Economy
Related: About this forumWeekend Economists Pull Timmy Out of Well (and Throw Him Back In)May 30-June 1, 2014
Yup. That's him. That's the
Geithner's position included a large role in directing the Federal Government's spending on the crisis, including allocation of $350 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program enacted during the previous administration. At the end of his first year in office, he continued to deal with multiple high visibility issues, including administration efforts to restructure the regulation of the nation's financial system, attempts to spur recovery of both the mortgage market and the automobile industry, demands for protectionism, President Obama's tax changes, and negotiations with foreign governments on approaches to worldwide financial issues...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner
Timmeh, as he is sometimes referred to, has just written a book about his service to the
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/timothy-geithner-book-052914
I am plowing through Timothy Geithner's new book, which I believe is titled, I Saved The Fking World, You Ungrateful Curs, or something like that. Anyway, I'm only about a quarter of the way through and I found what I believe is going to be the best sentence in all of the book's 580 pages. It appears on page 111.
"Central bankers did not have a good record of identifying bubbles in advance, and neither did bank supervisors."
Yes, and the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company did not have a good record of identifying fire hazards in advance, either.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)FORTRAN and BASIC are just too antique for modern applications....who would have thought there were so many ways NOT to make a strikeout?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The two branches of Slavie Federal Savings Bank will reopen as branches of Bay Bank, FSB during their normal business hours....As of March 31, 2014, Slavie Federal Savings Bank had approximately $140.1 million in total assets and $111.1 million in total deposits. Bay Bank, FSB will pay the FDIC a premium of 0.20 percent to assume all of the deposits of Slavie Federal Savings Bank. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Bay Bank, FSB agreed to purchase approximately $129.9 million of the failed bank's assets. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition...
The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $6.6 million. Compared to other alternatives, Bay Bank, FSB's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Slavie Federal Savings Bank is the ninth FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Maryland. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Bank of the Eastern Shore, Cambridge, on April 27, 2012.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Geithner was born in New York City, son of Peter Franz Geithner and his wife Deborah Moore. His father was the director of the Asia program at the Ford Foundation in New York in the 1990s. Geithner's father is a German American. Geithner's paternal grandfather, Paul Herman Geithner (19021972), immigrated to the United States in 1908 with his parents from Zeulenroda, in Thuringia.
Geithner's mother, a Mayflower descendant, belongs to a New England family. Her father, Charles Frederick Moore, Jr., was an adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served as Vice President of Public Relations from 1952 to 1964 for Ford Motor Company.
Geithner spent most of his childhood living abroad, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, India, and Thailand, where he completed high school at the International School Bangkok. He attended Dartmouth College, as did his father and paternal grandfather, graduating in 1983 with an A.B. in government and Asian studies. He studied Mandarin at Peking University in 1981 and at Beijing Normal University in 1982. and earned an M.A. in international economics and East Asian studies from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in 1985. He has also studied Japanese.
Geithner married Carole Marie Sonnenfeld, his classmate at Dartmouth, on June 8, 1985, at his parents' summer home in Orleans, Massachusetts. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University School of Medicine, where she teaches listening skills to medical students. She is the children's author of a coming-of-age novel about grief. Her father, Albert Sonnenfeld, was a professor of French and Comparative Literature and a food critic; her mother, Portia, died when Carole was 25, shortly after she was married. They have two adult children, a daughter named Elise and a son named Benjamin.
Early career
Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates in Washington for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988. He went on to serve as an attaché at the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (19951996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (19961997), and assistant secretary for international affairs (19971998).
He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (19982001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Summers was his mentor, but other sources call him a Rubin protégé.[20]
In 2001 he left the Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department. He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department (20012003) at the International Monetary Fund.
In October 2003, at age 42, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His salary in 2007 was $398,200. As President of the New York Fed, he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee. In 2006, he also became a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. In May 2007, he worked to reduce the capital required to run a bank. In November he rejected Sanford Weill's offer to take over as Citigroup's chief executive.
In March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns. In the same year, he played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG just two days after deciding not to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. Some Wall Street CEOs subsequently expressed the opinion that decisions in which Geithner participated, especially the failure to rescue Lehman, contributed to worsening the global financial crisis. As a Treasury official, he helped manage multiple international crises of the 1990s in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand.
(MANAGE, OR CREATE? --- DEMETER)
Geithner believed, along with Henry Paulson, that the U.S. Department of the Treasury needed new authority to experiment with responses to the late-2000s (decade) financial crisis. Paulson described Geithner as a "very unusually talented young man...who understands government and understands markets".
AND WE ALL KNOW HOW PERSPICACIOUS AND INSIGHTFUL HENRY PAULSON IS....NOT!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner
Demeter
(85,373 posts)(THINK ABOUT THAT, JUST FOR A FEW MINUTES, IN THOUGHTFUL SILENCE...DEMETER)
On November 24, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Geithner to be Treasury Secretary...During his confirmation, it was disclosed that Geithner had not paid $35,000 in Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes from 2001 through 2004 while working for the International Monetary Fund. The IMF, as an international agency, did not withhold payroll taxes, but instead reimbursed the usual employer responsibility of these taxes to employees. Geithner received the reimbursements and paid the amounts received to the government, but had not paid the remaining half which would normally have been withheld from his pay. The issue, as well as other errors relating to past deductions and expenses, were noted during a 2006 audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Geithner subsequently paid the additional taxes owed. In a statement to the Senate Finance Committee, Geithner called the tax issues "careless," "avoidable," and "unintentional" errors. Geithner testified that he used software to prepare his 2001 return, but that the tax errors were his own responsibility.
Geithner was sworn in as Treasury Secretary on January 26, 2009
(THINK ABOUT THAT (AND KEEP YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE DOWN, SOMEHOW) FOR A FEW BRIEF MOMENTS....DEMETER)
On January 26, 2009, the U.S. Senate confirmed Geithner's appointment by a vote of 6034. Geithner was sworn in as Treasury Secretary by Vice President Joe Biden and witnessed by President Barack Obama.
Bank bailout
Geithner had the authority to decide what to do with the second tranche of $350 billion from the $700 billion banking bailout bill passed by Congress in October 2008. He was not mandated to seek Congressional approval, but went to Congress on February 1011, 2009 to explain his plans. Under the Financial Stability Plan, he proposed to create a new investment fund to provide a market for the legacy loans and securitiesthe so-called toxic assetsburdening the financial system, using a mix of taxpayer and private money.
He also proposed to expand a lending program that would spend as much as $1 trillion to cover the decline in the issuance of securities backed by consumer loans. He further proposed to give banks new infusions of capital with which to lend. In exchange, banks would have to cut the salaries and perks of their executives and sharply limit dividends and corporate acquisitions.
DID ANY OF THIS HAPPEN, YOU ASK? WHAT DO YOU THINK?
The plan was criticized by Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman as well as fellow Nobel laureate and former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz.
AIG bonuses
Although President Obama expressed strong support for Geithner, the outrage over the AIG bonuses undermined public support. AIG paid bonuses to executives in its Financial Services division after receiving more than $170 billion in federal bailout aid.
Even prior to the election, senior aides to Timothy Geithner had closely dealt with American International Group Inc. on compensation issues including bonuses, both from his time as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as Treasury secretary.
In early November, 2008, a committee concluded that the bonuses, which were in contracts signed before the government takeover, couldn't be legally blocked. On March 3, 2009, appearing at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat, asked him about the bonuses that AIG would be paying to financial-products employees "in the coming weeks."
On March 11, Geithner called Edward Liddy, AIG chief, to protest the bonus payouts. Mr. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke attended a hearing by Congress on March 24, 2009.
AIG payments to banks
In November 2009, Neil Barofsky, the Treasury Department Inspector General responsible for oversight of TARP funds, issued a report critical of the use of $62.1 billion of government funds to redeem derivative contracts held by several large banks which AIG had insured against losses. The banks received face value for the contracts although their market value at the time was much lower. In the report, Barofsky said the payments "provided the banks with tens of billions of dollars they likely would have not otherwise received". Terms for use of the funds had been negotiated with the New York Federal Reserve Bank while Geithner was president.
In January 2010, Rep. Darrell Issa released a series of e-mails between AIG and the New York Fed. In these e-mails, the Fed urged AIG not to disclose the full details of the payments publicly or in its SEC filings. Issa pushed for an investigation of the matter, and for records and e-mails from the Fed to be subpoenaed. Rep. Edolphus Towns, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued subpoenas for the records and scheduled hearings for late January. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed would welcome a full review of its actions regarding the AIG payments.
Geithner and his predecessor, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, both appeared before the Committee on January 27. Geithner defended the bailout of AIG and the payments to the banks, while reiterating previous denials of any involvement in efforts to withhold details of the transactions. His testimony was met with skepticism and angry disagreement by House members of both parties.
AND NOTHING HAPPENED...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)China
In written comments to the Senate Finance Committee during his confirmation hearings, Geithner stated that the new administration believed China was "manipulating" its currency and that the Obama administration would act "aggressively" using "all the diplomatic avenues" to change China's currency practices. The Obama administration would pressure China diplomatically to change this practice more strongly than the George W. Bush Administration had done. The United States maintained that China's actions hurt American businesses and contributed to the financial crisis.
Shortly after assuming his role as Secretary of the Treasury, Geithner met in Washington with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. He told Yang that the U.S. attached great importance to its relations with China and that U.S.China cooperation was essential in order for the world economy to fully recover.
On June 1, 2009, during a question-and-answer session following a speech at Peking University, Geithner was asked by a student whether Chinese investments in U.S. Treasury debt were safe. His reply that they were "very safe" drew laughter from the audience.
Geithner co-chaired the high-profile U.S.China Strategic and Economic Dialogue from July 27 to 28 in Washington, D.C. and led the Economic Track for the U.S. side.
WE ALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT TO THE DOLLAR....
Opposing extension of tax cuts
In summer 2010, The New York Times said Geithner "is President Obamas point man in opposing the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy after their Dec. 31 expiration. ... Geithner has cited the projected $700 billion, 10-year cost of the tax cuts, and nonpartisan analyses that they do not stimulate the economy because the wealthy tend to save the additional money rather than spend it. 'I believe there is no credible argument to be made that the purpose of government is to borrow from future generations of Americans to finance an extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent,' he said in a recent speech."
AND TODAY THOSE TAX CUTS ARE PERMANENT LAW---FUNNY HOW THAT WORKED OUT
Fiscal cliff and debt limit negotiations
Geithner was Obama's lead negotiator about the fiscal cliff and the increase in the 2013 debt limit. For example on December 5, 2012, Geithner confirmed leaks from the White House, Treasury Secretary Geithner told CNBC that the Obama Administration is "absolutely" willing to go over the fiscal cliff if Republicans refused to back off from their opposition to raising rates on wealthier Americans.
AND WE WENT OVER THE CLIFF, THE TAX RATES BARELY BUDGED, AND WE STILL AREN'T RECOVERED...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Geithner weathered criticism early in the Obama presidency, when Congressman Connie Mack (R-FL) suggested he should resign over the AIG bonus scandal, and Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said that Geithner was "out of the loop". Democrats largely joined Obama in supporting Geithner, and there was no serious talk of him losing his job.
In November 2009, Geithner again came under fire from members of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Republican Party. Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio suggested that both Geithner and Lawrence Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, should be fired in order to curtail unemployment and signal a new direction for the Obama administration's fiscal policy. "We think it is time, maybe, that we turn our focus to Main Street," said DeFazio, speaking for himself and some fellow members of the Progressive Caucus.
When Geithner appeared in front of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, the ranking House Republican, Kevin Brady of Texas, said to the secretary, "Conservatives agree that, as point person, you've failed. Liberals are growing in that consensus as well. Poll after poll shows the public has lost confidence in this president's ability to handle the economy. For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?" Geithner defended his record, suggesting Brady was misrepresenting the situation and overestimating popular disapproval of his job performance.
In June 2011, The New Republic criticized Geithner from the left, arguing that he was and is overly concerned with the deficit at a time, following the Great Recession, the government should be pursuing stimulus; and as a result, it is possible that the stimulus was smaller than it could have been.
