STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 15 April 2014

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 15 April 2014[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 14 April 2014

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 14 April 2014
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Dow Jones 16,173.24 +146.49 (0.91%)
S&P 500 1,830.61 +14.92 (0.82%)
Nasdaq 4,022.69 +22.96 (0.57%)


[font color=red]10 Year 2.65% +0.01 (0.38%)
[font color=black]30 Year 3.49% 0.00 (0.00%) [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.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.








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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. That, and the fact that the Party was going down in flames

especially among the independents.

[Demeter]

2. The Wall Street second-chances rule: scandal makes the rich grow stronger

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/13/wall-street-scandal-sac-steve-cohen-rich-grow-stronger

Wall Street is a place where memories are short, profit is amoral, and money is the only thing that settles all the scores. That's why financiers and CEOs are largely destined to overcome any scandal. Money and influence reserve a permanent place at the trough of money. It's usually absurd to hope that any kind of setback – a loss, a bankruptcy, a harrowing proximity to eight insider-trading convictions – will leave a mark. They never do. Disgrace is not a functional term in a business that is still, at its core, based upon relationships with a closed circle of people.

For the powerful movers of money in this country, second acts are not the exception – they are very much the rule. If you doubt that, you need only keep watching the life and career of hedge-fund manager Steve Cohen. In a traditional middle-class morality tale, he'd be in disgrace after a judge last week told his firm, SAC Capital, to pay the largest-ever fine for insider trading – a cool $1.8bn – to federal regulators. SAC, which is the first firm to ever become a convicted felon, will abide by a five-year period of probation.

But this isn't the middle class, and Steve Cohen is not some hapless homeowner caught helplessly in foreclosure. He is rich, and on Wall Street that means he has leverage. He can negotiate for his own redemption – like so many of his fellow billionaires before him.

"Can Steven Cohen move on from SAC's insider trading past?" Frontline asked this week, and the answer is that he already has. Without even a moment of silence for the past of SAC Capital, Cohen's second act is already underway, with a new firm called Point72 Asset Management that exists solely to manage his multibillion-dollar fortune...

[Demeter]

3. Meet the Twisted 'Pioneer' of the Right-Wing War on Women RECAP WEE TWO WEEKS AGO

http://www.alternet.org/gender/meet-twisted-pioneer-right-wing-war-women?akid=11713.227380.Bez5rz&rd=1&src=newsletter981271&t=12&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

The late Charles Keating, who died last week at the age of 90, is remembered primarily for his role in the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, as a symbol of the frauds and excesses of an unregulated financial sector — a debacle from which we seem to have learned very little. Yet, ironically, those of us interested in American sexual politics remember a very different side of Keating: the smut-fighting moral entrepreneur who called for more regulation — as long as it pertained to matters of obscenity, rather than investment. Keating’s pioneering activity in junk-bond innovation has all but eclipsed what may, in fact, be his most lasting legacy. As founder and longtime leader of Citizens for Decent Literature (CDL), Keating pioneered a new form of sexual conservatism, modernizing it to meet the changing mores of the mid-20th century. Through CDL, Keating developed a legalistic, pseudo-empirical anti-porn movement that worked hard to show itself as not anti-sex, but rather anti-perversion. As such, Keating brilliantly framed CDL for a post-Kinsey America, leaving a lasting imprint on conservative sexual politics.

A young Catholic lawyer in socially conservative Cincinnati in the 1950s, Keating watched with alarm as the newsstands and paperback racks of the nation filled with pulp novels and Playboy imitators, and he assessed the American moral landscape with a clarity few at the time possessed. Even as the Cold War witnessed a dramatic sexual retrenchment that ranged from aggressively domestic ideals for women to state-sponsored violence and suppression toward queer “deviants,” anti-smut activism seemed to be at low ebb. “Censorship” was unpopular, viewed through a Cold War prism as a tactic of the totalitarian Soviet Union, not freedom-loving Americans — none less than President Dwight D. Eisenhower castigated “the book burners” in 1953. Meanwhile, old forms of moral activism had fallen into disrepute. Anti-smut activist Anthony Comstock, in whose name the 1873 federal obscenity law had been passed, was now viewed through a post-Freudian lens as a repressed Victorian, and Catholic cultural influence was on the wane, with the traditional boycott methods of the Legion of Decency under attack in the media and the Hollywood Production Code disintegrating rapidly.

