did sign, except Brazil. Brazil was then threatened with an embargo; but its resistance paid off, since it alone among Western nations survived and thrived during the 2007-2009 crisis. As for the others:
The Holdouts
That was the fate of countries in the WTO, but Palast did not discuss those that were not in that organization at all, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. These seven countries were named by U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.) in a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview as the new “rogue states” being targeted for take down after September 11, 2001. He said that about 10 days after 9-11, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. What did these countries have in common? Besides being Islamic, they were not members either of the WTO or of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That left them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland. Other countries later identified as “rogue states” that were also not members of the BIS included North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan.
The body regulating banks today is called the Financial Stability Board (FSB), and it is housed in the BIS in Switzerland. In 2009, the heads of the G20 nations agreed to be bound by rules imposed by the FSB, ostensibly to prevent another global banking crisis. Its regulations are not merely advisory but are binding, and they can make or break not just banks but whole nations. This was first demonstrated in 1989, when the Basel I Accord raised capital requirements a mere 2%, from 6% to 8%. The result was to force a drastic reduction in lending by major Japanese banks, which were then the world’s largest and most powerful creditors. They were undercapitalized, however, relative to other banks. The Japanese economy sank along with its banks and has yet to fully recover. Among other game-changing regulations in play under the FSB are Basel III and the new bail-in rules. Basel III is slated to impose crippling capital requirements on public, cooperative and community banks, coercing their sale to large multinational banks.
The “bail-in” template was first tested in Cyprus and follows regulations imposed by the FSB in 2011. Too-big-to-fail banks are required to draft “living wills” setting forth how they will avoid insolvency in the absence of government bailouts. The FSB solution is to “bail in” creditors – including depositors – turning deposits into bank stock, effectively confiscating them.
The Public Bank Alternative
Countries laboring under the yoke of an extractive private banking system are being forced into “structural adjustment” and austerity by their unrepayable debt. But some countries have managed to escape. In the Middle East, these are the targeted “rogue nations.” Their state-owned banks can issue the credit of the state on behalf of the state, leveraging public funds for public use without paying a massive tribute to private middlemen. Generous state funding allows them to provide generously for their people. Like Libya and Iraq before they were embroiled in war, Syria provides free education at all levels and free medical care. It also provides subsidized housing for everyone (although some of this has been compromised by adoption of an IMF structural adjustment program in 2006 and the presence of about 2 million Iraqi and Palestinian refugees). Iran too provides nearly free higher education and primary health care. Like Libya and Iraq before takedown, Syria and Iran have state-owned central banks that issue the national currency and are under government control. Whether these countries will succeed in maintaining their financial sovereignty in the face of enormous economic, political and military pressure remains to be seen.
As for Larry Summers, he went on to become president of Harvard, where he approved a derivative bet on interest rate swaps that lost over $1 billion for the university. He resigned in 2006 to manage a hedge fund among other business activities, and went on to become State Senator Barack Obama’s key campaign benefactor. Summers played a key role in the banking deregulation that brought on the current crisis, causing millions of US citizens to lose their jobs and their homes. Yet he is President Obama’s first choice to replace Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chairman. Why? He has proven he can manipulate the system to make the world safe for Wall Street; and in an upside-down world in which bankers rule, that seems to be the name of the game.
________________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com, http://PublicBankSolution.com, and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.” —Prof. Caroll Quigley, Georgetown University, Tragedy and Hope (1966)
Iraq and Libya have been taken out, and Iran has been heavily boycotted. Syria is now in the cross-hairs. Why? Here is one overlooked scenario.
In an August 2013 article titled “Larry Summers and the Secret ‘End-game’ Memo,” Greg Palast posted evidence of a secret late-1990s plan devised by Wall Street and U.S. Treasury officials to open banking to the lucrative derivatives business. To pull this off required the relaxation of banking regulations not just in the US but globally. The vehicle to be used was the Financial Services Agreement of the World Trade Organization. The “end-game” would require not just coercing support among WTO members but taking down those countries refusing to join. Some key countries remained holdouts from the WTO, including Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. In these Islamic countries, banks are largely state-owned; and “usury” – charging rent for the “use” of money – is viewed as a sin, if not a crime. That puts them at odds with the Western model of rent extraction by private middlemen. Publicly-owned banks are also a threat to the mushrooming derivatives business, since governments with their own banks don’t need interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, or investment-grade ratings by private rating agencies in order to finance their operations.
Bank deregulation proceeded according to plan, and the government-sanctioned and -nurtured derivatives business mushroomed into a $700-plus trillion pyramid scheme. Highly leveraged, completely unregulated, and dangerously unsustainable, it collapsed in 2008 when investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, taking a large segment of the global economy with it. The countries that managed to escape were those sustained by public banking models outside the international banking net. These countries were not all Islamic. Forty percent of banks globally are publicly-owned. They are largely in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—which house forty percent of the global population. They also escaped the 2008 credit crisis, but they at least made a show of conforming to Western banking rules. This was not true of the “rogue” Islamic nations, where usury was forbidden by Islamic teaching. To make the world safe for usury, these rogue states had to be silenced by other means. Having failed to succumb to economic coercion, they wound up in the crosshairs of the powerful US military. Here is some data in support of that thesis.
The End-game Memo
In his August 22nd article, Greg Palast posted a screenshot of a 1997 memo from Timothy Geithner, then Assistant Secretary of International Affairs under Robert Rubin, to Larry Summers, then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner referred in the memo to the “end-game of WTO financial services negotiations” and urged Summers to touch base with the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan Bank, for whom private phone numbers were provided. The game then in play was the deregulation of banks so that they could gamble in the lucrative new field of derivatives. To pull this off required, first, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 Act that imposed a firewall between investment banking and depository banking in order to protect depositors’ funds from bank gambling. But the plan required more than just deregulating US banks. Banking controls had to be eliminated globally so that money would not flee to nations with safer banking laws. The “endgame” was to achieve this global deregulation through an obscure addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization, called the Financial Services Agreement. Palast wrote:
Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods–that is, my cars for your bananas. The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in “bads” – toxic assets like financial derivatives.
