STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 24 February 2014

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, 24 February 2014[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 21 February 2014

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 21 February 2014
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Dow Jones 16,103.30 -29.93 (-0.19%)
S&P 500 1,836.25 -3.53 (-0.19%)
Nasdaq 4,263.41 -4.13 (-0.10%)


[font color=green]10 Year 2.73% -0.04 (-1.44%)
30 Year 3.70% -0.04 (-1.07%) [font color=black]


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

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


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








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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]

[Demeter]

1. IF YOU ARE ONLY GOING TO SEE ONE (OR NO) MOVIE

You must see Monument Men. I took the Kid and I wept like a child. To explain it to the Kid, I began: "There once was a monster, selfish, greedy and cruel."

It isn't Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness we should fight for, it should be to fight Ignorance, Cruelty, and above all, Greed. And we should fight them HERE, because it's our human task: to rid our society of these three killers.

IF, and only IF, we have succeeded here, should we even think of trying it anywhere else, and only with an engraved invitation from the poor.

[DemReadingDU]

3. +++

Agree, movie to see!

[Fuddnik]

2. There goes the neighborhood.

Winner of the week

John Boehner. The U.S. House speaker is the new owner of an $835,000 condo in Marco Island in southwest Florida. Situated in a tony, 14-story tower known as the Tampico, the condo suggests Boehner may be planning to retire to a place where he can finally have an authentic-looking tan.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/winner-and-loser-of-the-week/2166948

[DemReadingDU]

4. No kidding. Boehner's our Representative now

[xchrom]

5. Economics Has a Surprising Mental Disorder

Economics Has a Surprising Mental Disorder

http://www.alternet.org/economy/economics-and-gender



The typical mainstream economist is about as good at making predictions as a monkey reading tea leaves. Exhibit A: The financial crisis, which only a few economists outside the mainstream saw coming, despite oceans of papers, prognostications and plumb academic assignments.

The question is, why?

Researcher Vinca Bigo decided to investigate, and found a surprising explanation: the profession of economics is suffering from a collective mental disorder, causing practitioners to project their pathologies onto the rest of us. Which is very costly for you and me.

Let’s explore.

Pathological Math

In a fascinating paper, Bigo hones in on the fact that economists are in love with mathematical models, despite the glaring fact that they often don’t work in their field. The problem starts when researchers base their models on arbitrary and often ridiculous assumptions about how people and institutions behave, which leads to conclusions that are airily detached from reality. The complexities of the real world then come along to blow up those fancy models, rendering them all but useless. Yet this never stops the mainstream economist, who just goes on to make more models.

Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if these phantasms didn’t lead to policies that affect your pocketbook. But they do. According to the predictions of mainstream (often called “neoclassical”) economists, the 2007-'08 financial crisis wasn’t supposed to happen. I bet it felt pretty real to you, didn’t it? When asked by Congress why he was unable to warn Americans among the coming sh*tstorm, Alan Greenspan offered an uncharacteristic admission: the model he had used to assess the economy for decades was not worth a hill of beans.

[Demeter]

6. we already know that reason for that

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

A further bit from the post:

By emphasizing mathematical models, Bigo argues, economists turn their work into a kind of intellectual parlor game in which the practical problems faced by actual human beings become irrelevant. Bigo acknowledges that some practitioners are now trying to focus more on human behavior and psychology, but they are still expected to package their work in the trapping of mathematics, never mind that the models don’t really fit. They end up with good ideas stuck in bad or useless models.

THAT IS A MUST READ ARTICLE...TYING ECONOMICS, FEMINISM, PSYCHOLOGY TOGETHER.

[Demeter]

7. Anatomy of the Deep State by Mike Lofgren

http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/

Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo.

– The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (1871)

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.

During the last five years, the news media has been flooded with pundits decrying the broken politics of Washington. The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal. That is certainly the case, and I have been among the harshest critics of this development. But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system. On one level, the critique is self-evident: In the domain that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly deadlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the Civil War.

As I wrote in The Party is Over, the present objective of congressional Republicans is to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected (a goal that voter suppression laws in GOP-controlled states are clearly intended to accomplish). President Obama cannot enact his domestic policies and budgets: Because of incessant GOP filibustering, not only could he not fill the large number of vacancies in the federal judiciary, he could not even get his most innocuous presidential appointees into office. Democrats controlling the Senate have responded by weakening the filibuster of nominations, but Republicans are sure to react with other parliamentary delaying tactics. This strategy amounts to congressional nullification of executive branch powers by a party that controls a majority in only one house of Congress.