Yet Keating uniquely recognized the opportunities afforded by the Supreme Court, whose 1957 Roth v. United States opinion determined that obscene materials were not protected by the First Amendment. Today we remember Roth for helping unleash the sexual revolution. Because Justice William Brennan restricted obscenity to only those works completely devoid of “socially redeeming value,” the case cleared the path for Henry Miller novels, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” and ultimately “Deep Throat.” But Keating recognized the conservative opportunity the Court afforded: Banning books could be framed as something other than censorship. If a sleazy book with a name like “Lust Agent” is obscene, it has no constitutional claim to free speech. Ipso facto, to suppress it is not to censor it. Or at least, that’s how Keating’s semantic gambit went — and it worked, marvelously. His CDL rapidly rose from a local Cincinnati group to a national behemoth, easily the nation’s preeminent anti-pornography organization in the 1960s and beyond. Keating stripped the movement against smut of its association with repression and prudery, instead boldly declaring that his cause could be reconciled with a sexually liberated age. “I spent over 8 years in the Navy,” his right-hand man declared in a typical 1962 CDL stock speech, “and I think sex is great!” The right kind of sex, of course: heterosexual and married, not “deviant.” Though himself Catholic, Keating kept CDL militantly broad-based to avoid the charge that it was an extension of sectarian Catholic beliefs. To the notion that moral offenses were victimless crimes, an idea promoted by Alfred Kinsey and others, Keating had an answer as well.

In CDL’s miraculously schlocky 1963 short propaganda film “Perversion for Profit,” a barrage of statistics and social science is presented to link obscenity to venereal disease, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy and, ultimately, national decline. It plays like camp today, but reflected precisely the sentiments of national leaders like FBI head J. Edgar Hoover at the time. It also revealed another central CDL tactic: offering enough skin, sleaze and tawdriness to generate some real spectatorial frisson — all in the name of decency, of course. The purported evidence of porn’s harms was mostly bunk. A few years later, Keating offhandedly explained the source of the film’s figures: They “came out of my head,” he shrugged. But the content mattered less than the form. What Keating accomplished through CDL was to wholly reinvent the battle against pornography, distancing it from censorship and the killjoys associated with it — repressed Victorians with sweaty palms, insular Catholics attempting to impose their cultural politics, and baseless moralism. Scholars at the time saw conservatism as opposed to modernity itself, but CDL was as modern as they come, using sophisticated media tactics and always emphasizing data and law, not overt moralism. You wouldn’t confuse Keating for a character in “The Scarlet Letter.”

MORE

Whitney Strub is assistant professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark and author of the books “Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right” and “Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression.”

[Demeter]

4. The Global Banking Game Is Rigged, and the FDIC Is Suing Ellen Brown, Web of Debt

http://truth-out.org/news/item/23077-the-global-banking-game-is-rigged-and-the-fdic-is-suing

Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars for a swindle pulled off by the world’s biggest banks, using a form of derivative called interest-rate swaps; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has now joined a chorus of litigants suing over it. According to an SEIU report:

Derivatives . . . have turned into a windfall for banks and a nightmare for taxpayers. . . . While banks are still collecting fixed rates of 3 to 6 percent, they are now regularly paying public entities as little as a tenth of one percent on the outstanding bonds, with rates expected to remain low in the future. Over the life of the deals, banks are now projected to collect billions more than they pay state and local governments – an outcome which amounts to a second bailout for banks, this one paid directly out of state and local budgets.

It is not just that local governments, universities and pension funds made a bad bet on these swaps. The game itself was rigged, as explained below. The FDIC is now suing in civil court for damages and punitive damages, a lead that other injured local governments and agencies would be well-advised to follow. But they need to hurry, because time on the statute of limitations is running out.

THIS IS WHAT PUT DETROIT INTO PLAY--AND WHY THEY SHOULD SUE FOR FRAUD

The Largest Cartel in World History

On March 14, 2014, the FDIC filed suit for LIBOR-rigging against sixteen of the world’s largest banks – including the three largest US banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup), the three largest UK banks, the largest German bank, the largest Japanese bank, and several of the largest Swiss banks. Bill Black, professor of law and economics and a former bank fraud investigator, calls them “the largest cartel in world history, by at least three and probably four orders of magnitude.” LIBOR (the London Interbank Offering Rate) is the benchmark rate by which banks themselves can borrow. It is a crucial rate involved in hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivative trades, and it is set by these sixteen megabanks privately and in secret.

