STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 21 February 2014

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 21 February 2014[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 20 February 2014

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 20 February 2014
[center][font color=green]
Dow Jones 16,133.23 +92.67 (0.58%)
S&P 500 1,839.78 +11.03 (0.60%)
Nasdaq 4,267.54 +29.59 (0.70%)


[font color=black]10 Year 2.75% 0.00 (0.00%)
[font color=red]30 Year 3.72% +0.01 (0.27%) [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]

[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.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.








[HR width=95%]


[center]

[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]

[DemReadingDU]

1. Matt Taibbi leaving Rollingstone

2/20/14 Thank You, Rolling StoneBy Matt Taibbi

Today is my last day at Rolling Stone. As of this week, I’m leaving to work for First Look Media, the new organization that’s already home to reporters like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras.

I’ll have plenty of time to talk about the new job elsewhere. But in this space, I just want to talk about Rolling Stone, and express my thanks. Today is a very bittersweet day for me. As excited as I am about the new opportunity, I’m sad to be leaving this company.

More than 15 years ago, Rolling Stone sent a reporter, Brian Preston, to do a story on the eXile, the biweekly English-language newspaper I was editing in Moscow at the time with Mark Ames. We abused the polite Canadian Preston terribly – I think we thought we were being hospitable – and he promptly went home and wrote a story about us that was painful, funny and somewhat embarrassingly accurate. Looking back at that story now, in fact, I’m surprised that Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana gave me a call years later, after I’d returned to the States.

I remember when Will called, because it was such an important moment in my life. I was on the American side of Niagara Falls, walking with friends, when my cell phone rang. Night had just fallen and when Will invited me to write a few things in advance of the 2004 presidential election, I nearly walked into the river just above the Falls.

At the time, I was having a hard time re-acclimating to life in America and was a mess personally. I was broke and having anxiety attacks. I specifically remember buying three cans of corned beef hash with the last dollars of available credit on my last credit card somewhere during that period. Anyway I botched several early assignments for the magazine, but Will was patient and eventually brought me on to write on a regular basis.

It was my first real job and it changed my life. Had Rolling Stone not given me a chance that year, God knows where I’d be – one of the ideas I was considering most seriously at the time was going to Ukraine to enroll in medical school, of all things.

more...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/thank-you-rolling-stone-20140220

[Demeter]

2. Thank you, Matt Taibbi!

You revitalized the 4th Estate for the entire world, and I'm not exaggerating in the slightest.

[Demeter]

3. Meanwhile, back in the Frozen Midwest

our intrepid girl blogger is losing what's left of her mind.

Today brought thunder, snow, rain, freezing rain, flooding and no doubt tomorrow will feature 2 lane skating rinks on every horizontal surface. And it's supposed to go back down to zero or worse, next week. Again. For the 4th time, but who's counting?

The condo residents are up to their ankles in flooded garages and raindrops keep falling on many heads due to ice dams leaking water through the new roofs, which weren't supposed to get any, anymore. The site manager is taking his wife to the orthopedic surgeon; she fell in her workplace parking lot and suffered 3 fractures (all the bones attached to the ankle).

We aren't doing well, and we have GOP government, to boot.

Everybody, put your minds to it and push that Polar Vortex back where it belongs. Ready? One, two, Three...


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The second room is painted...all that remains is convincing my autistically impaired daughter not to ruin it. And the paint fumes...for a bit we could open the window, but it cooled down rapidly.\

Maybe I should just check into a rest home...

Let's not even get into the clients.

[Demeter]

11. Dear goddess, it's snowing on the glare ice

I'll be back, maybe, if I can, to start the Weekend...

[Demeter]

16. Well, it's not that bad out

The roads are clear and the huge floods are gone.

There's still lumpy ice in parking lots, but it's drivable. And the wind is blowing, but the temp. isn't dropping as fast as they said it would.

[jtuck004]

4. Why Is the Job-Finding Rate Still Low?

Fluctuations in unemployment are mostly driven by fluctuations in the job-finding prospects of unemployed workers—except at the onset of recessions, according to various research papers (see, for example, Shimer [2005, 2012] and Elsby, Hobijn, and Sahin [2010]). With job losses back to their pre-recession levels, the job-finding rate is arguably one of the most important indicators to watch. This rate—defined as the fraction of unemployed workers in a given month who find jobs in the consecutive month—provides a good measure of how easy it is to find jobs in the economy. The chart below presents the job-finding rate starting from 1990. Clearly, the job-finding rate is still substantially below its pre-recession levels, suggesting that it is still difficult for the unemployed to find work. In this post, we explore the underlying reasons behind the low job-finding rate.
...
We conclude that while matching efficiency has declined and remained low in virtually all industries, the most important factor in the low job-finding rate is the persistently low level of vacancies per unemployed.

http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/02/why-is-the-job-finding-rate-still-low.html

Graphic at the link shows the drop-off about 2008 from which we have yet to recover.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/

[Demeter]

5. Answer for jtuck

[xchrom]

6. Inequality, Productivity, and WhatsApp by Robert Reich

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/21-2



If you ever wonder what’s fueling America’s staggering inequality, ponder Facebook’s acquisition of the mobile messaging company WhatsApp .

