Weekend Economists Toast the Apostle of Ireland March 14-16, 2014

[Demeter]

Saint Patrick (Latin: Patricius; Proto-Irish: *Qatrikias; Modern Irish: Pádraig; Welsh: Padrig) was a 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland... he is the primary patron saint of the island along with Saints Brigit and Columba.

The dates of Patrick's life cannot be fixed with certainty but, on a widespread interpretation, he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the fifth century. He is generally credited with being the first bishop of Armagh, Primate of Ireland.

When he was about 16, he was captured from his home in Great Britain, and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After becoming a cleric, he returned to northern and western Ireland. In later life, he served as an ordained bishop, but little is known about the places where he worked. By the seventh century, he had already come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland.

Saint Patrick's Day is observed on 17 March, the date of his death. It is celebrated inside and outside Ireland as a religious and cultural holiday. In the dioceses of Ireland, it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation; it is also a celebration of Ireland itself.

Two Latin letters survive which are generally accepted to have been written by St. Patrick. These are the Declaration (Latin: Confessio) and the Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus (Latin: Epistola), from which come the only generally accepted details of his life. The Declaration is the more important of the two. In it, Patrick gives a short account of his life and his mission. Most available details of his life are from subsequent hagiographies and annals, and these are now not accepted without detailed criticism....wikipedia





http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=89

St. Patrick of Ireland is one of the world's most popular saints: Apostle of Ireland, born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland, in the year 387; died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, 17 March, 461...Patrick was born around 385 in Scotland, probably Kilpatrick. His parents were Calpurnius and Conchessa, who were Romans living in Britian in charge of the colonies...

wikipedia, again:

Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early seventeenth century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in general. Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, céilithe, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks. Christians also attend church services, and the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol are lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday's tradition of alcohol consumption.

Saint Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Newfoundland and Labrador and Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora around the world; especially in Britain, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand.

[Demeter]

1. Just like Spring itself, I am tardy

I came in third at the monthly Euchre game. This mainly because nobody had any good hands of cards...

So, let's muse upon the Irish, their patron saint, and their art and music. We will hold a céilithe!

[Demeter]

2. No bank failures this weekend

The FDIC must be celebrating!

[Warpy]

7. Gutters will run green in Boston late Monday night

from all the puked up green beer.

It was one holiday I didn't take part in. Being a non drinker took all the fun out of it, it was the one night a year employers expected their employees to get pissed out of their brains and come in hung over the next day.

[Demeter]

3. Investment Bank Revenue to Decline 11%, JPMorgan Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-13/investment-bank-revenue-to-decline-11-jpmorgan-says.html

The world’s top investment banks may see combined revenue from trading, underwriting and advising on mergers drop 11 percent in the first quarter as clients cut back on activity, JPMorgan Cazenove analysts said. Barclays Plc (BARC) and UBS AG (UBSN) may post the biggest declines compared with the year-earlier period, down 15 percent and 14 percent respectively, analysts led by Kian Abouhossein wrote in a note to clients today.

A decline in price swings and margins will contribute to a 19 percent contraction in revenue from trading fixed-income, currencies and commodities, the analysts wrote. Sales from trading stocks are on course for a 6 percent decline in the quarter while revenue from advising on mergers and underwriting securities sales may rise 1 percent, the analysts said.

Among the global securities firms tracked by JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley (MS)’s investment-banking revenue may fall the least, or 7 percent, Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) 8 percent and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) 10 percent.

UBS is JPMorgan’s top pick because of its greater exposure to equity trading relative to FICC, while Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) is the analysts’ favored stock with a large FICC business because of the firm’s reorganization.

[Demeter]

4. EMU Periphery Watch: 'Deflation Club' Increases To Four

https://mninews.marketnews.com/content/emu-periphery-watch-deflation-club-increases-four

Signs of deflation strengthened on the Eurozone periphery Wednesday, with four countries now registering annual declines in consumer prices. Data around the edges of the single currency area showed that consumer prices fell by 0.1% in February in both Portugal and Slovakia compared with a year ago. The two countries join Greece and Cyprus, where price declines are already running at an annual pace of more than 1.0%. European Central Bank officials continued to say Wednesday that there were no signs of deflation in the Eurozone as a whole, but that the risk remained present in at least some specific areas of the economy.

"We don't see deflation in the Eurozone," ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said in a Frankfurt speech on Wednesday. "We see it as a possible risk. We need to be ready to act against this possible risk."

February prices in Portugal and Slovakia were both weaker than expected, mainly because of lower food and energy costs. In Portugal, prices fell by a monthly 0.3% after a 1.4% drop in January. In Slovakia, which has been a Eurozone member since 2009, prices slipped by 0.1%, both on a monthly and on an annual basis. Other Eurozone peripheral countries remain on the cusp of falling prices, with annual consumer inflation running at just 0.1% in Spain, 0.2% in Ireland and 0.5% in Italy. International Monetary Fund chief economist Olivier Blanchard warned this week that falling prices in the Eurozone periphery were very much a double-edged sword.

"On the one hand it would certainly improve their competitiveness and help exports but on the other hand it would increase the real interest rate and the real value of debt and so reduce domestic demand," Blanchard said in a Handelsblatt interview.

"The risk of deflation, especially in the Eurozone, definitely exists," he added.

Analysts said that falling prices in the periphery were unlikely to be enough to sway the ECB because of the rapid structural changes that were occurring as countries try improve their competitiveness.

Countries like Greece and Cyprus "are facing necessary deflationary forces because they are going through enormous adjustments," ING Chief Economist Carsten Brzeski said. "As long it won't lead to deflation expectations, the ECB will stick to the same old story," he said.

