STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 25 August 2014

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday 25 August 2014[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 22 August 2014

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 22 August 2014
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Dow Jones 17,001.22 -38.27 (-0.22%)
S&P 500 1,988.40 -3.97 (-0.20%)
[font color=green]Nasdaq 4,538.55 +6.45 (0.14%)


[font color=red]10 Year 2.39% +0.01 (0.42%)
[font color=green]30 Year 3.16% -0.02 (-0.63%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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(click on link for latest updates)
http://tools.investing.com/market_quotes.php?
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.








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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]

[Demeter]

1. Well, bargain or not, the purpose of life, for sure.

Everything else is a hobby.

[kickysnana]

33. My #1 bargain brought his bargains over yesterday with a back to school fashion preview..

[Demeter]

2. A Simple Plan To Balance Trade And Bring Back All Those Jobs

http://ourfuture.org/20140822/a-simple-plan-to-balance-trade-and-bring-back-all-those-jobs?utm_source=pmupdate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20140822

We have an enormous, humongous and ongoing trade deficit. This means we buy more from other countries than they buy from us and we do this every year.

Trade is supposed to be balanced. Instead we have been running continuing trade deficits since the late 1970s. A trade deficit drains our economy and forces consumers, businesses and government to borrow, just to keep going. This means that jobs, factories, entire industries and literal boatloads of money have been leaving the country – it really adds up because we do this every single year. We have to do something about this.

The “Buffett Plan”

In May’s post, Balancing Trade – Remember The “Buffett Plan” I described the 2003 “Buffett Plan” proposed by Warren Buffett, who was very concerned about the damage done to our economy and unemployment caused by our ongoing trade deficit.

The government could issue “Import Certificates (ICs) to all U.S. exporters in an amount equal to the dollar value of their exports.” The number of import certificates determines the level of trade imbalance or balance that we allow.

A few years later Congress tried to address the problem with legislation designed to balance exports and imports.

Senators Russ Feingold and Byron Dorgan proposed the The Balanced Trade Restoration Act of 2006, similar to Buffett’s plan. The bill warned, “The surging trade deficits could soon create a balance of payments crisis for the United States, which could wreak havoc with the economy of the United States.” The bill didn’t go anywhere.

And then (from the same post) someone else brought up the Buffett Plan:

In a 2011 article, “What Would Buffett Do? — A Plan to Balance Trade, Create Jobs and Restore American Manufacturing,” Bill Parks goes into detail on a similar plan, and suggests a mix of private and public sale of the import certificates. He also suggests that the government could adjust the ratio of exports to imports as needed.

A New Stab At This Simple Plan

At the site Economy In Crisis, Kenneth N. Davis, Jr., Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce writes about the Balanced Trade Restoration Act of 2014. Davis notes that “imports have been the single most damaging blow to our domestic industrial base that we rely on for national security and income as well as for a strong economy and good jobs.”

In the Balanced Trade Restoration Act, Davis has put together a proposal that, while inspired by the original Buffett plan, offers an updated and more specific legislative plan for making it work. Davis writes,

My group, Balanced Trade Associates, believes we have a bold, realistic plan to deal with the import problem. It could eliminate our 700+ billion dollar annual trade deficits within 3 years. Our law would also require 3 years of modest 10% annual reductions in our imports that now run at 2.1 trillion dollars. The answer is our proposed new legislation: “The Balanced Trade Restoration Act.”

With it, the U.S. would restore our practice of maintaining modest annual trade surpluses with the rest of the world. Unlike most competitor nations, we abandoned that sound policy to emphasize globalization in the late 1960’s.

The text of the Balanced Trade Restoration Act of 2014 is included in his post at Economy in Crisis, but put simply, import certificates are issued based on exports, you need a certificate to import:

The government would create “a Balanced Trade Import Certificate Program.”
The program would issue “import certificates” that act as a license to import “a good with an appraised value that is equal to or less than the face value of the certificate.”
Goods cannot be shipped into the country without a certificate issued equal to their import value.
The certificates would be issued based on exports. The Commissioner of the program would determine how many such certificates to issue, starting at the current level of imports and tapering down by 10 percent a year for three years.
After three years we enter a “Continuous Maintenance of Balanced Trade Period” where certificates are issued equal to the amount we export.
Bob’s your uncle; trade is balanced.

It might sound like a lot of paperwork, but actually it’s just an IT/computer problem – setting up a data center with a database of exports, the resulting certificates and issuing certificates for incoming shipments by importers.

Does This Proposal Violate Trade Agreements?

While trade agreements contain measures against import restrictions they also call for balanced trade. This is not an import restriction, it is a balancing measure. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) allows import restrictions in situations of balance-of-payments. Trade not only should be balanced, it must eventually be balanced because the damage done by unbalanced trade to the economies of countries and ultimately to the world’s economy.

A Cap-And-Trade System To Incentivize Exports?

Davis’ plan calls for issuing certificates to “qualified” importers on a fair basis to prevent giants like Walmart from cornering the market. From the proposal: “Certificates shall be issued by the United States Customs and Border Protection to any qualified importer, as determined by the Commissioner. Certificates are non-transferable. The Commissioner shall determine the fee for Certificates such that all costs of administering the Program are paid by the fees.”

My own thinking is that a regulated (to prevent cornering the market) cap-and-trade (transferable certificate) system that allows exporters to sell those certificates to importers for a market price would still be beneficial. Because we import more than we export the certificates would have an added value, creating an incentive to export. It would also subsidize those exports. Corporations respond to incentives and this would create an incentive to export, which would create jobs. Once trade is balanced, those incentives are reduced, so it is self-correcting.

