STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 28 April 2014

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, 28 April 2014[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 25 April 2014

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 25 April 2014
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Dow Jones 16,361.46 -140.19 (-0.85%)
S&P 500 1,863.40 -15.21 (-0.81%)
Nasdaq 4,075.56 -73.00 (0.00%)


[font color=green]10 Year 2.67% -0.01 (-0.37%)
30 Year 3.44% -0.01 (-0.29%) [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]

[Fuddnik]

1. It's too early to turn the AC on.

But, it was close to 90 today. Luckily we're near the Gulf, and it cools us down a few degrees. We were in the upper 80's.

[Demeter]

2. We were in the lower 40's with a snappy breeze

Too cold to garden. My pansy leaves are turning purple with cold--honest truth!

At least there was no snow left in the shadows when I did the papers (in my parka and gloves). That's progress, around here. It was sunny, but the sun had no effect, and how we are getting all the tornado hype, although it sounds as if it's 3 states over....of course, tornadoes don't recognize political boundaries.

And the flowers are bravely pushing forward, blooming. The grass is growing, and our site manager is already grumbling about mowing.

[jtuck004]

32. There was just a little snow blowing around yesterday, mixed with the rain, nothing on the

ground. But I did burn a couple sticks in the wood stove just to take the early chill off.

On the other hand, I've removed the mulch, and my garlic is 8" tall in some spots. So Spring is coming...

Sunny beaches. Bah.

[Demeter]

3. Pritzker Says Deal Close on Pacific-Trade Agreement (Transcript)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-25/pritzker-says-deal-close-on-pacific-trade-agreement-transcript-.html

THE ONLY REASON I CAN FIGURE THEY PUT A TRANSCRIPT OF HER REMARKS IN PRINT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE UNBELIEVABLY VACUOUS AND SMACK OF SHADY DEALINGS OR PURE DELUSION....YOU WILL HAVE TO READ IT FOR YOURSELF.

[Demeter]

4. The Sharing Economy Isn’t About Trust, It’s About Desperation

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/sharing-economy-is-about-desperation.html



Wired's cover story this month is about the rise of the "sharing economy" — a Silicon Valley–invented term used to describe the basket of start-ups (Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, et al.) that allow users to rent their labor and belongings to strangers. Jason Tanz attributes the success of these start-ups to the invention of a "set of digi­tal tools that enable and encourage us to trust our fellow human beings," such as bidirectional rating systems, background checks, frictionless payment systems, and platforms that encourage buyers and sellers to get to know each other face-to-face before doing business.

Tanz's thesis isn't wrong — these innovations have certainly made a difference. But it leaves out an important part of the story. Namely, the sharing economy has succeeded in large part because the real economy has been struggling. A huge precondition for the sharing economy has been a depressed labor market, in which lots of people are trying to fill holes in their income by monetizing their stuff and their labor in creative ways. In many cases, people join the sharing economy because they've recently lost a full-time job and are piecing together income from several part-time gigs to replace it. In a few cases, it's because the pricing structure of the sharing economy made their old jobs less profitable. (Like full-time taxi drivers who have switched to Lyft or Uber.) In almost every case, what compels people to open up their homes and cars to complete strangers is money, not trust.

To understand why the sharing economy is thriving now, it's worth taking a look at how many full-time jobs have been replaced by part-time jobs since the recession of 2008:



More telling is what's happened to real wages, which have fallen for middle- and low-income people since the recession:



Add to this the fact that 3.7 million Americans are long-term unemployed (meaning they haven't had a job in the last six months), and the rise of the sharing economy makes total sense. When wages fall and full-time jobs are hard to get, workers seek out flexible part-time gigs to sustain themselves while they look for something better.

As Sarah Kessler discovered in her Fast Company investigation, it's hard to make it in the sharing economy. Many of the people renting out their labor and goods through these services will end up making a fraction of what they did at their full-time jobs, and having none of the benefits. Tanz writes that "in the sharing economy, the commerce feels almost secondary." That may be true for the buyers, but it certainly isn't true for the sellers, for whom these transactions are often an important source of income...The title of Tanz's story is "How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other." But as Tanz himself notes, the data clearly show that Americans don't trust each other: One survey, he says, "found that just 41 percent of respondents express 'a great deal' or 'quite a bit' of trust in the people they hire to work in their home, only 30 percent trust the cashiers who swipe their credit or debit card, and a mere 19 percent trust 'people you meet when you are traveling away from home.'" So something else must be compelling people to exhibit what he calls "behaviors that would have seemed unthinkably foolhardy as recently as five years ago." One plausible explanation is that people don't have a choice: They have to get comfortable with the sharing economy because that's where the money is. A narrative about labor-market weakness isn't as uplifting as one about strangers learning to trust enough other with the help of ride-sharing apps. But it's a necessary piece of the puzzle.

Tools that help people trust in the kindness of strangers might be the thing pushing hesitant sharing-economy participants over the threshold to adoption. But what's getting them to the threshold in the first place is a damaged economy, and harmful public policy that has forced millions of people to look to odd jobs for sustenance.