[Demeter]

5. Senate Banking leaders reach housing finance deal (Fannie and Freddie)

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/senate-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-housing-finance-deal-104522.html

The leaders of the Senate Banking Committee have reached a bipartisan agreement on how to overhaul the housing finance market — now they face the challenge of building a broad base of support to establish their legislation as the leading proposal for getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What to do with the two mortgage finance giants has bedeviled policymakers since the government took over the companies in September 2008 as the housing market cratered and the financial crisis neared its zenith.

The plan announced on Tuesday by Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and the panel’s top Republican, Mike Crapo of Idaho, represents a centrist approach in which the government will still play a role in supporting the mortgage market but less of one than it does today...

Senators Draft Housing Finance Overhaul By SHAILA DEWAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/business/two-senators-draft-plan-to-phase-out-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html?_r=0

The committee chairman, Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, and Mike Crapo of Idaho, the ranking Republican, have come up with a compromise that provides an explicit government guarantee for mortgages, but only after private investors have taken the first losses. The plan would set up a new federal regulator, called the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corporation, to provide the guarantee and regulate the system.

“There is near unanimous agreement that our current housing finance system is not sustainable in the long term and reform is necessary to help strengthen and stabilize the economy,” Senator Johnson said in a news release. “This bipartisan effort will provide the market the certainty it needs, while preserving fair and affordable housing throughout the country.”

More than two dozen plans have been floated for changing the housing finance system, but this one carried bipartisan clout significant enough to move markets. The price of Fannie Mae stock fell 43 percent on Tuesday, and Freddie Mac was down 33 percent. Both of the stocks had been rising on investors’ hopes that the mortgage giants’ functions would be privatized.

The bill, to be released in the coming days, still faces an uphill battle. Although its creators were under pressure to release a plan in time for a vote this year, the chances of the legislation reaching the Senate floor are uncertain...

Love and hate on the Johnson-Crapo GSE reform effort Sarah Wheeler

http://www.housingwire.com/articles/29272-love-and-hate-on-the-johnson-crapo-gse-reform-effort

Industry leaders gave a generally loving welcome to the agreement on GSE reform reached by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, today, with smaller lenders and one investor and taxpayer-minded politician making up a significant dissent faction.

The Senators are planning to introduce the legislation soon.

The long-anticipated agreement is the latest attempt to craft a bill that overhauls Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's role in mortgage finance while opening up space for the private sector. The agreement builds on the earlier Corker-Warner bill as senators try to find middle ground. Of course any bill passed by the Senate will still have to get through the House of Representatives.

The Bipartisan Policy Center Housing Commission issued a statement that applauded the senators, and said that the agreement reflected many of the items on the BPC's own report last year, including "the gradual wind down of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; a greater role for private capital in assuming mortgage credit risk; a continued, but more limited, role for the federal government as the insurance backstop of last resort in the secondary market for mortgage-backed securities; and a commitment to ensuring access to safe and affordable mortgages for all borrowers in all geographic markets."

MORE

[Demeter]

6. MORE LATER...MEANWHILE, SOME MUSIC

[jtuck004]

8. Well, unless you got no time, here's a little more music. This one describes where I hoped our

Last edited Sat Mar 15, 2014, 05:19 AM - Edit history (2)

economic system might go back then in these few lines...(Holy crap did we take a wrong turn)

"Maybe I'll be there to shake your hand (Shake your hand)
Maybe I'll be there to share the land (Share the land)
That they'll be givin' away
When we all live together, we're talkin' 'bout together, now"

Maybe if we had realize that "living together" meant "working together"...But we were 17
But if we could replace what they have in our heads with those words we could run the 1% out of town tomorrow...

&list=RDCANaDWMYGAM

...
Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. Taught guitar by his mother and a childhood friend, Cash began playing and writing songs at the age of twelve. When Cash was young, he had a high tenor voice.[23] In high school he sang on a local radio station; decades later he released an album of traditional gospel songs, called My Mother's Hymn Book. He was also significantly influenced by traditional Irish music that he heard performed weekly by Dennis Day on the Jack Benny radio program.
...
-wiki

To stay with the theme, here is an AFL/CIO shopping list for St Patrick's day.

"We’re all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day and we can celebrate Ireland’s patron saint who drove the snakes off the Emerald Isle (some say on to planes, but that’s another story) with union libations and hearty fare.

You can propose a St. Patrick’s Day toast with these fine whiskies—including some tasty single barrels—from the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) represented distilleries."

[xchrom]

9. Eurosceptic party leads in Danish poll before European election

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/15/uk-denmark-poll-idUKBREA2E07G20140315

(Reuters) - The far-right, euro-sceptic Danish People's Party may emerge as Denmark's biggest vote getter at the European parliamentary elections in May, a poll indicated on Saturday.

The People's Party would get 15 percent of the vote if the elections, slated for May 22-25, were held now - outdoing both the Social Democrats and Liberal Party, long the two biggest mainstream parties in the Nordic state.

The Social Democrats, led by Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and Liberals are expected to get 13-14 percent each, the Gallup poll conducted for the Berlingske newspaper showed.

One of Denmark's 13 members of the European Parliament is from the Danish People's Party while the Social Democrats hold four seats and the Liberals three.

[Demeter]

13. The times, they are a changing

and it is about time, too. But they put the screws way too tight for too long.

