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STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 2 January 2014
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Thursday, 2 January 2014[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 31 December 2013
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 31 December 2013
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Dow Jones 16,576.66 +72.37 (0.44%)
S&P 500 1,848.36 +7.29 (0.40%)
[font color=black]Nasdaq 4,176.59 0.00 (0.00%)
[font color=red]10 Year 3.03% +0.04 (1.34%)
30 Year 3.97% +0.07 (1.79%) [font color=black]
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
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.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
26 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/02/federal-judge-asks-why-havent-any-top-executives-been-prosecuted-for-financial-crisis/
As the five-year statute of limitations nears for crimes that led to the Great Recession, a federal judge wants to know why no high-level executives have been prosecuted.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff said he could not be sure whether intentional fraud was committed in any particular case, but he pointed out that government agencies had found significant evidence to suggest wrongdoing in their own investigations.
“The stated opinion of those government entities asked to examine the financial crisis overall is not that no fraud was committed. Quite the contrary,” Rakoff writes in the New York Review of Books. “For example, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, in its final report, uses variants of the word ‘fraud’ no fewer than 157 times in describing what led to the crisis, concluding that there was a ‘systemic breakdown,’ not just in accountability, but also in ethical behavior.”
He dismissed claims by Department of Justice officials that proving intent would be too difficult, pointing out that federal prosecutors routinely did so by establishing that defendants acted in willful or conscious disregard of the law.
As the five-year statute of limitations nears for crimes that led to the Great Recession, a federal judge wants to know why no high-level executives have been prosecuted.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff said he could not be sure whether intentional fraud was committed in any particular case, but he pointed out that government agencies had found significant evidence to suggest wrongdoing in their own investigations.
“The stated opinion of those government entities asked to examine the financial crisis overall is not that no fraud was committed. Quite the contrary,” Rakoff writes in the New York Review of Books. “For example, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, in its final report, uses variants of the word ‘fraud’ no fewer than 157 times in describing what led to the crisis, concluding that there was a ‘systemic breakdown,’ not just in accountability, but also in ethical behavior.”
He dismissed claims by Department of Justice officials that proving intent would be too difficult, pointing out that federal prosecutors routinely did so by establishing that defendants acted in willful or conscious disregard of the law.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/31/the-secret-capitalist-cabal-behind-austerity/
The ‘How to Win the Class War’ satirist tells Claire Provost about the ‘shadowy plot’ to claw back working-class gains
In a discreet villa in Switzerland, carefully chosen experts have been assembled by a shadowy group of wealthy and powerful commissioners and tasked with answering a single big question: how, amid the global financial crisis, can a renaissance of western capitalism be best ensured?
This is the Machiavellian scene that opens the latest book from Susan George, the prolific Franco-American political scientist and global justice activist. While perhaps best known for her work on world hunger, poverty and debt, George has turned to Europe and the US in How to Win the Class War, a satire of the 1%, or the “Davos class”, as she puts it, in reference to the elite annual gatherings of the World Economic Forum.
Tongue-in-cheek and at times bizarre, the book is likely to strike a chord with those involved in movements such as Occupy and others increasingly suspicious of political parties and elite institutions. “I don’t think preachy books work,” says George, who was in London this month. “I think sometimes people are more moved by [satire] and black humour … God knows there’s plenty to satirise out there.”
George, 79, has spent decades studying and critiquing mainstream economic policy and is a key figure in alter-globalisation circles. Born in Ohio during the Great Depression, she moved to France in the 1950s and never left, joining activist movements against France’s colonial war in Algeria and America’s war in Vietnam. Today, she is honorary president of Attac-France, a group founded to push for taxes on foreign exchange transactions but which now works on a range of issues, and heads the board of the Transnational Institute network of “scholar-activists”.
The ‘How to Win the Class War’ satirist tells Claire Provost about the ‘shadowy plot’ to claw back working-class gains
In a discreet villa in Switzerland, carefully chosen experts have been assembled by a shadowy group of wealthy and powerful commissioners and tasked with answering a single big question: how, amid the global financial crisis, can a renaissance of western capitalism be best ensured?
This is the Machiavellian scene that opens the latest book from Susan George, the prolific Franco-American political scientist and global justice activist. While perhaps best known for her work on world hunger, poverty and debt, George has turned to Europe and the US in How to Win the Class War, a satire of the 1%, or the “Davos class”, as she puts it, in reference to the elite annual gatherings of the World Economic Forum.
Tongue-in-cheek and at times bizarre, the book is likely to strike a chord with those involved in movements such as Occupy and others increasingly suspicious of political parties and elite institutions. “I don’t think preachy books work,” says George, who was in London this month. “I think sometimes people are more moved by [satire] and black humour … God knows there’s plenty to satirise out there.”
George, 79, has spent decades studying and critiquing mainstream economic policy and is a key figure in alter-globalisation circles. Born in Ohio during the Great Depression, she moved to France in the 1950s and never left, joining activist movements against France’s colonial war in Algeria and America’s war in Vietnam. Today, she is honorary president of Attac-France, a group founded to push for taxes on foreign exchange transactions but which now works on a range of issues, and heads the board of the Transnational Institute network of “scholar-activists”.