Despite this apparent impotence, President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented — at least since the McCarthy era — witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called “Insider Threat Program”). Within the United States, this power is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal, state and local law enforcement. Abroad, President Obama can start wars at will and engage in virtually any other activity whatsoever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, such as arranging the forced landing of a plane carrying a sovereign head of state over foreign territory. Despite the habitual cant of congressional Republicans about executive overreach by Obama, the would-be dictator, we have until recently heard very little from them about these actions — with the minor exception of comments from gadfly Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Democrats, save a few mavericks such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, are not unduly troubled, either — even to the extent of permitting seemingly perjured congressional testimony under oath by executive branch officials on the subject of illegal surveillance...

AN IMPORTANT ANALYSIS....MUST READ

[xchrom]

8. How Morgan Stanley Has Raked in Billions by Manipulating the Prices of Everyday Commodities

How Morgan Stanley Has Raked in Billions by Manipulating the Prices of Everyday Commodities

http://www.alternet.org/books/great-american-disconnect-seven-fundamental-threats-our-democracy



The following is an excerpt from Jed Morey 's new book, The Great American Disconnect: Seven Fundamental Threats To Our Democracy (Long Island Press, 2013).

The easiest way to think about commodities is that they are things — physical things — that can be measured in size, quantity or volume. Fruit. Oil. Grains. Metals. Currency. All these have unique characteristics and trade against one another on commodities exchanges throughout the world.

It is a complicated system that’s not for the faint of heart. Only a select few traders on Wall Street have the acumen and desire to deal in this sector, an exchange that had been efficiently regulated by the CEA since 1936. To help understand the markets, in 2008 I interviewed Michael Greenberger, an outspoken critic and former employee of the CFTC, who described these as “backwater markets,” but ones that recently have become “as important to understand and regulate as the securities and debt markets are.”

Once upon a time, commodities traders were highly specialized in their fields and their discipline was so narrow that it was largely misunderstood. Because it represented such a small portion of the vast economic market of debt and equities, it existed in the shadows of the global marketplace.

In her book "The Futures," Emily Lambert, a senior writer for Forbes, offers incredible insight that takes readers beyond the world of Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd in "Trading Places" and places them into the murky and misunderstood world of Chicago commodities trading. One of the more insightful anecdotes is the story of Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga, an unlikely duo.

[Demeter]

9. Still Broken Five Years Later by MIKE WHITNEY

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/21/still-broken-five-years-later/

“The repo market wasn’t just a part of the meltdown. It was the meltdown.”

– David Weidner, Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2013.

Ask your average guy-on-the-street ‘what caused the financial crisis’, and you’ll either get a blank stare followed by a shrug of the shoulders or a brusque, three-word answer: “The housing bubble”. Even people who follow the news closely are usually sketchy on the details. They might add something about subprime mortgages or Lehman Brothers, but not much more than that. Very few people seem to know that the crisis began in a shadowy part of the financial system called repo, which is short for repurchase agreement. In 2008, repo was ground zero, the epicenter of the meltdown. That’s where the bank run took place that froze the credit markets and sent the financial system into freefall. Unfortunately, nothing has been done to fix the problems in repo, which means that we’re just as vulnerable today as we were five years ago when Lehman imploded and all hell broke loose. Repo is a critical part of today’s financial architecture. It allows the banks to fund their long-term securities cheaply while giving lenders, like money markets, a place where they can park their money overnight and get a small return. The entire repo market is roughly $4.5 trillion, although the more volatile tri-party repo market is around $1.6 trillion. (Note: That’s $1.6 trillion that’s rolled over every day.)

