STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 8 October 2014

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, 8 October 2014[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 7 October 2014

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 7 October 2014
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Dow Jones 16,719.39 -272.52 (-1.60%)
S&P 500 1,935.10 -29.72 (-1.51%)
Nasdaq 4,385.20 -69.60 (-1.56%)


[font color=green]10 Year 2.34% -0.06 (-2.50%)
30 Year 3.05% -0.06 (-1.93%)[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.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts







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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]

[Crewleader]

1. Today's Cartoon and a housing article

Homebuilders Offer Freebies as Booming U.S. Markets Cool

Tuesday, Oct 7, 2014

By Prashant Gopal

Joseph Beben wasn't in the market for a house until he heard about a year-old community in suburban Phoenix where 10 homebuilders are offering buyers incentives such as swimming pools, built-in barbecues and subsidized mortgage rates.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/homebuilders-offer-freebies-booming-u-040100193.html

[Demeter]

2. I was speaking with a member of the health professionals

about ebola, and her opinion was "why bring them here? Send the supplies there, don't spread it around!"

Seems I'm not the only one to think that a quarantine isn't so old-fashioned.

[xchrom]

3. FORGET QE: The Next Move From The Fed Will Be 'VE'

http://www.businessinsider.com/verbal-easing-2014-10

For years, since the financial crisis, the Fed has used "Quantitative Easing" as a means of easing monetary policy.

Quantitative Easing is the process by which the Fed buys government bonds to push down yields, add liquidity to the market, and encourage holders of assets to move into riskier investments.

But QE is almost coming to an end. The Fed has been "tapering" its purchases of government bonds (reducing the number it purchases every month), and the purchases are about to cease completely.

But suddenly the market is looking wobbly.

The dollar is surging, and the stock market is taking it on the chin. The Dow fell over 270 points on Tuesday, the latest in a series of volatile days.

Even more important than stocks is what the market is saying about inflation prospects. This chart shows the market's expectations of inflation over the next five years, and as you can see, it's been diving lately. In fact, it's nearly dropped to levels at which the Fed has done new easing in the past. Falling inflation expectations are cause for worry at the Fed.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/verbal-easing-2014-10#ixzz3FYJdvtBF

[xchrom]

4. 10 Things You Need To Know Before The Opening Bell

http://www.businessinsider.com/opening-bell-oct-14-2014-2014-10

A Town On Turkey’s Border Is “About To Fall” To ISIS. Turkey's president said the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani was under severe threat, asking for further Western intervention.

Air France’s Pilot Strike Is Hitting Its Profits. The massive European airline had to wipe more than $600 million from this year’s profit forecast.

Symatec May Split Into Two Companies. Security software maker Symantec Corp is in advanced talks to split its business into two entities — one that sells security programs and another that does data storage, Bloomberg reported.

Florida’s State Pension Fund Is Weakening Ties With PIMCO. The state is going to see the amount of money it has with PIMCO "significantly reduced" after Bill Gross’ departure.

European Markets Are Down. The UK’s FTSE 100 is down 0.51%, Germany’s DAX is down 0.74% and France’s CAC 40 is down 0.71%. In Asia, the Hang Seng and Nikkei both closed in the red, down 0.19% and 0.68%, respectively.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/opening-bell-oct-14-2014-2014-10#ixzz3FYKDjwtU

[xchrom]

5. The Bond Market Is Being Driven By One Thing Right Now:

http://www.businessinsider.com/government-bond-yields-are-plunging-as-fear-is-driving-markets-again-2014-10

Investors are piling into government bonds, causing yields to fall to new lows, as fears over the health of the global economy grow.

Government bonds are usually seen as a safe alternative to stocks, which react in a more volatile way to bad news. As bond prices rise due to the influx of new demand, the interest "yield" on top of them falls by a corresponding amount. The fact that investors are willing to pay rising prices for an instrument that pays them less and less is an indicator that fear is their motivating factor.