Mr. $100,000's heart. 
I was gonna offer to help.
http://www.businessinsider.com/jobless-claims-january-2014-2014-1
Pantheon Macro's Ian Shepherdson says seasonal distortions continue to make this figure noisy:
"With two straight readings not far from our guesstimate of the underlying trend, it is tempting to argue that the claims numbers are settling after an extended period of extreme volatility, triggered by the California systems problems, the government shutdown and old-fashioned seasonal adjustment problems.
But we think it makes sense to remain cautious. Indeed, we think the odds favor a sharp drop in claims next week, to perhaps 310K or so, followed by a rebound to about 340K the following week. The data likely won't be free of seasonal distortions until the middle of this month.
For now, we're guessing that the trend in layoffs is flat-to-slightly downwards, but we cannot be sure."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jobless-claims-january-2014-2014-1#ixzz2pFZ6jMMN
Pantheon Macro's Ian Shepherdson says seasonal distortions continue to make this figure noisy:
"With two straight readings not far from our guesstimate of the underlying trend, it is tempting to argue that the claims numbers are settling after an extended period of extreme volatility, triggered by the California systems problems, the government shutdown and old-fashioned seasonal adjustment problems.
But we think it makes sense to remain cautious. Indeed, we think the odds favor a sharp drop in claims next week, to perhaps 310K or so, followed by a rebound to about 340K the following week. The data likely won't be free of seasonal distortions until the middle of this month.
For now, we're guessing that the trend in layoffs is flat-to-slightly downwards, but we cannot be sure."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jobless-claims-january-2014-2014-1#ixzz2pFZ6jMMN
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-here-is-what-america-wants-the-government-to-focus-on-in-2014-2014-1
Health care and the economy top the list of issues that Americans want the government to work on, but no one believes that Congress will actually get anything done. Seventy percent have no confidence that the federal government "can make progress on the important problems and issues it faces in 2014." Confidence in state and local governments is higher, but still low.
More than half are pessimistic about the opportunity for most people to achieve the American Dream. Fifty four percent believe life will get worse over the next 50 years compared to just 23% who say it will get better. However, 54% also believe that life in America has gotten worse since the 1970s.
Here's the full chart of what issues Americans want government to tackle:
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-here-is-what-america-wants-the-government-to-focus-on-in-2014-2014-1#ixzz2pFZjKwAH
Health care and the economy top the list of issues that Americans want the government to work on, but no one believes that Congress will actually get anything done. Seventy percent have no confidence that the federal government "can make progress on the important problems and issues it faces in 2014." Confidence in state and local governments is higher, but still low.
More than half are pessimistic about the opportunity for most people to achieve the American Dream. Fifty four percent believe life will get worse over the next 50 years compared to just 23% who say it will get better. However, 54% also believe that life in America has gotten worse since the 1970s.
Here's the full chart of what issues Americans want government to tackle:
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-here-is-what-america-wants-the-government-to-focus-on-in-2014-2014-1#ixzz2pFZjKwAH
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robots-and-the-demographic-crisis
Do you remember back when we were worried that robots will take all of the jobs? There will be no work for any of us because we will have all been replaced by robots....It turns out that we have even more to worry about. AP says that because of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancies, we face a huge demographic crunch. We will have hordes of retirees and no one to to do the work. Now that sounds really scary, at the same time we have no jobs because the robots took them we must also struggle with the fact that we have no one to do the work because everyone is old and retired. Yes, these are the complete opposite arguments. It is possible for one or the other to be true, but only in Washington can both be problems simultaneously. In this case, I happen to be a good moderate and say that neither is true. There is no plausible story in which robots are going to make us all unemployed any time in the foreseeable future. Nor is there a case that the demographic will impoverish us.
The basic story is that we have a rising ratio of retirees to workers, which should promote outraged cries of "so what?" Yes folks, we have had rising ratios of retirees to workers for a long time. In 1960 there was just one retiree for every five workers. Today there is one retiree for every 2.8 workers, and the Social Security trustees tell us that in 2035 there will be one retiree for every 2.1 workers. Just as the fall in the ratio of workers to retirees between 1960 and 2013 did not prevent both workers and retirees from enjoying substantially higher living standards, there is no reason to expect the further decline in the ratio to 2035 to lead to a fall in living standards.
This point can be seen by comparing the average wage in 2013 with the average wage projected for 2035. The chart also includes the after-Social Security tax wage. The figure for 2035 assumes a 4.0 percentage point rise in the Social Security tax, an increase that is far larger than would be needed to keep the program fully funded under almost any conceivable circumstances. Even in this case, the average after tax wage would more than 38 percent higher than it is today. There is of course an issue of distribution. Most workers have not seen much benefit from the growth in average wages over the last three decades as most of the gains have gone to those at the top. But this points out yet again the urgency of addressing wage inequality. A continuing upward redistribution of income could make our children poor. Social Security and Medicare will not.