In Bull by the Horns Sheila Bair often criticizes Geithner for his penchant for bailouts, protecting Citigroup, and trying to push more obligations onto the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
End of term
Geithner left the administration on January 25, 2013.
After leaving office, Geithner wrote a memoir of his time serving as Secretary of Treasury entitled Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, published in May 2014. In November 2013, it was announced that Geithner would join the private equity firm Warburg Pincus as president and managing director in March 2014.
Media
Geithner was portrayed by Billy Crudup in the HBO film Too Big to Fail.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Memberships
Center for Global Development (Board of Directors)
Council on Foreign Relations
Economic Club of New York (trustee)
Bank for International Settlements, Committee on payment and settlement systems (chairman)
Bilderberg Group
THE ANSWER IS NO.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)There was an eerie silence on Thursday morning in the press area outside the Bilderberg conference venue in Copenhagen. All eyes, and a lot of lenses, were peering up Kalvebod Brygge, the long road to the airport, waiting for the limousines to start whooshing in with their precious cargo: a powerful mix of ministers and moguls, billionaires and business behemoths.
We know George Osborne is due to attend; this years conference in Copenhagen will be his seventh. Hes been coming on and off since 2006, though remarkably, in all this time, he hasnt managed to say seven words about it in public. His discretion is to be much admired. Or criticised. Depending upon your view of democracy.
Photographers are playing an important part in bringing Bilderberg to a wider world one which for decades paid scant attention to this international summit. Theres a material difference between seeing the words Allied Supreme Commander Europe on a press release and seeing his face in a limousine pass you into the Marriott hotel.
General Philip M Breedlove, a four-star general in the United States Air Force, arriving with a thoughtful expression. Hes obviously pondering the discussion topic of Ukraine on this weekends agenda. That or which end of the herring buffet to start at first. You have to plan for these things. You dont want to get between Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin, and a platter of smørrebrød. You could lose an arm.
Its one thing to be told that Breedlove is attending, and that hell be discussing global politics with foreign ministers and the head of Nato, three senior members of Goldman Sachs and the chief executive of Airbus. Its quite another to see him in the flesh. In uniform. With a military aide at his side. Hes come to do business, and his business is war.
This is why reporters and concerned citizens from around the world come to Bilderberg each year: to bear witness to the reality of it. A few years ago, and I know this from personal experience, you were scoffed at as a nutcase if you talked at all about this meeting. You might as well have been trying to describe a conference of unicorns taking place in Narnia. Pop on your tinfoil hat and run along now but that rhetoric doesnt hold much water any more.
When you can see a jetlagged Craig Mundie of Microsoft, a member of the Bilderberg steering committee these days, unloading his luggage in front of a luxury hotel, the reality of the meeting is no longer in question.
When you know that after Mundie has had a couple of hours sleep and a hot stone massage, hell be discussing Does privacy exist? with the head of MI6 and the chancellor of the exchequer, thats when the rhetoric changes. The reality of the conference is no longer in question.
And thats when the mainstream press start showing up. Danish television news was an early arrival. They negotiated a spot to site their cameras and, right on cue, up trundled Henry Kissinger. Dear old Henry was arriving with his own trusty aide, Klaus Kleinfeld, chairman and chief executive of Alcoa, the worlds third-largest aluminium producer. Unfortunately, the sunlight finds it difficult to penetrate the penumbra of Kissinger, so this isnt the best photo in the world, but its definitely him. Id know those glasses anywhere. Theyve seen some things.
Henry, of course, is an expert on China, and Klaus Kleinfeld is on the board of the US-China business council, so both of them will have lots to discuss with Cheng Li of the Brookings Institute, an expert on technological development in China according to his Brookings bio. No doubt hell be taking part in the scheduled discussion about Chinas political and economic outlook.
A sketchy agenda was released a few days before the conference began, along with a participant list, from which we can assume that the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, will lead the chat about How special is the relationship in intelligence sharing? No one has seen him arrive at the hotel. Its possible he parachuted in last night, or crept up via the river in scuba gear.
We did manage to spot Cheng Li, looking distinctly worried as he pull up to the security checkpoint. Poor Cheng. Its like a last forlorn look back into the world, before entering the lions den. Hes thinking: if I jumped out now, could I make it to the bus stop before an NSA sniper dropped me? But alas, he hesitated too long, the Mercedes pulled through into the hotel, and for Cheng, the three long days of Bilderberg began.
For those of us outside the hotel gates, were settling in for the long haul. In Denmark, the evenings are long and light, the coffee is strong, the police are (like all Danes) unbelievably friendly, and someone just saw Queen Sofia of Spain pulling up at the lights. A cry of recognition flies from the throat of a Spanish journalist, and the assembled lenses rise. A policewoman hops to the side, to avoid blocking our shot, and theres a chorus of clicks, whirrs and focus beeps.
The sound of another Bilderberg.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Watching Timmy tap dance...it's rather frenetic, isn't it?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Those wonderful Church Bulletins! Thank God for church ladies with computers. These sentences (with all the BLOOPERS) actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services:
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The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
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The sermon this morning: Jesus Walks on the Water.
The sermon tonight: Searching for Jesus.
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Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
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Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community.. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell' to someone who doesn't care much about you.
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Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.
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Miss Charlene Mason sang 'I will not pass this way again,' giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
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For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
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Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
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Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
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A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
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At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be 'What Is Hell?' Come early and listen to our choir practice.
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Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
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Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
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The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility..
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Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.
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The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
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This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
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Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM . All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. is done.
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The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
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Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
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The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
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Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church.
Please use large double door at the side entrance.
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The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new campaign slogan last Sunday:"I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours."
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AND I NEED SOME SLEEP. SEE YOU IN THE MORNING!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Former JPMorgan dealmaker Ian Hannam has lost his appeal against a 450,000 pound ($756,100) fine for market abuse, a London tribunal said on Wednesday.
"His actions were not in the proper course of the exercise of his employment," the Upper Tribunal said in its judgment.
The Financial Services Authority, which became Financial Conduct Authority April 2013, accused Hannam of sending two emails in 2008 that contained "inside", or potentially market-moving, information relating to a potential takeover and possible oil discovery.
He appealed the decision last July, saying he was acting appropriately in his role as a financial adviser. Hannam could yet appeal this latest decision. ($1 = 0.5952 British Pounds)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)ANOTHER OF THOSE "FREEZING IN THE DARK" PLANS? I REMEMBER THAT IN REAGAN'S CAMPAIGN...HE WAS DEMENTED ALREADY. BUT THIS....IT'S MORE A WISH THAN A PLAN!
http://www.dw.de/european-commission-proposes-plan-to-cut-foreign-energy-reliance/a-17668869
The European Commission has proposed a plan to cut the EU's reliance on foreign energy, particularly from Russia. The strategy follows Moscow's threats to halt gas supplies to Ukraine, a key transit point for Europe. A report from European Union leaders on Wednesday proposed securing the bloc's energy supplies by promoting internal sources, including renewable and nuclear energy, and shifting away from a "monopoly supplier."
"Improving the internal market will mean that energy prices will be roughly the same for everyone," EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger told reporters in Brussels. He added that for the bloc's natural gas supplies, "we must move away from a monopoly supplier, Russia in this instance."
Europe imports around 40 percent of its gas from Russia, nearly half of which flows through Ukraine. As diplomatic tensions deepen between Kyiv and Moscow, Russia has threatened to cut off its gas supplies unless Ukraine pays up front for deliveries. Russia previously shut down transmission to Ukraine in 2006 and 2009, and EU countries have been hesitant this time around to sanction Moscow for its latest actions, including the annexation of Crimea.
Oettinger stressed, however, that "we are clearly in better standing today than during the 2006 gas crisis or at the beginning of 2009."
OH, YES! CLEARLY!
EU leaders have suggested a "European Energy Union" - a single market with guaranteed supplies and infrastructure that would assure the bloc is not overly reliant on any one country for its energy. Oettinger said European countries should consider increasing renewable energy production and raising "sustainable production of fossil fuels."
"We want strong and stable partnerships with important suppliers but must avoid falling victim to political and commercial blackmail," he said.
The EU must "complete the internal energy market, improve our infrastructure, become more efficient and better exploit our own resources," said Oettinger. "Moreover, we need to accelerate the diversification of external energy suppliers, especially for gas."
Significant foreign reliance
The 28-nation bloc imports more than half of its energy supplies, and that reliance is expected to increase by 27 percent by 2030, said the Commission. In 2012, the EU paid more than 1 billion euros a day for that energy, it added. Europe's main remaining reserves of fossil fuel are shale gas, which would be accessed by the controversial hydraulic fracturing process known as "fracking." Several countries, including France, have all but ruled out that option due to environmental concerns.
The Commission's plan will be submitted to EU leaders at a June 26-27 summit.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)With the milestone agreement to create a Eurasian economic union clinched in Kazakhstan on Thursday, Russia put cheap energy resources at the head of its drive to pull former Soviet states away from European integration and into its orbit.
The Eurasian Economic Union agreement, signed by the leaders of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in the Kazakh capital of Astana, will come into force on Jan. 1, 2015. It envisages the gradual integration of the three former Soviet countries' economies, establishing free trade, unbarred financial interaction and unhindered labor migration. The pact combines the previous agreements reached between the three countries under the Customs Union and the Single Economic Space, which were formed in 2010 and 2011 and have been generally considered a success. At the signing ceremony, President Vladimir Putin said "Today we are creating a powerful center of gravity for economic development, a large regional market that unites more than 170 million people," according to an official transcript. He also stressed that the union's combined territory is a hydrocarbon treasury, possessing a fifth of all global natural gas resources and 15 percent of all oil reserves.
Russia's gain in entering the Eurasian union is more political than economic particularly as Russia is still smarting from the recent failure of its attempts to draw Ukraine into the Customs Union. As for Kazakhstan and Belarus, they are pursuing their own economic interests rather than any dream of forming super-state between Europe and Asia, both their leaders and analysts said.
MUCH MORE AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Argentina reached an agreement with creditor nations on repaying overdue debts, in a landmark deal that should open up much-needed international financing for the country. The Paris Club of creditors said the agreement will allow Argentina to clear over five years arrears that stood at $9.7 billion at the end of April. Negotiations over the deal - whose terms one analyst said looked favourable for Buenos Aires - had dragged into the early hours. The dispute was the legacy of Argentina's 2001/2002 default on roughly $100 billion, which left it starved of foreign capital. The country's resistance to settling with its creditors until now had made it a pariah of international capital markets but a hero in the eyes of many Latin American leftists.
"Paris Club creditors welcomed progress made by the Argentine Republic towards the normalisation of its relations with creditors, the international financial community and institutions," the group said in a statement.
"Realisation of initial payment under a formal commitment of Argentina to fully clear its arrears is a necessary and important step for (this)...normalisation."
Argentina's refusal hitherto to bow to its creditors has also created a mountain of litigation and helped fuel inflation that has eroded living standards. The main challenge now to it regaining full access to markets is a long-running battle with "holdout" sovereign bondholders who have declined to participate in its debt restructurings. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide in coming weeks whether to take on the case. If it does not, Argentine officials have said the country may be forced into a technical default. Offering the country some breathing room, the Paris Club agreement calls for a first instalment of at least $1.15 billion due by May 2015, followed by another payment within a year. The group said the deal cleared the way for export credit agencies of its members to resume doing business with Argentina, which should ease making foreign investment in the country.
Foreign investment could prompt a revival in Latin America's No. 3 economy, which faces a decline in output this year, not least in helping develop its vast Vaca Muerta shale field. Buenos Aires has been eager to secure a deal that does not put too much strain on its balance of payments. Argentine central bank reserves stood at $28.6 billion as of Monday evening.
Argentina and Paris Club members came close to striking a deal in 2008 but the government pulled out at the last moment, concerned about its falling foreign exchange reserves in the midst of the global financial crisis. Germany is Argentina's biggest Paris Club creditor with about 30 percent of the debt, followed by Japan with about 25 percent. Smaller holders include the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the United States and Switzerland.