Repo works a lot like a pawn shop. You bring your rusty bike and your imitation Van Gogh “Starry Night” to Rosie’s E-Z-Pawn, and the guy with the gold earring behind the counter gives you 15 bucks in return. That’s how repo works too, the only difference is that repo is a loan. The banks post collateral –mostly pools of mortgages (MBS) or US Treasuries– and get overnight loans from a cash-heavy lenders, like money markets, insurance companies or pension funds. Borrowers repay the loan with interest added to the original sum. The problem that arose in 2008, and that will likely crop up in the future, was that the value of the underlying collateral (subprime MBS) was steadily downgraded forcing the banks to take steep haircuts. (which means they couldn’t borrow as much on their collateral) The bigger the haircuts, the less money the banks had to fund their securities which forced them to sell assets to make up the difference. When banks and other financial institutions deleverage quickly, asset prices plunge and capital is wiped out forcing the Fed to step in and backstop the system to prevent a full-blown meltdown. And that’s exactly what the Fed did in 2008. It slashed rates to zero, set up myriad lending facilities and provided unlimited backing for both regulated and unregulated financial institutions. It was the biggest financial rescue operation of all time and it cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 13 trillion dollars in loans and other guarantees. Under the provisions of the Dodd Frank financial reforms, the Fed is forbidden from carrying out a similar bailout in the future, although you can bet-your-bippy that Yellen and Co. will bend the rules if there’s another catastrophe.

Fixing repo is not a left-right issue. Among the people who follow these things, there is general agreement about what needs to be done to make the system safer. Even New York Fed President William C. Dudley –who’s no “liberal” by any stretch–admits that the system is broken. In October, 2013, at a bank conference Dudley opined, “Current reforms do not address the risk that a dealer’s loss of access to tri-party repo funding could precipitate destabilizing asset fire sales, whether by the dealer itself, or by the dealer’s creditors following a default.” In other words, the chances of another 5-alarm fire sometime in the future are pretty darn good. Dudley’s description of what happened during the acute phase of the crisis is also worth reviewing. He said:

“Higher margins on repo and increased collateral calls due to credit ratings downgrades reduced the quantity of assets that could be financed in repo markets and elsewhere, prompting further asset sales. As wholesale investors started to exit, this set in motion a bad dynamic—a fire sale of assets that cut into earnings and capital. This just increased the incentives of investors to run and for banks to hoard liquidity against the risk that they could themselves face a run. This downward spiral of fire sales and funding runs was a key feature of the financial crisis …”

And, that, dear reader, is a first-rate account of what happened in 2008 when panic gripped the markets and the dominoes started to tumble. Former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s version of events is also worth a look if only because he describes the crash in terms of what it really was, a modern day bank run. Here’s what he said:

“What was different about this crisis was that the institutional structure was different. It wasn’t banks and depositors. It was broker-dealers and repo markets. It was money market funds and commercial paper.”

While most analysts agree about the origins of the crisis and the type of changes that are needed to avoid a repeat, the banks have blocked all attempts at reforming the system. But, why? It’s because the reforms would cost the banks more money, and they don’t want that. They’d rather put the entire system at risk, then cough up a little more dough to make repo safer. Here’s how the New York Fed summed it up in a paper titled “Shadow Bank Monitoring”:

“One clear motivation for intermediation outside of the traditional banking system is for private actors to evade regulation and taxes. … Regulation typically forces private actors to do something which they would otherwise not do: pay taxes to the official sector, disclose additional information to investors, or hold more capital against financial exposures. Financial activity which has been re-structured to avoid taxes, disclosure, and/or capital requirements, is referred to as arbitrage activity.” (“Shadow Bank Monitoring”, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, September, 2013)

That says it all, doesn’t it? They don’t want to pay taxes, they don’t want to hold capital against their collateral, and they want to continue to run their businesses in the shadows so nosy shareholders and regulators can’t see what the heck they’re up to. So, what else is new? The banks are running a crooked, black box operation, and they aim to keep it that way come hell or high water. The banks can’t be reasoned with, that’s obvious from the position they’ve taken. They’ve put profits above everything, even the viability of the system. How can you reason with people like that? Just get a load of what the New York Fed said on the matter:

“Intermediaries create liquidity in the shadow banking system by levering up the collateral value of their assets. However, the liquidity creation comes at the cost of financial fragility as fluctuations in uncertainty cause a flight to quality from shadow liabilities to safe assets. The collapse of shadow banking liquidity has real effects via the pricing of credit and generates prolonged slumps after adverse shocks.”

This sounds more complicated than it is. What the Fed is saying is: “Hey, guys, you’re creating all this fake money (credit) by loading up on leverage (borrowing), and that’s pushing us closer to another crisis. Once the money markets figure out that all those nifty subprime CDOs you’ve been trading for overnight loans aren’t worth Jack-crap, then they’re going to cut you off at the knees and move into risk-free assets like US Treasuries. So why don’t you wise-the-hell-up, and start playing by the rules like everyone else so we don’t have to deal with another big, freaking meltdown. Okay?”