[xchrom]

10. CHINA WIDENS CURRENCY'S FLUCTUATION AGAINST DOLLAR

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_EXCHANGE_RATE_CONTROLS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-15-07-28-38

BEIJING (AP) -- China announced on Saturday a modest easing of exchange rate controls that have been criticized by Washington and other trading partners, adding to a flurry of reform initiatives aimed at making its slowing economy more efficient.

The range in which the tightly controlled yuan is allowed to fluctuate against the dollar each day will double in size, though to a still relatively narrow 2 percent.

The move was widely expected after Premier Li Keqiang promised in an annual policy speech last week to give market forces a "decisive role" in allocating credit and other resources in the state-dominated economy.

The ruling Communist Party says it wants to inject more competition into the economy and nurture self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumption instead of trade and investment.

[Demeter]

14. Why would we want an "efficient" economy?

What makes an economy efficient, and what does it mean?

If it means everyone gets what they work for and need, and nobody gets a hoard...but somehow, I don't think that's it.

Definition of 'Economic Efficiency' A broad term that implies an economic state in which every resource is optimally allocated to serve each person in the best way while minimizing waste and inefficiency. When an economy is economically efficient, any changes made to assist one person would harm another.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economic_efficiency.asp

Well then, it all depends on who defines: "optimally allocated" "waste" "inefficiency" and "harm another".

If the goals were: ecologically friendly, people friendly, socially breaking down the classes, meaningful occupation, and stewardship....I could go along with them. but that isn't what they mean, and we all know it.


Investopedia continues:

Measuring economic efficiency is often subjective, relying on assumptions about the social good created and how well that serves consumers. Basic market forces like the level of prices, employment rates and interest rates can be analyzed to determine the relative improvements made toward economic efficiency from one point in time to another.

[xchrom]

11. US GOVERNMENT CEDING CONTROL OF KEY INTERNET BODY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_INTERNET_GOVERNANCE_SHIFT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-14-20-37-38

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The U.S. government is relinquishing its control of the Internet's address system in a shift that may raise questions about the future direction of online innovation and communications.

The decision announced Friday begins a long-planned transition affecting the stewardship of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. That's a not-for-profit agency launched in 1998 by the Commerce Department to govern the system that assigns website addresses and directs Internet traffic.

The department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, hopes to end its oversight of ICANN's Internet Assigned Numbers Authority by the time its contract expires in September 2015. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority administers the technology that keeps computers connected to the Web and steers Internet traffic.

Proposals for a new ICANN stewardship will be accepted beginning next week at a conference in Singapore.

[xchrom]

12. the 'paid what your worth' myth

http://www.nationofchange.org/paid-what-you-re-worth-myth-1394803915

It’s often assumed that people are paid what they’re worth. According to this logic, minimum wage workers aren’t worth more than the $7.25 an hour they now receive. If they were worth more, they’d earn more. Any attempt to force employers to pay them more will only kill jobs.

According to this same logic, CEOs of big companies are worth their giant compensation packages, now averaging 300 times pay of the typical American worker. They must be worth it or they wouldn’t be paid this much. Any attempt to limit their pay is fruitless because their pay will only take some other form.

"Paid-what-you’re-worth" is a dangerous myth.

Fifty years ago, when General Motors was the largest employer in America, the typical GM worker got paid $35 an hour in today’s dollars. Today, America’s largest employer is Walmart, and the typical Walmart workers earns $8.80 an hour.

Does this mean the typical GM employee a half-century ago was worth four times what today’s typical Walmart employee is worth? Not at all. That GM worker wasn’t much better educated or productive. He often hadn’t graduated from high school. And today’s Walmart worker is surrounded by digital gadgets — mobile inventory controls, instant checkout devices, retail search engines — making him or her highly productive.

[Demeter]

15. Don’t trust anyone until you do a background check

THE ARTICLE IS TALKING ABOUT BROKERS, BUT IT'S GOOD ADVICE IN GENERAL

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-tell-the-financial-pros-from-the-schmos-2014-03-14?siteid=YAHOOB



Many victims of financial fraud could avoid trouble by doing a simple background check before giving money to the bad guys. So imagine how alarming it is to note that the primary way that consumers check out brokers is flawed...That was the message sent recently when the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA) issued a report about the BrokerCheck service maintained by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra).

BrokerCheck is a free online database that gives investors access to background information on brokers and firms that are now or that have been registered with Finra. It includes current licensing status and history, employment history and any regulatory issues, customer disputes, criminal complaints and other matters that help investors decide if a broker is a good risk. Finra started making records available online in the late 1990s, but created BrokerCheck in 2007. In 2009, more than 20 million searches were conducted on the site, with roughly 18.5 million summary records viewed and nearly 4 million requests for detailed reports.

Finra’s site says that the BrokerCheck service “should be the first resource investors turn to when choosing whether to do business or continue to do business with a particular firm or individual.”

Having written two books on choosing and working with financial advisers, I’m a big believer in the BrokerCheck service. It is far from perfect — no system is — but it is the easiest access the average consumer is going to get, and far too many individuals hire advisers without doing the most cursory of background reviews. MORE

[Demeter]

16. Five strategies to get the most Social Security

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/five-strategies-to-get-the-most-social-security-2014-03-15?siteid=YAHOOB

President Barack Obama wants to eliminate, as part of his proposed fiscal year 2015 budget, aggressive Social Security claiming strategies “which allow upper-income beneficiaries to manipulate the timing of collection of Social Security benefits to maximize delayed retirement credits.” Now, that plan to stop upper-income beneficiaries from claiming and then suspending their Social Security benefit may or may not become a reality. But what remains a reality, at least for now, is this: The incentive for waiting to claim Social Security until age 70. And that incentive, according to a series of just-released fact sheets and the like from National Association of Social Insurance, is significant.