But either way, this can be worked out as the system is set up. Hopefully experts would provide testimony and a consensus decision would be made based on the best way to proceed to help our economy and fight the enormous, humongous trade deficits.

And So, In Conclusion

I end this post as I ended the May post. The Buffett Plan was just one idea for balancing trade. But balance we must. As Buffett warns, these huge trade deficits cannot be sustained. They are draining our economy. There has to be a reckoning. We have not faced that reckoning yet, but it is inescapable. It has to happen. We have to tackle this as a country, with a national plan.

***********************************************************

Petition

While we’re talking about balancing trade, the Coalition for a Prosperous America has a petition to Congress: Congress should direct the President to pursue Balanced Trade now as the principal trade policy objective.

We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, request that Congress adopt balanced trade as the primary national trade goal by adding the following language to future trade-related bills:

“The principal national objective for trade in goods, services and agriculture is to achieve an overall balance of payments over a reasonable period of time, eliminate persistent trade deficits and reverse the accumulation of foreign debt.”

SEE LINK FOR MORE DETAIL

[Demeter]

3. AN OPPOSIING VIEW: Who to blame for Argentina's disastrous default? Its lawyers, of course

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/argentina-debt-default-lawyers-court-pay-clause?CMP=ema_565


Hedge-fund manager Hans Hume, experienced with national debt and Argentina’s default, argues that the country needs to make a fresh start and fire the law firm that advised default was a good idea...The Argentine nightmare continues. Attempts by local institutions, then international banks, have failed to either prevent or end last month’s default by Argentina, its second in 13 years. The antagonistic rhetoric has heightened and Elliott Associates and the other so-called “holdouts” are squaring off against Argentina’s leadership, including President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and finance minister Axel Kicillof.

This is familiar ground for me. I co-chaired the Global Committee of Argentina Bondholders leading up to the country’s 2005 exchange of its bonds for better terms. I have been involved in more than 20 country debt restructurings and I had never before or since encountered representatives of a country who were more duplicitous, arrogant or who demonized the representatives on the other side of the table more.

At the time, Argentina presented a unilateral offer that only 76% of the creditors accepted (only 63% of international investors accepted), despite our attempts to suggest a modification of their offer that would have been less expensive for the country in the long run and would have garnered over 90% of the bondholders to accept the offer.

This was only the beginning of Argentina choosing to engage in antagonistic and self destructive behaviour rather than engage creditors in a negotiation...

PARDON ME, MR. HUME, BUT MR. SINGER WASN'T INTERESTED IN "NEGOTIATION"

[Demeter]

4. It's the end of Argentina as we know it, and the world economy will be just fine HEIDI MOORE

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/series/heidi-moore-column



Every once in a while you get a crazy financial story that makes you wonder how smart the people in charge really are. Argentina’s recent flirting with economic default is proof that the average consumer, managing a few thousands, could probably do a better job than politicians with billions at their disposal....If you read the papers, you would believe that the land of tango, gauchos, Malbec and great steaks is on the verge of self-destruction: “Argentina dances with default”, groused a Wall Street Journal headline. “Argentina nears cliff in risky debt game”, chided the Financial Times.

Sounds dire, doesn’t it?

It is possible – but very unlikely, despite ongoing talks – that Argentina may willfully destroy its own economy in an ill-fated political attempt to look tough on foreigners, particularly in the form of mostly American hedge-fund managers. You don’t have to watch old episodes of Dallas to know that “rich Americans” is shorthand for “evil”. That stereotype has helped Argentina. In a silly form of financial rebellion, the nation refuses to pay the hedge funds $1.5bn in interest it owes on money it borrowed from them, way back in 2001. The entire point of Argentina’s threat is to create a panic, to telegraph the country’s own power. It shouldn’t. Default isn’t a bad word, and the stubborn refusal by the Argentines to pay up is empty drama that only ends up proving the country’s own weakness...The US tried the same technique three times when a team of Tea Party Republicans threatened to pitch America into default. The Americans felt no financial bite from that ill-advised drama – except that the government looked unintelligent and ill-managed – and the Argentines will feel the same embarrassment now.

Absolutely nothing is riding on an Argentina’s default. The entire conflict is composed of absurdities.

Here’s one: Argentina’s president, Cristina Kirchner, maintains that Argentina can’t afford to pay the hedge funds. But it pays for the rest of us to be skeptical of that claim: if Argentina can pay some of its bondholders, it can pay all of them. The country owes the holdouts roughly only $1.5bn, a fraction of the $23bn it will pay its other bondholders in a single payment.

Here’s another: Argentina’s fight with hedge funds sets no precedents for any other countries. The US will feel no impact, beyond a few investors losing some completely manageable amounts of money on their own. Argentina’s mulishness centers around a relatively paltry set of 13-year-old, $1.5bn bonds that were badly negotiated and haven’t been imitated by any other country since.

And another insanity: Argentina is already unwelcome in the debt markets – avoiding your creditors will do that – so a default wouldn’t make it any worse. Argentina has been so financially isolated for so long that it has nearly no global weight to throw around.

Why would a country go to these lengths just to prove a point? It comes down to politics, and it illuminates how silly high finance can get when there are also votes and political power at stake...Here’s Argentina’s conflict. It’s not complicated. The country borrowed a ton of money, $132bn. Then it had a financial crisis in 2001 and decided it couldn’t pay the interest. Argentina asked bondholders to help it out by trading in their bonds for cheaper ones, which would pay only 30 cents on the dollar. It’s better than zero, so the holders traded in 93% of the old bonds. A group of hedge-fund holdouts, led by Wall Street billionaire Paul Singer, wanted no part of this. They still wanted Argentina to pay the original interest, so they went to a US court. After 13 years, a US judge ruled last month that Argentina lost and has to pay up by Wednesday. Still, Argentina still refuses to pay.