SUPPORTING LINKS AT OP

[Demeter]

6. If Techtopus wage theft suit proves anything, it’s that philosophy that built the Valley is no more

http://pando.com/2014/04/25/if-the-techtopus-wage-theft-suit-proves-anything-its-that-the-philosophy-that-built-the-valley-is-no-more/

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... what’s defined Silicon Valley – and the reason it surpassed Boston as the world’s leading innovation and startup hub decades ago – was an almost Eastern philosophy of the constant recirculation of money and talent. Like atoms washing in and out of the body, or a flow of energy that would be described in a California Yoga class, the idea was that this flow of talent and capital was all that mattered – not any one job, or any one company, or even any one technical wave. It was the big living breathing organism of the ecosystem. The Valley eschewed strictures of the East Coast – Robert Noyce hated unions and so he made his employees at Intel partners in the business. And unlike the East Coast, non-competes were frowned upon. As the Valley grew, so too grew this idea that even a founder wouldn’t be in his job forever, and the system was what mattered. If someone wanted to leave you to start a company or join one, you had to let them and trust it would all work out. But something has happened to this zen, free-market utopia: It worked so well that it spawned handfuls upon handfuls of companies that got truly massive, with huge multiples in their stock prices, and mind-boggling amounts of cash. These companies exerted enormous control over their markets, and they’d seen the decline of once-great tech companies who weren’t careful. Even Microsoft – the company that struck fear in the heart of even the boldest entrepreneurs 15 years ago – barely moved in stock price over the last decade.

These companies knew just being big wasn’t enough. Just as startups use their own endemic nimbleness to get ahead, these companies decided they needed to use their sheer muscle, institutional heft, and market cap to win. In the words of Steve Case at last month’s PandoMonthly, the “disrupters” became “defenders.” And just as startups will use that speed, nimbleness, and disruptive mindset – even veering into the gray area of the law when need be – so too did these giants of Silicon Valley lose all sense of decorum, respect for talent, legality, and appreciation for what made the Valley unique and successful to begin with. The most egregious example of this shift is the Tectopus wage fixing scandal, which artificially suppressed tech wages for millions of engineers. It was simply shocking boldness, as Mark Ames has reported in leaked email after leaked email. Much has been made of the fact that Facebook – not to mention LinkedIn, Twitter and others – refused to join this cartel, ultimately diminishing its impact. But let’s not kid ourselves: Facebook didn’t join only because of timing. Facebook was the disruptor not the defender. Ten years earlier or decades before that, Google and Apple wouldn’t have joined. The suit was settled this week, and yeah it cost the companies a lot of money. Some $325 million, but that boils down to about $500 per head. Nothing. Just like the “too big to fail” banks. In retrospect, even if they knew this could be the outcome it was a greedy game worth playing. They saved far more than that...Ditto for wage suppression. While the national press has finally grabbed this story with both hands, and we’re all expressing shock and outrage, let’s be clear: This was a huge victory for the bullies and the defenders in tech, Silicon Valley, and every industry. If this was the price of getting caught it simply wasn’t steep enough to not be tried again. And this time, with more care around the paper trail. If the banks were too big to fail, these companies are simply too rich to be punished. And that’s terrifying.

Some fifty years or more into one of the greatest economic experiments in modern history, Silicon Valley is in an all-out fight for its soul between the disrupters who are viewed as the lifeblood of this place and the giant, gaudy, extreme successes of a system that worked too well for companies with hundreds of billions to lose. It’s not just the Tectopus. It’s the acquisition strategies. The acquisition math for these Terminator-like public companies like Google and Facebook is dramatically more aggressive than anything we’ve seen before. Whatsapp is only valued at $19 billion because giving up 10% of Facebook means nothing if it remains one of the most dominant companies on earth. See also $2 billion for Oculus Rift – something that might, one day, in one weird sci-fi version of reality become a new ad platform. See also Google’s swallowing whole of the robotics and hardware startup leadership. It’s not illegal, and VCs and entrepreneurs make out like bandits in these wildly-priced deals. But it’s the same ethos of controlling what no one ever tried to control in the Valley. What we all prided ourselves on was uncontrollable – the potential for the young to eat the old...



MUCH MORE INSIGHT INTO WHY SILICON VALLEY IS NOT A HEALTHY PLACE AT LINK.



Sarah Lacy is the founder and editor-in-chief of PandoDaily. She is an award winning journalist and author of two critically acclaimed books, "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0" (Gotham Books, May 2008) and "Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos" (Wiley, February 2011). She has been covering technology news for over 15 years, most recently as a senior editor for TechCrunch.

[Demeter]

7. AS DILBERT SEES IT

[Fuddnik]

12. And the obsolete, entrenched interests are counter-attacking.

Tampa Police and the Transportation Authority are threatening Uber and Lyft drivers with $800 fines. Uber and Lyft are fighting back, by vowing to pay the drivers fines for them.

This should get interesting.

As for me, I'm just running a few Personal Clients on a few runs, mainly to the airport, in my Hybrid Ford. I don't have to depend on it for a living. Just a little spare cash.

[Demeter]

13. I wonder who put them up to it

It doesn't seem like anything a police force would have any jurisdiction over. I'm not sure what Tampa's transportation authority encompasses...here, it's just buses.

[Demeter]

5. Desperation Seems to be the Theme of the 21st Century

Topics that have been exhibiting signs of desperation:

1. Climate change. The hysteria is quite frightening, even more than the possibility. Hysterical people do stupid things to other people...cruel, deadly, unnecessary things.

2. Economics. The whole austerity/letting banksters get away with murder are just two sides of the same counterfeit coin. That's not economics, that's plunder.

3. Imperialism. The US is losing it, before TPTB even got good at it. Of course, part of the reason they are losing it is they never TRIED to get good at it...again, they went for the plunder, not the infrastructure...

4. Education. Or rather, the desire to make education unaffordable, unattainable, and unavailable. This is stupidity at the highest level, and I do mean highest.

5. Democracy. We are holding on to the vestiges of our democratic government and daily losing our grip on it to the 1%, as epitomized by the Dancing Supremes, who will end up on lampposts, if there is any Justice left in this world. We will be turning to Venezuela to lead the way back.

I'm sure you can think of other areas of desperation....

6. Monsanto is one desperate company...they are getting the boot from all the new markets, and even their captive markets are fighting bitterly.