Argentina wrung a major concession from the Paris Club by avoiding any International Monetary Fund involvement in the deal, which the creditor group usually requires. The country's history with the informal group of mostly Western nations goes back to the Paris Club's origins in 1956, when Argentina agreed to meet its public creditors in Paris.
antigop
(12,778 posts)Tansy_Gold
(17,874 posts)Ronald Reagan fits into those lyrics so comfortably.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Asset managers could face a just-created super-regulator. Here's why Mary Jo White's SEC is fighting it all the way...The Securities and Exchange Commission has touched off a major bureaucratic scuffle with its fellow financial regulators by proposing to, in the words of one Democratic aide, rip the heart out of Dodd-Frank. The SEC, following the wishes of one of its Republican commissioners, has initiated a turf war over which agency gets to monitor a key corner of the financial system. At issue are so-called asset managers, companies like BlackRock, Fidelity and Pimco, who manage investments on behalf of individuals and groups through mutual funds and other vehicles. Asset management firms collectively control an astonishing $53 trillion in investor funds.
Historically, the SEC has regulated asset managers. But under Dodd-Frank, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a newly created super-regulator, can designate systemically important financial institutions, or SIFIs, and subject them to rules previously reserved for banks. An FSOC designation puts non-bank SIFIs under the supervision of the Federal Reserve, subjecting them to tougher standards, like having to carry more capital to cover against losses. This makes sense, because non-banks like AIG were major contributors to the crisis.
Two asset managers BlackRock, which manages $3.8 trillion in funds, and Fidelity, which manages $1.9 trillion came under official FSOC review last November...Late last week, at a conference sponsored by the Investment Company Institute, the lobbying group for asset managers, SEC chairwoman Mary Jo White echoed industry arguments. White, who has a vote on the 10-member FSOC, claimed that asset managers represent a safe sector of the financial system, because they dont place risk on their own balance sheets, instead merely managing funds for others. In addition, she argued that the SECs capital markets expertise makes them the right agency to oversee asset managers, not the traditional banking regulators who comprise a majority of the FSOC. White has proposed new rules for asset managers, including expanded stress testing and more transparency for their portfolios. But clearly, she wants to keep that turf, rather than turn over the biggest companies to FSOC. It is enormously important for FSOC, before it takes any decision, to make certain it has the requisite expertise, White said. A lot of it has come and needs to come from the industry. Notably, the SEC did not place Whites remarks on its website.
Reformers might have less of a problem with the SEC handling asset managers if they showed any interest in stiffer oversight of the financial industry in recent years. The SEC has been slow to write Dodd-Frank rules, punted on rules for money markets, completely undermined proposed rules for credit rating agencies, let banks off the hook for toxic securities designed prior to the financial crisis, and has been blasted as irresponsibly weak by their own ex-lawyers. This episode furthers the impression that the SEC cares more about its friends at BlackRock and other Wall Street giants than about safety and stability for investors...
MORE DIRTY POLITICS AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)WESTERN fashion models have long been in high demand for catwalk shows and photo shoots in Shanghai and Beijing. However, dozens of them were rounded up recently on alleged visa infractions and chucked out of the country. Leggy beauties are not the only foreign models now under threat in China. Unsourced rumours are swirling of a forthcoming ban on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) buying Cisco telecoms equipment and IBM computer servers. This week the Financial Times reported that American consulting firms like McKinsey and Bain would be blocked from working for SOEs.
The American tech firms and consultants appear not to have been informed of any prohibition. The big SOEs say quietly that they have not received any written notice to cut off contracts. The state banks are unable to confirm the directive to chuck out IBM servers.
What is clear is that these rumours are coming in response to the news that America wants to prosecute five members of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army for alleged hacking of industrial secrets. This provoked outrage in China. Edward Snowdens revelations of American hacking of Chinese targets have persuaded many locals that the Yanks are hypocrites.
One way to understand this recent flurry of rumours is as a calibrated political manoeuvre. On this argument, Chinese officials want to threaten to expel important American firms so as to force the United States to reconsider its new cyber-offensive. If America enforces any punitive sanctions then todays rumoured bans will become tomorrows official policy...
AND THE GREAT UNWIND OF AMERICAN EMPIRE PROCEEDS APACE...EVERY MOVE TO ENFORCE IT BREAKS IT UP A LITTLE MORE...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...Nearly half of European businesses fear their "golden times" in China are over, amid tougher business conditions in a slowing economy, according to the 2014 European Business in China Business Confidence Survey. It's conducted by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China in partnership with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.
Of the 552 businesses surveyed, 46 percent said they believe that the "golden age" for multinationals in the country has ended. That's particularly true for large firms with more than 1,000 employees and veteran companies with more than five years in the country. They have started to feel the pinch with 68 percent and 61 percent, respectively, stating that business in China has become more difficult over the past year.
"A Chinese economic slowdown is a game-changer that will fundamentally and necessarily alter corporate business strategies," Jorg Wuttke, president of the chamber, told a press conference on Thursday in Beijing. "With costs rising and regulatory issues continuing, European companies are starting to put expansion plans on hold."
Only 57 percent of companies plan to expand current operations in the world's second-largest economy, down from 86 percent last year. Only one-fifth of companies gave China as their top investment destination compared with one-third two years ago...
AS GLOBALISM REACHES ITS LIMITS OF ABSURDITY
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The U.S. economy shrank for the first time in three years during the first quarter, according to government data released Thursday morning, but many analysts believe the recovery has already regained its mojo.
Businesses depleted their inventories and cut back on investment in the first three months of the year, while harsh winter weather curtailed construction. As a result, the nations gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 1 percent. The governments previous estimate had showed the economy essentially flatlining.
The decline highlights the fragility of the nations recovery but is not likely to derail it altogether. Several forecasts for the current quarter show the economy growing at a healthy 3 percent annual rate or faster.
"I think it just frankly coils the spring even tighter for a snapback this quarter," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services. "Boiiiing."
DON'T LET THAT COILED SPRING HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT, FELLA....
Consumer spending was particularly robust during the first quarter, jumping 3.1 percent despite the wickedly cold weather. Businesses also ramped up hiring as the temperature began to rise, suggesting stronger growth to come. Other government data released Thursday morning showed the number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time fell to 300,000 last week, a better showing than analysts expected. And there are no new major federal spending cuts weighing on the recovery. But those bright spots were overshadowed by a drawdown in business inventories that subtracted 1.62 percentage points from economic growth during the first quarter. State and local governments decreased spending at a rate of 1.8 percent rate. Private and residential investment dropped off, while exports declined and imports rose -- all of which add up to weaker growth. Still, the economic about-face in the first quarter could reflect the lingering damage of the recession. Analysts had predicted that housing would be a critical boost to the economy this year, but improvement in the beleaguered sector seems to have plateaued. The National Association of Realtors reported Thursday that its index of pending home sales inched up 0.4 percent in April, less than analysts had anticipated. Lawrence Yun, the group's chief economist, said future gains will likely be slow and steady.
OR HOUSING COULD NOT COME BACK AT ALL. IF THE BEAN COUNTERS THOUGHT HOUSING WOULD PULL US OUT OF THE DOLDRUMS, THEY WERE WILDLY OPTIMISTIC (OR EXPECTING A LOT OF HEDGE FUNDS AND FOREIGNERS TO DO THE HEAVY LIFTING).
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The economy stumbled badly during the severe winter, much more than first estimated, according to a government report, and stalled a recovery that appeared poised to take off this year.
Economists, however, see the quarterly drop more as a delay in the nation's long revival from the Great Recession. Other recent data indicate economic growth has picked up significantly this spring, putting the recovery back on a slowly improving track.
Total economic output shrank at an annual rate of 1% from January through March, the first quarterly contraction in three years and just the second since the recession ended nearly five years ago, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The department's revised figure for what is known as gross domestic product was far worse than the 0.1% growth initially reported last month. And the revision was steeper than the 0.5% contraction economists had anticipated.The new reading also makes it unlikely that the economy will expand this year at the 3% rate economists previously projected.
..
"We've got to climb out of that hole" in the first quarter, said Brian Bethune, chief economist at consulting firm Alpha Economic Foresights. "You can think of it as a temporary setback, but it is going to pull down growth projections for this year."
http://www.trbimg.com/img-5387af82/turbine/la-fi-g-gdp-chart-20140529/400/16x9
xchrom
(108,903 posts)ndia's economic growth has remained subdued, due largely to a slowdown in the manufacturing sector, official figures have shown.
The economy grew at an annual rate of 4.6% between January and March, below analysts' forecasts and the same pace as the previous quarter.
For the full 2013-14 financial year, growth was 4.7%, the second straight year of sub-5% expansion.
New Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged to boost growth.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Brazil's economy grew 0.2% in the first three months of 2014, official statistics show.
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics also revised down economic growth in the last three months of 2013, to 0.4%.
The sluggish growth figures come just before the start of the World Cup and presidential elections in October.
President Dilma Rousseff, who is seeking re-election, has said the football event will spur growth.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)When the man known as The Bitcoin Jesus got hacked, he didnt go straight to the police. He just tapped the power of bitcoin.
Last week, Roger Veran American-born ex-pat living in Japan whos long been at the heart of the worldwide bitcoin communitywas contacted by a hacker who had seized control of his old Hotmail account and used it to nab his Social Security number, passport number, and other personal information. The hacker threatened to exploit this information unless Ver forked over about 37 bitcoins, the equivalent of $20,000. But then Ver used the same number of bitcoins to put out a bounty on the hacker, and this instantly transformed the brazen cyber criminal into a penitent stooge.
Sir, I am sincerely sorry. I am just a middleman. I was being told what to tell you, the hacker told Ver soon after the bounty was posted, before later asking: Are you going to order a hitman to kill me now?
Libertarians have long hailed bitcoin as a way to free the world from the control big government and big banks. But with his 37-bitcoin bounty, Ver has given the worlds most popular digital currency a new kind of libertarian cred. For Ver, the digital currency is not just a way of storing and moving money without help from the authorities. Its also a way of seeking justice, something thats laid out in the Skype chat logs that Ver provided of his conversation with the hacker. Sure, you can wield this type of bounty using other currenciesand many havebut theres something particularly appropriate about doing it with bitcoin...
MORE FANTASTIC DETAIL AT LINK...THIS WOULD MAKE A GREAT NOVEL/FILM...
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Nearly $60 trillion will change hands over the next 55 years as Americans transfer their wealth to heirs and charities, according to a newly released Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy report that illustrates how the wealthy have taken a more aggressive approach to avoiding the tax man.
The report finds that Americans will pass on a total of $59 trillion over that period, but just $5.6 trillion will go to estate taxes less than 10 percent of the total. The report assumes a 2 percent economic growth rate and the continuation of the current estate tax system put in place in early 2013. Should growth fall to just 1 percent over those years, estate tax collections would fall to less than 7 percent of total transfers.
Those numbers are so paltry in part because the wealthy have gotten increasingly aggressive and creative about avoiding estate taxes by passing wealth to their heirs before they die. About $10 trillion, or roughly 17 percent of the total wealth transfer the report forecasts, will come from lifetime transfers that are not subject to the estate tax.
Such lifetime transfers are supposed to be subject to other forms of taxation so that wealthy people cant evade the estate tax system entirely. But the wealthiest Americans have become so adept at avoiding the other taxes that backstop the estate tax that it has become essentially voluntary for people of means, as Bloomberg has reported.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)By L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and Senior Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute. Originally posted at New Economic Perspectives
This is part of a series, following on from the last installment that asked Do We Need Taxes?.
Previously we have argued that taxes drive money in the sense that imposition of a tax that is payable in the national governments own currency will create demand for that currency. Sovereign government does not really need revenue in its own currency in order to spend.