Until the bankers’ re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders. The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives “products.”
And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives.
The job of turning the FSA into the bankers’ battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
Until the bankers’ re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders. The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives “products.”
And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives.
The job of turning the FSA into the bankers’ battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
WTO members were induced to sign the agreement by threatening their access to global markets if they refused; and they all did sign, except Brazil. Brazil was then threatened with an embargo; but its resistance paid off, since it alone among Western nations survived and thrived during the 2007-2009 crisis. As for the others:
The new FSA pulled the lid off the Pandora’s box of worldwide derivatives trade. Among the notorious transactions legalized: Goldman Sachs (where Treasury Secretary Rubin had been Co-Chairman) worked a secret euro-derivatives swap with Greece which, ultimately, destroyed that nation. Ecuador, its own banking sector de-regulated and demolished, exploded into riots. Argentina had to sell off its oil companies (to the Spanish) and water systems (to Enron) while its teachers hunted for food in garbage cans. Then, Bankers Gone Wild in the Eurozone dove head-first into derivatives pools without knowing how to swim–and the continent is now being sold off in tiny, cheap pieces to Germany.
The Holdouts
That was the fate of countries in the WTO, but Palast did not discuss those that were not in that organization at all, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. These seven countries were named by U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.) in a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview as the new “rogue states” being targeted for take down after September 11, 2001. He said that about 10 days after 9-11, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. What did these countries have in common? Besides being Islamic, they were not members either of the WTO or of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That left them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland. Other countries later identified as “rogue states” that were also not members of the BIS included North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan.
The body regulating banks today is called the Financial Stability Board (FSB), and it is housed in the BIS in Switzerland. In 2009, the heads of the G20 nations agreed to be bound by rules imposed by the FSB, ostensibly to prevent another global banking crisis. Its regulations are not merely advisory but are binding, and they can make or break not just banks but whole nations. This was first demonstrated in 1989, when the Basel I Accord raised capital requirements a mere 2%, from 6% to 8%. The result was to force a drastic reduction in lending by major Japanese banks, which were then the world’s largest and most powerful creditors. They were undercapitalized, however, relative to other banks. The Japanese economy sank along with its banks and has yet to fully recover. Among other game-changing regulations in play under the FSB are Basel III and the new bail-in rules. Basel III is slated to impose crippling capital requirements on public, cooperative and community banks, coercing their sale to large multinational banks.
The “bail-in” template was first tested in Cyprus and follows regulations imposed by the FSB in 2011. Too-big-to-fail banks are required to draft “living wills” setting forth how they will avoid insolvency in the absence of government bailouts. The FSB solution is to “bail in” creditors – including depositors – turning deposits into bank stock, effectively confiscating them.
The Public Bank Alternative
Countries laboring under the yoke of an extractive private banking system are being forced into “structural adjustment” and austerity by their unrepayable debt. But some countries have managed to escape. In the Middle East, these are the targeted “rogue nations.” Their state-owned banks can issue the credit of the state on behalf of the state, leveraging public funds for public use without paying a massive tribute to private middlemen. Generous state funding allows them to provide generously for their people. Like Libya and Iraq before they were embroiled in war, Syria provides free education at all levels and free medical care. It also provides subsidized housing for everyone (although some of this has been compromised by adoption of an IMF structural adjustment program in 2006 and the presence of about 2 million Iraqi and Palestinian refugees). Iran too provides nearly free higher education and primary health care. Like Libya and Iraq before takedown, Syria and Iran have state-owned central banks that issue the national currency and are under government control. Whether these countries will succeed in maintaining their financial sovereignty in the face of enormous economic, political and military pressure remains to be seen.
As for Larry Summers, he went on to become president of Harvard, where he approved a derivative bet on interest rate swaps that lost over $1 billion for the university. He resigned in 2006 to manage a hedge fund among other business activities, and went on to become State Senator Barack Obama’s key campaign benefactor. Summers played a key role in the banking deregulation that brought on the current crisis, causing millions of US citizens to lose their jobs and their homes. Yet he is President Obama’s first choice to replace Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chairman. Why? He has proven he can manipulate the system to make the world safe for Wall Street; and in an upside-down world in which bankers rule, that seems to be the name of the game.
________________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com, http://PublicBankSolution.com, and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)10. Yes. This is the heart of the matter.
... Basel III and the new bail-in rules. Basel III is slated to impose crippling capital requirements on public, cooperative and community banks, coercing their sale to large multinational banks.
The “bail-in” template was first tested in Cyprus and follows regulations imposed by the FSB in 2011. Too-big-to-fail banks are required to draft “living wills” setting forth how they will avoid insolvency in the absence of government bailouts. The FSB solution is to “bail in” creditors – including depositors – turning deposits into bank stock, effectively confiscating them...
The “bail-in” template was first tested in Cyprus and follows regulations imposed by the FSB in 2011. Too-big-to-fail banks are required to draft “living wills” setting forth how they will avoid insolvency in the absence of government bailouts. The FSB solution is to “bail in” creditors – including depositors – turning deposits into bank stock, effectively confiscating them...
A massive, on an historical scale, extraction of financial sovereignty (and therefore economic and therefore political power) from the People and its concentration, after much manipulation, in the hands of a ('chosen') Few.