Consider: If you claim Social Security at age 62 you’ll get just 75% of the monthly benefit you would have received had you waited until full retirement age. But if you wait until age 70, you’ll get 132% of what would have been your full retirement age benefit. Or put another way, if your full retirement age benefit is $1,000 a month, you’d get just $750 a month if you claim at age 62, or $1,320 if you wait until age 70. The decision about when to claim Social Security decision is, for most people, not an easy one. To do it right, you need to consider many factors and answer many questions, some of which are, frankly, unanswerable. What are some of those factors and questions? Well, the NASI addressed many of the factors and questions in its just-released tool kit, Social Security: It Pays to Wait, which includes, a three-minute video: Social Security: It Pays To Wait

a one-page fact sheet, When Should I Take Social Security? http://www.nasi.org/sites/default/files/research/FACT_SHEET_When_to_Take_Social_Security.pdf ;

and a 16-page brief, When Should I Take Social Security? Questions to Consider. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/five-strategies-to-get-the-most-social-security-2014-03-15?pagenumber=2 To be sure, it’s well worth reading and studying the NASI’s tool kit. It’s also worth learning what experts participating in an email discussion had to say about the NASI’s tool kit and what they think beneficiaries need to consider before taking Social Security.

1. Take it seriously

First, what’s especially difficult about the when-to-claim-Social Security decision is that you have to decide what to do early in your 60s, long before you know the answers to your questions about your health and life expectancy. And two, the decision is irrevocable.

“Unfortunately, some decisions have to be made early in the game, such as the decision about when to take Social Security, or what option to take from the defined benefit plan, and once made, are generally irrevocable,” said Chuck Yanikoski, the president of Still River Retirement Planning Software and RetirementWORKS.

“Other decisions can be put off, or modified, but once made limit one’s future choices. So the further a person gets into retirement, the fewer options they have — and not only because of past decisions that they can’t take back, but because of declining health, fewer or no opportunities for re-employment, possibly declining asset balances, and generally no likelihood of other new sources of income or assets.”

Yes, there’s a continuing need to reassess and modify your plan as things change during retirement, but that cannot be an excuse for not doing the best possible job at retirement, Yanikoski said.

“Planning around the time of retirement has a much bigger impact than individual course corrections during retirement, so it is best to do that planning as if you were only going to get one shot at it,” Yanikoski said.

2. Don’t use your break-even age

Advisers sometimes suggest, as part of the process, that you ought to determine the age at which you would come out ahead if you delay Social Security. In other words, the experts want you to determine your break-even age. Now the break-even age, according to an analysis by Rande Spiegelman, a vice president of financial planning at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, depends on the amount of your benefits and the assumptions you use to account for taxes and the opportunity cost of waiting. In his analysis, Spiegelman calculated the break-even ages for a top wage earner turning 62 in 2013 with monthly benefits (in 2013 dollars) at ages 62 and one month of $1,923; 66, $2,591; and 70, $3,447. And what he found was this: The break-even age is between:

• 77 and 78 for the top wage earner deciding whether to take Social Security early at age 62 vs. at age 66, the full retirement age (FRA);
  
  
• 80 and 81 for those deciding whether to take Social Security early at age 62 or at age 70; and
  
  
• 83 and 84 for those deciding whether to take Social Security at FRA vs. at age 70.

Research, however, shows the Social Security Administration’s historical use of “break-even analysis” has the effect of inducing individuals to retire early, according to Jeff Brown, a professor at the University of Illinois...So instead of using a break-even analysis, Brown recommends using “alternative frames,” much more in the spirit of how the NASI does this in its toolkit. That sort of framing, he said, increases intended claiming ages by 18 to 24 months. Indeed, in its tool kit, the NASI suggests that older Americans consider not their break-even age, but their life expectancy when deciding when to take Social Security. For instance, the NASI notes that an average 65-year-old male can expect to live 19 more years, to age 84, while an average 65-year-old female can expect to live about 22 more years, to age 87. In addition, the NASI suggests that nearly four in 10 women and three in 10 men age 65 today can expect to reach age 90.

3. Focus more on longevity risk

Brown, however, suggest that those trying to decide when to claim Social Security focus less on average life expectancy and more on the odds of living a long time.

“My concern about focusing on life expectancy rather than the full distribution of longevity possibilities is that one could inadvertently put people back into the mind-set of thinking in terms of break-even dates, rather than thinking about the sustainability of consumption,” said Brown. “Indeed, one of my pet peeves about financial planners (and financial planning software) is that they rarely discuss longevity ‘risk’ as opposed to average life expectancy.”

Said Brown: “An arbitrary extension of life expectancy ‘to be conservative’ is not a substitute for a fulsome discussion of longevity risk. If one does not explicitly consider the risk around average life expectancy, then one will never see why an annuity is an appropriate solution. It would be like trying to sell fire insurance, but instead of discussing the risk that your house will burn down, you only point out that on average 1% of everyone’s house will burn once a year.”

Others, however, have a different point of view. The Social Security decision is significantly different from some other longevity issues,” said Yanikoski. “Financial planners need to look at extra-long life scenarios, because they are, usually, trying to figure out how to amortize savings — and obviously, a planned amortization using life expectancy leaves 50% of people in a catastrophe.” Social Security isn’t like that, he said. “None of the choices leads to a catastrophic outcome, regardless of what happens,” Yanikoski said. “So with Social Security the task is not to avoid catastrophe, but to optimize the chance of getting the best result. And the way to do that is to plan around the most likely longevity outcome.”