7. The EU is one desperate suicide pact. The question is whether it will crack from internal or external realities.

I just thought of another:

8. Fossil fuel energy companies, trying to stop solar yet again...Reagan delayed solar 30 years, but the rest of the world didn't stop. The US is now playing catch-up, but all the manufacturing is in other nations...and the utilities and the Koch-heads are trying yet again to take us back to dirt and deprivation.

[Demeter]

8. The Koch Attack on Solar Energy

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-energy.html

At long last, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have found a new tax they can support. Naturally it’s a tax on something the country needs: solar energy panels. For the last few months, the Kochs and other big polluters have been spending heavily to fight incentives for renewable energy, which have been adopted by most states. They particularly dislike state laws that allow homeowners with solar panels to sell power they don’t need back to electric utilities. So they’ve been pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive. Oklahoma lawmakers recently approved such a surcharge at the behest of the American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC) the conservative group that often dictates bills to Republican statehouses and receives financing from the utility industry and fossil-fuel producers, including the Kochs. As The Los Angeles Times reported recently, the Kochs and ALEC have made similar efforts in other states, though they were beaten back by solar advocates in Kansas and the surtax was reduced to $5 a month in Arizona.

But the Big Carbon advocates aren’t giving up. The same group is trying to repeal or freeze Ohio’s requirement that 12.5 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2025. Twenty-nine states have established similar standards that call for 10 percent or more in renewable power. These states can now anticipate well-financed campaigns to eliminate these targets or scale them back. The coal producers’ motivation is clear: They see solar and wind energy as a long-term threat to their businesses. That might seem distant at the moment, when nearly 40 percent of the nation’s electricity is still generated by coal, and when less than 1 percent of power customers have solar arrays. (It is slightly higher in California and Hawaii.) But given new regulations on power-plant emissions of mercury and other pollutants, and the urgent need to reduce global warming emissions, the future clearly lies with renewable energy. In 2013, 29 percent of newly installed generation capacity came from solar, compared with 10 percent in 2012.

Renewables are good for economic as well as environmental reasons, as most states know. (More than 143,000 now work in the solar industry.) Currently, 43 states require utilities to buy excess power generated by consumers with solar arrays. This practice, known as net metering, essentially runs electric meters backward when power flows from rooftop solar panels into the grid, giving consumers a credit for the power they generate but don’t use. The utilities hate this requirement, for obvious reasons. A report by the Edison Electric Institute, the lobbying arm of the power industry, says this kind of law will put “a squeeze on profitability,” and warns that if state incentives are not rolled back, “it may be too late to repair the utility business model.”

Since that’s an unsympathetic argument, the utilities have devised another: Solar expansion, they claim, will actually hurt consumers. The Arizona Public Service Company, the state’s largest utility, funneled large sums through a Koch operative to a nonprofit group that ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes by raising electric rates. The ad tried to link the requirement to President Obama. Another Koch ad likens the renewable-energy requirement to health care reform, the ultimate insult in that world. “Like Obamacare, it’s another government mandate we can’t afford,” the narrator says. That line might appeal to Tea Partiers, but it’s deliberately misleading. This campaign is really about the profits of Koch Carbon and the utilities, which to its organizers is much more important than clean air and the consequences of climate change.

[Demeter]

9. Chernobyl’s Bugs: The Art And Science Of Life After Nuclear Fallout

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/chernobyls-bugs-art-and-science-life-after-nuclear-fallout-180951231/?utm_source=feedburner&no-ist

...Mutations caused by radionuclides (radioactive isotopes of elements) come in two forms: germline mutations in the DNA of the sperm or egg or mutations in cellular DNA due to exposure that can cause different forms of cancer. The first is passed down to future generations, and the second is typically not. Both types of mutations would likely look like mutations that arise normally in insects—so no glowing grasshoppers or giant flies of science fiction fodder are likely buzzing around Ukraine. Individual mutations probably wouldn’t impede an insect’s survival, but if new mutations accumulate in these bugs overtime, fitness could drop due to natural selection pressure.

For any animal or insect, a drop in fitness could produce negative effects at the ecological community level. Since the mid-1990s, scientists have reported that moose, boar, otter and other animal communities thrive around Chernobyl. But a string of studies since then have suggested that all might not be so idyllic for some species. Barn swallows living in the exclusion area have seen increased rates of albinism and cataracts, as well as decreased reproduction and survival.

“We have a very, very incomplete picture,” says Mousseau, who studies birds and insects around Chernobyl and Fukushima in Japan. In 2009, Mouseau and his colleagues did find lower populations of butterflies, bees, dragonflies and spiders in areas inside the 12-square-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl compared to those further away. But, he adds, “There’s been very little research done to rigorously assess the impacts of the radioactive contaminants on the insect communities in the area.”

Scientists do know that some species might be less susceptible than others, and perhaps mutant bugs could adapt to such stressful conditions. In a Functional Ecology paper published this week, Mousseau and his colleagues revealed that some bird species living near Chernobyl might be adapting to low-dose radiation levels. As scientists discern Chernobyl’s radioactive legacy, they’re also figuring out how evolution works in a radioactive world.

[Demeter]

10. Phone Company Bid to Keep Data From N.S.A. Is Rejected

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/us/phone-company-bid-to-keep-data-from-nsa-is-rejected.html?_r=1

A telephone company asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in January to stop requiring it to give records of its customers’ calls to the National Security Agency, in light of a ruling by a Federal District Court judge that the N.S.A. program is likely unconstitutional, according to court papers declassified on Friday. But Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, another Federal District Court judge who also sits on the secret surveillance court, rejected the request — and her colleague’s legal analysis — in a 31-page ruling on March 20, the newly declassified papers show. The identity of the phone company was censored in the documents that were made public.