How will it turn out? This is the first time something quite this stupid is happening, so we’ll have to keep watching. Argentina has pushed its deadline to the very brink, and then some. (Update: on Wednesday afternoon, Standard & Poor’s had judged that Argentina defaulted on its debt. Talks will continue.) What is true, however, is that this is the kind of financial irresponsibility you can only indulge in if you have a lot of money. As anyone who has written a check to a terrible landlord or cold-hearted credit-card company knows, disliking someone is not a good reason not to pay what you owe. Any American who has feared foreclosure can enjoy a bitter laugh: if you didn’t pay your mortgage or credit cards for 13 years, you would be on the street. Argentina just gets to throw a tantrum...Somehow the goal of financial health gets lost in the infinitely stupid ego-measuring that passes for sophisticated financial negotiations these days. The “nuclear option” of destroying an economy is increasingly becoming a way for politicians to look tough. Unfortunately, it just looks irresponsible. And it’s certainly not the end of the world.

[Demeter]

5. LET'S BASH CAPITALISM!

RECENT OP-ED PIECES ABOUND ON WHY WE SHOULD FIND ANOTHER SYSTEM. SUMMARIES FOLLOW...

Gary Engler: 10 Reasons to Hate Capitalism

http://www.alternet.org/economy/10-reasons-hate-capitalism?akid=12140.227380.ZD7kMt&rd=1&src=newsletter1015967&t=20

10. Capitalist corporations suffer from a personality disorder characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and are rewarded by shareholders for acting that way. If corporations could be sent to a criminal psychologist’s office they’d be diagnosed as psychopaths and locked away forever.

9. Capitalism encourages greed. But greed is only good for capitalists. For normal people it is anti-social and soul destroying, not to mention very bad for our communities, which rely on altruism, compassion and a generalized concern for others.

8. Capitalism is a system of minority privilege and class rule based on the private ownership of means of livelihood. This gives a few rich people the power to buy and sell jobs, which means they can build or destroy entire communities that depend on those jobs.

7. Capitalists praise freedom and individualism, but they destroy freedom and individualism for everyone but themselves. The vast majority of us who work for a living are daily asked to uncritically follow orders, to act as if we are machines, and limit our creativity to what profits our bosses.

6. Capitalists denigrate cooperation and collectivism, but create mass production processes that rely on both from workers. Their system requires us to be cogs in a giant profit-making machine, but because they fear the power this gives us we are told working together for our own interests is illegitimate and bad. Thus capitalists undermine unions and other organizations that encourage workers to cooperate with each other and act collectively.

5. Capitalism requires the largest propaganda system the world has ever known to convince us it is the only system possible. It turns people into consumers through advertising, marketing, entertainment and even so-called news. Millions around the world are employed to use their creativity to twist our feelings of love, desire, human solidarity and fairness into tools of manipulation, so that ever more profits can flow into the hands of a tiny minority.

4. Capitalism is a system in which the principle of one dollar, one vote, dominates that of one person, one vote. Those who own the most shares (bought with their dollars) control giant corporations, many of which are more powerful than all but a few governments. Rich people also use their money to dominate the elections that are supposed to give us all one, equal vote. Under capitalism those with the most money are entitled to the most goods and services as well as the most say in directing our governments and our economy.

3. Capitalism proclaims the virtue of naked self-interest, but self-interest without regard for morality, ecology or common sense leads to environmental degradation, destruction of indigenous communities, colonialism, war and other forms of mass destruction. Self-interest leads capitalists to seek profit absolutely everywhere, regardless of the damage done to other people and the health of the planet’s ecosystem. Self-interest leads capitalists to destroy any rival economic system or way of thinking (such as indigenous communal land use and respect for nature) that can be a barrier to their endless quest for profit.

2. Capitalism is not a friend to democracy but ultimately its enemy. When pushed, capitalists choose capitalism over democracy. If people use democracy to weaken the power of capitalists the rich and powerful turn to various forms of fascism in order to keep their privileges.

1. Capitalism is a cancer taking over our planet. Capitalists make profits from global warming, from destroying our oceans, from pumping ever more chemicals into the atmosphere and from patenting everything they can, including life itself. Only by getting rid of capitalism can we rescue our environment.

Gary Engler is a Canadian journalist, novelist (The Year We Became Us) and co-author of the recently released New Commune-ist Manifesto — Workers of the World It Really is Time to Unite (www.newcommuneist.com).

Paul Buchheit: The Carnage of Capitalism

http://www.alternet.org/economy/carnage-capitalism?akid=12138.227380._dcv8l&rd=1&src=newsletter1015885&t=14

Capitalism is expanding like a tumor in the body of American society, spreading further into vital areas of human need like health and education.

Milton Friedman said in 1980: "The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people." The father of the modern neoliberal movement couldn't have been more wrong . Inequality has been growing for 35 years, worsening since the 2008 recession, as a few well-positioned Americans have made millions while the rest of us have gained almost nothing. Now, our college students and medicine-dependent seniors have become the source of new riches for the profit-seeking free-marketers...

...College grads took a 19 percent pay cut in the two years after the recession. By 2013 over half of employed black recent college graduates were working in occupations that typically do not require a four-year college degree. For those still in school, tuition has risen much faster than any other living expense, and the average student loan balance has risen 91 percent over the past ten years.

At the other extreme is the winner-take-all free-market version of education , with a steady flow of compensation towards the top. Remarkably, and not coincidentally, as inequality has surged since the 1980s, the number of administrators at private universities has doubled. Administrators now outnumber faculty on every campus across the country...