I would be very surprised (although delighted) to see the current US administration (or those in the 'shadows' behind it) deviate from this course.
They just need to keep the 'right' Generals, Intelligence Chiefs, etc. 'on board'.
(P.S. Please forgive my perhaps 'excessive' use of quotation marks around terms... Our language is being so much abused by the propaganda machine employed in the service of the above that it appears to me necessary to highlight those terms the real and the propagandised meanings of which are worth thinking about.)
AnneD
(15,774 posts)28. Great catch....
and a reminder to all SMW's to follow the money.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)8. Ex-JPMorgan Employees Indicted Over $6.2 Billion Loss
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-16/ex-jpm-trader-and-supervisor-indicted-by-u-s-grand-jury.html
Two former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) traders were indicted for engaging in a securities fraud to hide trading losses that eventually surpassed $6.2 billion on wrong-way derivatives bets last year.
Javier Martin-Artajo, who oversaw trading strategy for the synthetic portfolio at the bank’s chief investment office in London, and Julien Grout, a trader who worked for him, were named in a federal indictment, which was unsealed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. The U.S. announced preliminary charges against the men in August.
Both were charged in yesterday’s indictment with five criminal counts, including securities fraud, conspiracy, filing false books and records, wire fraud and making false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The pair, along with unnamed co-conspirators, are accused of engaging in a scheme to manipulate and inflate the value of position markings in the synthetic credit portfolio, or SCP.
Martin-Artajo and Grout were named in criminal complaints filed by prosecutors in the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Aug. 14 that accused them of four separate counts of conspiracy, falsifying books and records, wire fraud, and false filings with the SEC. Yesterday’s indictment, which formalized those counts, added the securities fraud charge, which carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison.
Two former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) traders were indicted for engaging in a securities fraud to hide trading losses that eventually surpassed $6.2 billion on wrong-way derivatives bets last year.
Javier Martin-Artajo, who oversaw trading strategy for the synthetic portfolio at the bank’s chief investment office in London, and Julien Grout, a trader who worked for him, were named in a federal indictment, which was unsealed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. The U.S. announced preliminary charges against the men in August.
Both were charged in yesterday’s indictment with five criminal counts, including securities fraud, conspiracy, filing false books and records, wire fraud and making false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The pair, along with unnamed co-conspirators, are accused of engaging in a scheme to manipulate and inflate the value of position markings in the synthetic credit portfolio, or SCP.
Martin-Artajo and Grout were named in criminal complaints filed by prosecutors in the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Aug. 14 that accused them of four separate counts of conspiracy, falsifying books and records, wire fraud, and false filings with the SEC. Yesterday’s indictment, which formalized those counts, added the securities fraud charge, which carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)9. Less Tapering Becomes Tightening Credit No Matter What Fed Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-17/less-tapering-becomes-tightening-credit-no-matter-what-fed-says.html
By just talking about adding stimulus at a slower pace, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke sent bond yields a percentage point higher. The rout serves as a warning to monetary policy makers that their exit from record accommodation won’t be easy to control.
The jump in yields has pushed up the cost of mortgages for millions of Americans, curbed demand for homes and prompted thousands of job cuts at Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., all at a time when the Fed’s policies are aimed at creating jobs and supporting housing.
Bernanke has stressed that any reduction in the amount of money the central bank pumps into the financial system each month doesn’t mean policy is getting any more restrictive. That message hasn’t been heeded by bond investors, demonstrating how hard it will be for the Fed to control long-term interest rates as it moves toward tightening, according to Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey.
“Getting out of ultra-low interest-rate policy was never going to be easy, and this is a perfect illustration of why,” Crandall said. “It is possible that this will make it even harder because the market will be even more primed to view inflection points as messy and destructive, and therefore a reason to sell early.”
By just talking about adding stimulus at a slower pace, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke sent bond yields a percentage point higher. The rout serves as a warning to monetary policy makers that their exit from record accommodation won’t be easy to control.
The jump in yields has pushed up the cost of mortgages for millions of Americans, curbed demand for homes and prompted thousands of job cuts at Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., all at a time when the Fed’s policies are aimed at creating jobs and supporting housing.
Bernanke has stressed that any reduction in the amount of money the central bank pumps into the financial system each month doesn’t mean policy is getting any more restrictive. That message hasn’t been heeded by bond investors, demonstrating how hard it will be for the Fed to control long-term interest rates as it moves toward tightening, according to Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey.
“Getting out of ultra-low interest-rate policy was never going to be easy, and this is a perfect illustration of why,” Crandall said. “It is possible that this will make it even harder because the market will be even more primed to view inflection points as messy and destructive, and therefore a reason to sell early.”
xchrom
(108,903 posts)11. Here's The Petty Reason Obama Might Not Appoint Janet Yellen To Fed Chair
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-petty-reason-obama-might-not-appoint-janet-yellen-to-the-fed-2013-9
With Larry Summers dropping out of the Fed race, it now appears clear that Janet Yellen is the frontrunner to succeed Ben Bernanke.
According to WSJ, the White House is not inclined to start fresh with new names, and since Yellen was the #2, Summers' departure makes her the #1. But it's not a done deal until it's over.
POLITICO's Ben White — who deserves credit for identifying Summers as the favorite before just about any other reporter — says in today's Morning Money that while Yellen is probably the frontrunner, one can't discount the possibility of someone like Roger Ferguson, also a former Fed vice-chair, and the CEO of TIAA-Creff.