The renewed interest in government bonds comes after the IMF cut its global growth forecast again on Tuesday. In the latest edition of the World Economic Outlook, the Fund said it expected global growth to be 3.3% in 2014 — 0.4% lower than it predicted in April, and 0.1% below what it was forecasting in July. This has helped drive pessimism over the sustainability of the global economic recovery and pushed investors to seek the perceived safe haven of government debt — even though adjusting for the impact of inflation they are losing money in doing so. Conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine aren't helping either.

The yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond fell to 2.34% from a recent high of 2.62% on September 17th as investors searched for safety once again:



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/government-bond-yields-are-plunging-as-fear-is-driving-markets-again-2014-10#ixzz3FYKz5PES

[xchrom]

6. The Australian Market Is Tanking

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-australian-market-is-tanking-2014-10

The Australian market fell hard on opening, following Wall Street like a rock.

The S&P/ASX 200 was 5,211.50, down 1.37% or 72.50 points after the US S&P500 lost 1.5% to close at 1935.09 points.

Ric Spooner, Chief Market Analyst at CMC Markets, says the downward momentum in international markets overnight creates its own imperatives.

“The flip side of falling equity markets overnight was a rally in safe haven assets like US bonds and the Japanese Yen,” he says.

The IMF’s downgrade to economic forecasts added to the gloom in the market.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/australian-shares-are-tanking-2014-10#ixzz3FYP1AgTO

[xchrom]

7. GEITHNER GRILLED IN COURT OVER AIG BAILOUT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AIG_LAWSUIT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-08-07-44-03

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Timothy Geithner, a key player in the U.S. government's 2008 bailout of American International Group Inc., is due back in court Wednesday in a trial of a lawsuit filed by the insurance giant's former CEO over the handling of the rescue.

On Tuesday, Geithner affirmed his belief that the bailout was needed to avert disaster for the financial system. Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve at the time of the rescue and later Treasury secretary.

A lawyer grilled Geithner at the trial of the lawsuit brought by former AIG Chairman and CEO Maurice Greenberg. He is suing the federal government for about $40 billion in damages, asserting that it violated the Constitution's Fifth Amendment by taking control of the insurance giant without "just compensation" for the shares it received.

The $85 billion loan package for AIG, which was teetering toward bankruptcy in September 2008, gave the government control of 80 percent of the New York-based company's stock. While upholding the necessity of the AIG bailout, Geithner in his testimony Tuesday also acknowledged that he had said the bailout "wiped out" AIG shareholders.

[xchrom]

8. COMPANY WINS NEW CONTRACTS DESPITE FEDERAL PROBE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HELICOPTER_DEAL_PROBE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-08-03-16-20

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army has awarded $80 million in helicopter contracts to Wall Street executive Lynn Tilton even as the Justice Department is investigating whether she played by the rules to win earlier military work.

Tilton is the founder of the private equity firm Patriarch Partners, which owns MD Helicopters of Mesa, Arizona, and dozens of other companies. The Justice Department inquiry is focused on Tilton's hiring of a former Army officer who allegedly steered millions of dollars in contracts to MD Helicopters while the pair negotiated his future employment.

The Associated Press reported in March that Tilton and Bert Vergez, a retired colonel who ran an Army acquisition office in Huntsville, Alabama, were in unusually close contact for more than a year before Vergez retired from military service in late 2012. Three months later, he was working for Tilton.

Under the terms of the two new deals, MD Helicopters will provide Afghanistan's air force with armed helicopters. The contracts are underwritten by the Army and buttress President Barack Obama's plan to shift the security mission to the Afghans from the U.S.-led coalition, which is scheduled to leave at the end of 2014.

[xchrom]

9. GLOBAL ECONOMIC GROWTH WORRIES SEND STOCKS LOWER

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-08-07-46-48

KEEPING SCORE: Germany's DAX edged down 0.4 percent to 9,046.82, while France's CAC 40 was 0.3 percent lower at 4,197.04. Britain's FTSE 100 shed 0.2 percent to 6,482.51. U.S. shares were set to recoup only some of the losses from the previous session, with Dow futures inching up 0.1 percent and S&P 500 futures up 0.2 percent.