...As with education, the extremes forced upon us by free-market health care are nearly beyond belief. First, at the human end, 43 percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. It's estimatedthat over 40,000 Americans die every year because they can't afford health insurance.

At the corporate end, drugmakers are at times getting up to $100 for every $1 spent . That's true at Gilead Sciences, the manufacturer of the drug Sovaldi, which charges about $10 a pill to its customers in Egypt, then comes home to charge $1,000 a pill to its American customers. The 10,000 percent profit is also true with the increasingly lucrative, government-funded Human Genome Project, which is estimated to potentially return about $140 for every $1 spent. Big business is quickly making its move. Celera Genomics, Abbott Labs, Merck, Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Pfizer are all starting to cash in...

MUCH MORE AT LINK

Lynn Stuart Parramore: How the New Monopoly Capitalism Will Crush You to Smithereens

http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-new-monopoly-capitalism-will-crush-you-smithereens?akid=12136.227380.Yebbzs&rd=1&src=newsletter1015711&t=4





Something wicked has crept into American society, something that many hoped was left back in the dustbins of the 19th century. We’re talking about monopoly, the ogre that screams capitalism run amok. Monopolies, or near-monopolies, as are most common in America, rise up through a lack of competition. When one or a handful of players dominate the marketplace, get ready for higher prices, low-quality products, and crap wages for you and me.

Just a few decades ago, this destructive activity would have been illegal. But advocates for small government and faulty market theories successfully drove a complete unraveling of the regulations that used to keep these monsters at bay. The result has been disastrous. Monopolies are back, and they are bigger and nastier than ever.

You can hardly open a newspaper without reading about a monopolist making a power grab. Some monopolistic industries mess around with your daily life in an obvious way, like Big Telecom bringing you the low-grade misery of shoddy service and defective products. Others fly a bit lower under the radar, like the credit reporting monopolist Fair Isaac Corp, which can blast your financial existence in a nanosecond.

Monopolists buy politicians a dime a dozen, and they write laws to preserve their power. Yet until recently, few journalists had given this subject an in-depth look...

FOLLOW LINK FOR THAT DETAILED LOOK!

David DeGraw: How the Ultra-Rich .01% Have Sucked Up Even More of America's Wealth Than You Think

http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-ultra-rich-01-have-sucked-even-more-americas-wealth-you-think?akid=12158.227380.TlQisS&rd=1&src=newsletter1016531&t=4

This is an adapted excerpt from the new book, The Economics of Revolution...

An extensive analysis of economic conditions and government policy reveals that the need for significant systemic change is now a mathematical fact. Corruption, greed and economic inequality have reached a peak tipping point. Due to the consolidation of wealth, the majority of the population cannot generate enough income to keep up with the cost of living. In the present economy, under current government policy, 70% of the population is now sentenced to an impoverished existence.

Let’s take an in-depth look at the evidence.

I: The Ultra-Rich .01%

To see how corrupt the United States government has become, just follow the money. According to the most recent Federal Reserve Flow of Funds report, US households currently have an all-time high $82 trillion in overall wealth. If that wealth were spread out evenly, every US household would now have $712k. However, as of the end of 2013, the median household only had $56k in wealth. From 2007 – 2013, overall wealth increased 26%, while the median household lost a shocking 43% of their wealth. If median wealth continues to decline at this rate, over 50% of US households will be bankrupt within the next decade.



The fact that the majority of households are losing so much wealth in a time of record-breaking overall wealth demonstrates how systemically corrupt the economy has become. To begin to grasp the scale of corruption, let’s analyze how much wealth has been consolidated within the economic top 1% of the population.

The latest comprehensive look at wealth distribution data reveals that the “ultra-rich” economic top 0.01% of US households now has an all-time high 11.1% of overall wealth. The next tier, the 0.1% – 0.99% has 10.4%, and the top 1% – 0.9% has 18.3%. In total, the top 1% now has an all-time high 39.8% of wealth.

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

6. Regulators: Mega-Banks Like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs Still a Giant Threat to America

http://www.alternet.org/economy/regulators-mega-banks-citigroup-and-goldman-sachs-still-giant-threat-america?akid=12123.227380.m2F8oV&rd=1&src=newsletter1015344&t=12

We are all sitting ducks waiting for the next financial shit-storm.


We hear a lot of big talk about how Dodd-Frank has made the financial system safer. That law was enacted to make certain that the country never gets blown apart by a financial crisis like the one in 2008.

But does anybody really believe it?

The bank regulators sure don’t. The FDIC just put out a press release summarizing problems with resolution plans submitted by 11 big banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other behemoths. These resolution plans, also called “living wills,” spell out how the banks will handle things in the event the financial shit hits the fan.

The FDIC noted several areas where bank plans don’t pass the smell test:

While the shortcomings of the plans varied across the first-wave firms, the agencies have identified several common features of the plans' shortcomings. These common features include: (i) assumptions that the agencies regard as unrealistic or inadequately supported, such as assumptions about the likely behavior of customers, counterparties, investors, central clearing facilities, and regulators, and (ii) the failure to make, or even to identify, the kinds of changes in firm structure and practices that would be necessary to enhance the prospects for orderly resolution.

The FDIC recommended that banks should, among other things, establish “a rational and less complex legal structure” to address resolution and show that they actually have basic operational capabilities, like the ability to produce reliable information in a timely manner. And so on.

In short, the FDIC says that the banks’ plans are “not credible.”

Based on the review of the 2013 plans, the FDIC Board of Directors determined pursuant to section 165(d) of the Dodd-Frank Act that the plans submitted by the first-wave filers are not credible and do not facilitate an orderly resolution under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The Federal Reserve Board determined that the 11 banking organizations must take immediate action to improve their resolvability and reflect those improvements in their 2015 plans.