(Of course, I’m paraphrasing here.)

The only way to fix repo is by backstopping collateral with more capital, forcing all trading onto central clearing platforms (where regulators can see what’s going on), and regulating shadow banks like traditional, commercial banks. The editors at Bloomberg said it best nearly a year ago. They said: ” If an entity engages in banking activity… it must register as a bank, with all the backstops and capital requirements that entails.”

Right on.

If we’re not going to nationalize the banks and turn them into public utilities, which is what we should have done in 2009 when we had the chance, then we need to put safeguards in place to keep them from crashing the system every few years. Regulate, Regulate, Regulate. That’s the ticket. Stricter regulations could have prevented the last crisis, and stricter regulations can prevent the next one. It’s just a matter of finding the political will to get the job done.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [e-mail].

[xchrom]

10. The Battle for Kiev

http://www.thenation.com/article/178488/battle-kiev

Odessa, Ukraine—The Ukrainian government and the president certainly have much to answer for. They permitted radicals to build a heavily armed encampment smack in the very heart of the nation’s capital and in violation of three separate court orders, all just a few yards away from the main government buildings. They have repeatedly given in to the intimidation of roving bands of armed and masked hooligans who, having now become a law unto themselves, endanger the lives of peaceful citizens. Just before the most recent spate of violence, during the “peaceful” interlude that followed the president’s last amnesty offer, for example, law enforcement officials stood by as a civic initiative known as “Kievans for a Clean City” was brutally assaulted near the Maidan.

The parliamentary political opposition (Yatsenyuk, Klitschko and Tyahnybok) also has much to answer for. Its contempt not just for the current constitution but for the parliamentary process itself, as manifested by its routine seizure of the Speaker’s podium to prevent parliament from functioning, has only further weakened and discredited the political process.

With power seemingly within reach, it has relied on ultraradical and openly neo-Nazi groups to achieve the kind of political control that it probably could not achieve through the ballot box. After all, just as the views of the political opposition have hardened with the escalation of this crisis, so have the attitudes of the supporters of President Yanukovych’s party, the Party of Regions, which remains the largest in the country. By carelessly embracing the slogan of revolution, however, it has unleashed forces that it is now powerless to control.

Finally, those Western governments which have taken it upon themselves to intervene in Ukraine’s internal political drama also have much to answer for. Their undisguised bias against the popularly elected Ukrainian government and insistence on mutually exclusive demands—protect freedoms and defend the rule of law, but do not defend freedoms and the rule of law if force must be used—has enervated the government, emboldened the opposition and given the most radical elements a free hand to create mischief. By failing to insist that the political opposition distance itself from the radicals, Western policies bear part of the responsibility for the escalation of violence.

[Demeter]

20. A plague on both their houses

When the USSR was created, the first thing Stalin did was to populate the satellite nations with ethic Russians do Russify the conquered.

This is the result. How to unscramble this egg?

After the 50+ years, the Ukrainians should be thinking as Ukrainians, and should embrace ALL their population as a human asset against a Cold hard world. They shouldn't lean to Europe, with its whips and chains, nor shy away form an honest deal with Russia. But first and foremost, they should think about themselves, for themselves.

And I am ashamed of any US activity, implicit or explicit, that further inflames the situation. If we want peace, it begins with US butting out. And the whole notion of New World Order, Global Government by Corporations, damn the People and full speed ahead, must be staked through the heart.

[xchrom]

22. AP INTERVIEW: GORBACHEV CALLS FOR UKRAINE UNITY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_UKRAINE_GORBACHEV?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-24-07-53-37

SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- The political turmoil in Ukraine looks like "a real mess" but it is important that the country hold together in the battle for influence between Russia and the West, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Monday.

The 82-year-old Gorbachev made the comments during an interview with The Associated Press in the United Arab Emirates city of Sharjah.

He emphasized the need for outside mediation to ease tensions in Ukraine, which became an independent country following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union that he once led.

Ukraine today is deeply divided between largely pro-Russian eastern regions and western areas that long for closer ties with the European Union.

[Demeter]

24. Honestly, I think the Russians are the only adults in the room

Except I was freaked out about Kossacks horse-whipping women in the street with govt. approval....

Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter only improve with age. They have an ability to be honest with themselves that far too many politicians completely lack.

[xchrom]

11. NABE ECONOMISTS DIVIDED OVER PACE OF FED TAPERING

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NABE_ECONOMY_SURVEY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-24-01-06-57

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Business economists are almost equally divided over whether the Federal Reserve will pare back bond purchases at the current pace through year's end or take a small breather to let the economy recover further.

The views were unveiled Monday by the National Association for Business Economics. The NABE conducted its twice-a-year survey of 230 members between Jan. 30 and Feb. 6, before Janet Yellen's first appearance before Congress as Fed chair.

About 43 percent of NABE members thought the Fed would complete its so-called "tapering" in the fourth quarter. About 42 percent thought the tapering would finish in 2015 or later.

At each of the last two policy meetings, the Fed cut bond purchases by $10 billion to the current pace of $65 billion a month. There are seven meetings left in 2014.

[xchrom]

12. MARKETS DRIFT AMID CHINESE PROPERTY FEARS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORLD_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-24-07-27-42

LONDON (AP) -- Global stock markets drifted Monday as concerns over the Chinese property market reinforced jitters over the strength of the world's No. 2 economy.

Figures showed that average new home prices in China's 70 major cities rose 9.6 percent in the year to January, down on the 9.9 percent rise recorded in December. The first slowdown since November 2012 has added to fears that the banks are beginning to tighten their lending and that could mean Chinese growth falters.

"Negative sentiment surrounding China continued to weigh on risk appetite," said Sue Trinh, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

The Chinese figures weighed on sentiment in the Asian trading session - China's main index finished 1.7 percent lower at 2,077.23. That downbeat start to the week dragged on into the European session. Disappointing earnings from HSBC PLC, Europe's biggest bank by market value, didn't help.

[xchrom]

13. GERMAN BUSINESS OPTIMISM AT HIGHEST SINCE MID-2011

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GERMANY_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-24-06-33-38

BERLIN (AP) -- A closely-watched survey of German business sentiment is up to its highest level in two and a half years, beating expectations and underscoring optimism that Europe's largest economy is picking up speed.

The Ifo Institute said Monday its business climate index for February rose to 111.3 points in February from 110.6 the month before - its highest level since July 2011.

Ifo says the rise was driven by greater optimism in the manufacturing and retailing sectors, while both the construction and wholesaling sectors saw slight dips.

Anna Zabrodzka, an economist at Moody's Analytics, says the results support "our view that the pace of economic growth should pick up at the beginning of this year."

[Demeter]

26. As the man who fell off a 100 storey building said at the 50th floor...

No problems so far!

[Demeter]

14. Politicians Launched the Idea of “Free Trade Agreements” In 1960s to Strip Nations' Sovereignty

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-02-21/liberal-politicians-launched-idea-%E2%80%9Cfree-trade-agreements%E2%80%9D-1960s-strip-nations

Preface: Liberals might assume that it is Republicans who are cheerleaders for global corporations at the expense of government. But, as shown below, liberal politicians have been just as bad … or worse...Matt Stoller – who writes for Salon and has contributed to Politico, Alternet, Salon, The Nation and Reuters – knows his way around Washington. Stoller – a prominent liberal – has scoured the Congressional Record to unearth hidden historical facts. For example, Stoller has previously shown that the U.S. government push for a “New World Order” is no wacky conspiracy theory, but extensively documented in the Congressional Record. Now, Stoller uses the Congressional Record to show that “free trade” pacts were always about weakening nation-states to promote rule by multinationals:

Political officials (liberal ones, actually) engaged in an actual campaign to get rid of countries with their pesky parochial interests, and have the whole world managed by global corporations. Yup, this actually was explicit in the 1960s, as opposed to today’s passive aggressive arguments which amount to the same thing.

***
Liberal internationalists, including people like Chase CEO David Rockefeller and former Undersecretary of State and an architect of 1960s American trade policies George Ball, began pressing for reductions in non-tariff barriers, which they perceived as the next set of trade impediments to pull down. But the idea behind getting rid of these barriers wasn’t about free trade, it was about reorganizing the world so that corporations could manage resources for “the benefit of mankind”. It was a weird utopian vision that you can hear today in the current United States Trade Representative Michael Froman’s speeches. I’ve spoken with Froman about this history, and Froman himself does not seem to know much about it. But he is captive of these ideas, nonetheless, as is much of the elite class. They do not know the original ideology behind what is now just bureaucratic true believer-ism, they just know that free trade is good and right and true.