The developments heighten the display of legal tensions over the program. Since 2006, a series of judges on the secret surveillance court have repeatedly ordered companies to participate in the program, but none of them produced a judicial opinion explaining why it was legally justified until after it became public in the leaks by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden. Since then, some outsiders have challenged the legality of the bulk records collection. The critics include Judge Richard J. Leon, who ruled in December that the program was likely to violate the Fourth Amendment. Judges Collyer and Leon were both appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002 for the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.

On Jan. 22, the unnamed phone company asked the surveillance court to vacate the current order requiring it to turn over customers’ records in light of Judge Leon’s ruling. But Judge Collyer said she found Judge Leon’s analysis to be “unpersuasive.” The argument chiefly focused on Smith v. Maryland, a 1979 case in which the Supreme Court held that there was no Fourth Amendment protections for metadata — information like the numbers dialed and the duration of a call, but not its contents. Judge Leon argued that the precedent was not valid when applied to bulk collection of all Americans’ phone data in the modern era. But Judge Collyer said the Supreme Court precedent was still valid and that the bulk nature of the collection was irrelevant because what mattered was each individual caller’s expectation of privacy. Separately, the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has issued a lengthy analysis rejecting the surveillance court’s view that a provision of the Patriot Act — which allows the F.B.I. to obtain business records that are relevant to an investigation — can be legitimately interpreted as authorizing bulk collection. The board issued its report after the phone company made its challenge, and neither it nor Judge Collyer’s ruling addressed that issue.

In another lawsuit, Judge William H. Pauley III, of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, upheld the program in December. Before the program’s public disclosure, Judge Pauley — who is also not on the surveillance court — had been briefed on the program and rejected Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union seeking details about how the government was interpreting the Patriot Act.


NOT GOOD, PEOPLE. OR...NOT-GOOD PEOPLE.

[Demeter]

11. THOMAS HOMER-DIXON: What’s behind these fracturing countries? Stalled economies

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/whats-behind-these-fractures-stalled-economies/article17925027/

Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela. At first glance, it would seem hard to find four more different countries. But if you’ve followed international events over the last year, you’ve probably noticed that these countries share a striking similarity. Each has seen a surge of civil protest, including violent mass demonstrations against the national government.

The events in these four countries are the latest developments in a trend going back to the popular protests across the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010 and 2011. Extended unrest in this region eventually produced a fragmented polity in Libya, a civil war in Syria and resurgent military rule in Egypt. Elsewhere, Russia was shaken by protests from 2011 through 2013, while demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people swept Brazil in 2013.

The trend is striking partly because it contradicts conventional wisdom. According to scholars such as Harvard’s Steven Pinker, the world is becoming more peaceful. Steady improvements in living standards, the continuing spread of justice and human-rights norms, and broadening commitments to democracy and the role of reason in public affairs have allowed people, groups and countries to fight less.

Recently, however, that narrative has become less clear. According to the 2013 Global Peace Index (a standard reference compiled by the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace), 70 per cent of countries surveyed became less peaceful between 2008 and 2013. Of the GPI’s 22 indicators of peacefulness, 17 worsened when averaged across all countries. The incidence of violent demonstration showed an especially large increase.

This unrest could be just a blip in a longer-term trend toward greater peace. Prof. Pinker’s analysis, for example, extends over centuries. But several things suggest that the new political instability is more than a blip.

Each case of recent unrest is different in the details. Yet if we look closely, we see they have features in common. In each, many early participants were relatively young (in their 20s and 30s), urban, relatively educated and wealthy. They were angry about economic stagnation, official corruption, government’s arbitrary use of power, their lack of representation in decision-making institutions and the accumulation of wealth by powerful cronies. Importantly, they were also adept at using information technology and social media to share information and co-ordinate their actions, which boosted their confidence and their feeling of power in numbers.

In most cases, these early participants seemed to demand something akin to liberal democracy and the rule of law, which encouraged support for the uprisings from established democracies. But a democratic impulse didn’t motivate all protests; in Thailand, the latest round actually attacked the country’s democratic institutions. Also, in many cases, liberal protesters were joined by long-established groups of religious or nationalist hard-liners; sometimes, the liberals even allied themselves strategically with these groups.

The hard-liners were generally better organized and more ruthless; they also had more resources and clearer goals. So they moved quickly to the protests’ front lines and were more inclined to respond to the government’s violence with violence of their own. Indeed, their presence in the protesters’ ranks helped legitimize violence by government forces, and the clashes that followed marginalized the more liberal elements. In Egypt, the new military regime’s crackdown appears to have succeeded. In Ukraine, the regime ultimately fell, but the protesters’ ideological differences have created deep divisions within the new government.

The fundamental cause of all this unrest – in such a variety of societies – is likely slower global economic growth. The Institute for Economics and Peace notes that countries experiencing recession “have decreased in peace at a greater rate than the rest of the world.” The unrest is a downstream consequence of the recession of 2008 and 2009, which flipped the global economy into a persistent low-growth state, as countries, firms, and households around the world hunkered down and focused on paying off debt. Consistently high prices for oil and food have reinforced this stagnation.

The political effects have been most dramatic in middle-income societies with corrupt authoritarian regimes, rapacious elites, wide economic inequality and small and economically insecure middle classes. In these fractured societies, stalled economies have dashed economic opportunity and deepened grievances – especially among cohorts of young people who have relatively good education but very few good jobs.

Some scholars argue that low growth is the global economy’s new normal. If so, much more political instability is in the cards. And we should watch developments closely in China, which exhibits many of the key precursors to unrest: endemic corruption and economic cronyism, rising middle-class grievances, virtually no avenues for expression of those grievances, rapidly falling economic growth.

ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER....

IN FACT, LUMPING ALL THESE COUNTRIES TOGETHER IS DISINGENUOUS.

VENEZUELA IS ANYTHING BUT COLLAPSING. WHAT'S COLLAPSING IN VENEZUELA IS THE 1% HEGEMONY.