This sounds shocking because we are so accustomed to thinking that taxes pay for government spending. This is true for local governments, provinces, and states that do not issue the currency. It is also not too far from the truth for nations that adopt a foreign currency or peg their own to gold or foreign currencies. When a nation pegs, it really does need the gold or foreign currency to which it promises to convert its currency on demand. Taxing removes its currency from circulation making it harder for anyone to present it for redemption in gold or foreign currency. Hence, a prudent practice would be to constrain spending to tax revenue.
But in the case of a government that issues its own sovereign currency without a promise to convert at a fixed value to gold or foreign currency (that is, the government floats its currency), we need to think about the role of taxes in an entirely different way. Taxes are not needed to pay for government spending. Further, the logic is reversed: government must spend (or lend) the currency into the economy before taxpayers can pay taxes in the form of the currency. Spend first, tax later is the logical sequence. Some who hear this for the first time jump to the question: Well, why not just eliminate taxes altogether? There are several reasons. Firstas we said last timeit is the tax that drives the currency. If we eliminated the tax, people probably would not immediately abandon use of the currency, but the main driver for its use would be gone. Further, the second reason to have taxes is to reduce aggregate demand. If we look at the United States today, the federal government spending is somewhat over 20% of GDP, while tax revenue is somewhat lesssay 17%. The net injection coming from the federal government is thus about 3% of GDP. If we eliminated taxes (and held all else constant) the net injection might rise toward 20% of GDP. That is a huge increase of aggregate demand, and could cause inflation.
Ideally, it is best if tax revenue moves countercyclicallyincreasing in expansion and falling in recession. That helps to make the governments net contribution to the economy countercyclical, which helps to stabilize aggregate demand...
GOOD SOLID ECONOMIC THEORY/OBSERVATION
RESOURCE FOR ARGUMENTS WITH THE UNENLIGHTENED!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)What do you get when you drop taxes? Well, Bitcoins.
.........EXTENSIVE, RATHER DISJOINTED PALAVER.......
Just how long would you be able to dupe some dope into taking the bank IOUs in payment?
Probably not too long. Same story with taxes. Abolish taxes and see how long the dopes who dont need US currency to pay taxes will continue to sell stuff to get US currency. Oh, it could go on a while. If PT Barnum was correct, theres a dope born every minute. Sixty an hour. It adds up.
Witness Bitcoins. Nuff said.
I dont need Bitcoins to make any obligatory payments. And no Bitcoin issuer is required to take them back. Bitcoins are not redeemable.
Unless you are involved in illegal activity or trying to hide income and wealth, theres really only one compelling reason to accept them: you really do believe in the greater fool theory. Youre going to dupe the dopes and ride that Bitcoin up and pray that a) you dont lose your wallet; b) your exchange doesnt go bankrupt; and c) you can sell out of Bitcoins before the whole thing crashes.
...This means government can buy stuff by issuing its currency since taxpayers need it...Are taxes needed to pay for governments spending? No. Taxes are needed to create a demand for the currency...We are not making this up. Read Marriner Eccles, Beardsley Ruml, and Frank Newman. All of them FDRs Fed Chairman, President of the NY Fed and former Deputy Secretary of the US Treasury, respectively, have said EXACTLY the same things were saying when we talk about the role of taxes.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Wisconsins crackdown on state worker rights in 2011 drew massive protests but was ultimately successful.
he United States ranks in the bottom half of the world when it comes to labor rights, according to a new global comparison from an international labor coalition that represents 176 million workers from 161 different nations.
The U.S. scores a four on the International Trade Union Confederations (ITUC) five-point scale, joining countries like Bahrain, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Thailand where the ITUC finds systematic violations of worker rights. Category one countries do the best job of protecting workers rights, and category five countries do the worst. (Countries where open violent conflict leaves workers completely adrift score a five or higher.) The categorization is based on a 97-point evaluation of the state of labor rights in various countries. The criteria range from fundamental civil liberties, like the ability to strike or to protest labor conditions without being murdered, to collective bargaining rights, the right to strike, and the free exercise of union rights.
The ITUC distinguished between violations in law, meaning legislative failures to protect workers, and violations in practice, meaning actual actions against workers. ITUC analysts sifted through reports of rights violations in a database that was created over 30 years ago and scored each country.
This is the state of labor rights around the world:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Google's Motorola Mobility handset unit has announced it will close its Texas factory by the end of this year, barely a year after it opened as the first smartphone factory in the U.S.
Sales of its flagship phone, the Moto X, have been weak and the costs of running the plant are too high to keep operations going, Motorola Mobility spokesman Will Moss said. Singapore-based international contract electronics manufacturer Flextronics Ltd. operates the plant.
Even though the concept of the smartphone was pioneered in the U.S. and many phones have been designed here, the vast majority of phones are assembled in Asia.
The Texas factory has allowed Google to stamp the phone with "Made in the U.S.," although assembly is just the last step in the manufacturing process and accounts for relatively little of the cost of a smartphone. The cost largely lies in the chips, battery and display, most of which come from Asian factories...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)How many times does Geithner lie in his latest op-ed. Tim is thinking 5.
---
By Dr. Pitchfork
In "5 Myths About TARP," Tim Geithner joins Steve Rattner and Herb Allison in the parade of Washington insiders who have gone out of their way to tout the great success of TARP, calling it the "most effective government program in recent memory." If you think the Timmy doth protest too much, methinks you're exactly right.
Geithner starts by rehearsing the same, tiresome narrative we've heard a thousand times:
Then Geithner proceeds to debunk some "myths" about TARP.
Myth 1. TARP cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
Well, TARP did cost hundreds of billions of dollars. This isn't a myth. $700B were authorized by the legislation. Nearly $400B were appropriated and disbursed. And according to the latest figures from the U.S. Treasury (that would be the little outfit where the author, Tim Geithner, hangs his hat every day) roughly half of that amount, about $200B, remains outstanding. And the costs of TARP are a "myth"? Apparently Geithner thinks we should give him a cookie just because some of the money might be paid back -- in the future. Don't be fooled by headline numbers saying TARP may cost "only $30B," because those numbers are based on wildly optimistic projections of what Treasury's ownership of AIG, GM and C will be worth.
And how did the banks pay back TARP? First, we got rid of mark-to-market accounting, changing their balance sheets overnight, and then the banks have been borrowing from the Fed at ZERO and earning the spread on Treasuries or anything else they wanted to put the money in. The effect of this process is a transfer of wealth from savers (who depend on bank CD's) and pension funds (who are often required to invest in government bonds) to the same banks that took money through TARP. This cost amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars each of the last two years. And TARP had negligible costs?
Besides, like we've said before, all the talk about getting the TARP paid back is a red herring. If someone breaks into your house, tears the place up, and then sticks a gun to your head demanding $700B, you don't thank him when he pays you back. Because a) you had a gun stuck in your face, and b) your house is still a freakin' mess.
Myth 2. TARP was a gift to Wall St. that did nothing for Main St.
This is Geithner's attempt to construct a straw man (TARP "did nothing" and then blow him down. Was TARP a gift to Wall St.? Yes. What did TARP do for Main St.? Not much. Geithner's claim here is that TARP helped stop a financial panic that would have hurt the rest of the economy. First of all, contrary to popular belief, TARP wasn't actually very helpful in the crisis and may have accelerated it. The actions that truly helped in the crisis period are discussed here: http://dailybail.com/home/play-tarp-nonsense-whack-a-mole-with-former-auto-czar-steve.html But we were never faced with a choice between TARP and doing nothing while the world burned. This false choice between TARP or nothing is repeated almost every single time a TARP apologist opens his or her mouth. Don't let them get away with it. Repeat: there was NEVER a choice between doing TARP and doing nothing.
But Main St. did get something out of the deal. Delinquent borrowers were able to apply for HAMP. HAMP allowed banks to give borrowers false hope for a few months while they continued to pay their mortgages out of their life savings. Banks and servicers also collected some nice fees for letting borrowers sign up for the program -- on a temporary basis. Real nice. See here and here.(LINKS AT OP) Main St. thanks you, Mr. Secretary!
Myth 3. TARP left our financial system weak.
Timmy doesn't even try on this one. Makes some claim about how government ownership of Fannie, Freddie and AIG, together with Bank of America's purchase of Merrill, makes the system stronger. What? Oh, and then there were the non-stress tests. Big whoop. Question: If the financial system is so strong and stable, then why is the Obama administration still so afraid of ruffling its feathers? And why are they terrified of honest accounting? Well?.... (Cue crickets.)
Myth 4. TARP left the banking system more concentrated and more vulnerable to a crisis.
Geithner admits that this one isn't a myth at all. So that's 4 Myths, but who's counting? Still, it's OK that our banks are bigger than they were before the crisis, Geithner says, because Europe's banks are even more concentrated (and everyone knows they're not at risk of a crisis). But it's also OK to have Too Bigger To Fail banks because now we have this wonderful thing called the Dodd-Frank Act. And it has "a clear prohibition on taxpayer-funded bailouts." Meh. Sorry if I'm underwhelmed by a "clear prohibition." Because as one wag points out, "We wipe our asses with the Constitution these days, in case you haven't noticed." Moreover, most of those credit default swaps that made them so afraid in 2008 are still out there. There is ZERO chance that the resolution authority is actually put into use.
Myth 5. TARP was part of Obama's strategy to take more control over the economy.
Anyone who thinks that Obama has "control" over Wall St. is out of his tree. In any case, Geithner helpfully points out here, that not only did Democrats like Obama fall to their knees in 2008 and fellate the TBTF banks, but so did Bush and a bunch of Republicans. Glad you see it our way, Timmy.
--
The bottom line on TARP is that almost no one has been held accountable. And almost everyone, even those most responsible, have kept their jobs, been promoted, been awarded huge bonuses, or have ridden off into the sunset with millions in ill-gotten gains. That includes Tim Geithner. He was president of the NY Fed from 2003-2008 and oversaw the crisis from start to finish. Because of the failures of people like Geithner, our entire monetary and fiscal order has been re-arranged to serve the interests of a few at the very top of the pyramid. Because of the actions (and inactions) of people like Geithner, the middle class has borne most of the risk associated with TARP and all the other bailout programs. And much of that risk is still with us, whether in terms of our currency, the national debt, or social and political unrest.
The message of the bailouts, like Geithner's message to us, is clear. The guys at the top get served first, at our expense. We are expected to be grateful that people like Geithner have bailed them out. And the buck stops nowhere.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)At a state dinner in 2011, Barbra Streisand told him he must be alright because he was a Brooklyn Jew. It was kind of her, he writes, except that Im not Jewish and Ive never lived in Brooklyn.
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21602187-former-treasury-secretary-tells-all-man-charge
THIS SEEMS TO BE A BLOG DEVOTED TO TIMMY....AND IT'S A METHOD OF LAUGHING THROUGH YOUR TEARS....
http://dealbreaker.com/tag/tim-geithner/
Demeter
(85,373 posts)AnneD
(15,774 posts)I own her cook book. What a sweetheart. Reminds me of listening to my elders in the kitchen. They would start their Depression stories as they cooked. I could listen for hours. They could feed a large group with practically nothing. Her parents manage to feed all the kids even though her dad didn't work for at least 5 years I think. He foraged, planted, swapped, and bartered for what they needed.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Zephyr Teachout, with her roots in the insurgent Howard Dean presidential campaign, ties to the Occupy movement and history of spirited activism of democracy issues, reflects the inside-outside sensibility of many progressives who have maintained a frustrated relationship with the Democratic Party.
Shes worked inside the party, developing groundbreaking online strategies for Deans 2004 campaign, yet she has been outspoken in her criticism of Democrats who fail to uphold progressive values. Just two weeks ago, after Federal Communications Commission chair Tom Wheeler advanced a proposal that would undermine net neutrality, Teachout wrote a Politico piece headlined Obama Should Fire His FCC Chair.
And Teachout has been at odds with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, pressuring the business-friendly Democrat to use his political muscle to reform campaign finance laws and reduce the influence of corporate cash on elections and government. Cuomo has disappointed plenty of progressives in New York, not just on the campaign finance issue but on everything from fracking to education policy. And now there is a prospect that Teachout will offer them an alternative on the ballot line of the states Working Families Party.