But back to the 1967 hearing. In the opening statement, before a legion of impressive Senators and Congressmen, Ball attacks the very notion of sovereignty. He goes after the idea that “business decisions” could be “frustrated by a multiplicity of different restrictions by relatively small nation states that are based on parochial considerations,” and lauds the multinational corporation as the most perfect structure devised for the benefit of mankind. He also foreshadows our modern world by suggesting that commercial, monetary, and antitrust policies should just be and will inevitably be handled by supranational organizations.

***********

“For the widespread development of the multinational corporation is one of our major accomplishments in the years since the war, though its meaning and importance have not been generally understood. For the first time in history man has at his command an instrument that enables him to employ resource flexibility to meet the needs of peoples all over the world. Today a corporate management in Detroit or New York or London or Dusseldorf may decide that it can best serve the market of country Z by combining the resources of country X with labor and plan facilities in country Y – and it may alter that decision 6 months from now if changes occur in costs or price or transport. It is the ability to look out over the world and freely survey all possible sources of production… that is enabling man to employ the world’s finite stock of resources with a new degree of efficiency for the benefit of all mankind.

But to fulfill its full potential the multinational corporation must be able to operate with little regard for national boundaries – or, in other words, for restrictions imposed by individual national governments.

To achieve such a free trading environment we must do far more than merely reduce or eliminate tariffs. We must move in the direction of common fiscal concepts, a common monetary policy, and common ideas of commercial responsibility. Already the economically advanced nations have made some progress in all of these areas through such agencies as the OECD and the committees it has sponsored, the Group of Ten, and the IMF, but we still have a long way to go. In my view, we could steer a faster and more direct course… by agreeing that what we seek at the end of the voyage is the full realization of the benefits of a world economy.

Implied in this, of course, is a considerable erosion of the rigid concepts of national sovereignty, but that erosion is taking place every day as national economies grow increasingly interdependent, and I think it desirable that this process be consciously continued. What I am recommending is nothing so unreal and idealistic as a world government, since I have spent too many years in the guerrilla warfare of practical diplomacy to be bemused by utopian visions. But it seems beyond question that modern business – sustained and reinforced by modern technology – has outgrown the constrictive limits of the antiquated political structures in which most of the world is organized, and that itself is a political fact which cannot be ignored. For the explosion of business beyond national borders will tend to create needs and pressures that can help alter political structures to fit the requirements of modern man far more adequately than the present crazy quilt of small national states. And meanwhile, commercial, monetary, and antitrust policies – and even the domiciliary supervision of earth-straddling corporations – will have to be increasingly entrusted to supranational institutions….

We will never be able to put the world’s resources to use with full efficiency so long as business decisions are frustrated by a multiplicity of different restrictions by relatively small nation states that are based on parochial considerations, reflect no common philosophy, and are keyed to no common goal.” ***

These ["free trade"] agreements are not and never have been about trade. You simply cannot disentangle colonialism, the American effort to create the European Union, and American trade efforts. After their opening statements, Ball and Rockefeller go on on to talk about how European states need to be wedged into a common monetary union with our trade efforts and that Latin America needs to be managed into prosperity by the US and Africa by Europe. Through such efforts, they thought that the US could put together a global economy over the next thirty years. Thirty years later was 1997, which was exactly when NAFTA was being implemented and China was nearing its entry into the WTO. Impeccable predictions, gents.


***

I guess it turns out that the conspiracy theorists who believe in UN-controlled black helicopters aren’t as wrong as you might think about trade policy, and not just because United Technologies, which actually makes black helicopters, has endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership.



***



These agreements are about getting rid of national sovereignty, and the people who first pressed for NAFTA were explicit about it. They really did want a global government for corporations.



***



Ball in particular expressed his idea of a government by the corporations, for the corporations, in order to benefit all mankind. Keep that in mind when you think you’re being paranoid.




The bottom line is not that liberals – or conservatives – are evil. It’s that neither the Democratic or Republican parties reflect the true values of the American people.