AND THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT PEOPLE ARE ATTEMPTING TO ACCOMPLISH IN TURKEY, WHERE ANOTHER US PUPPET IS TEETERING, UKRAINE, WHERE THE US ISN'T GETTING TO FIRST BASE ON INSTALLING A PUPPET, AND AS FOR WHAT IS GOING ON IN THAILAND, WE HAVEN'T GOTTEN ANYTHING LIKE THE FACTS.

BUT IF THE US DOESN'T HAVE A FINGER, OR TWO HANDS, IN THAT PIE, I'D BE MIGHTY SURPRISED...

[Demeter]

14. No Accounting Skills? No Moral Reckoning

IT'S AN INTERESTING THESIS...ACCOUNTING BEING THE PATH TO ETHICAL ENLIGHTENMENT...OR AT LEAST, HONESTY.

I AM REMINDED OF A JOKE:

BUSINESS MAN LOOKING FOR AN ACCOUNTANT, ASKS: "HOW MUCH ARE 2+2?"

ACCOUNTANT REPLIES: "HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT IT TO ADD UP TO?"

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/no-accounting-skills-no-moral-reckoning/

SOMETIMES it seems as if our lives are dominated by financial crises and failed reforms. But how much do Americans even understand about finance? Few of us can do basic accounting and fewer still know what a balance sheet is. If we are going to get to the point where we can have a serious debate about financial accountability, we first need to learn some essentials. The German economic thinker Max Weber believed that for capitalism to work, average people needed to know how to do double-entry bookkeeping. This is not simply because this type of accounting makes it possible to calculate profit and capital by balancing debits and credits in parallel columns; it is also because good books are “balanced” in a moral sense. They are the very source of accountability, a word that in fact derives its origin from the word “accounting.”

In Renaissance Italy, merchants and property owners used accounting not only for their businesses but to make a moral reckoning with God, their cities, their countries and their families. The famous Italian merchant Francesco Datini wrote “In the Name of God and Profit” in his ledger books. Merchants like Datini (and later Benjamin Franklin) kept moral account books, too, tallying their sins and good acts the way they tallied income and expenditure. One of the less sexy and thus forgotten facts about the Italian Renaissance is that it depended highly on a population fluent in accounting. At any given time in the 1400s, 4,000 to 5,000 of Florence’s 120,000 inhabitants attended accounting schools, and there is ample archival evidence of even lowly workers keeping accounts. This was the world in which Cosimo de’ Medici and other Italians came to dominate European banking. It was understood that all landowners and professionals would know and practice basic accounting. Cosimo de’ Medici himself did yearly audits of the books of all his bank branches; he also personally kept the accounts for his household. This was typical in a world where everyone from farmers and apothecaries to merchants — even Niccolò Machiavelli — knew double-entry accounting. It was also useful in political office in republican Florence, where government required a certain amount of transparency.

If we want to know how to make our own country and companies more accountable, we would do well to study the Dutch. In 1602, they invented modern capitalism with the foundation of the first publicly traded company — the Dutch East India Company — and the first official stock market in Amsterdam. But it was through an older and well-maintained culture of accountability that they kept these institutions stable for a century. The spread of double-entry accounting to the Netherlands during the early 1500s made the country the center of accounting education, world trade and early capitalism. Well-accounted-for provincial tax returns allowed the Dutch to float bonds at dependable 4 percent interest rates. The Dutch trusted their managers to know how to keep good books and make regular interest payments, while paying off state debt. Every level of Dutch society practiced double-entry accounting — from prostitutes to scholars, merchants and even the Stadholder, Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange. Painters regularly depicted merchants keeping their books; Quentin Metsys’ “The Money Changers” (circa 1549) showed that even skilled accountants could be fraudulent. In other words, the advantages and pitfalls of accounting were at the fore of public consciousness. Not only did the Dutch have basic financial management skills, they were also acutely aware of the concept of balanced books, audits and reckonings. They had to be. If local water board administrators kept bad books, the Dutch dyke and canal system would not be well maintained, and the country risked catastrophic flooding. This desire for accountability was what pushed the Dutch to reform their financial system when it began to collapse under the weight of fraud. The first shareholder revolt happened in 1622, among Dutch East India Company investors who complained that the company account books had been “smeared with bacon” so that they might be “eaten by dogs.” The investors demanded a “reeckeninge,” a proper financial audit. While the state did not allow the Dutch East India Company’s books to be audited in public, Prince Maurice did do a serious internal audit, and Dutch burghers were satisfied with both company and state accountability. A cultural ideal was set. For the next century, it became common practice for public administrators to have portraits of themselves painted with their account books — sometimes with real calculations in them — open, for all to see.

These historical examples point the way toward achievable solutions to our own crises. Over the past half century, people have stopped learning double-entry bookkeeping — so much so that few know what it means — leaving it instead to specialists and computerized banking. If we want stable, sustainable capitalism, a good place to start would be to make double-entry accounting and basic finance part of the curriculum in high school, as they were in Renaissance Florence and Amsterdam. A population well-versed in double-entry accounting will not immediately solve our complex financial problems, but it would allow average citizens to understand the nuts and bolts of finance: balance sheets, mortgage interest, depreciation and long-term risk. It would also give them a clearer sense of what financial accountability really means and of how to ask for and assess audits. The explosion of data-driven journalism should also include a subset of reporters with training in accounting so that they can do a better job of explaining its central role in our economy and financial crises. Without a society trained in accountability, one thing is certain: There will be more reckonings to come.

Jacob Soll, a professor of history and accounting at the University of Southern California, is the author, most recently, of “The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations.”

I'VE NEVER HAD A DAY'S LESSON IN ACCOUNTING (FORGIVE ME, TANSY GOLD, FOR MY IGNORANCE) BUT IT DIDN'T TAKE ANY SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE CONDO ASSOCIATION'S BOOKKEEPING WAS TRASHED...NOTHING ADDED UP OR MADE SENSE.