White cites one "well-connected" source who offers the following argument for Obama to pick Ferguson:
“He handled the Fed’s response to 9-11 adroitly and is a calm and analytical policy wonk. He knows the President and Valerie Jarrett well, but also gets along fine with Republicans on the Hill. And if he is the pick the President could let it be known that he won’t reward Elizabeth Warren for sabotaging the Summers pick by giving the appointment to Warren’s pal Yellen.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-petty-reason-obama-might-not-appoint-janet-yellen-to-the-fed-2013-9#ixzz2f92ryEI5
With Larry Summers dropping out of the Fed race, it now appears clear that Janet Yellen is the frontrunner to succeed Ben Bernanke.
According to WSJ, the White House is not inclined to start fresh with new names, and since Yellen was the #2, Summers' departure makes her the #1. But it's not a done deal until it's over.
POLITICO's Ben White — who deserves credit for identifying Summers as the favorite before just about any other reporter — says in today's Morning Money that while Yellen is probably the frontrunner, one can't discount the possibility of someone like Roger Ferguson, also a former Fed vice-chair, and the CEO of TIAA-Creff.
White cites one "well-connected" source who offers the following argument for Obama to pick Ferguson:
“He handled the Fed’s response to 9-11 adroitly and is a calm and analytical policy wonk. He knows the President and Valerie Jarrett well, but also gets along fine with Republicans on the Hill. And if he is the pick the President could let it be known that he won’t reward Elizabeth Warren for sabotaging the Summers pick by giving the appointment to Warren’s pal Yellen.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-petty-reason-obama-might-not-appoint-janet-yellen-to-the-fed-2013-9#ixzz2f92ryEI5
Demeter
(85,373 posts)19. "Petty" doesn't BEGIN to describe Obama
but we have noticed that he's not a big man, unlike some I could name (Biden). He's profoundly jealous of his "image", to be sure....even though he has tainted it almost beyond repair by his foolish actions and sycophantic hirings.
Tansy_Gold
(17,847 posts)33. A symptom of profound insecurity. n/t
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)12. Barclays Is Still Paying for Qatar's Bad 'Advice'
Barclays is off raising $9.2 billion to shore up its capital, and the prospectus has a rather awkward disclosure, which is that British regulators are planning to fine Barclays $79 million because the last time it raised a bunch of capital it maybe lied to shareholders to cover up the bribes it paid to Qatari investors to buy its shares. But that was, like, almost five years ago, so surely there are no hard feelings?
...
It was not alone in this. If you're a bank and things have gone terribly wrong for you, one thing you might want to do is raise some money by selling stock. This can be hard because everyone tends to know that things have gone wrong for you, but they have trouble knowing how wrong, so their sensible inclination is to assume the worst. Markets for lemons, etc.
One partial way around this problem is to raise a big chunk of money from a single, deep-pocketed investor. That investor gets to do due diligence, look you in the eye, and generally get a better than average sense of your situation. And then you can use him as an foundation to raise public money: "See, we can't be in that bad shape, we raised all this money from Investor X." Many extra points if Investor X is Warren Buffett but, in a pinch, Blackrock or Fairfax or Temasek or even the Qatar Investment Authority will do.
The problem here is that the big investor will want to buy shares below where you want to sell them. For good reasons. One, he's putting in a lot of money and want some sort of volume discount. Two, he's done due diligence and looked you in the eyes. Your eyes are bloodshot and shifty. Why would he trust you with his money unless you give him a good deal? ...
/More... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-16/barclays-is-still-paying-for-qatar-s-bad-advice-.html
xchrom
(108,903 posts)13. German Investor Sentiment Blows Through The Roof
http://www.businessinsider.com/zew-survey-2013-9
Here's the latest survey of economic sentiment from Germany's prestigious ZEW institute:
The ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany has increased by 7.6 points in September 2013. The indicator now stands at a level of 49.6 points (historical average: 23.8 points). "The financial market experts hold the view that the German economy is still gaining momentum. In particular, the experts’ economic optimism has increased due to the improved economic outlook for the Eurozone – although recently released economic data for Germany have fallen short of expectations", says ZEW President Prof. Dr. Clemens Fuest.
The assessment of the current economic situation for Germany has also improved in September. The respective indicator has increased by 12.3 points and now stands at the 30.6 points-mark. Economic expectations for the Eurozone have increased considerably in September. The respective indicator has improved by 14.6 points to 58.6 points.
The indicator for the current economic situation in the Eurozone has increased by 14.4 to a level of minus 59.7 points.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/zew-survey-2013-9#ixzz2f98Wh8P5
Here's the latest survey of economic sentiment from Germany's prestigious ZEW institute:
The ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany has increased by 7.6 points in September 2013. The indicator now stands at a level of 49.6 points (historical average: 23.8 points). "The financial market experts hold the view that the German economy is still gaining momentum. In particular, the experts’ economic optimism has increased due to the improved economic outlook for the Eurozone – although recently released economic data for Germany have fallen short of expectations", says ZEW President Prof. Dr. Clemens Fuest.
The assessment of the current economic situation for Germany has also improved in September. The respective indicator has increased by 12.3 points and now stands at the 30.6 points-mark. Economic expectations for the Eurozone have increased considerably in September. The respective indicator has improved by 14.6 points to 58.6 points.
The indicator for the current economic situation in the Eurozone has increased by 14.4 to a level of minus 59.7 points.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/zew-survey-2013-9#ixzz2f98Wh8P5
Demeter
(85,373 posts)20. Well, that's delusional
So, WW3 starts where the previous two started?
xchrom
(108,903 posts)14. Why Conservatives Are Obsessed With Gold
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-conservatives-like-gold-2013-9
The Federal Reserve is celebrating its 100th birthday trapped in a political bunker.
At few points since the Fed's founding in 1913 has it taken such sustained fire. It's taking fire from the left, because its policies favor Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the other financial corporations that are most responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown and the Great Recession. But it is also taking fire from the right.