MORE AT LINK

[xchrom]

16. +1

[xchrom]

15. EUROZONE INFLATION STABLE AT LOW LEVEL IN JANUARY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-24-05-01-53

BRUSSELS (AP) -- Official figures show the inflation rate for the 18-nation eurozone remained steady at a low 0.8 percent in January.

The data provided Monday by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, show inflation remains well below the European Central Bank's target of just below 2 percent.

The rate, which measures consumer price increase over 12 months, was the same as in December.

Low inflation in recent months has raised concerns of deflation, a sustained drop in prices that can choke off growth. The weak rate will keep pressure on the ECB to provide more stimulus to the economy.

[xchrom]

17. UAW OFFICIAL SAYS UNION REMAINS FINANCIALLY STRONG

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AUTOMAKERS_UAW_UNCERTAIN_FUTURE_QA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-22-10-18-30

DETROIT (AP) -- The man who appears poised to take over leadership of the United Auto Workers later this year says car companies' fears about the union's demise are unfounded.

Membership has dropped from a peak of 1.5 million in 1979 to 382,000 at the end of 2012, although it's been rising slightly since 2009. Annual dues, the union's main income source, are down 40 percent since 2006.

Dennis Williams, now secretary-treasurer for the union, concedes that it has been selling off stocks and other assets to balance the budget for the past seven years. But he says it also has cut spending, and more cuts are coming.

Delegates to the union's four-year convention in June will be asked to increase dues to help with the problem, and Williams says rising membership has started to reverse the trend of declining dues.

[xchrom]

18. RUSSIA QUESTIONS UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT'S LEGITIMACY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_UKRAINE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-24-08-04-17

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia questioned the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian authorities on Monday, with its prime minister saying it sees the turmoil in Ukraine as a threat to both Russian citizens and Russian interests in Ukraine.

The statement by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was the strongest criticism yet from Russia, which had backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the capital of Kiev after striking a deal with the opposition. The Ukrainian parliament on Saturday quickly ousted him and set new elections for May, and its new speaker has been named Ukraine's caretaker president.

Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying the new authorities in Ukraine have come to power as a result of "armed mutiny." He lashed out at what he called the EU's recognition of the new authorities as an "aberration of consciousness."

He said Russia would be ready to resume relations with Ukraine once it sees a "normal, modern government based on laws and constitution of Ukraine."

[xchrom]

19. UKRAINE ISSUES ARREST WARRANT FOR MISSING LEADER

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_UKRAINE_PROTESTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-24-07-32-42

SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's acting government issued an arrest warrant Monday for President Viktor Yanukovych, accusing him of mass crimes against the protesters who stood up for months against his rule. Yanukovych himself has reportedly fled to pro-Russian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.

Calls are mounting in Ukraine to put Yanukovych on trial, after a tumultuous presidency in which he amassed powers, enriched his allies and family and cracked down on protesters. Anger boiled over last week after government snipers killed scores of protesters in the bloodiest violence in Ukraine's post-Soviet history.

The turmoil has turned this strategically located country of 46 million inside out over the past few days, raising fears that it could split apart. The parliament speaker is now nominally in charge of a country whose failing economy is on the brink of default and whose loyalties are sharply torn between Europe and longtime ruler Russia.

"The state treasury has been torn apart, the country has been brought to bankruptcy," Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a protest leader and prominent lawmaker whose name is being floated as a possibility for prime minister, said in parliament Monday.

[xchrom]

21. GREEK OLIVES FACE SQUEEZE IN EFFICIENCY DRIVE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GREECE_OLIVE_OIL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-24-08-28-44

SIMIZA, Greece (AP) -- In the olive groves around Ancient Olympia, sanctuary of the Greek gods, the trees were once considered sacred, and in many ways they still are.

Carefully pruned and pampered, they are described by farmers with a reverence that could match the language used by makers of champagne or single malt whisky.

So plans to extend a brutal efficiency drive to olive oil production have been met with anger and disbelief. If proposals from a government funded study are adopted, olive oil blended with cheaper vegetable oils will soon go on sale as part of an effort to modernize Greece's economy, which was rescued from near bankruptcy four years ago.

One pro-government lawmaker called the proposal a "cause of war," while olive producers in the fabled hills of the southern Peloponnese region worry that Greece could spoil its own signature product.

[Demeter]

25. Short-sighted corporate adulteration

Oh, when will they ever learn?