WHEN OUR RESIDENT CPA DEBUGGED THE SYSTEM, THINGS STARTED TO CORRELATE, AND I COULD READ OUR BALANCE SHEET BECAUSE THINGS BALANCED.

I DON'T HAVE THE PERSONALITY TO DO ACCOUNTING, BUT I DOUBT THAT A GOOD DOSE OF BASIC ARITHMETICAL SKILLS AND ABILITY TO REASON LOGICALLY WOULDN'T DO AS MUCH OR MORE FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

OUR PROBLEM IS WE HAVE AN ENTIRE CLASS OF POLITICAL HACKS THAT CANNOT OR WILL NOT USE EITHER.

[Tansy_Gold]

30. Double entry bookkeeping isn't a miracle cure

For what ails the economy.

Even if people understood it better -- it's actually quite simple, though it does require a shift in perception -- it's still possible to cook the books. Or just have two sets of books.

However, a better understanding of accounting in general wouldn't hurt. Or of economics. Or of history. Or of literature. Or of art, biology, chemistry, mathematics, geography, sociology, philosophy . . . . . . . .and GRAMMAR AND SPELLING!!! <== One of Ms. Tansy's pet peeves.

[Demeter]

33. I see we are in agreement

That won't last....

[xchrom]

15. IMF RAISES CHINESE ECONOMIC GROWTH OUTLOOK

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_IMF?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-04-28-06-16-30

BEIJING (AP) -- The International Monetary Fund raised its economic growth forecast for China on Monday but warned that its financial system faces risks due to the rapid expansion of debt.

The IMF's 0.3 percentage point increase to 7.5 percent in its growth outlook for China may help reassure investors who worry the world's second-largest economy might be slowing too abruptly.

The forecast is in line with the ruling Communist Party's official growth target for the year and would be the strongest for any major economy. But it is well below the double-digit levels of the past decade and might raise the risk of politically dangerous job losses.

The IMF warned that China faces the twin risks of an unexpectedly sharp slowdown and "rising vulnerabilities" in its financial system. It said both could cause repercussions for the region.

[Demeter]

34. And boy, is the IMF disappointed!

In fact, they are livid about it. Hence all the "warnings" which could be construed as threats.

[xchrom]

16. FRANCE ORCHESTRATING ALSTOM DEAL AT FULL TILT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_FRANCE_ALSTOM?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-04-28-06-34-48

PARIS (AP) -- Officials close to talks on a proposed merger between Alstom and General Electric say France's president is open to the idea, despite a delay imposed by one of his top finance officials.

President Francois Hollande is meeting three CEOs in an all-out effort to orchestrate a deal for Alstom and keep the engineering company firmly rooted at home. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are sensitive.

Hollande held an hour-long meeting with the CEO of General Electric Co., which was preparing a merger with Alstom before the government intervened, citing "strategic interests."

He'll sit down later Monday with the CEO of GE rival Siemens and French conglomerate Bouygues, a significant Alstom shareholder.

[xchrom]

17. TENSION BETWEEN UKRAINE AND RUSSIA PUSH METALS UP

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_COMMODITIES_REVIEW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-04-25-16-33-14

Rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine drove up prices for gold, platinum and palladium Friday.

U.S. officials said that Russian fighter jets had flown into Ukrainian airspace several times over the last 24 hours. At the United Nations, Ukraine's deputy foreign minister told reporters that he fears a Russian invasion is imminent.

Gold for June delivery rose $10.20 to settle at $1,300.80 an ounce, marking its third straight day of gains.

Traders often shift money into gold in anticipation of a crisis. Last month, gold prices hit a high point for the year on concerns over a territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine.

[xchrom]

18. Thai opposition leader meets military head as crisis deepens

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/28/uk-thailand-protest-idUKKBN0DE0FT20140428

(Reuters) - Thai opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva met the head of the armed forces on Monday to discuss ways to avert a showdown between rival political factions next month that threatens more bloodshed and economic damage.

Former Prime Minister Abhisit, who met Armed Forces Supreme Commander General Thanasak Patimaprakorn, has asked for two weeks to try to resolve the crisis peacefully.

"He supports what I want, which is to bring all sides together to find a way out for the country," Abhisit told reporters after a two-hour meeting with Thanasak.

"The commander underscored that political problems must be solved through political means."

***change is a coming to a low wage paradise.

[xchrom]

19. US STOCKS-Futures rebound from Friday drop, pending home sales on tap

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/28/markets-usa-stocks-idUKL2N0NK0AK20140428

Obama slaps U.S. sanctions on more Russians over Ukraine

* Pfizer works on next move in takeover bid for Astrazeneca

* Futures up: Dow 40 pts; S&P 5.6 pts; Nasdaq 10.5 pts

NEW YORK, April 28 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures rose on Monday, rebounding from sharp losses on Friday, boosted by merger and acquisition activity in the pharmaceuticals sector.

* U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc is working on its next move in a potential $100 billion bid to take over Britain's AstraZeneca Plc after having two bids rejected.

* Pfizer made a 58.8 billion pounds ($98.9 billion) bid to AstraZeneca in January and said it had contacted its British rival again on April 26 to further discuss a takeover, which would be one of the biggest ever in the pharmaceuticals industry.

* In earnings, Charter Communications Inc reported a 15 percent jump in first-quarter revenue due to a rise in the number of residential video subscribers. The stock closed at $130.01 on Friday.

[xchrom]

20. London Metal Exchange seeks to appeal warehouse ruling

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/28/uk-lme-warehouse-idUKKBN0DE15Q20140428

(Reuters) - The London Metal Exchange (LME) said it planned to seek permission to appeal against a court ruling it lost last month, which halted a major reform aimed at cutting backlogs at warehouses.