4. Consider personalized life expectancy

Other experts, meanwhile, say factoring life expectancy into the Social Security-claiming decision is important, but that it needs to be personalized. “What is conspicuously absent, however, is that many people, roughly 50%, do not live to their life expectancy or longer,” said Steve Mitchell, a consultant Oculus Partners and founder of Stephen W. Mitchell & Associates. “The important question that every potential beneficiary should ask that is totally missing from the discussion and most of our industry discussion on outliving retirement income is whether or not the overall average life expectancy is a good estimate of personal life expectancy, or are their personal health or family history factors that should be factored into the individual’s decision.” According to Mitchell, an important step for most considering the Social Security decision is to use a tool to estimate a “personal” life expectancy such as that found at the Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator https://www.livingto100.com/ . “At best, it’s still just an estimate, but better than making a big financial decision based on broad population averages,” he said.

In many cases, for those in good health, who don’t smoke and who have good family history, Mitchell said calculating your personal life expectancy will reinforce the key message that you may live longer than you expect and Social Security becomes an increasingly important source of income as you get older. However, for others who are in poor health, and who have family history of premature death, and the like, Mitchell said the considerations are different. “Of course for married couples, both spouses’ expectancy need to be considered and some of the more complex Social Security claiming strategies may provide significant benefits,” Mitchell said. The exercise of creating a personalized life expectancy is a worthwhile one, but one shouldn’t go overboard. In his practice, for instance, Yanikoski considers only sex, smoking status, and a five-level self-evaluation of current factors health...MORE CAVEATS

5. Stay flexible

Others, meanwhile, remind us that retirement planning is not a once-and-done exercise.

“Retirement-income planning is not static and is not a one-time decision,” said Diane Savage, a certified financial planner and educator. “It requires attention throughout retirement with many course adjustments, if you will.”

“So many of the factors related to retirement-income management are not controllable even though we like to think they are,” she said. “It appears to me that there are many attempts to create certainty around something that is far from certain.”

The best plans, she said, are those that provide some guaranteed income sources as well as other income sources that can adapt and move with forces beyond the control of the retiree. “This is the most appropriate path to provide more certainty for the retirement-income stream,” said Savage. “The best advice someone planning their retirement income can be given is be prepared to be flexible.”

[Demeter]

17. Fed nominee Fischer: policy decisions are best made early

http://news.yahoo.com/fed-nominee-fischer-policy-decisions-best-made-early-030558240--sector.html

Stanley Fischer, U.S. President Barack Obama's pick for the No. 2 job at the Federal Reserve, said on Friday that decades of crisis-fighting have taught him the importance of making policy decisions quickly, even before all relevant data is in hand.

"We tend to underestimate the lags in receiving information and the lags with which policy decisions affect the economy," he said in remarks prepared for delivery to the Stanford Institute on Economic Policy.

"Those lags led me to try to make decisions as early as possible, even if that meant that there was more uncertainty about the correctness of the decision than would have been appropriate had the lags been absent."

Fischer was in California to receive the institute's $100,000 prize one day after his nomination hearing in Washington, a session that shed little new light on his policy leanings but suggested he is largely supportive of the Fed's current super-easy monetary policy. He is expected to win Senate confirmation, although the timing is unclear. His comments Friday came in a speech titled "Lessons from Crises, 1985-2014," billed as a set of remarks about the past rather than reflections on current events. Still, his inclusion of this particular lesson, number eight on his list, may suggest an inclination to act rather than to wait in the face of uncertainty. That could be a critical insight into the thinking of a man likely soon to become the most influential U.S. central banker after Fed Chair Janet Yellen, just as the Fed faces the unprecedented task of unwinding its extraordinary stimulus measures launched in the depths of the last financial crisis.

Yellen convenes her first policy-setting meeting as Fed chair next week. Policymakers are expected to continue to reduce their bond-buying program with a view to winding it down before the end of the year. They are also expected to give investors a clearer idea of when they eventually will start to raise rates, after keeping them near zero since December 2008 to encourage investment and spending. By telegraphing their intentions as best as possible to markets, Fed policymakers hope to make the transition to the first U.S. tightening cycle in a decade as smooth as possible.

At 70, Fischer is anything but an impetuous decision-maker. An economics professor for many years, he taught both former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi. He spent seven years as the No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund during the Asian financial crisis, and headed the Bank of Israel from 2005 until the middle of last year. In that role, he was known for making decisions on interest rates that sometimes took markets by surprise.

On Friday he recounted one rate decision he faced in his early days at Israel's central bank: He decided to keep the rate unchanged until the following month, he recalled telling his advisers, when the situation would be clearer. "It is never clear next time; it is just unclear in a different way," came the response from his second-in-command.

And so, Fischer said Friday, he learned his lesson: "don't overestimate the benefits of waiting for the situation to clarify."

WOULD YOU TRUST ANYONE WHO RAN THE BANK OF ISRAEL? AS WELL AS THE IMF? AND BELIEVES IN LEAPING BEFORE LOOKING?

I THINK JANET YELLEN IS BEING SET UP. I THINK THIS IS THE ONE THE ELITISTS WANT IN CHARGE, AND THEY ARE GOING TO BULLY HER INTO AN EARLY RETIREMENT.

GOD HELP US ALL.