Conservative or Tea Party Republicans have a different kind of criticism. They reject the notion that the Fed should even have the power to regulate the money supply and "debase" the dollar. They believe in hard money and a return to the gold standard.
These Republicans have taken a page from the book of conservative orthodoxies of the late 19th century. Conservatives are again fervently pushing gold as a means to protect the wealth and power of Wall Street financiers and the corporate elite. Conservatives are demanding hard money as part of the policy mix that enriches the top 1 percent. Now, as in the Gilded Age, the United States is a nation of savage inequality.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-conservatives-like-gold-2013-9#ixzz2f9917zf3
The Federal Reserve is celebrating its 100th birthday trapped in a political bunker.
At few points since the Fed's founding in 1913 has it taken such sustained fire. It's taking fire from the left, because its policies favor Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the other financial corporations that are most responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown and the Great Recession. But it is also taking fire from the right.
Conservative or Tea Party Republicans have a different kind of criticism. They reject the notion that the Fed should even have the power to regulate the money supply and "debase" the dollar. They believe in hard money and a return to the gold standard.
These Republicans have taken a page from the book of conservative orthodoxies of the late 19th century. Conservatives are again fervently pushing gold as a means to protect the wealth and power of Wall Street financiers and the corporate elite. Conservatives are demanding hard money as part of the policy mix that enriches the top 1 percent. Now, as in the Gilded Age, the United States is a nation of savage inequality.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-conservatives-like-gold-2013-9#ixzz2f9917zf3
xchrom
(108,903 posts)15. Crisis in Greece: PM Samaras sees recovery by 2019
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24124189
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said the debt-ridden country could return to pre-crisis living standards within six years.
"According to most [experts], we will not need a couple of decades, not a couple of generations, but only six years," he said in a speech.
He was speaking in Rome ahead of talks with EU officials in Brussels.
International lenders are due to conduct a new audit of Greece, where strikes against cuts are under way.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said the debt-ridden country could return to pre-crisis living standards within six years.
"According to most [experts], we will not need a couple of decades, not a couple of generations, but only six years," he said in a speech.
He was speaking in Rome ahead of talks with EU officials in Brussels.
International lenders are due to conduct a new audit of Greece, where strikes against cuts are under way.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)21. My goodness, the Delusions Tremens, or DTs are all over, like early influenza
Not a good sign for the season...
xchrom
(108,903 posts)16. Where Americans—Rich and Poor—Spent Every Dollar in 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/where-americans-rich-and-poor-spent-every-dollar-in-2012/279727/
Here it is, fresh from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: all of American spending in one big color wheel.
Since some of you (inexplicably) don't like pie charts, here's the same data in bars.
Averages are misleading, particularly when the rich are running away from the rest. So, digging deeper into BLS data, I broke out percent spending by category for the richest and poorest 20 percent.
Here it is, fresh from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: all of American spending in one big color wheel.
Since some of you (inexplicably) don't like pie charts, here's the same data in bars.
Averages are misleading, particularly when the rich are running away from the rest. So, digging deeper into BLS data, I broke out percent spending by category for the richest and poorest 20 percent.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)22. Proving my contention that insurance is the province of the rich
because the poor can't afford it.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)24. the older i get -- the more i resent insurance. nt
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)41. 'Insurance', you'll notice, is classified as an expenditure,
not an investment.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)17. AP SURVEY: SLUGGISH GLOBAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY AHEAD
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AP_ECONOMY_SURVEY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-09-17-06-29-33
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A robust recovery for the global economy remains well out of reach.
That's the view that emerges from a survey of economists just as the Federal Reserve is expected this week to reduce its stimulus for the U.S. economy.
Europe has finally emerged from recession. Japan is growing after two decades of stagnation. And the United States is trudging ahead. Yet an Associated Press survey of more than two dozen economists suggests that global growth will remain below full health this year and next.
Persistently weak growth would make it harder to resolve many of the world's biggest economic challenges. They include historically high unemployment in Europe, sluggish spending by consumers and businesses in the United States, heavy government debts in Europe and Japan and unstable economies in some emerging nations.
The economists think the 17 nations that use the euro will grow at an annual rate barely above 1 percent in the second half of 2013 and in 2014. From April through June, the eurozone eked out its first quarterly growth after 18 months of contraction - a 1.2 percent annual rate. No acceleration is foreseen in the next year and a half.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A robust recovery for the global economy remains well out of reach.
That's the view that emerges from a survey of economists just as the Federal Reserve is expected this week to reduce its stimulus for the U.S. economy.
Europe has finally emerged from recession. Japan is growing after two decades of stagnation. And the United States is trudging ahead. Yet an Associated Press survey of more than two dozen economists suggests that global growth will remain below full health this year and next.
Persistently weak growth would make it harder to resolve many of the world's biggest economic challenges. They include historically high unemployment in Europe, sluggish spending by consumers and businesses in the United States, heavy government debts in Europe and Japan and unstable economies in some emerging nations.
The economists think the 17 nations that use the euro will grow at an annual rate barely above 1 percent in the second half of 2013 and in 2014. From April through June, the eurozone eked out its first quarterly growth after 18 months of contraction - a 1.2 percent annual rate. No acceleration is foreseen in the next year and a half.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)18. FIRM EXPECTS SLOWER HOLIDAY GROWTH IN 2013
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HOLIDAY_SALES_FORECAST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-09-17-06-22-59
Coming off of a weak back-to-school shopping period, a research firm expects holiday sales growth will be slower this year during the crucial holiday season. Shoppers are also expected to visit fewer stores as they research purchases online.
Retail revenue in November and December should rise 2.4 percent during the biggest shopping period of the year, Chicago-based research firm ShopperTrak said Tuesday. That compares with a 3 percent increase in 2012 from 2011.