I guess we can just pray that another crisis doesn't hit before these new plans are submitted a year from now.

MORE

[Demeter]

7. Why It’s Worrying That U.S. Companies Are Getting Older

http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/why-its-worrying-that-u-s-companies-are-getting-older-1652/

Not only is the American population aging, businesses in the U.S. also are growing older.

Older firms are increasingly controlling the largest market share in different sectors of the economy, according to a paper by the Brooking Institution’s Robert E. Litan and Ennsyte Economics’s Ian Hathaway. By 2011, the portion of U.S. businesses aged at least 16 years reached 34%, compared to 23% in 1992. Moreover, those mature companies went from employing only 60% of private-sector workers in 1992 to employing nearly three quarters of the private-sector labor force in 2011.

The report attributes this trend to declining entrepreneurship, among other reasons. The rate of new business creation in the U.S. has been constantly shrinking in the past three decades. “The decline in new firm formation rates had occurred in every U.S. state and nearly every metropolitan area, in each broad industry group, and in all firm size classes,” the authors explain.

Moreover, it has become more difficult for younger companies to survive and compete with the bigger ones. Business failures are more frequent and likely among start-ups, which may account for the fall in business creation after the 1990s. The economy has grown more advantageous for incumbent firms and less helpful for fledgling ones.

The authors argue that younger companies are crucial to attaining a healthier economy as they have had the largest contribution to past “disruptive and thus highly productivity enhancing innovations” across different sectors ranging from airplanes and automobiles to computers and internet search.

“If we want a vibrant, rapidly growing economy in the future, we must find ways to encourage and make room for the startups of the future that will commercialize similarly influential innovations,” said the authors.

[Demeter]

8. Paul Craig Roberts: Defining Away Economic Failure

Redefinition Is America’s Most Powerful Factor of Production

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39338.htm

Last...government guesstimate that second quarter 2014 real GDP growth will be 4% seems nonsensical on its face. There is no evidence of increases in real median family incomes or real consumer credit that would lift the economy from a first quarter decline to 4% growth in the second quarter. Middle class store closings (Sears, Macy’s, J.C. Penney) have spread into the Dollar stores used by those with lower incomes. Family Dollar, a chain in the process of closing hundreds of stores is being bought by Dollar Tree, the only one of the three Dollar store chains that is not in trouble. Wal-Mart’s sales have declined for the past 5 quarters. Declining sales and retail store closings indicate shrinking consumer purchasing power. Retail facts do not support the claim of a 4% GDP growth rate for the second quarter, and they do not support last Friday’s payroll job claim of 26,700 new retail jobs in July.

What about the housing market? Don’t the headlines accompanying last Friday’s payroll jobs report, such as “Hiring Settles Into Steady Gains,” mean more people working and a boost to the economy from a housing recovery? No. What the financial press did not report is that the US is in a structural jobs depression. In the 12-month period from July 2013 through July 2014, 2.3 million Americans of working age were added to the population. Of these 2.3 million only 330 thousand entered the labor force. My interpretation of this is that the job market is so poor that only 14% of the increase in the working age population entered the labor force.

The decline in the labor force participation rate is bad news for the housing market. The US labor force participation rate peaked at 67.3% in 2000 and has been in a sustained downturn ever since. The rate of decline increased in October 2008 with the bank bailout and Quantitative Easing. From October 2008 to the present, 13.2 million Americans were added to the working age population, but only 818 thousand, or 6%, entered the labor force. http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/americas-structural-job-depression-is-here-to-stay/ Despite government and financial press claims, the Federal Reserve’s multi-year policy of printing money with which to purchase bonds did not restore the housing or job markets.

What about the stock market? It has been down in recent days but is still high historically. Isn’t the stock market evidence of a good economy? Not if stocks are up because corporations are buying back their own stock. Corporations are now the largest buyers of stocks. Recently we learned that from 2006 through 2013 corporations authorized $4.14 trillion in buybacks of their publicly traded stocks. Moreover, it appears that corporations have been borrowing the money from banks with which to buy back their stocks. Last year there were $754.8 billion in authorized stock buybacks and $782.5 billion in corporate borrowing. In the first three months of this year, companies purchased $160 billion of their own stocks. http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/07/another-wall-street-inside-job-stock-buybacks-carried-out-in-dark-pools/

MORE REALLY GLOOMY REALITY


As I have emphasized for years, the West already lives in the dystopia forecast by George Orwell. Jobs are created by hypothetical add-ons to the reported payroll figures and by inappropriate use of seasonal adjustments. Inflation is erased by substituting lower priced items in the inflation index for those that rise in price and by redefining rising prices as quality improvements. Real GDP growth is magicked into existence by deflating nominal GDP with the understated measure of inflation. Now corporations without factories are going to produce US manufacturing output, US exports, and US manufacturing jobs!

Every sphere of Western existence is defined by propaganda. Consequently, we have reached a perfect state of nihilism. We can believe nothing that we are told by government, corporations, and the presstitute media.We live in a lie, and the lie is ever expanding.


Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

[Demeter]

9. America Keeps People Poor On Purpose: A Timeline of Choices We've Made to Increase Inequality

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/inequality-the-choices-we-ve-made?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20140822

This infographic was featured in The End Of Poverty, the Fall 2014 issue of YES! Magazine. It was adapted from Who Stole the American Dream? by Hedrick Smith. Random House Publishing Group, 2012, 592 pages.

[Demeter]

10. Poverty Is Not Inevitable: What We Can Do Now to Turn Things Around by Dean Paton

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/why-poverty-is-not-inevitable


Having poor people in the richest country in the world is a choice. We have the money to solve this. But do we have the will?