Interest rate swaps are now a $426 trillion business. That’s trillion with a “t” – about seven times the gross domestic product of all the countries in the world combined. According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in 2012 US banks held $183.7 trillion in interest-rate contracts, with only four firms representing 93% of total derivative holdings; and three of the four were JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America, the US banks being sued by the FDIC over manipulation of LIBOR. Lawsuits over LIBOR-rigging have been in the works for years, and regulators have scored some very impressive regulatory settlements. But so far, civil actions for damages have been unproductive for the plaintiffs. The FDIC is therefore pursuing another tack....But before getting into all that, we need to look at how interest-rate swaps work. It has been argued that the counterparties stung by these swaps got what they bargained for – a fixed interest rate. But that is not actually what they got. The game was rigged from the start.

FIND OUT HOW, AT LINK!

[Demeter]

5. The Secret History of How Banks Assumed Control of the U.S. Economy

http://www.alternet.org/economy/secret-history-wall-st-washington-collusion?akid=11699.227380.3XOOkc&rd=1&src=newsletter979554&t=16&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

THE STORY OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE CORPORATION

[Demeter]

6. How the Corporate Takeover of Society Is Leaving Us Feeling Empty Inside

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/corporations-have-taken-over-profit-more-way?akid=11699.227380.3XOOkc&rd=1&src=newsletter979554&t=6


How do you engineer a bland, depoliticised world, a consensus built around consumption and endless growth, a dream world of materialism and debt and atomisation, in which all relations can be prefixed with a dollar sign, in which we cease to fight for change? You delegate your powers to companies whose profits depend on this model.

Power is shifting: to places in which we have no voice or vote. Domestic policies are forged by special advisers and spin doctors, by panels and advisory committees stuffed with lobbyists. The self-hating state withdraws its own authority to regulate and direct. Simultaneously, the democratic vacuum at the heart of global governance is being filled, without anything resembling consent, by international bureaucrats and corporate executives. The NGOs permitted – often as an afterthought – to join them intelligibly represent neither civil society nor electorates. (And please spare me that guff about consumer democracy or shareholder democracy: in both cases some people have more votes than others, and those with the most votes are the least inclined to press for change.)

To me, the giant consumer goods company Unilever, with which I clashed over the issue of palm oil a few days ago, symbolises these shifting relationships. I can think of no entity that has done more to blur the lines between the role of the private sector and the role of the public sector. If you blotted out its name while reading its web pages, you could mistake it for an agency of the United Nations. It seems to have representation almost everywhere. Its people inhabit (to name a few) the British government's Ecosystem Markets Task Force and Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the G8's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the World Food Programme, the Global Green Growth Forum, the UN's Scaling Up Nutrition programme, its Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Global Compact and the UN High Level Panel on global development. Sometimes Unilever uses this power well. Its efforts to reduce its own use of energy and water and its production of waste, and to project these changes beyond its own walls, look credible and impressive. Sometimes its initiatives look to me like self-serving bullshit.

Its "Dove self-esteem project", for instance, claims to be "helping millions of young people to improve their self-esteem through educational programmes". One of its educational videos maintains that beauty " couldn't be more critical to your happiness", which is surely the belief that trashes young people's self-esteem in the first place. But of course you can recover it by plastering yourself with Dove-branded gloop: Unilever reports that 82% of women in Canada who are aware of its project " would be more likely to purchase Dove"...

MORE

[Demeter]

7. Global Corporations Are Scheming to Take Control of Our Economy — We Can Put a Stop to It

http://www.alternet.org/activism/global-corporations-are-scheming-take-control-our-economy-we-can-put-stop-it?akid=11712.227380.s0mAHK&rd=1&src=newsletter981068&t=30

The broad movement for fair trade has stalled the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). When fast track trade promotion authority was introduced by former Senator Baucus, the Chairman of the Finance Committee, it was announced dead by Harry Reid and many of the members of the Finance Committee. A similar bill in the House also died quickly, not even proceeding to mark-up in the Ways and Means Committee, despite being introduced by its Chairman, David Camp (R-MI). Congressional leadership including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) all announced that they opposed the Baucus-Camp version of fast track. Vice President Biden acknowledged that trade promotion authority was unlikely this year. This happened because a movement of movements engaged in protests across the country, the issue was raised at town hall meetings and hundreds of thousands of phone calls and emails went to Capitol Hill saying “no” to fast track for the TPP. But, we knew that efforts to rig global trade in the favor of trans-national corporations would not stop there. The movement of movements that stopped the first version of fast track has been preparing for the next stage.