Finally, this AP article warns of the demographic nightmare facing China. Really? China has seen incredible economic growth over the last three decades. As a result it is hugely richer today than it was in 1980. The chart below shows the ratio of real per capita income projected by the IMF for China in 2018 compared to its 1980 level. The projection for 2018 is more than 22 times as high as the 1980 level. The chart shows average wages under the assumption that wages grew in step with per capita income and a hypothetical after Social Security tax wage. The latter is calculated under the assumption that there was zero tax in 1980 and a 30 percent tax in 2018. (These are intended to be extreme assumptions.) Even in this case the average after-Social Security tax wage in 2018 would still be 15 times as high as the wage in 1980. Of course in China, as with the United States, there has been an upward redistribution of income associated with a huge shift from wages to profits. As a result workers have not fully shared in the gains from growth over this period. But the limit in the gains to workers is clearly this distributional shift, not a deterioration in the country's demographic picture. In short, we have a seriously flawed scare story. The upward redistribution of income does pose a serious threat to the well-being of future generations of workers in the United States and elsewhere. The rise in the ratio of retirees to workers is not even an issue by comparison.
WHEN THEY DEVELOP ROBOTS THAT CAN CHANGE DIAPERS WITHOUT HURTING PEOPLE, OR DISINFECT BATHROOMS AFTER THE INCONTINENT HAVE USED THEM, THEN WOMEN'S WORK WILL BE DONE....BY ROBOTS!
Do you remember back when we were worried that robots will take all of the jobs? There will be no work for any of us because we will have all been replaced by robots....It turns out that we have even more to worry about. AP says that because of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancies, we face a huge demographic crunch. We will have hordes of retirees and no one to to do the work. Now that sounds really scary, at the same time we have no jobs because the robots took them we must also struggle with the fact that we have no one to do the work because everyone is old and retired. Yes, these are the complete opposite arguments. It is possible for one or the other to be true, but only in Washington can both be problems simultaneously. In this case, I happen to be a good moderate and say that neither is true. There is no plausible story in which robots are going to make us all unemployed any time in the foreseeable future. Nor is there a case that the demographic will impoverish us.
The basic story is that we have a rising ratio of retirees to workers, which should promote outraged cries of "so what?" Yes folks, we have had rising ratios of retirees to workers for a long time. In 1960 there was just one retiree for every five workers. Today there is one retiree for every 2.8 workers, and the Social Security trustees tell us that in 2035 there will be one retiree for every 2.1 workers. Just as the fall in the ratio of workers to retirees between 1960 and 2013 did not prevent both workers and retirees from enjoying substantially higher living standards, there is no reason to expect the further decline in the ratio to 2035 to lead to a fall in living standards.
This point can be seen by comparing the average wage in 2013 with the average wage projected for 2035. The chart also includes the after-Social Security tax wage. The figure for 2035 assumes a 4.0 percentage point rise in the Social Security tax, an increase that is far larger than would be needed to keep the program fully funded under almost any conceivable circumstances. Even in this case, the average after tax wage would more than 38 percent higher than it is today. There is of course an issue of distribution. Most workers have not seen much benefit from the growth in average wages over the last three decades as most of the gains have gone to those at the top. But this points out yet again the urgency of addressing wage inequality. A continuing upward redistribution of income could make our children poor. Social Security and Medicare will not.
Finally, this AP article warns of the demographic nightmare facing China. Really? China has seen incredible economic growth over the last three decades. As a result it is hugely richer today than it was in 1980. The chart below shows the ratio of real per capita income projected by the IMF for China in 2018 compared to its 1980 level. The projection for 2018 is more than 22 times as high as the 1980 level. The chart shows average wages under the assumption that wages grew in step with per capita income and a hypothetical after Social Security tax wage. The latter is calculated under the assumption that there was zero tax in 1980 and a 30 percent tax in 2018. (These are intended to be extreme assumptions.) Even in this case the average after-Social Security tax wage in 2018 would still be 15 times as high as the wage in 1980. Of course in China, as with the United States, there has been an upward redistribution of income associated with a huge shift from wages to profits. As a result workers have not fully shared in the gains from growth over this period. But the limit in the gains to workers is clearly this distributional shift, not a deterioration in the country's demographic picture. In short, we have a seriously flawed scare story. The upward redistribution of income does pose a serious threat to the well-being of future generations of workers in the United States and elsewhere. The rise in the ratio of retirees to workers is not even an issue by comparison.
WHEN THEY DEVELOP ROBOTS THAT CAN CHANGE DIAPERS WITHOUT HURTING PEOPLE, OR DISINFECT BATHROOMS AFTER THE INCONTINENT HAVE USED THEM, THEN WOMEN'S WORK WILL BE DONE....BY ROBOTS!
I'D LIKE TO SEE HOW IT WOULD LOOK IF ALL THE SECCESSIONISTS HAD LEFT THE USA UMBRELLA
ARTICLE AT http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531986/The-124-States-America-A-look-USA-been.html