According to news reports, Facebook has agreed to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion.

That’s the highest price paid for a startup in history. It’s $3 billion more than Facebook raised when it was first listed, and more than twice what Microsoft paid for Skype.

(To be precise, $12 billion of the $19 billion will be in the form of shares in Facebook, $4 billion will be in cash, and $3 billion in restricted stock to WhatsApp staff, which will vest in four years.)

[xchrom]

7. The Monstrous Merger of Comcast and Time Warner Must Be Stopped - Now

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/21-0

Comcast has announced it intends to merge with Time Warner Cable, joining together the largest and second-largest cable and broadband providers in the country. The merger must be approved by both the Justice Department and the FCC. Given the financial and political power of Comcast, and the Obama administration’s miserable record of protecting the public interest, the time to speak out and organize is now.

“This is just such a far-reaching deal, it should be dead on arrival when it gets to the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission for approval,” Michael Copps told me days after the merger announcement. Copps was a commissioner on the FCC from 2001 to 2011, one of the longest-serving commissioners in the agency’s history. Now he leads the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative at Common Cause. “This is the whole shooting match,” he said. “It’s broadband. It’s broadcast. It’s content. It’s distribution. It’s the medium and the message. It’s telecom, and it’s media, too.” Back in 2011, when Comcast sought regulatory approval of its proposed acquisition of NBC Universal, Copps was the sole “no” vote out of the five FCC commissioners.

Copps is not the only former FCC commissioner with an opinion on the merger. Meredith Attwell Baker served briefly there, from 2009 to 2011. President Barack Obama appointed Baker, a Republican, to maintain the traditional party balance on the FCC. Baker was a big supporter of the Comcast-NBCU merger. It surprised many, however, when she abruptly resigned her FCC commission seat to go work for - you guessed it - Comcast. She was named senior vice president for governmental affairs for NBCU, just four months after voting to approve the merger.

As for the regulators, the news website Republic Report revealed that the head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, William Baer, was a lawyer representing NBC during the merger with Comcast, and Maureen Ohlhausen, a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, provided legal counsel for Comcast before joining the commission. If you wonder how President Obama feels about the issue, look at who he appointed to be the new chairperson of the FCC: Tom Wheeler, who was for years a top lobbyist for both the cable and wireless industries.

[xchrom]

8. FANNIE EARNS $6.5B IN 4Q; REPAYING US BAILOUT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EARNS_FANNIE_MAE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-21-08-31-41

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fannie Mae posted net income of $6.5 billion from October through December, its eighth straight profitable quarter. Fannie will have repaid its full government bailout after paying its fourth-quarter dividend.

Fannie said Friday its 2013 profit of $84 billion was boosted by rising home prices and an accounting move capitalizing on tax benefits it had accumulated from losses on mortgages during the financial crisis.

The fourth-quarter profit compares with net income of $7.6 billion in the same period of 2012.

Fannie will pay a dividend of $7.2 billion to the U.S. Treasury next month. With its previous payments totaling about $114 billion, it will have more than fully repaid the $116 billion it received from taxpayers.

[xchrom]

9. JAPAN STOCKS UP AS BOJ SIGNALS CONTINUED STIMULUS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORLD_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-21-04-13-50

HONG KONG (AP) -- Japanese stocks jumped on Friday as the central bank in Asia's second biggest economy signaled its lavish monetary stimulus could continue for longer than the two years anticipated by markets.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index closed 2.9 percent higher at 14,865.67 after the Bank of Japan released minutes of its January policy meeting. Board members said that in order to avoid any misunderstanding about the BOJ's program of ambitious monetary easing, the bank needed "to provide a clear explanation that it did not strictly set this to end in two years," according to Kyodo news agency.

As part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic revival strategy, the central bank in April last year announced a policy overhaul that aimed to double the money supply and achieve 2 percent inflation within about two years.

"They need to provide the market with confidence that they're going to continue doing things," said Andrew Sullivan, director of Asian sales trading at Kim Eng Securities. "We haven't really seen money being spent in Japan yet. Companies are still holding on to capex funds, they're not paying higher wages."

[xchrom]

10. Chess in a Minefield: The Global Implications of the Ukraine Conflict

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-geopolitical-implications-of-conflict-in-ukraine-a-954724.html

The quote printed in SPIEGEL 33 years ago was a noteworthy one, and still sounds remarkably topical: "We have to ensure that this Soviet empire, when it breaks apart due to its internal contradictions, does so with a whimper rather than a bang." The sentence was spoken by US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger during an interview conducted in September of 1981.