The new chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), made a speech this week announcing that he was working to introduce a new version of trade promotion authority that he is propagandistically calling “smart-track,” but which sounds more like fast track in sheep’s clothing. Wyden was vague on the details, but this far into the process any fast track bill being pushed will still rig trade in favor of transnational corporations.

For people who care about worker’s rights, the environment, Internet freedom, health care for all, regulation of banks and big finance, healthy food, access to water and other issues, the fundamental question is: will trade put the necessities of the people and environment before the profits of transnational corporations and the already wealthy? From what we’ve seen, the TPP does not and that is why we must continue to organize not only to stop it but also to redefine how trade is negotiated from the first step and to correct the failures of past trade agreements....

[Demeter]

8. Corporate Cash Hoarding Is Killing the Middle Class REP. ALAN GRAYSON

http://www.alternet.org/economy/corporate-nest-eggs-are-actually-middle-classs-funeral-pyre?akid=11712.227380.s0mAHK&rd=1&src=newsletter981068&t=24

... $1,265,836,000,000.

This is the amount of cash that S&P 500 companies (excluding banks and other financial institutions) are currently sitting on. As of the beginning of the third quarter, the largest U.S. companies collectively held $1.27 trillion. That’s about 13.5 percent more than this time last year. … Where is this cash coming from? Well, borrowing accounts for some of it. But mostly, it’s that companies are simply generating cash faster than they are spending it.

Companies sitting on cash — the financial newsletter thinks that this is great news! Spectacular news! How nice — for them. Here is more great news for Big Business: Corporations have been largely excused from paying taxes. The Government Accountability Office found earlier this year that the average effective tax rate on U.S. corporations is only 12.6 percent of their income. That’s low enough to make Mitt Romney jealous. Hooray, say the financial newsletters! More spectacular news! In fact, the corporate income tax has been performing a magical disappearing act for decades. In 1952, corporate income tax revenues totaled 6 percent of GDP. The average during our enormous post-war economic expansion, between 1945 and 1970, was more than four percent of GDP. Since then, in every year, it has been less than three percent. In 1983, Reagan’s tax breaks knocked corporate income tax revenue as a percentage of GDP all the way down to 1 percent. It returned to that pitifully low level in the first year of the Obama administration, and it has remained below 2 percent. No wonder the corporate cash pile keeps growing and growing and growing.

But what about the non-corporate entities in America? How are those bags of flesh and bones known as “human beings” faring?

FIND OUT AT LINK

[xchrom]

9. BP head says Russian business unaffected by sanctions

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/uk-bp-russia-idUKBREA3E0MS20140415


(Reuters) - Western sanctions over Russia's actions in Ukraine have not impacted BP's (BP.L) business in Russia, chief executive Bob Dudley said on Tuesday in Moscow, reiterating that the oil major stands by its Russian investments.

Dudley is in Moscow where he is taking part in a meeting of the Russian Geographical Society, where President Vladimir Putin heads the Board of Trustees. Dudley is a member of the board.

"We are rock solid with our investments in Rosneft and (we) will stand by our investments. For us it's business as usual," he told reporters before the meeting.

BP owns a 19.75 percent stake in Russia's top oil producer Rosneft (ROSN.MM).

[xchrom]

10. Europe's banks prepare for ECB tests with new provisions

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/uk-banks-tests-provisions-idUKBREA3E07G20140415

(Reuters) - The tens of billions of euros euro zone banks set aside for loan losses in their latest annual accounts may have substantially reduced the chance of institutions failing ECB stress tests in the next few months.

A total of 71.5 billion euros ($99.3 billion) was set aside in 2013 by the 20 biggest listed banks involved in the exercise, a Reuters analysis of their new annual reports shows. Many also boosted capital ratios by raising cash and hoarding profits.