The LAST (very last, forever) time I went to KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken, for those of us old enough and agile enough to remember more than 3 letters) I asked for honey for my biscuit, and got a TOTALLY FAKE, corn-syrup substitute.

Is honey so expensive that they had to destroy their franchise to save it?

[xchrom]

23. CHILDREN BECOME LATEST VICTIMS OF THAI VIOLENCE

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/children-become-latest-victims-thai-violence

BANGKOK (AP) — The father grimaced and wept as he struggled to contain his grief at the death of his two children in a grenade attack during a weekend trip to a mall in downtown Bangkok — the latest casualties in Thailand's months of political crisis.

"I'm asking and pleading to every side to let my children be the last case (of violence) on Thai soil," Tayakorn Yos-ubon, 33, said, his voice shaking, before retrieving their bodies from the morgue Monday.

Korawit, 4, and his sister Patcharakorn, 6, were not part of the anti-government demonstrations. They had piled into a three-wheeled "tuk-tuk" taxi after eating at a KFC with their cousin and an aunt when the attack occurred Sunday near a busy intersection occupied by the protesters.

The siblings, along with a 5-year-old girl who died Saturday in another attack on a rally site in the eastern province of Trat, are the first children to be killed in the country's recent political unrest, which has claimed at least 20 lives and injured more than 700 since November. Police have not arrested any suspects in the weekend attacks.

[xchrom]

27. Ukraine Seeks $35 Billion as Yanukovych Warrant Is Issued

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-23/ukraine-interim-leader-warns-of-economic-danger.html

Ukraine’s interim government said the country needs $35 billion of financial assistance to avoid default as it issued an arrest warrant for fleeing ex-President Viktor Yanukovych for his role in last week’s violence.

Lawmakers in Kiev are working on establishing a coalition government, while the U.S. and the European Union have pledged aid for a new administration. Yanukovych and others were placed on a wanted list for their role in violence that killed at least 82 people last week. Ukrainian assets gained.

Leaders of the protest movement that toppled the Kremlin-backed regime are facing a contentious period after Russia halted payments from a $15 billion bailout. An international aid package is taking shape as demonstrators control Kiev, while the positioning has started for early presidential elections scheduled for May 25.

[florida08]

29. seems to be increasingly popular

http://www.bing.com/news/search?q=nationalize+the+pension+system&FORM=HDRSC6

[florida08]

30. fact check.org

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/12/no-government-401k-takeover/

[jtuck004]

31. Sen. Corker Outs Himself as a Lying Dirt Bag on Unions

...
But who cares, when a Sun Belt Republican’s instinctive hatred of unions is involved? Enter US Senator Bob Corker, who exerted every bit of political influence at his disposal to to blackmail and intimidate VW workers into rejecting unionization. In one hand, he held out the carrot: “I’ve had conversations today and based on those am assured that should the workers vote against the UAW, Volkswagen will announce in the coming weeks that it will manufacture its new mid-size SUV here in Chattanooga.” In the other, he (and other GOP leaders in Tennessee) waved the stick: He warned that, if Chattanooga workers went union, Tennessee might take back all the “business incentive” subsidies it had used to entice VW to open a plant in that state.

So the message was loud and clear: Union employers — even voted in with the encouragement of management, and with entirely voluntary open-shop membership — aren’t welcome in Tennessee. If your business goes union, we’ll punish you.

And as it turns out, Volkswagen is actually less likely to build another plant in the American right-to-work south because of the anti-union vote. VW corporate policy mandates works councils at all their plants. The head of the company works council said that, after the vote in Chattanooga, it was unlikely that any new VW plants in the United States would be built in a right-to-work state.
...
So what’s the answer? Workers in Chattanooga can still unionize without a certification vote or permission from the NLRB. They can still organize in solidarity and undertake direct action on the job — and they can do it in ways that neither VW corporation nor Bob Corker will like very much at all. Workers formed unions and engaged in direct action — far more effectively — long before the Wagner Act, and they still can. Just Google “IWW” and “How to Fire Your Boss: A Worker’s Guide to Direct Action on the Job.”
...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/24/sen-corker-outs-himself-as-a-lying-dirt-bag-on-unions/

Just thought it was a good read, about a company that sees value in worker representation at the corporate level.

[Demeter]

32. So, only half a miracle market today

Somebody go flog those fairies!