It feels like Cuomo is part of this broken system, and he is not going to fix it, she says. Voters in New York want a real choice, and right now, with just [Republican Rob] Astorino and Cuomothey seem to just be fighting about who can give more tax breaks to the billionaires.
The tech-savvy academic, who teaches law at Fordham University, is up with a website on which she declares, Im running because New Yorkers need an economy and democracy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected. Shes identifying herself as the Working Families Democrat for Governor.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)DON'T KNOW WHO THIS GUY IS, BUT HE'S RELENTLESS IN FACTS AND CONCLUSIONS
HE'S ALSO A SILVER FANATIC....BUT INTERESTING
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Labor rights activists have been protesting against sweatshops for about a generation, shaming multinational fashion brands for labor abuses and economic imperialism. Yet for all the petition drives and campus rallies, systematic labor exploitation still persists in garment factories across the Global South. But the power of the purse might succeed where the protests havent, as some government agencies wield their clout as ethical consumers. Pushing individual shoppers to buy sweat-free wont necessary put a crimp in Wal-Marts supply chain, but activists are looking beyond the campus to city, town and state governments to promote conscientious contracting on a mass scale.
Last month, to commemorate the anniversary of the deadly Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, the city of Madison, Wisconsin, launched a contracting policy that commits the citys vendors to promote fair labor standards. The citys new sweatfree contract guidelines aim to eradicate labor abuse from its international supply chains for the production of government uniforms, including the apparel worn by firefighters and other agency personnel. The guidelines build on the citys existing sweat-free procurement policies, with disclosure and monitoring mechanisms that aim to [raise] the bar for human rights due diligence in government contracting by providing a nationwide model, according to the advocacy network Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium (SPC). Similar to living-wage policies for workers on government contractswhich help raise pay scales for low-income workers across the communitythe sweat-free contract model for government purchasing can promote standards for more ethical manufacturing across the global apparel market. Madisons effort builds on model policies developed by advocates and governments of various cities and states through the SPC, which includes Austin, Berkeley and Maine.
The Madison contract rules cover basic labor protections that reflect International Labour Organization standards. Vendors will be required to disclose detailed information on the entire supply chain, allowing city authorities to oversee factories compliance with national rules on wages and benefits, child labor, employment discrimination and maternity leave, fire and building safety codes, and overtime and maternity leave rules. Vendors will be monitored by a Contract Review Panel that includes representatives of the city and international labor experts. And if contractors do not have full disclosure for all their suppliers initially, they must increase disclosure levels annually over the duration of the contract.
Suppliers will also be screened on whether they provide worker education and a grievance process to help them advocate for their rights at work. There is a special focus on prevention measures to address health and safety conditions in high-risk areas such as Bangladesh and Pakistantwo countries associated with deathtrap factories that have claimed the lives of hundreds of workers in recent years. The language mirrors provisions of the Bangladesh Accord, an industry-based program for factory health and safety that now has now enrolled about about 170 brands and retailers worldwide.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said hes encouraged by a report today showing faster gains in prices while calling for vigilance as inflation moves closer to the Feds 2 percent goal.
The inflation rate is going to gradually lift up, Plosser said today in a Bloomberg Radio interview. How quickly? It may end up coming back quicker than some people think. Well just have to be careful and vigilant.
The Commerce Department today said the Feds preferred gauge of inflation, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures index, accelerated to 1.6 percent in April, marking the fastest pace since 2012. Fed officials have struggled to speed inflation toward their goal even with record-low interest rates and an expansion of their balance sheet to $4.32 trillion.
Im one of those people who think the rate hikes are going to come sooner than others do, Plosser said in the interview. The timing of the interest-rate increase will depend on the evolution of the economy, he said.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Guardian has a fascinating article about how the Masters of the Universe are starting to realize that screwing 99% of the Earths population will lead to a populist uprising. In other words, the peasants are about to revolt and the aristocracy is getting worried.
So will they amend their ways? Will they put a check on their enormous greed? Will they stop rigging the system and stealing millions billions trillions from the people that do all the work?
Hellllllll no!
The project is thus designed to influence political and business opinion and to target public opinion through a media campaign that seeks to engage major outlets.
By nuanced, of course, they mean shovel copious amounts of bullshit. Because if theres one thing the rich despise more than anything else, its a well-informed populace capable of rationally discussing the issue of income inequality and corporate greed.
But the sentence really sums up the 1%s resistance to government regulation is the one in bold above: We will be led down a policy path of increased regulation and greater state control of institutions, businesses and the people at the heart of them, which will fatally cripple the very system that has been responsible for economic prosperity. This is absolutely correct! Increased government control would fatally cripple that system. What the 1% neglects to mention is that the economic prosperity theyre so protective of only exists for them. More specifically, it only exists for them at the expense of everyone else.
Under the old system of tighter regulations and higher taxes, the rich still got richer but so did the people that provided the labor. Banks still made money but they couldnt rob people blind or risk the entire economy. The 1% got rid of that system because they just werent getting richer fast enough. The current system lets them destroy the economy and still accumulate mass amounts of wealth in the process. Whats not to love about that? If youre already rich, that is...
MORE--MUST READ
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Yesterday's Conference on Inclusive Capitalism co-hosted by the City of London Corporation and EL Rothschild investment firm, brought together the people who control a third of the world's liquid assets the most powerful financial and business elites to discuss the need for a more socially responsible form of capitalism that benefits everyone, not just a wealthy minority.
Leading financiers referred to statistics on rising global inequalities and the role of banks and corporations in marginalising the majority while accelerating systemic financial risk vindicating the need for change.
While the self-reflective recognition by global capitalism's leaders that business-as-usual cannot continue is welcome, sadly the event represented less a meaningful shift of direction than a barely transparent effort to rehabilitate a parasitical economic system on the brink of facing a global uprising.
Central to the proceedings was an undercurrent of elite fear that the increasing disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the planetary population under decades of capitalist business-as-usual could well be its own undoing...
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Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Take a little visit to Jonestown.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)This was supposed to be the year that U.S. mortgage rates soared. Instead, theyre retreating.
Interest rates unexpectedly fell this year after the Federal Reserve began scaling back the stimulus that held borrowing costs near record lows since 2011. After five weeks of declines, rates for 30-year fixed loans are at 4.12 percent, the lowest in seven months, Freddie Mac said yesterday.
The housing market, in the season thats traditionally its busiest, can use the help, even if its short-lived. Soaring home prices and a one percentage point spike in rates from May to August last year cut into affordability and slowed the real estate recovery. While the falling borrowing costs have forced economists at the National Association of Realtors and Moodys Analytics Inc. to lower forecasts, they still expect 30-year rates to lurch closer to 5 percent by the end of the year.
Its a temporary window of opportunity for buyers in that a year from now rates will be higher, said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moodys Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The housing market could use it given how its gone sideways. But I wouldnt count on these low rates for very long.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)When are the 1% going to realize: you can't get blood from a stone, nor skim profits off the skint.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The current Chief Actuary of Social Security is Stephen Goss and on the occasion of the publication of the 75th Anniversary issue of the Social Security Bulletin he contributed what may be the most valuable single piece you will ever read on Social Security financials. The article carried the title The Future Financial Status of the Social Security Program The abstract/teaser for the article starts out with this:
To which I can only add Boy Howdy!
Steve is perhaps best associated with the concept of Sustainable Solvency which he describes as follows:
Well this requires some unpacking. Under current law the Social Security Trust Funds are considered solvent if they have a Trust Fund balance equalling 100% of the next years cost at the end of a given actuarial period. Stronger versions of this would require that the Trust Fund meet this standard in every year of the period and/or that it be trending upwards at the end. That is Steves stable or rising. Well all that is reasonable enough, but what would it look like under standard budget scoring? Well the answer is either kind of odd or mind-bending. Which will be explored under the fold.
You dont even have to look at the Tables of the Social Security Report to understand that the nominal amount of benefits payable rises each and every year simply due to population growth combined with any amount of price inflation. And this fact is basically independent of whether that cost is rising or falling as a percentage of GDP. It is even independent of the fact that there are differentials between the demographic cohorts. Those factors can influence the amount of the increase but not under any reasonable projection make nominal cost growth of Social Security negative.
That being true it follows that the requirement to keep a reserve at 100% of next years cost means that Trust Fund balances have to increase by at least that same nominal amount to meet the stable or rising requirement. Which gets us to our first point. Since under current law Trust Fund reserves are required to be held in financial instruments full guaranteed as to principal and interest by the Federal government this means that such holdings have to increase year over year forever. And since the only instruments that currently fully meet that requirement are Treasury Bills, Notes and Bonds and since all of those are included in both Total Public Debt and Debt Subject to the Limit this means that Social Security will increase Total Public Debt year over year for every year that it maintains a state of sustainable solvency. That is Social Security Solvency equates to Perma-increases in Debt.
But how does this translate to deficit? Well under current scoring rules any year that Social Security increases its year end balance is a year that Social Security is running a surplus as defined by CBO. So Social Security Solvency equals Perma-Surpluses. Which among other things shows us that the common sense relation of debt to deficit can use some revisiting, at least as it comes to Social Security.
Still the curve balls keep coming. Social Securitys Trust Funds are held almost entirely in Special Issue Treasuries that are set by a formula at the average rate of maturing 10 year Notes. And since over the long run it is somewhere between unlikely and impossible that Coupon Rates on the 10 year will be negative in real terms this means that interest on a fully solvent Trust Fund will be in excess of the need to build those Reserves. Meaning that once we achieve Sustainable Solvency it will be Self-Sustaining Solvency. In fact so much so that in order to prevent Trust Fund balances from balooning out of control it would require any interest accrued that was in excess of the amount needed to maintain solvency to be expended as partial payment of benefits. Which in turn would mean that Social Security Revenue excluding Interest would have to be kept under Cost by the same amount as that excess interest. Which in turns means that some part of the Debt Service on the interest earning Trust Funds would have to come in the form of General Fund transfers. Which would make the system as a whole slightly cash flow negative. This conclusion is not simply due to me running through the numbers, Chief Actuary Goss says as much in the following (bolding mine):
So to sum up. Under conditions of Sustainable Solvency Social Security would at one and the same time be 1) adding to Public Debt year over year, 2) be in permanent surplus for Budget Deficit calculations, and 3) be permanently cash flow negative.
More Debt, Less Deficits, Cash Flow Negative. It only sounds paradoxical.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)French economist Thomas Piketty published a detailed 4,400-word defense of his best-selling book on income inequality against allegations that he relied on faulty data.
In a posting on his website, Piketty provided a blow-by-blow response to charges by the Financial Times newspaper that his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, contains suspect statistics and incorrect calculations.
The FT suggests that I made mistakes and errors in my computations, which is simply wrong, he wrote.
He said he stood by the books conclusions: that wealth inequality in Europe and the U.S. has risen in recent decades, and that the gap in the U.S. has widened more than in Europe.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and the panic over Picketty is a sign of real distress amongst the 1%.
AnneD
(15,774 posts)if it had been REAL reform, the insurance companies would have been screaming bloody murder.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)There are already cries of protest that it isn't working as they thought it would...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)If you're looking for affordable real estate in the city of Detroit, the Building Detroit website appears back in action after an overwhelming demand to place bids on properties reportedly caused a crash Friday.
The Detroit News reported Saturday that a record-breaking auction of a home in the city's Boston-Edison Historic District caused the crash Friday evening, before the site appeared to eventually come back online.
By 8 a.m. Saturday the Building Detroit website was up and running and gave visitors the opportunity to place bids on several properties starting at 9 a.m.
Bids for each home listed on the website start at $1,000.
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission suffered a loss on Friday when a jury cleared a New York hedge fund manager and two others accused of engaging in a $1.3 million insider trading scheme in 2001.
A federal jury in Manhattan found Nelson Obus, a fund manager at Wynnefield Capital Inc, not liable on an SEC claim he traded on inside information about a takeover of industrial products supplier SunSource Inc.