[Demeter]

18. We Can’t Grow the Gap Away Charles M. Blow

MR. BLOW MAY BE A CONSERVATIVE IDIOT...BUT HIS MAIN POINT IS TRUE.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opinion/blow-we-cant-grow-the-gap-away.html

The shocking level of income inequality in this country has set off alarms that grow louder by the day, but little seems to be underway to reverse the trend. As a January International Monetary Fund paper that was officially released on Thursday points out:

“In the United States, the share of market income captured by the richest 10 percent surged from around 30 percent in 1980 to 48 percent by 2012, while the share of the richest 1 percent increased from 8 percent to 19 percent. Even more striking is the fourfold increase in the income share of the richest 0.1 percent, from 2.6 percent to 10.4 percent.”

In fact, a study published last year in The Journal of Economic Perspectives found that the share of income going to the top 1 percent in America was higher than in other developed countries. At the same time, the plight of the poor has grown worse and has become stubbornly resistant to improvement. The rate of poverty in America remains stuck at the untenably high level of 15 percent. Among children, the rate is 22 percent. We are reminded ad nauseam about the record number of Americans receiving food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. What we hear far less about is that a record high percentage of poor families with children are not receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the federal government’s primary welfare program. In 1997, only 36 percent of such families received no TANF benefits; that number in 2012 climbed to 74 percent.

It stands to reason, then, that food insecurity in this country remains alarming high. The United States Department of Agriculture reported in September that 14.5 percent of the country, or 17.6 million American households, “had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources” in 2012. This widening gap between the hardscrabble and the high rollers is unseemly and unsustainable.

A January poll by the Pew Research Center and USA Today found that “65 percent believe the gap between the rich and everyone else has increased in the last 10 years.” A February poll by CNN/ORC International found that “more than six in 10 Americans strongly or somewhat agree that the government should work to narrow that gap, compared to 30 percent who believe it should not.” The president has called rising income inequality and lack of economic mobility “the defining challenge of our time.” And he has been pushing an economic agenda aimed at making a dent in inequality, including raising the minimum wage, extending emergency unemployment benefits and, this week, moving to expand overtime pay. While these moves would help, they are not nearly enough. Addressing this issue is not about ensuring an even redistribution of wealth while disregarding great ideas and hard work. Imbalance is built into a capitalistic economy. But the degree to which that imbalance has grown in this country is not only alarming; it could prove deleterious to our economic health.

There are some who suggest that the solution to this inequality problem — if indeed they concede that it is a problem — is simply to grow the economy. A February I.M.F. paper pointed out the folly of such a tactic: “It would still be a mistake to focus on growth and let inequality take care of itself, not only because inequality may be ethically undesirable but also because the resulting growth may be low and unsustainable.” Furthermore, as the I.M.F. pointed out in its January paper, inequality could, in fact, be an impediment to growth: “There is growing evidence that high income inequality can be detrimental to achieving macroeconomic stability and growth.” A December survey of several dozen economists by The Associated Press found that most believe that growing income inequality is hurting our economy.

We can’t grow our way out of this obscenity. It’s a barrier to growth. We must forthrightly address the issue with policy prescriptions. The I.M.F.’s list includes things like means-testing benefit programs, improving access to higher education and health care for the less well off, and “implementing progressive personal income tax rate structures” while “reducing regressive tax exemptions.” Surely we can figure out how to fix this. We just don’t have the political will to do so.

[Demeter]

19. Work Like a German By GLENN HUTCHINS

I THINK THIS IS A STUPID AND FALSE EQUIVALENCE...I THINK WE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO WORK AS AMERICANS...WHICH MEANS DETHRONING, DIS-EMPOWERING AND ASSET-STRIPPING THE 1%. THAT'S WHAT THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (AND THE CIVIL WAR, REVOLUTION PART 2, WERE ALL ABOUT). BUT THEN, THIS IS A BROOKINGS INSTITUTION GUY...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opinion/work-like-a-german.html

SOME of our workplace programs, like Unemployment Insurance and Disability Insurance, parts of which date from the 1930s, desperately need updating. The original designers did not envisage such large numbers of people unemployed for long periods of time or living on disability benefits. If we could convert these programs into ladders of upward mobility, they would disproportionately benefit the disadvantaged, as well as strengthen the economy. We need to focus on enabling workers to stay in work — rather than having to compensate them after they have lost their jobs.

We need only turn to Germany to see how much more effective such an approach can be. In 2009, Germany suffered a more precipitous drop in gross domestic product than the United States, but it experienced almost no change in unemployment. Here, it doubled. Today, unemployment in Germany is actually lower than it was pre-crisis, and long-term unemployment is negligible. With America’s unemployment rate stuck above 6.5 percent, the contrast is stark.

In the German job-share model (known as “Kurzarbeit”), if an employer cuts an employee’s hours so that income is reduced by more than 10 percent, the government compensates workers for a large portion of wages lost. This enables companies to cut costs during downturns without having to lay workers off. And then they’re better placed for a recovery because they’ve been able to preserve their pool of skilled labor. America should have a similar program to enable people to share jobs and to give employers an incentive to cut hours rather than staff.

When people lose their jobs but find work at lower wages, the new program could plug the gap by supplementing their income. For the long-term unemployed who take significantly lower-paying jobs (typically, at minimum-wage levels), the unemployment benefits could offer stop-loss insurance to put a floor under their losses. The new program should also subsidize employers to provide paid sick days, family leave and child care support — measures that are especially important for disadvantaged women in the work force.

AND THERE'S MORE..YOU SHOULD SEE WHAT THIS ELITIST THINKS ABOUT DISABILITY!


Glenn Hutchins is a co-founder of the technology investment firm Silver Lake Partners and the vice chairman of the Brookings Institution.