"Although the economy continues to recover slowly, consumers remain cautious about spending and are not ready to splurge," said ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin.
While the job picture has been improving in the U.S. and the turnaround in the housing market is gaining traction, the improvements have not been enough to sustain higher levels of spending for most Americans. Most continue to juggle tepid wage gains with a higher cost of living.
Coming off of a weak back-to-school shopping period, a research firm expects holiday sales growth will be slower this year during the crucial holiday season. Shoppers are also expected to visit fewer stores as they research purchases online.
Retail revenue in November and December should rise 2.4 percent during the biggest shopping period of the year, Chicago-based research firm ShopperTrak said Tuesday. That compares with a 3 percent increase in 2012 from 2011.
"Although the economy continues to recover slowly, consumers remain cautious about spending and are not ready to splurge," said ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin.
While the job picture has been improving in the U.S. and the turnaround in the housing market is gaining traction, the improvements have not been enough to sustain higher levels of spending for most Americans. Most continue to juggle tepid wage gains with a higher cost of living.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)23. DOCTORS AT GREEK HOSPITALS JOIN STRIKES
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GREECE_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-09-17-07-15-34
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greek hospital doctors have embarked on a three-day strike, joining high school teachers who walked off the job a day earlier in a week of public sector strikes protesting planned job cuts.
The doctors walked off the job Tuesday, ahead of a two-day civil service strike that is expected to affect public services across the country, including schools, hospitals and some transport systems.
Under government plans, 25,000 public sector employees are to be suspended this year and 15,000 must be fired in the next 15 months as part of efforts to trim the bloated public sector and meet the conditions of Greece's international bailout. The country has been depending on rescue loans from the International Monetary Fund and other European countries that use the euro currency since May 2010.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greek hospital doctors have embarked on a three-day strike, joining high school teachers who walked off the job a day earlier in a week of public sector strikes protesting planned job cuts.
The doctors walked off the job Tuesday, ahead of a two-day civil service strike that is expected to affect public services across the country, including schools, hospitals and some transport systems.
Under government plans, 25,000 public sector employees are to be suspended this year and 15,000 must be fired in the next 15 months as part of efforts to trim the bloated public sector and meet the conditions of Greece's international bailout. The country has been depending on rescue loans from the International Monetary Fund and other European countries that use the euro currency since May 2010.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)25. Winter is icumen in
and I am way behind...I may be scarce for a few weeks...until the place is buttoned up a bit.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)30. There was frost on the CAR!
wimper
xchrom
(108,903 posts)26. NEW DUTCH KING TO DELIVER CABINET'S GLOOMY MESSAGE
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_NETHERLANDS_BUDGET?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-09-17-07-44-37
AMSTERDAM (AP) -- King Willem-Alexander is traveling in a gilded horse-drawn carriage to the 13th-century Hall of Knights in The Hague for his first official address to Dutch lawmakers but his message is decidedly modern: More budget cuts are coming.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte may be hoping that the pomp and ceremony will provide a diversion from the gloomy message the king must deliver. Rutte's government is cutting spending again in 2014, despite this year's recession.
Dutch media are also expecting new military spending cuts, following the earlier decision to cut one of every six military jobs between 2012-2015. However, the De Telegraaf paper reported Tuesday the government has decided not to abandon participating in the U.S.-led "Joint Strike Fighter" project, despite cost overruns.
AMSTERDAM (AP) -- King Willem-Alexander is traveling in a gilded horse-drawn carriage to the 13th-century Hall of Knights in The Hague for his first official address to Dutch lawmakers but his message is decidedly modern: More budget cuts are coming.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte may be hoping that the pomp and ceremony will provide a diversion from the gloomy message the king must deliver. Rutte's government is cutting spending again in 2014, despite this year's recession.
Dutch media are also expecting new military spending cuts, following the earlier decision to cut one of every six military jobs between 2012-2015. However, the De Telegraaf paper reported Tuesday the government has decided not to abandon participating in the U.S.-led "Joint Strike Fighter" project, despite cost overruns.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)27. 'Follow the Money': NSA Monitors Financial World
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies-on-international-bank-transactions-a-922430.html
In the summer of 2010, a Middle Eastern businessman wanted to transfer a large sum of money from one country in the region to another. He wanted to send at least $50,000 (€37,500), and he had a very clear idea of how it should be done. The transaction could not be conducted via the United States, and the name of his bank would have to be kept secret -- those were his conditions.
Though the transfer was carried out precisely according to his instructions, it did not go unobserved. The transaction is listed in classified documents compiled by the US intelligence agency NSA that SPIEGEL has seen and that deal with the activities of the United States in the international financial sector. The documents show how comprehensively and effectively the intelligence agency can track global flows of money and store the information in a powerful database developed for this purpose.
"Follow the Money" is the name of the NSA branch that handles these matters. The name is reminiscent of the famous catchphrase by former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, the whistleblower known as "Deep Throat" who offered the information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters investigating the Watergate scandal in 1972.
Financial transfers are the "Achilles' heel" of terrorists, as NSA analysts note in an internal report. Additional fields of activity for their "financial intelligence" include tracking down illegal arms deliveries and keeping tabs on the increasingly lucrative domain of cybercrime. Tracing international flows of money could help reveal political crimes, expose acts of genocide and monitor whether sanctions are being respected.
In the summer of 2010, a Middle Eastern businessman wanted to transfer a large sum of money from one country in the region to another. He wanted to send at least $50,000 (€37,500), and he had a very clear idea of how it should be done. The transaction could not be conducted via the United States, and the name of his bank would have to be kept secret -- those were his conditions.