The jury also found Peter Black, a Wynnefield analyst, and Thomas Strickland, a former employee at General Electric Co's GE Capital who worked on the deal, not liable on insider trading charges.
Obus hugged his lawyer after the verdict was read. Outside the courtroom, he criticized the SEC for engaging in a "12-year campaign of regulatory overreach." He promised to push for policy changes "to ensure this doesn't happen again."
"There's no better use of one's wealth than to clear one's name and reputation," he said.
THE SEC FAILS AGAIN...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)So, I'm off to take advantage of it. I think there's enough posted (thanks, X!) to keep you entertained and alarmed until I return, sunburned,exhausted and dehydrated.
Or, you could go outside, too....except Tansy, who is already in the 100F range...
Until tonight!
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Just put the neighbors Tinkles out of it's cat miserableness.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)5/29/14 Eric King interviews Victor Sperandeo
Today a legendary trader and investor warned King World News that markets are being pushed higher in order to conceal a grave danger that central planners are hiding from the public. Victor Sperandeo has been in the business 45 years, and has worked with famous individuals such as Leon Cooperman and George Soros. Another legend, hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, said, Victor Sperandeo is gifted with one of the finest minds I know. No wonder hes compiled such an amazing record of success as a money manager. Incredibly, Sperandeo was interviewed in Barrons in September of 1987, where, with astonishing accuracy, he predicted that the stock market would crash. The market crash took place one month later and it just added to his legendary reputation. Below are the warnings issued by Sperandeo regarding the end game and gold.
Sperandeo: In my 50 years in this business of reading the tape, I can tell you with great certainty that every time there is negative news the Fed comes in, via the banks, and manipulates the stock market higher in order to keep the appearance of strength....
Today we had this 1 percent decline in GDP and there should have been some downside response to that. Under normal conditions there certainly would be. Shortly after the GDP news release we had Fed official Jeff Lacker saying that GDP in the second quarter will bounce back.
But why does a Fed official have to come out and support the market with his comments? You see, Eric, the whole game plan is pushing the markets higher. So there is no question there is Fed buying in the markets, being done through the banks, to keep the markets stable.
Again, stocks should be going down but there is this Fed put or manipulation underneath the market. Now this is the important point, Eric: The U.S. economy must be in grave danger, and I want to emphasize that again, grave danger of the system completely collapsing. This is why the Fed does not dare allow the stock market to sell off.
There is no way we after five years that we should still be at zero interest rates, and allowing markets to do what they are doing with continued Fed manipulation, unless things are very, very dire. I want to be clear about this, Eric, what I am saying is that things must be very alarming behind the scenes because the Fed wont allow any kind of selloff to occur in stocks.
You have to look at the comments by Fed member Lacker stating that GDP will be up in the second quarter. I can understand some economist coming out and saying that, but for a Fed official to rush out and make that statement just reveals how protective the Fed is and how worried the Fed is about a market sell off taking place.
more...
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/5/29_Legend_Says_Markets_Pushed_Higher_To_Conceal_Grave_Danger.html
Demeter
(85,373 posts)When the US distorts itself to defend the indefensible positions it is in, the entire world suffers. People within and without the US have been pleading for YEARS, if not decades, for the US to foreswear its evil ways, in vain.
Well, the world has had enough of this BS.
Russia, China, and probably India (joining at the last moment: they just had a complete flip in leadership) will pull the plug on the US, the Eurozone, and the Middle East, both the Saudis and the Israelis and anybody in between and in the way.
The Iraqis and Iranians will join in the fun. They've had enough, too. As will South and Central America. Colombia will be ripped from the CIA's bosom, as will Paraguay, Panama, and any other province in play. Guatemala, Costa Rica...the list is endless.
And when the score is counted, who will stand with the US? Poland, maybe. Much as I revere the native land of my ancestors, I must point out that the ancestors all had the good sense to leave.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)In more ways than one, last week heralded the birth of a Eurasian century. Of course, the US$400 billion Russia-China gas deal was clinched only at the last minute in Shanghai, on Wednesday (a complement to the June 2013, 25-year, $270 billion oil deal between Rosneft and China's CNPC.)
Then, on Thursday, most of the main players were at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum - the Russian answer to Davos. And on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his Shanghai triumph, addressed the participants and brought the house down.
It will take time to appraise last week's whirlwind in all its complex implications. Here are some of the St Petersburg highlights, in some detail. Were there fewer Western CEOs in town because the Obama administration pressured them - as part of the "isolate Russia" policy? Not many less; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may have snubbed it, but Europeans who matter came, saw, talked and pledged to keep doing business.
And most of all, Asians were ubiquitous. Consider this as yet another chapter of China's counterpunch to US President Barack Obama's Asian tour in April, which was widely described as the "China containment tour".
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)Before looking at the latest developments in the Ukraine, I think that it is important to at least mention two major developments involving Russia. First, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus have signed the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and they will soon be joined by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Second, China has officially called for a new security alliance with Russia and Iran thereby proving that all the naysayers who said that China did not really mean it to form an alliance with Russia were plain wrong. As I mentioned it in a previous SITREP the scope and nature of the recent economic agreements between Russia and China already constituted what I called a crypto-alliance and now we see the first official move by China to drop the 'crypto' part of it. Again, this is truly a major tectonic shift in world politics and, arguable, the creation of the most powerful coalition of countries in history. The title of Godfather of this new coalition should really go to the USA and Barak Obama who by his amazingly arrogant and hostile policies towards both China and Russia has greatly contributed to the forging of this alliance.
This process is far from over, by the way. Not only are there discussions to expand the BRICS to other countries (like Argentina), the SCO or CSTO could also be expanded to include countries such as Iran or Pakistan. AS for the Eurasian Economic Union, it will eventually morph into a single political entity, a Eurasian alliance which could include China in economic and/or security agreements. The entire Eurasian landmass is slowly but inexorably becoming integrated into a zone free from AngloZionist control and free of the dollar. The writing is on the wall for the AngloZionist Empire.
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For one thing, to speak of a "junta's strategy" or "Poroshenko's strategy" is plain wrong as this accepts they myth that that is an independent government in the Ukraine. There is none. Truly, all the decisions are taken by Uncle Sam and his representatives in Kiev and the so-called authorities are just the USA's collaborators who simply take orders form their boss. And for all their sins, the folks in DC are neither stupid not poorly informed. So what is their strategy in this frankly weird civil war?
Ideally, the first objective of the AngloZionists would be to trigger a Russian military intervention in protection of Novorossiia. That would re-create the kind of Cold War tensions these folks are so nostalgic for. It would give a justification for the existence of NATO and, if played well, it could even result in NATO and Russian forces looking at each other across the Dniepr river. Not only would such a situation be a dream come true for the US military-industrial complex, it would make it possible for the USA to achieve one of its most important strategic objective: to keep Europe colonized and to prevent any chance of its integration with the East. Far from being stupid, this strategy is nothing short of brilliant as it gives Putin only two choices: if Russia does not intervene Putin will look weak, indecisive, or even like a traitor to the Russian people, but if Russia does intervene, then Putin will be called the "New Hitler" or "New Stalin", a crazed Russian nationalist hell-bent on re-building the Soviet Union and crushing the freedom-loving Europeans under his tanks. Are these cliches? Yes, of course, but they will be used. So for Putin its "damned if you do, and damned if you don't".
Second option: to wear down the NDF to the point where they will eventually surrender. Not very likely, but in theory possible. Should that happen, this could be presented as a double victory for Poroshenko: he crushed the "terrorists" and he "deterred the Russian Bear". Again, this is a lot of whishful thinking, but in theory the US might see that as a unlikely but possible outcome.
Option three: the old US strategy of "what I cannot have, I burn down". Basically, the strategy here is to destroy and damage as much of Novorossiia as possible, making a recovery as long and costly as possible. This is also a lesson to all those who dare defy the Empire: you disobey and we will make you pay.
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Russia really has very few options to chose from. Any direct Russian intervention in the Ukraine - which in military terms would be a no-brainer - would have huge political consequences for the future of Europe's stability. In essence, by not intervening Russia is denying the USA the Cold War v2 it wants so badly. Should Russia intervene, and that is very possible, it would mean that the Kremlin accepts that the real price of its intervention is a long term re-submission of all of Europe to US interests.
Russia does, of course, have the option of covertly assisting the NDF and there is no doubt in my mind that it is already doing it, but this can only be done in a very careful and remote manner in order to avoid giving the US any proof of covert support. Still, advanced anti-air and anti-tank weapons are clearly shown on some videos which shows that somebody is helping the resistance.
Russia has also begun leaking information about the Ukrainian units involved in terror operations against the people of the Donbass. For example, Russian TV has announced yesterday that the following units have been involved in the bombing of the Donetsk airport: the 299 Tactical Aviation Brigade from Nikolaev (Su-25) and the 40th Aviation Brigade from Vasilkovo (MiG-29) who use the Ivan Kozhedub Air Force University of Kharkov (Mi-24; Mi-8) as a combat operations basis. Russian bloggers have also leaked the photos and names of the pilots involved.
Russian jurists have created special legal companies who take the testimony of the Ukrainians whose civil or human right have been violated by the junta to file lawsuits in Ukrainian courts. Of course, the Ukrainian courts are fully expected to reject the complaint at which point the Russian can then file their lawsuits at the European Court of Human Rights.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Whatever this grave danger is lurking, that must be what will bring down the markets, and will be blamed for the demise of our country.
Maybe England will stand by the U.S..
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Solving the problem of banks that are 'too big to fail' is still the most pressing regulatory issue for the Bank of England, six years after the start of the financial crisis, Governor Mark Carney said on Tuesday.
"It's at the top of the priority list," he told guests at a a conference on 'inclusive capitalism'.
"We are on schedule but I wouldn't downplay the difficulty of the technical issues," he added, referring to plans to get 29 'too big to fail' banks in nine countries to hold more capital.
I'M CONVINCED THE ONLY SOLUTION TO TBTF IS FAILURE.
"TO CONQUER DEATH, YOU ONLY HAVE TO DIE"....JC SUPERSTAR
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Hackers have exposed the personal information of 110 million Americans -- roughly half of the nation's adults -- in the last 12 months alone. That massive number, tallied for CNNMoney by Ponemon Institute researchers, is made even more mind-boggling by the amount of hacked accounts: up to 432 million. The exact number of exposed accounts is hard to pin down, because some companies -- such as AOL and eBay -- aren't fully transparent about the details of their cyber breaches. But that's the best estimate available with the data tracked by the Identity Theft Resource Center and CNNMoney's own review of corporate disclosures.
The damage is real. Each record typically includes personal information, such as your name, debit or credit card, email, phone number, birthday, password, security questions and physical address.
It's enough to get hunted down by an abusive ex-spouse. It makes you an easier target for scams. And even if only basic information about you is stolen, that can easily be paired with stolen credit card data, empowering impostors....Why does this keep happening? Two things are going on at once.
First, we're increasingly moving our lives online. Shopping, banking and socializing are now chiefly digital endeavors for many people. Stores rely on the Internet to conduct and process all transactions. As a result, your data is everywhere: on your phone, laptop, work PC, website servers and countless retailers' computer networks.
Second, hacks are getting more sophisticated. Offensive hacking weapons are numerous and cheap. And hackers have learned to quietly roam inside corporate networks for years before setting off any alarms....
FROM THE COMMENTS:
47% of Americans were hacked by the hackers.
100% of Americans have been hacked by the government.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Even before Ed Snowden leaked his first document, human rights lawyers and activists were concerned about law enforcement and intelligence agencies spying on the digital world. One of the tools developed to tackle those concerns was the development of the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (the Necessary and Proportionate Principles). This set of principles was intended to guide governments in understanding how new surveillance technologies eat away at fundamental freedoms, and outlined how communications surveillance can be conducted consistent with human rights obligations. Furthermore, the Necessary and Proportionate Principles act as a resource for citizensused to compare new tools of state surveillance to global expectations of privacy and due process.
We are now able to look at how the NSAs mass surveillance programs, which we have learned about in the past year, fare when compared to the Necessary and Proportionate Principles.