Inequality and poverty are suddenly hot topics, not only in the United States but also across the globe. Since the early 1980s, there has been a growing underclass in America. At the same time a much smaller class, now called the superrich, built its wealth to levels of opulence not seen since France’s Louis XVI. Despite this, the resulting inequality went mostly unnoticed. When the Great Recession of 2008 hit, and the division between the very wealthy and the rest of us came starkly into focus, various people and groups, including the Occupy movement, began insisting more publicly that we tax wealth. But still, helping the poor has been mostly a discussion on the fringes. At last, the terms of public debate have changed, because inequality and poverty now are debated regularly in the mainstream media and across the political spectrum, not solely by labor, by the left, and by others imagining a new economy.

Inserting such a controversial topic into mainstream discourse is French economist Thomas Piketty. His 700-page tome, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, shocked everyone this year when it made The New York Times bestseller list and bookstores found themselves backordering an economics book for legions of eager readers. Piketty did exhaustive searches of tax records from Great Britain, France, and the United States, going as far back as the late 18th century in France. Using sophisticated computer modeling and analyses, the professor from the Paris School of Economics debunks a long-held assumption—that income from wages will tend to grow at roughly the same rate as wealth—and instead makes a compelling case that, over time, the apparatus of capitalism grows wealth faster than wages. Result: Inequality between the wealthy and everyone else will widen faster and faster; and, without progressive taxation, his data show we’ll return to levels of inequality not seen since America’s Gilded Age.

Piketty, no Marxist, says a solution lies in a “confiscatory” tax on wealth: Tax salaries over $500,000 at 80 percent worldwide, and tax wealth at 15 percent worldwide. Every year.

Unless we can reverse the inequality trends of the past 35 years, Piketty says, the ensuing social chaos will eventually destroy democracy. Unfortunately, not even Piketty sees much chance of all nations on Earth simultaneously enacting his tax plans....MORE

[xchrom]

11. French Government Resigns

http://www.businessinsider.com/french-government-resigns-2014-8

PARIS (Reuters) - France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls presented the resignation of his government to the president on Monday, Francois Hollande's office said in a statement.
The statement said a new government would be formed on Tuesday in line with the "direction he (the president) has defined for our country."

The move comes a day after leftist Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg called for new economic policies and questioned what he called Germany's "obsession" with budgetary rigor.

"France is the euro zone's second-biggest economy, the world's fifth-greatest power, and it does not intend to align itself, ladies and gentlemen, with the excessive obsessions of Germany's conservatives," Montebourg said on Sunday.

Valls, a centrist within the socialist party, replaced Jean-Marc Ayrault as prime minister in March. He was appointed by French president Francois Hollande to lead a cabinet reshuffle after serving as interior secretary.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/french-government-resigns-2014-8#ixzz3BOkjlNCg

[Demeter]

19. good for them!

But have they convinced Hollande?

[xchrom]

12. Mario Draghi Gave A Big Speech On Friday — But The Most Crucial Part Wasn't In The Original Text

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-key-part-of-mario-draghis-jackson-hole-speech-2014-8

But most people might have missed one of Draghi's most crucial statements, because it wasn't originally in the prepared remarks. It was delivered off the cuff.

In a note out this morning, Lorcan Roche Kelly of Agenda Research highlights the significance of this.

First, here was the text as originally stated in the prepared remarks:

“Inflation has been on a downward path from around 2.5% in the summer of 2012 to 0.4% most recently. Acknowledging this, the Governing Council would use also unconventional instruments to safeguard the firm anchoring of inflation expectations over the medium- to long-term.”

But here's what he actually said off the cuff:

“Inflation has been on a downward path from around 2.5% in the summer of 2012 to 0.4% most recently. I comment on these movements about once a month in the press conference and I have given several reasons for this downward path in inflation, saying it is because of food and energy price declines; because after mid-2012 it is mostly exchange rate appreciation that has impacted on price movements; more recently we have had the Russia-Ukraine geopolitical risks which will also exert a negative impact on the euro area economy; and of course we had the relative price adjustment that had to happen in the stressed countries as well as high unemployment. I have said in principle most of these effects should in the end wash out because most of them are temporary in nature - though not all of them.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-key-part-of-mario-draghis-jackson-hole-speech-2014-8#ixzz3BOnycNuj

[Demeter]

21. Translation: The Natives Are Restless

and the immigrants keep pouring in....

[xchrom]

13. Confidence In Germany Is Plunging

http://www.businessinsider.com/german-business-confidence-plunges-2014-8

Here's the latest sign of decline in Europe.

Business confidence in Germany is collapsing.

The latest IFO survey of business leaders finds that assessments of the current and future state of the economy have fallen to their lowest levels in about a year.

This chart shows the story of the deteriorating.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/german-business-confidence-plunges-2014-8#ixzz3BOoTf7iB

[xchrom]

14. Hotels Now Make $2.25 Billion In Revenue On Surcharges Alone

http://www.businessinsider.com/hotels-now-make-225-billion-in-revenue-on-surcharges-alone-2014-8

NEW YORK (AP) — Forget bad weather, traffic jams and kids asking, "Are we there yet?" The real headache for many travelers is a quickly-growing list of hotel surcharges, even for items they never use.
Guaranteeing two queen beds or one king bed will cost you, as will checking in early or checking out late. Don't need the in-room safe? You're likely still paying. And the overpriced can of soda may be the least of your issues with the hotel minibar.

Vacationers are finding it harder to anticipate the true cost of their stay, especially because many of these charges vary from hotel to hotel, even within the same chain.