Though the transfer was carried out precisely according to his instructions, it did not go unobserved. The transaction is listed in classified documents compiled by the US intelligence agency NSA that SPIEGEL has seen and that deal with the activities of the United States in the international financial sector. The documents show how comprehensively and effectively the intelligence agency can track global flows of money and store the information in a powerful database developed for this purpose.
"Follow the Money" is the name of the NSA branch that handles these matters. The name is reminiscent of the famous catchphrase by former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, the whistleblower known as "Deep Throat" who offered the information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters investigating the Watergate scandal in 1972.
Financial transfers are the "Achilles' heel" of terrorists, as NSA analysts note in an internal report. Additional fields of activity for their "financial intelligence" include tracking down illegal arms deliveries and keeping tabs on the increasingly lucrative domain of cybercrime. Tracing international flows of money could help reveal political crimes, expose acts of genocide and monitor whether sanctions are being respected.
AnneD
(15,774 posts)29. "Financial transfers are the "Achilles' heel" of terrorists"
This includes WallStreet Crooksters and government terrorist. Too bad there is no introspection in our government.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)31. Too bad there is no Rule of Law
Demeter
(85,373 posts)32. Okay, one more slam at Larry, from Tom Tolles
http://assets.amuniversal.com/7d241460012c01311c16001dd8b71c47?width=750
truly, I am trying to quit...
truly, I am trying to quit...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)36. His Master's Voice
Demeter
(85,373 posts)38. I give up: Palast Has the Goods On Summers, and it's a must-read
http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=60e22b06aa&e=b784a2d50d
Larry Summers: Goldman Sacked By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine
Joseph Stiglitz couldn't believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America's economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, "What would Goldman think of that?"
Huh?
Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?
A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, told me he’d turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on “what Goldman thought.” As opposed to say, the facts, or say, the needs of the American public, you know, all that stuff that we heard in Cabinet meetings on The West Wing.
Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books.
R.I.P. Larry Summers
On Sunday afternoon, facing a revolt by his own party’s senators, Obama dumped Larry as likely replacement for Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Until news came that Summers’ torch had been snuffed, I was going to write another column about Larry, the Typhoid Mary of Economics. (My first, in The Guardian, 15 years ago, warned that “Summers is, in fact, a colony of aliens sent to Earth to turn humans into a cheap source of protein.”)
But the fact that Obama even tried to shove Summers down the planet’s throat tells us more about Obama than Summers—and whom Obama works for. Hint: You aren’t one of them.
All these Cabinet discussions back in the 1990s requiring the blessing of Goldman Sachs revolved around the Rubin-Summers idea of ending regulation of the US banking system. To free the US economy, Summers argued, all you'd have to do is allow commercial banks to bet government-guaranteed savings on new "derivatives products," let banks sell high-risk sub-prime mortgage securities and cut their reserves against losses.
What could possibly go wrong?
Stiglitz, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, tried to tell them exactly what would go wrong. But when he tried, he was replaced and exiled.
AND IT GOES ON! AND GETS WORSE...
Larry Summers: Goldman Sacked By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine
Joseph Stiglitz couldn't believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America's economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, "What would Goldman think of that?"
Huh?
Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?
A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, told me he’d turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on “what Goldman thought.” As opposed to say, the facts, or say, the needs of the American public, you know, all that stuff that we heard in Cabinet meetings on The West Wing.
Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books.
R.I.P. Larry Summers
On Sunday afternoon, facing a revolt by his own party’s senators, Obama dumped Larry as likely replacement for Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Until news came that Summers’ torch had been snuffed, I was going to write another column about Larry, the Typhoid Mary of Economics. (My first, in The Guardian, 15 years ago, warned that “Summers is, in fact, a colony of aliens sent to Earth to turn humans into a cheap source of protein.”)
But the fact that Obama even tried to shove Summers down the planet’s throat tells us more about Obama than Summers—and whom Obama works for. Hint: You aren’t one of them.
All these Cabinet discussions back in the 1990s requiring the blessing of Goldman Sachs revolved around the Rubin-Summers idea of ending regulation of the US banking system. To free the US economy, Summers argued, all you'd have to do is allow commercial banks to bet government-guaranteed savings on new "derivatives products," let banks sell high-risk sub-prime mortgage securities and cut their reserves against losses.
What could possibly go wrong?
Stiglitz, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, tried to tell them exactly what would go wrong. But when he tried, he was replaced and exiled.
AND IT GOES ON! AND GETS WORSE...
AnneD
(15,774 posts)39. Max Keiser's
latest has an interview with Greg on theis very topic.
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/episode-498-max-keiser-929/
Hotler
(11,396 posts)40. So much rope. So many lamp post all going unused. n/t
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)34. OMFG - Another one! TISA
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/09/17-0
I am so behind - I never even heard of this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Published on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 by Inter Press Service
A New Raw Deal: Corporations to Profit While Workers, Planet Pay the Price
'The TISA negotiations are largely an effort to ensure greater corporate profits at the expense of workers, farmers, consumers and the environment.'
by Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON - Nearly 350 international civil society organisations are urging countries taking part in new negotiations towards an agreement on “trade in services” to abandon the effort, warning that the accord would negatively impact on universal access to and national regulation of public services.
... “The TISA negotiations largely follow the corporate agenda of using ‘trade’ agreements to bind countries to an agenda of extreme liberalisation and deregulation in order to ensure greater corporate profits at the expense of workers, farmers, consumers and the environment,” an open letter from the groups, addressed to trade ministers both involved in the TISA negotiations and those not participating, states.