As you might expect, the NSA programs do not fare well. To mark the first anniversary of the Snowden disclosures, we are releasing Unnecessary and Disproportionate, which details how some of the NSA spying operations violate both human rights standards and the Necessary and Proportionate Principles.
Some of the conclusions are as follows:
More broadly, the United States justifies the lawfulness of its communications surveillance by reference to distinctions that, considering modern communications technology, are irrelevant to truly protecting privacy in a modern society. The US relies on the outmoded distinction between content and metadata, falsely contending that the latter does not reveal private facts about an individual. The US also contends that the collection of data is not surveillanceit argues, contrary to both international law and the Principles, that an individuals privacy rights are not infringed as long as her communications data are not analyzed by a human being. Its clear that the practice of digital surveillance by the United States has overrun the bounds of human rights standards. What our paper hopes to show is exactly where the country has crossed the line, and how its own politicians and the international community might rein it back.
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)It would have been hilarious were it not so nauseating. One could only watch the recent New Populism conference with pity-induced discomfort, as stale Democratic politicians did their awkward best to adjust themselves to the fad of populism. A boring litany of Democratic politicians or those closely associated gave bland speeches that aroused little enthusiasm among a very friendly audience of Washington D.C. politicos. It felt like an amateur recital in front of family and friends, in the hopes that practicing populism with an audience would better prepare them for the real thing. The organizers of the conference, The Campaign For Americas Future, ensured that real populism would be absent from the program. The group is a Democratic Party ally that essentially functions as a party think tank.
The two co-founders of Campaign for Americas Future are Robert Borosage who works closely with the progressive caucus of the Democratic Party and Robert Hickey, who works with Health Care for America Now, an organization that prioritized campaigning for Obamacare. On the Board of Directors is the notorious liberal Van Jones, no doubt carefully chosen for his non-threatening elitist politics.
The new populism seems to mistakenly believe that if Democrats merely advocate for a couple of popular ideas as opposed to their usual unpopular policies that they actually implement that they can suddenly transform themselves into populists. The unofficial and uninspiring leader of this grouping, Senator Elizabeth Warren, summarized the radical populist platform of these reborn Democrat revolutionaries, doing her drab best to inject life into a zombie political party:
Its true that 90 percent of Americans would agree with Warren, but the devil is in her lack of details. Warrens popular platform falls incredibly flat because there are no concrete demands to inspire people, just generalizations. This important omission didnt happen by mistake. The Democrats simply do not want a new populist movement; rather, their opportunistic goal is to win elections by simply being more popular than the Republicans. Any of Warrens above ideas if they ever enter the halls of Congress as a bill would be sufficiently watered down long before any elated response could be reached from the broader population. How might Warren transform her ideas if she actually wanted a populist response? Some examples might be:
Such demands would be much more likely to inspire people than what the populist Democrats are offering, and inspiration is the missing populist ingredient that the Democrats are organically incapable of provoking. Whats preventing the Democrats from becoming inspirational? They know all too well that by venturing too far to the left they could easily instigate a real mass movement. And such a movement is not easily controlled and would inevitably demand much more than the corporate-minded Democrats are willing to concede, which, at this point, is virtually nothing aside from musty rhetoric.
Unlike the Republicans populist turn to the right that created the now-defunct Tea Party, a true left turn would mean have the potential to rejuvenate the millions strong labor movement, while engaging tens of millions more into active political life, driving people to participate in mass marches, rallies, labor strikes and other forms of mass action. This was what happened during the old populism in U.S. history, which the Democrats are taking their trendy namesake from. The populist movement of the late 1800s was a genuine mass movement of workers and farmers, which briefly aligned in an independent political party, the Peoples Party, also known as the populists. The populist movement that included strike waves and local rural rebellions had nothing to do with the lifeless politics of the Democratic Party, and threatened the very foundation of America corporate power. The Democrats are keenly aware of this type of real populist threat, and they are willing to do anything to stop it.
For example, the Occupy movement proved that the Democrats fear real left populism much more than they fear far-right populism. We now know that the Obama administration worked with numerous Democratic Party mayors and governors across the nation to undermine and destroy the Occupy movement through mass arrests, police violence and surveillance. And because Occupy succeeded in changing the national conversation about income inequality, the Democrats were forced to engage with the rhetoric of the movement they dismembered, and now use the plagiarized language as proof of their populism.
Aside from Elizabeth Warren, the other rock star of the new populism conference was the nominally-independent socialist Bernie Sanders, who essentially functions in Congress as a Democrat. Sanders politics fits in perfectly with the rest of the progressive caucus Democrats, which is why he was invited to the conference. Sanders can perhaps outdo Warren when it comes to anti-corporate-speak; but like Warren he keeps his solutions vague and his movement building aspirations negligible. If by chance Sanders chooses to run for president as an Independent as many radicals are hoping his fake populist politics and empty rhetoric are unlikely to drastically change, limiting any chance that a "movement" may emerge. Its doubtful that many people have been fooled by the left turn of the Democratic Party. But on a deeper level the politics of lesser evilism still haunts labor and community groups, and keeping these groups within the orbit of the Democratic Party is the ultimate purpose of this new, more radical speechifying. Until these groups organize themselves independently and create their own working class political party, the above politics of "populist" farce is guaranteed to continue.
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@gmail.com
Demeter
(85,373 posts)TIMMY DID IT HIS WAY...HE QUIT!
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/14/fiscal-cliff-geithner/
?w=340&h=255
Demeter
(85,373 posts)YEAH, HOW DID THAT COME OUT, TIMMY?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/5359527/Tim-Geithner-to-reform-US-financial-regulation.html
US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is expected to unveil an overarching reform of the complex American financial regulation system as early as next week in an attempt to prevent the banking crisis of the last 12 months ever happening again... Mr Geithner, who on Wednesday pointed to signs that the US financial sector is starting to heal as Bank of America raised $13.4bn (£8.5bn) in an accelerated share sale, is believed to be leaning heavily towards giving the Federal Reserve a central role in future regulation.
Although his plan is not yet finalised, it is understood that the Fed would take on some of the work currently undertaken by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Speaking before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr Geithner did not disclose his thinking on the future role of the Fed, but went on to say as part of regulatory reform ... were going to have to take a comprehensive look at every aspect of our system.
He went on to discuss the need to keep heightened systemic risk in check, a role the Fed is likely to take on. Although reform of banking regulation remains high on the agenda, he also noted that he felt the financial stress tests undertaken by his department had been helpful in stabilising the sector, with $56bn raised by the 19 participating banks since the results were announced.
Of those 19, BoA has to date raised by far the most money, in an attempt to plug the $33.9bn hole the Treasury said it had in its balance sheet...
HECK OF A JOB, TIMMEH!
xchrom
(108,903 posts)For the first time since the economic crisis began, a group of bankers has been found guilty of financial crimes in Spain.
But the former leaders of Caixa Penedès, a Catalan savings bank that received 915 million in state aid before being bought out by another bank, may be able to avoid going to jail despite their joint five-year conviction.
Instead, former director general Ricard Pagès Font and his three aides have promised to return the 28.6 million in retirement plans that they granted themselves before leaving the lender. Caixa Penedès was ultimately bought out by Banco Sabadell in October 2013 after receiving the bailout money.
Judge José María Vázquez Honrubia has taken into account the attenuating circumstance that the defendants admitted to the facts. Pagès had awarded himself 11.6 million; Santiago José Abella got 5.7 million, and there was 6.1 million for Manuel Troyano and 4.8 million for Juan Caellas.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)LORD MOUNT. Its our fault. They couldnt help themselves.
QUEEN. It seems they have helped themselves, and pretty freely, too!
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Higher consumer taxes, lower corporate rates and few changes to income tax. Those were the proposals for the Spanish economy presented by the International Monetary Fund in Madrid on Tuesday, in the latest report issued by its mission in the country.
There is room for increasing indirect revenues, the report reads. Raising excise duties and environmental levies, and gradually reducing preferential treatments in the VAT, would bring Spains collection effort more in to line with its European peers. This should be combined with clearly identified measures to protect the most vulnerable.
There is scope for gradually cutting corporate income tax rates to promote growth (though not to 20 percent, which is below the EU average), the report continues. However, given the imperative to sustain revenues and preserve progressivity, there is less scope for significantly cutting top personal income tax rates.
The IMFs recommendations for Spain come two days after European elections that saw the countrys two main political forces, the Popular Party (PP) and Socialist Party (PSOE), suffer greatly at the polls. The two parties have been responsible for introducing a number of severe spending cuts in recent years under the mandate of the so-called troika of the IMF, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC).
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Fewer than 100 of the worlds super-rich have taken advantage of the Spanish governments offer of a residency permit in return for investing in the national economy or buying property in Spain. The so-called golden visa scheme was introduced in September 2013, aimed at foreigners buying properties worth more than 500,000; investing 1 million or more in shares of publicly traded Spanish companies; depositing at least 1 million in a Spanish bank account; or making a major business investment leading directly to meaningful job creation, or having significant socioeconomic or technological impact.
The government says it has issued 81 visas on the basis of people meeting these requirements, and that 72 of the cases involved property purchases.
Almost half of the new residents are Chinese and Russian millionaires, with the remainder coming from Ukraine, Lebanon, Ecuador, Qatar, Egypt and Iran, among others.
The new visas do not come with a work permit, or include family members or spouses (though these may apply separately); nor are beneficiaries required to live in Spain although they must visit the country at least once a year. They will, however, be allowed to move freely through the Schengen Area.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Isn't that ...... gross?
I hate to say it, but the US does it, too.
By investing $1 million in creating a new U.S. business that employs ten workers, you may qualify for a U.S. green card....EB-5 Investor Visa: Who Qualifies?
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/eb-5-investor-who-qualifies.html
Like many countries, the U.S. provides a means of entry for wealthy people who will pump money into its economy. (See the Immigration and Nationality Act, at I.N.A. § 203(b)(5),8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5).) This is known as the employment Fifth Preference or EB-5 immigrant visa (which allows permanent residence immediately upon entry to the U.S.). However, applicants for a U.S. green card based on investment must not only invest between $500,000 and $1million in a U.S. business, they must take an active role in that business (though they dont need to control it).
Green cards for investors are limited in number, to 10,000 per year. Of these, 3,000 are reserved for investors in rural areas or areas of high unemployment. If more than 10,000 people were to apply per year, you would be placed on a waiting list based on your Priority Date (the day you filed the first portion of your application).
But dont worry yet: This 10,000 limit has never been reached. Whats more, only principal applicants are counted toward the 10,000 limit. Accompanying relatives are not. Therefore, many more than 10,000 people per year can be admitted with EB-5 green cards.
Get a lawyer for this visa! If you can afford an investment-based green card, you can afford the services of a high-quality immigration lawyer. The EB-5 category is one of the most difficult categories under which to establish eligibility, and absolutely the most expensive. It is well worth paying for legal advice before taking any significant steps toward applying for this visa. If you try the application once on your own and fail, you may damage your chances of success in the future. Whats more, because you are expected to make the investment first, and apply for the green card later, you could waste a lot of money.
Pluses and Minuses of an EB-5 Green Card
Here are some of the advantages and limitations to an investment-based green card:
USCIS rejects many more applications than it accepts in this category. That is partly because the eligibility requirements are narrow, and partly because of the categorys history of fraud and misuse. Some lawyers counsel their clients to use their wealth to fit themselves into another category with a greater chance of success. For example, by investing in a company outside the United States that has a U.S. affiliate, the person might qualify to immigrate as a transferring executive or manager (priority worker, in category EB-1).
As long as you have money to invest and can demonstrate that you are in the process of investing it in a for-profit business, you yourself do not need to have any particular business training or experience. Nor does the law restrict entry to applicants from certain countries, although the immigration authorities are more suspicious when dealing with applicants from countries that have exhibited a pattern of fraudulent applications.
You can choose to invest your money in a business anywhere in the U.S., so long as you maintain your investment for at least three years and are actively engaged with the company you invest in.
After approximately the first three years, you can work for another company or not work at all.