Coming out of the recession, the travel industry grew fee-happy. Car rental companies charged extra for services such as electronic toll collection devices and navigation systems. And airlines gained notoriety for adding fees for checking luggage, picking seats in advance, skipping lines at security and boarding early. Hotel surcharges predate the recession, but recently properties have been catching up to the rest of the industry.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/hotels-now-make-225-billion-in-revenue-on-surcharges-alone-2014-8#ixzz3BOp4038B

[xchrom]

15. Markets Are Up Around The World

http://www.businessinsider.com/market-update-august-25-2014-2014-8

European markets are up early Monday.
Here's the scorecard:

France's CAC 40 is up 0.86%.

Germany's DAX is up 1.05%.

Spain's IBEX is up 0.80%

Italy's FTSE MIB is up 1.08%.

Britain's FTSE 100 is down 0.04%.

This comes after European Central Bank head Mario Draghi said at the Jackson Hole economic conference on Friday that "he was prepared to take action if inflation dropped further, raising expectations of quantitative easing," Reuters says.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/market-update-august-25-2014-2014-8#ixzz3BOpUZxcv

[xchrom]

16. French Economy Minister: Enough With German Austerity

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-french-economy-minister-urges-alternative-to-german-austerity-2014-8

PARIS (Reuters) - The time has come for France to resist Germany's "obsession" with austerity and promote alternative policies across the euro zone that support household consumption, firebrand French Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg said on Sunday.
Deficit-reduction measures carried out since the 2008 financial crisis have crippled Europe's economies and governments need to change course swiftly or they will lose their voters to populist and extremist parties, Montebourg told a socialists' meeting in eastern France.

"France is the euro zone's second-biggest economy, the world's fifth-greatest power, and it does not intend to align itself, ladies and gentlemen, with the excessive obsessions of Germany's conservatives," Montebourg said.

"That is why the time has come for France and its government, in the name of the European Union's survival, to put up a just and sane resistance [to these policies]."



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-french-economy-minister-urges-alternative-to-german-austerity-2014-8#ixzz3BOpy3vTF

[xchrom]

17. Actor-Director Richard Attenborough Dies At 90

http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-attenborough-dies-at-90-2014-8



Acclaimed actor and Oscar-winning director Richard Attenborough, whose film career on both sides of the camera spanned 60 years, has died. He was 90.
The actor's son, Michael Attenborough, told the BBC that his father died Sunday. He had been in poor health for some time.

Prime Minister David Cameron issued a statement calling Attenborough "one of the greats of cinema."

"His acting in 'Brighton Rock' was brilliant, his directing of 'Gandhi' was stunning," Cameron said.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-attenborough-dies-at-90-2014-8#ixzz3BOr0i1dc

[xchrom]

18. Doctor Explains The Biggest Problem With The American Healthcare System

http://www.businessinsider.com/doctored-the-disillusionment-of-an-american-physician-by-sandeep-jauhar-2014-8



"What the system has done is forced physicians to behave in ways that they don't want to behave," he says. "No medical student goes to become a doctor to become a businessperson, but the system is so dysfunctional today that it has created this business mentality among doctors."

Jauhar says the system needs to be fixed to accommodate the needs of more ordinary patients.

"The system is wonderful if you have a rare disease or if you require very high-tech care, but if you're a run-of-the-mill patient who has a chronic disease that needs to be managed by multiple doctors, the level of coordination and communication in the American system is so weak, so lacking," he says. "Today, if a politician says, 'we have the best medical system in the world,' he doesn't sound patriotic, he just sounds clueless."



Read more: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/health-care/no-medical-student-goes-tobecome-businessperson#ixzz3BOsIfyj8

[xchrom]

20. SURVEY: ECONOMISTS SAY FED IS ON 'THE RIGHT TRACK'

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ECONOMY_SURVEY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-25-00-39-42

NEW YORK (AP) -- A majority of economists believe the Federal Reserve is doing the right things to help repair the U.S. economy, according to a survey released Monday by the National Association of Business Economists.

The survey also showed that a vast majority of economists believe the U.S. economy is at little risk of inflation in the coming years.

In the association's semiannual survey, 53 percent of economists said the Fed's stimulus programs were "on the right track" for the U.S. economy while 39 percent thought the Fed was doing too much.

The Federal Reserve has been winding down a bond-buying economic stimulus program since December. Many investors and economists expect the central bank to start raising interest rates in 2015. It would be the first time the Fed raised interest rates since 2008. In the survey, three-quarters of the economists said they believe the Fed's first interest rate increase will come in 2015.

[Demeter]

23. shows you how much THEY know

[xchrom]

22. GLOBAL STOCKS MOSTLY UP ON STIMULUS OUTLOOK

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS_?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-25-05-47-58

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Global stock markets were mostly higher Monday after top central bankers in Europe and Japan said support for their economies would continue and additional help is possible.

KEEPING SCORE: Germany's DAX advanced 1 percent to 9,434.34 and France' CAC 40 rose 0.9 percent to 4,289.95. Hopes of stimulus in France were boosted by President Francois Hollande's dissolution of his government after an open feud in his Cabinet over the country's stagnant economy. London's stock market was closed for a public holiday. Wall Street was set for gains, with S&P futures and Dow Jones futures both up 0.3 percent.

DRAGHI'S BOOST: Europe's top central banker said the bank is considering asset purchases to pump more money into Europe's economy, though he gave no guidance on when that help would happen. Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, said in a speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Friday that the bank was ready to do more to boost the eurozone's shaky recovery. His remarks sent European shares higher and the euro currency lower.