If replicated across the 128 lenders subject to tests the European Central Bank aims to complete by October, it could mean no bank will fail or be forced to raise large amounts of new capital. Such limited consequences helped discredit previous tests by EU financial watchdog the European Banking Authority (EBA) - one reason the ECB is keen to show that its new exercise will truly be tough on the region's banks.

While some analysts have suggested that a failure by the ECB to force the closure of any euro zone bank after its own tests could again undermine the credibility of the exercise, many see it as more important that the ECB's scrutiny creates a stronger banking system - something the data suggest is happening.

[xchrom]

11. Japan PM talks with BOJ chief, does not push for easing

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/uk-japan-economy-kuroda-abe-idUKBREA3E0K120140415

(Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Tuesday but did not pressure the central bank chief to ease policy, curbing speculation that the BOJ might take more aggressive action this month.

Over lunch, Abe and Kuroda "took plenty of time to discuss economic conditions and so forth in a calm manner," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

The premier did not ask Kuroda to take further measures to bolster the world's third-biggest economy and pull it out of deflation, Kuroda and Suga told reporters separately.

Kuroda and other BOJ officials have repeatedly expressed confidence that this month's increase in the national sales tax will not derail the economy or prevent inflation from hitting the central bank's 2 percent target.

[xchrom]

12. China set to elevate environment over development in new law

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/uk-china-environment-idUKBREA3E03A20140415

(Reuters) - Smog-hit China is set to pass a new law that would give Beijing more powers to shut polluting factories and punish officials, and even place protected regions off-limits to industrial development, scholars with knowledge of the situation said.

Long-awaited amendments to China's 1989 Environmental Protection Law are expected to be finalised later this year, giving the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) greater authority to take on polluters.

While some details of the fourth draft are still under discussion, it has been agreed that the principle of prioritising the environment above the economy will be enshrined in law, according to scholars who have been involved in the process. The fourth draft is due to be completed within weeks.

&quot Upholding) environmental protection as the fundamental principle is a huge change, and emphasises that the environment is a priority," said Cao Mingde, a law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, who was involved in the drafting process.

[xchrom]

13. China gold demand to rise, World Gold Council says

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27030705

China's demand for gold is set to rise by about 20% over the next few years, the World Gold Council has estimated, as the population becomes more wealthy.

The council estimates private sector demand for gold in China will rise to at least 1,350 tonnes by 2017.

Chinese customers bought 1,132 tonnes of gold last year, in jewellery as well as gold bars and coins for investment.

The forecast comes as China becomes the world's largest gold-consuming nation since last year, overtaking India.

[xchrom]

14. Draghi’s Euro Warning Seen as Cheap Talk by Traders: Currencies

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-15/draghi-s-euro-warning-seen-as-cheap-talk-by-traders-currencies.html

For currency traders, talk is cheap, even when the person speaking is the president of the European Central Bank.

Mario Draghi’s suggestion this weekend that the ECB may ease policy to address the euro’s advance marked a strengthening of a position he’s been setting out for weeks. Yet the 18-nation currency has shrugged off his repeated comments and climbed since the beginning of March, while options traders are about the least bearish on the euro since November 2009.

The challenge for Draghi is capping euro gains that have slowed inflation to a quarter of the ECB’s 2 percent target and which run the risk of the sluggish growth that blighted Japan in the 1990s. Traders are trying to judge whether the central bank head is willing to back his words with sufficient firepower to end a 20-month rally in the shared currency.

“The ECB will probably continue with these types of comments, but talk is cheap,” Athanasios Vamvakidis, the head of Group-of-10 foreign-exchange strategy at Bank of America Corp. in London, said yesterday in a phone interview. “The market will need to see action for the euro to weaken substantially.”

[xchrom]

15. Spain Anxiety on Euro Leaves Rajoy With Two-Front Battle

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-14/spain-anxiety-on-euro-leaves-rajoy-with-two-front-battle.html

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is counting on Mario Draghi’s help in a battle on two fronts against the strength of the euro.

With the currency reaching a level high enough to provoke the European Central Bank president to threaten action, data today showed slowing euro-area export growth and figures tomorrow will confirm the damage caused to inflation. For Spain, the effect has already been double-edged, depressing consumer prices enough to cause annual declines in an economy beset with unemployment, while also threatening its export-based recovery.