You must actually live in the United States -- you may not use the green card only for work and travel purposes.
Your spouse and unmarried children under the age of 21 can get green cards as accompanying relatives.
Your green card will initially be only conditional -- that is, it will expire in two years, after which you will need to apply to renew it and make it permanent.
As with all green cards, yours can be taken away if you misuse it. For example, you live outside the U.S. for too long, commit a crime, or even fail to advise the immigration authorities of your change of address, you may become deportable. However, if you keep your green card for five years and live in the U.S. continuously during that time (counting your two years as a conditional resident), you can apply for U.S. citizenship.
Are You Eligible for a Green Card Through Investment?
Green cards through investment are available to someone who invests a minimum of $1 million in creating a new U.S. business or restructuring or expanding one that already exists.
Where you got the money in the first place does not matter. Gifts and inheritances, for example, are fine. The key is that you obtained the money lawfully.
The required dollar amount of the investment may be reduced to $500,000 under certain circumstances, described in, When $500,000 Is Enough to Get an Investment-Based Green Card (EB-5).
USCIS also has the authority to require a greater amount of investment than $1million. This may occur when the investor chooses to locate the business in an area thats doing well economically, with low unemployment. At present, USCIS policy is to not raise dollar investment requirements on this basis.
The business in which you invest must employ at least ten full-time workers (not counting independent contractors), produce a service or product, and benefit the U.S. economy. Full-time employment is defined as requiring at least 35 hours of service per week.
The investor, his or her spouse, and any children may not be counted among the ten employees. Other family members may be counted, however. The ten workers do not necessarily have to be U.S. citizens, but they must have more than a temporary (nonimmigrant) U.S. visa. Green card holders and any other foreign nationals who have the legal right to indefinitely live and work in the U.S. can all be counted toward the required ten.
Its also important to realize that you wont be able to send the money, sit back, and await your green card. The investor must be actively engaged in the company, either in a managerial or a policy-forming role. (See the Code of Federal Regulations at 8 C.F.R. § 204.6(j)(5).) Passive investments, such as land speculation, do not ordinarily qualify you for a green card in this categoryexcept under a temporary program described in When $500,000 Is Enough to Get an Investment-Based Green Card (EB-5).
The investment must be made in a new commercial enterprise. You can either create an original business, buy a business that was established after November 29, 1990, or buy a business and restructure or reorganize it so that a new business entity is formed.
There are two exceptions to the rule that the investment must be in a new commercial enterprise. The first exception is that you can buy an existing business and expand it. You would need to increase either the number of employees or the net worth of the business by at least 40%. You would also need to make the full required investment ($1 million or $500,000 depending on location) and you would still need to show that your investment created at least ten full-time jobs for U.S. workers.
The second exception to the new commercial enterprise rule is that you can buy a troubled business and save it from going under. To do this, you would need to show that the business has been around for at least two years and has had an annual loss of 20% of the companys net worth at some point over the 24 months leading up to the purchase. You must still invest the full required amount, but you are not required to show that you created ten jobs. Instead, you would need to show that for two years from the date of purchase, you employed at least as many people as were employed at the time of the investment.
Rich Chinese overwhelm U.S. visa program
http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/25/news/economy/china-us-immigrant-visa/
A dramatic surge in interest from wealthy Chinese is threatening to overwhelm a U.S. program offering investors green cards in exchange for cash.
The number of applicants is now so great that the government might run out of permits.
Any foreigner willing to commit at least $500,000 and create 10 jobs in America can apply for an investor immigrant visa -- also known as an EB-5. The demand from mainland Chinese eager to move abroad has already led the U.S. government to warn the program could hit a wall as early as this summer. Chinese nationals account for more than 80% of visas issued, compared to just 13% a decade ago, according to government data compiled by CNNMoney. That translates to nearly 6,900 visas for Chinese nationals last year, a massive bump up from 2004, when only 16 visas were granted to Chinese.
"The program has literally taken off to the point that in China, the minute anybody hears I'm an immigration lawyer, the first thing they say is, 'Can we get an EB-5 visa?' " said Bernard Wolfsdorf, founder of the Wolfsdorf Immigration Law Group.
"There is a panic being created in China about the demand getting so big that there is going to be a visa waiting line," he said.
(Related story: Invest $1 million, try for a U.S. green card)
The EB-5 program is limited to 10,000 visas per year, a number that includes visas granted to an investor's spouse and children. At the moment, there are 7,000 applications pending, said David Hirson, a partner at immigration law firm Fragomen. If just half are approved -- and each investor moved with two family members -- the program would easily surpass its annual limit.
Immigration lawyers said that even more applications have been made since Canada ended a similar program last month that was also popular with Chinese.
For rich Chinese, opportunities in America are attractive. A green card offers a way to send their children to college, escape heavy pollution and enjoy an improved quality of life, said Kate Kalmykov, an attorney with Greenberg Taurig. Plus, the EB-5 program is relatively cheap.
"The cost is very reasonable in relation to other countries," Hirson said. Australia, for example, requires a $4.5 million investment -- nine times the minimum required in the U.S.
(Related story: Europe's golden visas lure rich Chinese)
The comparatively low cost makes the program a viable option for increasing numbers of Chinese -- especially as household wealth in the country booms. China now boasts more than one million millionaires, according to a study by Hurun Report, an organization that tracks wealth in China. The program's popularity has even spurred a cottage industry of investment consultants, immigration specialists and specialized relocation agents that cater specifically to the Chinese, Hirson said. Supporters say immigrant investors have provided an important alternative source of financing, benefiting projects from Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards real estate development to a North Dakota factory that makes biodegradable food containers.
(Related story: Where rich Chinese want to live)
But there are plenty of critics, too. Some argue that the program is a way for the global elite to buy U.S. citizenship. Others say the scheme has too much red tape, and believe parts of it are mismanaged to the point of fraud.
Long visa waits or not, there are no signs of interest waning in China.
"The U.S. remains the most attractive country for them, because of its freedoms and its ability to cater for individual needs, including the Chinese culture," Hirson said. "It's a very comfortable transition physically."
xchrom
(108,903 posts)WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators have closed a small lender in Maryland, marking the ninth U.S. bank failure of 2014 after 24 closures last year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Friday that it has taken over Slavie Federal Savings Bank, in Bel Air, Maryland.
The lender, which operated two branches, had roughly $140.1 million in assets and $111.1 million in deposits as of March 31.
Bay Bank FSB, based in Lutherville, Maryland, has agreed to pay the FDIC a premium of 0.20 percent to assume Slavie Federal's deposits. It also agreed to buy about $129.9 million of the failed bank's assets.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Union negotiators have struck contract deals with more downtown Las Vegas casinos, but the threat of a strike at one hotel remains.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal and KLAS-TV report that officials at Culinary Workers Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165 say workers at the Golden Gate plan to go on strike at 5 a.m. Sunday unless last-minute agreements are reached.
Union negotiators said Saturday that they reached a tentative agreement with TLC Casino Enterprises for new five-year contracts with both the Four Queens Hotel and Casino and the Binion's Gambling Hall & Hotel. The newspaper and KLAS report the workers at the Plaza and Las Vegas Club have also reached deals.
The settlement follows earlier deals with other downtown casinos, including the Golden Nugget, Fremont, Main Street Station, El Cortez and The D.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)In last month's elections a majority of Greeks now routinely depicted by the gods of Europe as lousy managers and born tax-evaders reacted by shunning the pro-EU parties. They made the anti-European and populist left and far-right parties the rising stars at the polls. Even Syriza, the radical (though not so radical any more) leftwing party that secured 26.6% of the votes did not do as well as expected. Once very anti-austerity and ready to go up against Brussels, it has since watered down its tactics.
Analysing the results via ideological labels is perhaps less important than seeing beyond the political shake-up to the bruised reputation of a very proud people. The Greeks now often feel like unwanted guests at the EU table.
Add to this feeling the economic realities: the imposed never-ending austerity, GDP reduced by 30% and nearly wiping out the middle class, and the grim future Greek people face with youth unemployment running at over 60% (28% overall).
From the start of Greece's economic crisis, most of the richer EU members were emotional and openly angry, blaming the Greeks for all their woes when in fact it wasn't a problem of household private deficit and overspending, but of public sector mismanagement and bad governance.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)North Dakota is enjoying a flood of biblical proportions. Shale-drilling technology has liberated huge quantities of oil from the Bakken shale in the western part of the state. Production has surged from about 100,000 barrels per day in 2007 to nearly 1 million barrels per day this yeara tenfold increase.
But North Dakota, Americas latest petro-state, is handling its newfound wealth with the kind of modesty you might expect in a land where people live in giant open spaces and at the mercy of nature. Decades of boom and bust in agriculture have forged a culture of thrift, an abhorrence of debt, and a healthy mistrust of high finance. Alone among the 50 states, North Dakota has a state-owned bank. It never had much of a housing and credit boom, so it never had much of a housing bust.
So its not surprising the state is taking a conservative approach to its sovereign wealth fund, the North Dakota Legacy Fund.
At about $2 billion, the fund is a minnow among the more established resource-fueled public funds in the world. For decades, Norway has channeled its North Sea oil wealth into a fund that now contains $840 billion. Sovereign wealth funds based in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf have become important fixtures in the global financial scenebuying companies, building skyscrapers, and financing massive projects. Several U.S. states have channeled resource revenues into common property. The Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund, which collects revenues from coal, oil, and gas extracted in the state, has about $6 billion in assetsabout $10,000 for each of the states 576,000 residents. The interest and income it generates flows into Wyomings general fund, and helps the state get by without an income tax. The Alaska Permanent Fund created in the 1970s, has some $51 billion in assets. Each year, it pays out a dividend to citizens ($900 in 2013) to ease the sting and expense of residing in the state.
North Dakota, by contrast, has chosen to create a lockbox. The state had long imposed a 6.5 percent extraction tax and a 5 percent production tax assessed against the value of oil removed from its soil. The funds raised went into the general budget fund, or were channeled into trust funds to support schools or infrastructure.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)5/25/14 Interesting four-minute Chinese news video (with English subtitles): The Party and Developers Gang up to Build a Ponzi Scheme.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Just the mood I'm in.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Propelled by a soaring stock market, the median pay package for a CEO rose above eight figures for the first time last year. The head of a typical large public company earned a record $10.5m, an increase of 8.8% from $9.6m in 2012, according to an Associated Press/Equilar pay study. Last year was the fourth straight year that CEO compensation rose following a decline during the Great Recession. The median CEO pay package climbed more than 50% over that stretch. A chief executive now makes about 257 times the average worker's salary, up sharply from 181 times in 2009.
The best paid CEO last year led an oilfield-services company. The highest paid female CEO was Carol Meyrowitz of discount retail giant TJX, owner of TJ Maxx and Marshall's. And the head of Monster Beverage got a monster of a raise. Over the last several years, companies' boards of directors have tweaked executive compensation to answer critics' calls for CEO pay to be more attuned to performance. They've cut back on stock options and cash bonuses, which were criticized for rewarding executives even when a company did poorly. Boards of directors have placed more emphasis on paying CEOs in stock instead of cash and stock options. The change became a boon for CEOs last year because of a surge in stocks that drove the Standard & Poor's 500 index up 30%. The stock component of pay packages rose 17% to $4.5m.
"Companies have been happy with their CEOs' performance and the stock market has provided a big boost," says Gary Hewitt, director of research at GMI Ratings, a corporate governance research firm. "But we are still dealing with a situation where CEO compensation has spun out of control and CEOs are being paid extraordinary levels for their work."
...................................
The industry with the biggest pay bump was banking. The median pay of a Wall Street CEO rose by 22% last year, on top of a 22% increase the year before. BlackRock chief Larry Fink made the most, $22.9m. Kenneth Chenault of American Express ranked second with earnings of $21.7m.
CEO pay remains a divisive issue in the US. Large investors and boards of directors argue that they need to offer big pay packages to attract talented men and women who can run multibillion-dollar businesses.
MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Have a good week, everyone! Hugs, Matt, wherever you are!