[Demeter]

20. In-the-know insiders are dumping stocks

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in-the-know-insiders-are-dumping-stocks-2014-03-14

Opinion: Extreme bearishness among executives is a sell sign... Corporate insiders are more bearish than they have been in almost 25 years. That isn’t good news for the stock market, since these insiders — corporate officers and directors— know more about their companies’ prospects than the rest of us.

In fact, you may want to take their pessimism as a signal to ditch some of your stocks or shift into industries in which insiders aren’t heavily selling, such as energy, financials and basic industrials.

IMO THE FINANCIALS SHOULD BE BAILING MORE THAN ANYONE EXCEPT THE CONSUMER-LUXURY COMPANIES...

[Demeter]

21. 50 years young, forever immortal

The Chieftains are a traditional Irish band formed in Dublin in November 1962, by Paddy Moloney, Sean Potts and Michael Tubridy. The band had their first rehearsals at Moloney's house, with Tubridy, Martin Fay and David Fallon. Their sound, which is almost entirely instrumental and largely built around uilleann pipes, has become synonymous with traditional Irish music and they are regarded as having helped popularise Irish music across the world.

Paddy Moloney came out of Ceoltóirí Chualann, a group of musicians who specialised in instrumentals, and sought to form a new band. The group remained only semi-professional up until the 1970s, by then they had achieved great success in Ireland and the United Kingdom. In 1973, their popularity began to spread to the United States when their previous albums were released there by Island Records. They received further acclaim when they worked on the Academy Award-winning soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film Barry Lyndon, which triggered their transition to the mainstream in the US.

The group continued to release successful records throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and their work with Van Morrison in 1988 resulted in the critically acclaimed album Irish Heartbeat.[4] They went on to collaborate with many other well-known musicians and singers; among them Luciano Pavarotti, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Sinéad O'Connor and Roger Daltrey.[5] The band have won six Grammys during their career and they were given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2002. Some music experts[6] have credited The Chieftains with bringing traditional Irish music to a worldwide audience, so much so that the Irish government awarded them the honorary title of ‘Ireland’s Musical Ambassadors’ in 1989.[7] In 2012, they celebrated their 50th anniversary with the release of their most recent record Voice of Ages.

[Demeter]

22. Another classic

[Demeter]

23. Xpost from Dixiegrrrl: Wells Fargo caught with "how to defraud homeowners" manual.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024663267

[Demeter]

24. Time for change of pace

I'll be back later....enjoy the day!

[Demeter]

25. Safety Alert! Beware the Ides of March! (don't order from little caesar's!)

[Fuddnik]

26. Well, it's officially Spring.

Heard a whippoorwill out there squawking last night. That's always a sure sign.

Either that, or a drunken Irish Mockingbird.

[Demeter]

27. Investors Pulling Back — What Happens to Housing Now?

http://houseofdebt.org/2014/03/14/investors-pulling-back-what-happens-to-housing-now.html

Bill McBride at calculatedriskblog.com (a must read in the economics blogosphere) has been doing some fantastic posts on the abrupt pull-back by investors in the U.S. housing market. They were very aggressively buying homes in depressed markets from 2010 to 2012, but the excitement is now cooling. This is closely related to a previous post where we showed that house price growth has been stronger in cities where investors were extremely active.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/03/report-blackstones-home-buying-binge.html
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/03/lawler-preliminary-table-of-distressed.html
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/03/lawler-early-read-on-existing-home.html

We argued in our previous post that the 2010-2013 housing rebound was “strange” because it was driven mostly by investors buying up foreclosed properties that were sold at prices below fundamental value (a “fire sale”, in the language of Shleifer and Vishny).

What happens now that these investors no longer see bargains? Who steps in to buy? Is the 2010-2013 pace of house price growth sustainable? Difficult questions. We plan on looking deeper at this issue as more data become available.

Wall Street Investors Take Aim at Farmland THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/03/land-grabs-not-just-africa-anymore

...corporations don't do much actual farming in the United States. True, agrichemical companies like Monsanto and Syngenta mint fortunes by selling seeds and chemicals to farmers, and grain processors like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill reap billions from buying crops cheap and turning them into pricey stuff like livestock feed, sweetener, cooking oil, and ethanol. But the great bulk of US farms—enterprises that generally have razor-thin profit margins—are run by independent operators.

That may be on the verge of changing. A recent report by the Oakland Institute documents a fledgling, little-studied trend: Corporations are starting to buy up US farmland, especially in areas dominated by industrial-scale agriculture, like Iowa and California's Central Valley. But the land-grabbing companies aren't agribusinesses like Monsanto and Cargill. Instead, they're financial firms: investment arms of insurance companies, banks, pension funds, and the like. In short, Wall Street spies gold in those fields of greens and grains.

Why are they plowing cash into such an inherently risky business with such seemingly low profit potential? For Wall Street, farmland represents a "reassuringly tangible commodity" with the potential for "solid, if not excellent, returns," the Oakland Institute notes—something clients are hungry for after being recently burned not long ago by credit-default swaps and securities backed by trashy mortgages. As the saying goes, you can't make more land; and as the Oakland Institute notes, "over the last 50 years, the amount of global arable land per capita shrank by roughly 45 percent, and it is expected to continue declining, albeit more moderately, going toward 2050."
Nearly 40 percent of US farmland is rented—and more like 50 percent in ag-heavy regions.