Rajoy said on April 7 that he would like “a different exchange rate,” and Draghi said as much in Washington five days later when he told reporters that the euro’s strengthening “requires further monetary stimulus.” Such assistance can’t come soon enough for Spanish companies including Cosentino SA, a manufacturer of bathroom and kitchen quartz surfaces.

“The economic rationale of maintaining all our factories in Almeria is becoming weaker and weaker,” Chief Financial Officer Luis de la Haza said in a telephone interview from the southern region of Spain, where the company has 10 facilities and two fifths of its workforce. “We’ve been suffering for months without any respite from the euro’s exchange rate.”

[xchrom]

16. ECB Talking Up QE Focuses Belka on Zloty Defenses: Poland Credit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-15/ecb-talking-up-qe-focuses-belka-on-zloty-defenses-poland-credit.html

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s plan for further monetary easing is prompting his counterpart in Poland to respond with preparations of his own to keep the zloty from threatening the nation’s recovery.

The Polish central bank is “preparing instruments” to intervene on “asset markets of different classes,” Governor Marek Belka said on April 13 in a panel discussion at the International Monetary Fund’s meeting in Washington. The comments came a day after Draghi said the strengthening of the euro required further monetary stimulus.

“Poland needed to respond to the ECB becoming more dovish,” Grzegorz Ogonek, a Warsaw-based economist at ING Bank Slaski SA, said by phone yesterday. While Belka “probably won’t follow the ECB step by step, the central bank needs to show it won’t persist in running a tighter monetary policy” to avoid turbulence on the foreign-exchange market, he said. “Poland doesn’t need a stronger zloty.”

Belka’s comments reflect the central bank’s intention to remain agile as the ECB’s plans take shape. Yields on Poland’s 10-year bonds fell to the lowest in more than eight months last week, narrowing the spread over German bunds to the least in three months, after Draghi said April 3 that policy makers debated what form of quantitative easing, or large-scale asset purchases, they might need to use to bolster prices.

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17. German Investor Confidence Falls for Fourth Month in April

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-15/german-investor-confidence-declined-for-fourth-month-in-april.html

German investor confidence fell for a fourth month in April, highlighting the risks to the recovery in Europe’s largest economy.

The ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim said its index of investor and analyst expectations, which aims to predict economic developments six months in advance, slid to 43.2 from 46.6 in March. Economists forecast a decline to 45, according to the median of 37 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The gauge reached a seven-year high of 62 in December.

While the Bundesbank has said the German economy probably strengthened in the first quarter, business confidence has declined and manufacturing activity has slowed amid concern that an escalation of tensions in Ukraine and a cooling economy in China will threaten trade. A nascent euro-area recovery may also be curbed by a strengthening currency that depresses prices and hurts exporters.

“The crisis in Ukraine continues to sow uncertainty,” said Christian Schulz, senior economist at Berenberg Bank in London. “Fortunately, strong Germany is in the best position to deal with the fallout from the Ukraine crisis. That may act as a shield for the euro-zone recovery.”

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18. China GDP Gauge Seen Showing Deeper Slowdown

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-14/china-gdp-gauge-seen-showing-more-drop-than-main-measure.html

China’s loss of economic momentum in the first quarter was deeper than the most widely-cited data will show, according to analyst forecasts for a gauge that’s gaining increasing recognition.

Gross domestic product grew a seasonally adjusted 1.5 percent from the previous three months, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey ahead of data released tomorrow, down from 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter. That indicates a sharper deceleration than a median projection for 7.3 percent growth from a year earlier, from 7.7 percent.

Investors are focused on the scale of a slowdown that prompted Premier Li Keqiang to provide what some analysts dubbed a “mini-stimulus” of spending and tax relief. While the indicator suffers from flaws including the government’s failure to give details of methodology, it provides an extra tool to analyze an economy that bond-fund manager Bill Gross calls the “mystery meat” of emerging markets.

“The quarter-on-quarter data will show growth momentum has actually bottomed out in the first quarter,” said Chen Xingdong, Beijing-based chief China economist at BNP Paribas SA, who previously worked at the World Bank. The measure “has clearly captured the changes in growth momentum,” Chen said.