EASY JAPAN: Bank of Japan chief Haruhiko Kuroda told reporters at the Jackson Hole gathering of central bankers that Japan's central bank planned to continue its "extremely accommodative monetary stance" until inflation has risen to the bank's 2 percent target and stays there. His statement that the bank can expand support if necessary pushed the Nikkei 225 index higher.

ASIA'S DAY: Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.5 percent to 15,613.25. South Korea's Kospi inched up 0.2 percent to 2,060.89. Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.2 percent to 25,166.91 but China's Shanghai Composite index fell 0.5 percent to 2,229.27. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.2 percent to 5,634.90.

[xchrom]

24. AS CONFERENCE ENDS, ECONOMISTS GIVE CLASHING VIEWS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JACKSON_HOLE_ECONOMISTS_REACT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-23-17-07-00

Here are excerpts from Associated Press interviews with attendees at the conference about the friction between inflation and the job market - and whether Yellen is striking the right balance.

---

Martin Feldstein, Harvard economics professor, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan:

"I wish the Fed would be more explicit about being concerned about inflation. They were slow to communicate about inflation. Yellen gave a speech at the (International Monetary Fund) a few weeks ago in which she acknowledged that there were risks of financial instabilities but said that's not going to change our monetary policy.

"My sense is there's probably more inflation in the pipeline and closer (than Yellen thinks).

"Her eyes are on the underutilized labor resources. She'd like to be able to continue to bring that down.

"We may see inflation sooner than she thinks we're going to see, and I think if that happens, then I think they'll move the date (to raise rates) forward."

[Demeter]

27. STFU Feldstein, you failed and fraudulent creep

You've been wrong for 4 years, and never changed your tune.

edit: I MEANT to type 40

[xchrom]

30. !

[xchrom]

25. GERMAN INDEX SLUMP INCREASES TALK OF ECB ACTION

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GERMANY_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-25-06-57-22

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- A fall in business confidence in Germany has added to the troubling signs about the European economy as speculation grows that the European Central Bank may take further action to keep the recovery from stalling completely.

Germany's Ifo institute said Monday its closely-watched business confidence index dropped to 106.3 points in August from 108 points in July. Market analysts had expected a dip to 107.0.

The downbeat signal from the largest of the 18 economies that use the euro follows drops in other surveys of business activity and disappointing zero growth for the currency union in the second quarter after four quarters of weak growth.

The recent data, coupled with turmoil in Ukraine and the Middle East, has been enough to shake confidence in the European Central Bank's outlook that modest growth will continue and led Monday to increased expectation the bank may take more drastic action.

[xchrom]

26. TAX REFUNDS MAY GET HIT DUE TO HEALTH LAW CREDITS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_OVERHAUL_TAX_REFUNDS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-25-04-50-06

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Taxes? Who wants to think about taxes around Labor Day?

But if you count on your tax refund and you're one of the millions getting tax credits to help pay health insurance premiums under President Barack Obama's law, it's not too early.

Here's why: If your income for 2014 is going to be higher than you estimated when you applied for health insurance, then complex connections between the health law and taxes can reduce or even eliminate your tax refund next year.

Maybe you're collecting more commissions in an improving economy. Or your spouse got a better job. It could trigger an unwelcome surprise.

[xchrom]

28. Draghi Pushes ECB Closer to QE as Deflation Risks Rise

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-24/draghi-pushes-ecb-closer-to-qe-as-deflation-risks-rise.html

Mario Draghi just pushed the European Central Bank closer to quantitative easing.

With euro-area data this week likely to show the weakest inflation since 2009, the ECB president used the high-powered central-banking conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to warn that investor bets on prices have “exhibited significant declines.”

Stocks rose and bond yields dropped with the euro today as the comments fanned speculation the ECB is finally heading for a form of monetary stimulus it has long avoided. Draghi has previously said that a worsening of the medium-term inflation outlook would provide a reason for broad-based asset purchases.

The Aug. 22 speech “was a major event and marked a turning point in ECB rhetoric,” said Philippe Gudin, chief European economist at Barclays Plc in Paris. “We think the recent economic developments have increased the chance of outright QE as the next step.”

[xchrom]

29. Gaza War Risks Pushing Slowing Israeli Economy Into Contraction

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-24/gaza-war-risks-pushing-slowing-israeli-economy-into-contraction.html

At the Ashkelon factory of Israeli mattress manufacturer Polyron, the sirens set off by militant rocket fire from the Gaza Strip just 8 kilometers (5 miles) to the south are taking a toll.

“Instead of doing 100 mattresses, you do 50 or 60, having to run five or six times a day to the bomb shelter,” said marketing executive Alon Zimmerman. As a result, sales in July plunged by a third from the same month in 2013, a shortfall Zimmerman estimates will take a year to make up.

While businesses close to Gaza have been hurt worst by Israel’s seven-week battle with Hamas and other Palestinian militants groups, the fighting has also deterred tourists and dented consumer spending nationwide. An indicator gauging sentiment among corporate purchasing managers showed economic activity contracted in July for the second month.

Unlike previous conflicts with Hamas or Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, Israel entered the fighting in Gaza with an economy already losing momentum: growth slowed in the second quarter as exports slumped due to a strong shekel. The central bank has already cut its benchmark interest rate to a five-year low, leaving policy makers with less leverage to spur growth and tame the currency. All 20 economists in a Bloomberg survey forecast the bank will hold the rate at 0.5 percent today.

[Demeter]

31. NO COMMENT, just commentary

[Crewleader]

32. Retirees' Social Security checks garnished for student loans

By Patrick M. Sheridan

Consumer attorney Joshua Cohen works with an increasing number of older Americans whose Social Security benefits are being taken by the government to pay for old student loans.



http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/24/news/economy/social-security-student-debt/index.html?iid=TL_Popular