"We will be seeking leave to appeal," LME spokeswoman Kathy Alys said on Monday.

The exchange, the world's largest market for industrial metals such as copper and aluminium, previously said it was taking legal advice on whether to appeal the ruling or to launch a new consultation on its warehouse policy.

In late March, Russian aluminium producer Rusal won a ruling that halted a warehouse reform because consultations had been "unfair and unlawful".

[xchrom]

21. ECB'S Constancio watching more than just April inflation data

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/28/uk-ecb-policymakers-idUKKBN0DE0TH20140428

(Reuters) - The European Central Bank's vice president said on Monday that April's inflation figures due later this week should not alone trigger a policy change because "it's not just one or two numbers that matter".

Euro zone inflation is running at 0.5 percent - far below the ECB's medium-term target of just below 2 percent. The April data are due on Wednesday. A Reuters poll points to a reading of 0.8 percent.

But ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio told reporters in Frankfurt:

"I do not have any target in mind. It's an important information but not the only aspect that can lead to any decision. What we need is a more fundamental view on a possible revised medium-term path for inflation. It's not just one or two numbers that matter."

[xchrom]

22. Treasuries Irresistible to America’s Banks Awash in Cash

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-27/treasuries-irresistible-to-america-s-banks-awash-in-record-cash.html

America’s banks are regaining their appetite for U.S. government debt.

After culling Treasuries and bonds issued by federal agencies last year for the first time since 2007, commercial lenders such as Bank of America Corp. (BAC) have boosted their holdings every month this year, Federal Reserve data compiled by Bloomberg show. Banks now own $1.85 trillion of the debt, within 2 percent of the record amount held at the end of 2012.

With a lackluster job recovery and higher mortgage rates damping loan growth, banks are tapping record deposits to plow more money into government debt as regulations designed to limit risk-taking take effect. The demand helps explain why Treasuries are rising from the deepest losses since 2009, confounding forecasters who foresaw declines as a strengthening U.S. economy prompted the Fed to cut back its own bond buying.

“The economic situation is still not fully bared out and they have to do something with their cash,” Jeffery Elswick, director of fixed-income at Frost Investment Advisors, which oversees about $5 billion in debt securities, said in an April 23 telephone interview from San Antonio. “Banks have been big buyers of Treasuries. They need safe assets.”

[xchrom]

23. EU Stress Test Features Bond Rout, Eastern Europe Shock

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-27/eu-stress-test-features-bond-rout-eastern-europe-shock.html


The strength of Europe’s banking system is about to be tested against a fictional doomsday scenario that includes a global bond rout and a currency crisis in central and eastern Europe.

The three-year outlook features “the most pertinent threats” to the stability of European Union banks and their potential impact on entire balance sheets, according to a draft European Banking Authority statement seen by Bloomberg News. The EBA is due to release the details tomorrow in coordination with the European Central Bank.

As the ECB prepares to take over supervision of about 130 euro-area lenders from BNP Paribas SA (BNP) to National Bank of Greece (TELL) SA starting in November, policy makers have chosen to reflect real-world developments like the tensions over Ukraine in a bid for more credibility in the toughest stress tests to date. Similar exercises in 2010 and 2011 were criticized for failing to uncover weaknesses at banks that later failed.

“The negative impact of the shocks, which include also stress in the commercial real estate sector, as well as a foreign exchange shock in central and eastern Europe, is substantially global,” the draft statement said. “For most advanced economies, including Japan and the U.S., the scenario results in a negative response of GDP ranging between 5-6 percent in cumulative terms compared to the baseline.”

[xchrom]

24. Russian Billions Scattered Abroad Show Trail to Putin Circle

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-27/russian-billions-scattered-abroad-leave-trail-to-putin-circle.html


Outside a Moscow stadium one night in 2006, deputy central bank chief Andrei Kozlov was walking to his car after playing soccer when two men opened fire, pumping bullets into his head and neck and killing his driver.

Days before the murders, the man leading Russia’s fight against money laundering had shut down a scheme used to funnel $1.6 billion of dirty funds abroad, including at least $112 million via Vienna-based Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich AG, according to Russian and Austrian investigators.

It was a trickle in a flood of illegal outflows that would reach $52 billion in 2012 alone, according to former central bank Chairman Sergey Ignatiev. Such flows are now in the cross hairs of President Barack Obama’s efforts to penalize Vladimir Putin for annexing Crimea and to halt his incursions into Ukraine. Obama signed a law on aid to Ukraine this month that includes a clause that allows the U.S. to go after assets of Russian officials and their allies who are deemed complicit in “significant corruption.”

[xchrom]

25. Economy Seen Posting Best Performance in Four Years: U.K. Credit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-27/economy-seen-posting-best-performance-in-four-years-u-k-credit.html

The U.K. economy probably expanded at its fastest pace in four years in the first quarter as the Bank of England maintained record-low interest rates to cement the recovery.

Gross domestic product rose 0.9 percent, up from 0.7 percent in the final three months of 2013, according to the median of 39 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. It would be the strongest performance since the second quarter of 2010.

The rebound has put Britain on course to be the fastest-growing Group of Seven nation this year, fueling speculation that BOE policy makers led by Governor Mark Carney might raise borrowing costs as early as the fourth quarter. Officials have pledged to keep the key rate at 0.5 percent until the economy has used up more of its slack.

“This year should see a continued recovery at a reasonably brisk pace,” Philip Rush, an economist at Nomura International Plc in London, said in an April 25 interview. “The positive news on the economy should be bringing forward that time when rate hikes are appropriate.”