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19. Abe Ministries Risk Failure in ‘Womenomics’ Goals, Mori Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-14/abe-s-goal-of-boosting-women-employment-in-jeopardy-mori-says.html

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will fail to meet his goal of having women in 30 percent of management positions in the civil service by 2020 unless candidates are lured from private industry, the gender equality minister said in an interview.

More than a year since Abe won election promising to boost female employment, the government has only managed to fill 3 percent of supervisory positions in the civil service with women.

“Unless they appoint people from outside, they won’t make the target,” Masako Mori said in an interview in Tokyo on April 9.

The difficulty in promoting women in the bureaucracy illustrates Abe’s challenge in reaching the 30 percent target for the entire economy as part of his bid to replenish a workforce forecast to shrink as much as 42 percent by 2060. Long working hours, difficulty in finding childcare and lack of opportunities to return to work after a career break have hampered women’s progress, Mori said.

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20. Foreign Buyers Increasingly Return to Italian Debt, Cannata Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-14/foreign-buyers-increasingly-return-to-italian-debt-cannata-says.html

Foreign investors are increasingly returning to Italian debt, and some of them are diversifying their holdings, debt agency chief Maria Cannata said.

Purchasers from non-euro area countries such as the U.K. and Scandinavian nations are “important,” in addition to the “very strong” presence of U.S. investors, Cannata said in an interview in her office in Rome yesterday. Asian buyers, whose purchases were “quite limited in terms of maturity until the end of 2013” have started to broaden their horizon in investments and diversify the type of bonds this year, she said. Cannata said Japanese purchases of Italian debt have increased but are still “quite limited.”

Italy returned to economic growth at the end of 2013, breaking a slump that lasted more than two years. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is counting on more foreign investors to sustain the growth.

Non-resident holdings of Italian government securities increased by almost 30 billion euros ($41.5 billion) in January, the latest month for which figures are available, according to the Bank of Italy.

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21. India Consumer Inflation Rises in March, Adding Rate Pressure

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-15/india-wholesale-inflation-quickens-more-than-estimated-in-march.html

India’s consumer-price inflation quickened in March for the first time in four months, keeping pressure on the central bank to keep interest rates elevated.

The consumer-price index rose 8.31 percent from a year earlier, compared with a revised 8.03 percent in February, the Central Statistics Office said in New Delhi today. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 39 analysts was for an 8.25 percent increase.

Surging price pressures erode the purchasing power of about 800 million Indians who live on less than $2 a day, and could hurt the Congress party’s effort to extend its 10-year rule in elections ending May 16. Elevated inflation has prompted Raghuram Rajan to raise the benchmark rate 75 basis points since taking over the Reserve Bank of India in September.

“The RBI is likely to stay concerned on the inflation outlook and stick to the tight policy stance,” said Radhika Rao, a Singapore-based economist at DBS Bank Ltd. The figures point to a “long road to recovery,” she said.

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22. the global banking game is rigged and the FDIC is suing

the global banking game is rigged and the FDIC is suing

http://www.nationofchange.org/global-banking-game-rigged-and-fdic-suing-1397485271

Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars for a swindle pulled off by the world’s biggest banks, using a form of derivative called interest-rate swaps; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has now joined a chorus of litigants suing over it. According to an SEIU report:

Derivatives . . . have turned into a windfall for banks and a nightmare for taxpayers. . . . While banks are still collecting fixed rates of 3 to 6 percent, they are now regularly paying public entities as little as a tenth of one percent on the outstanding bonds, with rates expected to remain low in the future. Over the life of the deals, banks are now projected to collect billions more than they pay state and local governments – an outcome which amounts to a second bailout for banks, this one paid directly out of state and local budgets.

It is not just that local governments, universities and pension funds made a bad bet on these swaps. The game itself was rigged, as explained below. The FDIC is now suing in civil court for damages and punitive damages, a lead that other injured local governments and agencies would be well-advised to follow. But they need to hurry, because time on the statute of limitations is running out.

The Largest Cartel in World History

On March 14, 2014, the FDIC filed suit for LIBOR-rigging against sixteen of the world’s largest banks – including the three largest US banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup), the three largest UK banks, the largest German bank, the largest Japanese bank, and several of the largest Swiss banks. Bill Black, professor of law and economics and a former bank fraud investigator, calls them “the largest cartel in world history, by at least three and probably four orders of magnitude.”