A New Raw Deal: Corporations to Profit While Workers, Planet Pay the Price
'The TISA negotiations are largely an effort to ensure greater corporate profits at the expense of workers, farmers, consumers and the environment.'
by Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON - Nearly 350 international civil society organisations are urging countries taking part in new negotiations towards an agreement on “trade in services” to abandon the effort, warning that the accord would negatively impact on universal access to and national regulation of public services.
... “The TISA negotiations largely follow the corporate agenda of using ‘trade’ agreements to bind countries to an agenda of extreme liberalisation and deregulation in order to ensure greater corporate profits at the expense of workers, farmers, consumers and the environment,” an open letter from the groups, addressed to trade ministers both involved in the TISA negotiations and those not participating, states.
I am so behind - I never even heard of this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)35. Me neither
They multiply like all pests....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)37. Why the Idea of a "Free Market" Is Total BS Robert Reich
http://www.alternet.org/why-idea-free-market-total-bs?akid=10940.227380.sU5hnd&rd=1&src=newsletter897196&t=12
There has never been and never will be a "free" market. All markets have rules.
One of the most deceptive ideas continuously sounded by the Right (and its fathomless think tanks and media outlets) is that the "free market" is natural and inevitable, existing outside and beyond government. So whatever inequality or insecurity it generates is beyond our control. And whatever ways we might seek to reduce inequality or insecurity -- to make the economy work for us -- are unwarranted constraints on the market's freedom, and will inevitably go wrong. By this view, if some people aren't paid enough to live on, the market has determined they aren't worth enough. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of Americans remain unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they work two or three part-time jobs with no idea what they'll earn next month or next week, that's too bad; it's just the outcome of the market. According to this logic, government shouldn't intrude through minimum wages, high taxes on top earners, public spending to get people back to work, regulations on business, or anything else, because the "free market" knows best.
In reality, the "free market" is a bunch of rules about (1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); (2) on what terms (equal access to the internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections? ); (3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?) (4) what's private and what's public (police? roads? clean air and clean water? healthcare? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); (5) how to pay for what (taxes, user fees, individual pricing?). And so on.
These rules don't exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don't "intrude" on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren't "free" of rules; the rules define them.
The interesting question is what the rules should seek to achieve. They can be designed to maximize efficiency (given the current distribution of resources), or growth (depending on what we're willing to sacrifice to obtain that growth), or fairness (depending on our ideas about a decent society). Or some combination of all three -- which aren't necessarily in competition with one another. Evidence suggests, for example, that if prosperity were more widely shared, we'd have faster growth. The rules can even be designed to entrench and enhance the wealth of a few at the top, and keep almost everyone else comparatively poor and economically insecure. Which brings us to the central political question: Who should decide on the rules, and their major purpose? If our democracy was working as it should, presumably our elected representatives, agency heads, and courts would be making the rules roughly according to what most of us want the rules to be. The economy would be working for us; we wouldn't be working for the economy. Instead, the rules are being made mainly by those with the power and resources to buy the politicians, regulatory heads, and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth have concentrated at the top, so has political clout. And the most important clout is determining the rules of the game. Not incidentally, these are the same people who want you and most others to believe in the fiction of an immutable "free market."
If we want to reduce the savage inequalities and insecurities that are now undermining our economy and democracy, we shouldn't be deterred by the myth of the "free market." We can make the economy work for us, rather than the other way around. But in order to change the rules, we must exert the power that is supposed to be ours.
There has never been and never will be a "free" market. All markets have rules.
One of the most deceptive ideas continuously sounded by the Right (and its fathomless think tanks and media outlets) is that the "free market" is natural and inevitable, existing outside and beyond government. So whatever inequality or insecurity it generates is beyond our control. And whatever ways we might seek to reduce inequality or insecurity -- to make the economy work for us -- are unwarranted constraints on the market's freedom, and will inevitably go wrong. By this view, if some people aren't paid enough to live on, the market has determined they aren't worth enough. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of Americans remain unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they work two or three part-time jobs with no idea what they'll earn next month or next week, that's too bad; it's just the outcome of the market. According to this logic, government shouldn't intrude through minimum wages, high taxes on top earners, public spending to get people back to work, regulations on business, or anything else, because the "free market" knows best.
In reality, the "free market" is a bunch of rules about (1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); (2) on what terms (equal access to the internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections? ); (3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?) (4) what's private and what's public (police? roads? clean air and clean water? healthcare? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); (5) how to pay for what (taxes, user fees, individual pricing?). And so on.
These rules don't exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don't "intrude" on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren't "free" of rules; the rules define them.
The interesting question is what the rules should seek to achieve. They can be designed to maximize efficiency (given the current distribution of resources), or growth (depending on what we're willing to sacrifice to obtain that growth), or fairness (depending on our ideas about a decent society). Or some combination of all three -- which aren't necessarily in competition with one another. Evidence suggests, for example, that if prosperity were more widely shared, we'd have faster growth. The rules can even be designed to entrench and enhance the wealth of a few at the top, and keep almost everyone else comparatively poor and economically insecure. Which brings us to the central political question: Who should decide on the rules, and their major purpose? If our democracy was working as it should, presumably our elected representatives, agency heads, and courts would be making the rules roughly according to what most of us want the rules to be. The economy would be working for us; we wouldn't be working for the economy. Instead, the rules are being made mainly by those with the power and resources to buy the politicians, regulatory heads, and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth have concentrated at the top, so has political clout. And the most important clout is determining the rules of the game. Not incidentally, these are the same people who want you and most others to believe in the fiction of an immutable "free market."
If we want to reduce the savage inequalities and insecurities that are now undermining our economy and democracy, we shouldn't be deterred by the myth of the "free market." We can make the economy work for us, rather than the other way around. But in order to change the rules, we must exert the power that is supposed to be ours.