[Demeter]

26. The not-so-funny comics for today

CLASSIC DOONESBURY--1973

[xchrom]

27. Japan retail sales surge on tax hike

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27184185


Retail sales in Japan grew at the fastest pace in 17 years in March as consumers rushed to make purchases ahead of the sales tax hike in April.

Sales jumped 11% during the month, from a year ago - the most since March 1997.

Japan raised its sales tax, also known as consumption tax, to 8% from 5% from 1 April, the first hike in 17 years.

The hike comes as Japan has been looking to rein in public debt, while facing rising social welfare costs linked to an ageing population.

[xchrom]

28. Slovakia and Ukraine agree a gas supply deal

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27177763


Slovakia and Ukraine have agreed a deal that will allow gas from Central Europe to reach Ukraine via Slovakia.

Under the deal Slovakia will reinstate a disused pipeline that will be capable of supplying 3 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year to Ukraine.

Ukraine has been looking for alternatives to Russian gas, which last year accounted for around a half of its 55bcm consumption.

In April, German energy firm RWE began deliveries of gas via Poland.

[DemReadingDU]

29. Heidi Moore: the housing recovery was a sham

4/28/14 'I was right, the housing recovery was a sham': The Guardian’s Heidi Moore

The housing market appears to be hurting. Last week we learned that sales of new homes plunged 14.5% in March compared to February, while sales of existing homes fell slightly month-to-month, too. Meanwhile, demand for home loans have hit a 14-year low in the first quarter, according to industry newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance.

Heidi Moore, U.S. finance and economics editor at The Guardian, called the housing recovery a sham last June and in the video above says the latest run of weak data suggests the same concerns she raised when the recovery was humming along last summer. Moore says the recent slowdown reveals the recovery was in fact “dubious” and based on investor demand versus real homebuyers.

Others blame this year’s unseasonably cold weather along with higher mortgage rates for the slow start to the spring selling season. "Weather has been blamed for a lot, and it's true it has some role, but there are so many other metrics that go in the direction of real trouble," says Moore. "People haven't been able to borrow for a mortgage for years -- that has nothing to do with the weather, I promise you." The same goes for issues like rising prices and low supply, she adds.

When it comes to the impact of these real estate conditions more broadly, Neil Irwin argues in the New York Times’ Upshot that the housing market is still stalling the economy. He points out that investment in residential property remains a smaller share of the overall economy than at any time since World War II, contributing less to growth than in past downturns, including the early 1980s when mortgage rates were 20% (compared to 4.5% currently). Irwin argues if more people were buying homes and building returned to its postwar average as a share of the economy, growth would jump to 4% and about 1.5 million more jobs would be created. He says the main factor holding housing back is demand: Fewer people can or want to start a household of their own.

In Moore’s view, it's the other way around: It's the economy that's slowing the housing market. Factors including stagnant wages, high unemployment and high household and student loan debt are reasons why people aren't able to buy houses, says Moore. In other words, because the economy is stuck, the housing market is too.

Some have more sanguine views on recent housing data. Robert Shiller, Nobel prizewinner and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, told The Daily Ticker recently that on the one hand, “It’s not at all clear that momentum [in housing] is a safe bet anymore.” Yet he still expects home values to rise this year, thought likely at a slower rate. His view on the slowing rate of home price appreciation in 2014 has been echoed in the forecasts of a number of other economists on The Daily Ticker, including Bank of America's Michelle Meyer. Check out the video to see Moore’s response.

video at link, appx 4 minutes
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/i-was-right--the-housing-recovery-was-a-sham--guardian-s-heidi-moore-191918931.html

[xchrom]

31. CALLING MISTRESS TANSY!11 Unique Crystals: Newfound Purple-Pink Mineral Is Like No Other

http://www.livescience.com/45175-unique-putnisite-mineral-discovered.html

?1398693285
Putnisite is a newly discovered mineral that occurs as tiny crystals on volcanic rock. One such crystal, just 0.4 millimeters across, shown here, was recently found at the Armstrong mine in Widgiemooltha, Western Australia.

A new pinkish-purple mineral that has a chemical composition and crystalline structure unlike any of the known 4,000 minerals has been discovered at a mining site in Western Australia, researchers report.

Now called putnisite, the mineral was discovered in a surface outcrop of Polar Bear Peninsula, Southern Lake Cowan, north of Norseman. While workers with a mining company were prospecting for nickel and gold, one of them noticed the bright-pink grains and sent the mineral to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), and then it was sent to Peter Elliott, a research associate with the South Australian Museum, for examination.

And, sure enough, the crystal was novel.

"A mineral is different from currently known minerals if it has either a different chemical composition or it has a different crystal structure, or sometimes both," Elliott told Live Science in an email. "Occasionally, a new mineral will have a chemistry that is very different to other minerals, or it will have a crystal structure that is very different to other minerals." [See Stunning Photos of 'Godzilla' & Other Minerals]

[Demeter]

35. Very cool!

But they are going to have to find a lot more, in bigger sizes, for anything to come of it.

[xchrom]

36. as soon as they do - i'm just sure mistress tansy will make tiaras for all of us

[Demeter]

37. Ooooh!

Frankly, I'd settle for diamonds, that's my birthstone. Pearls are nice, too. Hell, anything as long as it's not too heavy!

[Tansy_Gold]

38. No pearls. Ms. Tansy is not fond of pearls.

The new mineral does indeed look fascinating. I'd better run over to my usual source for mineralogical info -- www.mindat.org -- to see what they have to say about it.

(runs over, runs back)


Actually, according to mindat, putnisite was discovered before 2012, since that's the date it was approved as a new mineral by the International Mineralogical Association.

With a Mohs hardness of only 1.5-2.0 (diamond is 10.0, turquoise is 5.0-7.0), it's much too soft for jewelry of any kind, and anyway someone will need to find crystals larger than 4mm. But it sure is a gorgeous color, isn't it?