This week in Ukraine, one of the core regions of that former empire, it is looking very much like a "bang." Thursday in Kiev has seen bloody violence that has cost the lives of dozens amid gunfire and brutal clashes on Independence Square. Hundreds have been wounded, many seriously. The violence comes on the heels of similar battles on Tuesday -- and mark the beginning of what could become an extended and dramatic conflict over the country's future.

Some of those who have traveled to Kiev to view the situation first hand in recent weeks are fully aware of what a "bang" looks like -- US Senator John McCain, 77, for example, a veteran of Vietnam who was shot down in 1967 and spent over two years as a prisoner of war. In December, he stood on the Independence Square stage in Kiev and called out: "People of Ukraine, this is your moment! The free world is with you! America is with you!"

In other words, the Cold War has returned and Moscow is once again the adversary. The only difference is that the weapons have changed.

[xchrom]

12. Wall Street Is Drooling Over The Money It Will Make On Americans Who Can’t Afford Houses

Wall Street Is Drooling Over The Money It Will Make On Americans Who Can’t Afford Houses

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/02/20/3314271/wall-street-landlords-projected-explosion/



Bad news for American families is great news for the financial industry, according to the real estate finance industry trade magazine CRE Finance World (CREFW).

Workers’ incomes will continue to decline and homeownership will become an ever more remote dream for the typical American, boosting demand for rental housing and pushing the cost of rent up, an article in the magazine’s new edition says. That will cause the market for rental housing securities — complex financial contracts backed by rental properties — to explode over the next year, Deutsche Bank analyst Harris Trifon writes.

Right now, the rental housing securities market mostly consists of a single half-billion dollar deal from late last year. If Trifon is correct, the market will be ten times larger by the end of the year, growing to $5 billion, and will reach $20 billion in the near future.

Given that Trifon’s firm helped arrange the first major rental-backed securities deal last year and that his analysis is being published by a magazine made by and for industry insiders, some skepticism is warranted. But the basis for his analysis looks sound. Working peoples’ incomes are stagnant or even falling, making it harder to afford buying a house. More than a trillion dollars of outstanding student loans are keeping hundreds of thousands of young people from buying homes. These obstacles to homeownership don’t appear to be dissipating anytime soon, so it stands to reason that the demand for rental housing will continue to climb, allowing landlords to raise rents all across the country.

[Demeter]

15. If you can't afford a house, how can you afford "rising rents"?

Somebody has a hole in his head.

[AnneD]

18. THey will just give you that boot.....

and put up a for rent sign and wait for the next new comer to the working poor.

[xchrom]

13. Ukraine’s Warring Factions Sign Pact to End Deadly Crisis

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-21/ukrainian-protesters-agree-to-offer-of-early-elections.html

Ukrainian opposition leaders joined President Viktor Yanukovych in signing a peace accord to halt a deadly three-month political crisis.

The pact, brokered in all-night talks in Kiev with three European Union foreign ministers, envisages snap presidential elections by December and a national unity government within 10 days. Lawmakers backed a return to the 2004 constitution, a step that would curb Yanukovych’s powers in favor of parliament.

After the worst violence since the start of the unrest killed at least 77 protesters and police this week, EU governments imposed sanctions on some Ukrainian officials and sent envoys to hammer out a peace deal. Ukrainian stocks and bonds rebounded on the prospects of a resolution to the crisis, which began when Yanukovych rejected an EU integration pact.

[xchrom]

14. Banks Fight Revised U.S. Plan to Monitor Checking Overdraft Fees

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-21/banks-fight-revised-u-s-plan-to-monitor-checking-overdraft-fees.html

U.S. banks are seeking to shield from scrutiny the $30 billion they collect annually in checking-account fees, saying a proposed requirement for periodic reports is unacceptable even if it exempts small institutions.

The dispute is the latest installment in a multi-year fight between the industry and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over how to monitor the way banks assess charges on their depositors, particularly when people overdraw checking accounts.

The bureau, along with the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, proposed last year that all institutions include detailed breakdowns of their revenue from account fees in the public quarterly reports they file with the FDIC. That would give the consumer bureau data it could use to write new regulations curbing revenue from overdraft services.

Small banks, which earn a larger slice of their revenue from such fees than big institutions, pushed back on the plan. Their resistance led the FDIC and OCC, which regulates nationally chartered banks, to break ranks with the consumer bureau and oppose the change, according to a person briefed on the deliberations who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions weren’t public.

[kickysnana]

17. Southern part of MN is closed due to blizzard conditions, too cold for ice chemical to work...

Single digits overnight with gusty winds. Sheet of ice froze on all roads and was covered with 6-17 inches of snow. Schools closed again and semi's were stuck on inclines on freeways all over the metro area. They are running out of chemicals, sand and they also have run down their budget for snow removal already.

Climate change exists here.