Financial institutions and food-strapped countries like China and United Arab Emirates have already been snapping up land in the developing world, where prices are low and labor is cheap. But now, the Oakland Institute reports, pricey US land is also looking attractive, because it "boasts some of the world's most fertile soil, advanced industrial farm technology, strong private property rights, [and] federally subsidized crop insurance."

And Wall Street likes a good bubble. Farmland prices have soared to all-time highs in recent years, pushed up by the government-mandated corn ethanol boom. The average per acre price of Iowa land surged about 60 percent in real terms between 2007 and 2012, and rents have jumped in lockstep...

CORPORATE SHARECROPPING

[Demeter]

28. PUTINOMICS (WILL BEAT THE SOCKS OFF EVERYTHING ELSE)

Russian companies withdraw billions from west, say Moscow bankers MARCH 14

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ffea2660-ab9e-11e3-aad9-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl

Russian companies are pulling billions out of western banks, fearful that any US sanctions over the Crimean crisis could lead to an asset freeze, according to bankers in Moscow.

Sberbank and VTB, Russia’s giant partly state-owned banks, as well as industrial companies, such as energy group Lukoil, are among those repatriating cash from western lenders with operations in the US. VTB has also cancelled a planned US investor summit next month, according to bankers.

The flight comes as last-ditch diplomatic talks between Russia’s foreign minister and the US secretary of state to resolve the tensions in Ukraine ended without an agreement....It also emerged on Friday that Russia’s top 10 billionaires, led by Alisher Usmanov, had lost a combined $6.6bn of their net worth over the past week, according to research firm Wealth-X. Russian equities, which showed more weakness on Friday, have lost 20 per cent of their value since the start of the year.

“You don’t need to have sanctions in place to cause economic turmoil,” said Christopher Granville, managing director of Trusted Sources, an emerging markets research firm. “The expectation is enough.”

MORE

Russia Wields $160 Billion Stick in Crimea Sanctions Standoff

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-14/russia-wields-160-billion-stick-in-crimea-sanctions-standoff.html

Vladimir Putin’s control over $160 billion in oil and natural gas exports may be his most potent weapon in Russia’s face-off with Europe and the U.S. over Ukraine.

As Crimea prepares to vote Sunday on whether to return to Russian control, the U.S. and its European allies have few levers to deter Putin’s Ukrainian venture. Threats of visa bans and asset freezes haven’t rattled the Kremlin thus far -- six hours of face-to-face talks between the top U.S. and Russian diplomats ended yesterday without a deal.

Russia, the world’s largest oil producer, exported $160 billion worth of crude, fuels and gas-based industrial feedstocks to Europe and the U.S. in 2012. While shutting the spigot on Russian energy exports would starve the Moscow government of essential flows of foreign cash, the price may be too high for European consumers and it may not alter Putin’s plans, said Jeff Sahadeo, director of Carleton University’s Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies.

“In the short term, this would be very difficult to do and it’s not clear it would even affect Russian behavior,” Sahadeo said in a phone interview from Ottawa. If the West “puts down the card of energy sanctions, it becomes a question of who blinks first.” MORE

[Crewleader]

29. KEEP YOUR GOLD

[Demeter]

30. Thank you! A perfect start to your Weekender life

I laughed out loud.

[xchrom]

31. Banking's back room risk cops step into top jobs

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/16/uk-banks-executives-risks-idUKBREA2F05720140316


(Reuters) - Once modest of pay and profile, risk experts are being reborn as rock stars of the banking world - their status and salaries soaring as regulators force financial institutions to clean up.

Industry-wide investigations into alleged exchange rate manipulation, trading scandals at UBS, Societe Generale and JPMorgan and HSBC's $1.9 billion (1.1 billion pounds) fine for lax money-laundering rules have upped the ante for banks already under pressure to curb reckless behaviour that led to the financial crisis.

Now watchdogs and central banks want to see a clear line of responsibility for the avoidance of such fiascos in the future, and as a result, the position of chief risk officer (CRO) has jumped up the ranks. Many CROs now sit alongside the finance director as second in importance behind the chief executive.

"The role of the CRO has become broader, higher profile and more influential," said Anne Murphy, head of UK financial services for executive recruitment firm Odgers Berndtson.

[xchrom]

32. Alibaba picks U.S. for IPO; in talks with six banks for lead roles

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/16/uk-alibaba-ipo-idUKBREA2F05L20140316

(Reuters) - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has decided to hold its long-awaited IPO in the United States and is in discussions with six banks to underwrite the deal, in what is set to the most high-profile public offering since Facebook Inc's listing nearly two years ago.

Alibaba said in a statement on Sunday it had decided to begin the U.S. IPO process, ending months of speculation about where it would go public.

Separately, sources told Reuters that Alibaba is in discussions with Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Group, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley for lead underwriting roles.

Most of the six banks are to set to win the coveted role of joint global coordinator, added the sources, who were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.

***i believe alibaba is going to open private banking outlets in china

[xchrom]

33. New York takes London's crown as top financial centre - survey

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/15/uk-global-financial-centres-idUKBREA2E0KQ20140315

(Reuters) - New York has knocked London from its position as the world's leading global financial centre after seven years, according to the Global Financial Centres Index compiled by London-based consultancy Z/Yen.

London slipped from the top of the global rankings, scoring 784 against 786 for New York, because a series of own goals had tarnished its reputation, the report said.

"London sees the largest fall in the top 50 centres," said Mark Yeandle, report author and associate director of Z/Yen, in a statement on the group's website.

"This seems to be based on a number of factors including ... uncertainty over Europe, the perception that London might be becoming less welcoming to foreigners and perceived levels of market manipulation."