ASIA'S DAY: The Nikkei 225, the benchmark for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, lost 1.2 percent to close at 15,595.98. Hong Kong's Hang Seng trimmed 0.7 percent to 23,263.33, while South Korea's Kospi fell 0.4 percent to 1,965.25. Sydney, Singapore and Taiwan also declined.

GROWTH WORRIES: Investors were turning less upbeat about the future of global economies after the IMF trimmed its outlook for this year and next, mostly because of weaker expansions in Japan, Latin America and Europe. The IMF expects the global economy will grow 3.3 percent this year, slightly below what it forecast in July. Earlier, Germany said its industrial output fell 4 percent in August, far more than expected. The slump follows other disappointing economic reports and suggests Europe's economy will not recover as strongly as hoped in the third quarter, keeping a lid on the 18-country eurozone.

LOOKING AHEAD: The U.S. Federal Reserve is due to release notes on its latest meeting on Wednesday. Investors will be looking for signs of when the Fed might raise interest rates. The first rate increase is not expected until mid-2015, but the U.S. labor market has been recovering at a steady pace, suggesting a hike could come sooner.

[xchrom]

10. WAL-MART CUTS HEALTH BENEFITS FOR SOME PART-TIMERS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WAL_MART_HEALTH_CARE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-07-15-36-22

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for some of its part-time U.S. employees in a move aimed at controlling rising health care costs of the nation's largest private employer.

Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that starting Jan. 1, it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move affects 30,000 employees, or about 5 percent of Wal-Mart's total part-time workforce, but comes after the company already had scaled back the number of part-time workers who were eligible for health insurance coverage since 2011.

The announcement follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees. It also comes a day after Wal-Mart said it is teaming up with an online health insurance agency called DirectHealth.com to help customers shop for health insurance plans.

"We had to make some tough decisions," Sally Welborn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press.

[xchrom]

11. EU LEADERS TACKLE JOBS CREATION AMID FRUSTRATION

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_JOBS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-08-06-17-22

MILAN (AP) -- European leaders will debate ways to find work for the continent's 25 million unemployed at a summit Wednesday, as popular frustration grows at authorities' failure to return the continent's economy to health.

Several thousand union activists protested outside the venue, demanding a stop to government spending austerity policies and calling for reforms to encourage investment.

`'The unemployment rate and the number of precarious jobs are only increasing," said Maurizio Landini, the head of the FIOM metalworkers' union.

The jobs summit, the third on the topic in under 18 months, will again square off France and Italy, which want to slow the pace of their spending cuts and increase investment by the EU to help growth, against Germany in its role as the main enforcer of austerity.

[xchrom]

12. 14-DAY PILOT STRIKE COST AIR FRANCE $631 MILLION

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_FRANCE_PILOTS_STRIKE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-08-03-57-37

PARIS (AP) -- Air France-KLM says a 14-day pilots' strike that grounded about half the airline's flights cost the company 500 million euros ($631 million).

The company gave the estimate in a statement Wednesday, and said it hoped to accelerate development of Transavia, a low-cost affiliate that was at the center of the standoff. The pilots union said it was not against plans for the new business, but objected to the proposed labor conditions. They fear that the company will outsource their jobs to countries with lower taxes and labor costs.

Air France is hoping Transavia will tap into new markets in France and elsewhere in Europe, allowing it to compete with the low-cost carriers that have cut into the once-dominant market share held by giant European airlines.

[xchrom]

13. Tightest Credit Market in 16 Years Rejects Bernanke’s Bid

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-08/tightest-credit-market-in-16-years-rejects-bernanke-s-bid.html

James Bregenzer, a 31-year-old marketing strategist in Chicago, was rejected for a mortgage in May after successfully financing two previous home purchases. The hitch this time: his monthly payment would have been $100 more than the lender was willing to approve.

Bregenzer is in good company. Standards in the U.S. are so high and inflexible that former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, now a Brookings Institute fellow-in-residence with a net worth of at least $1.1 million, said at a conference last week that he couldn’t refinance his house in Washington. Even some doctors struggle to get home loans if they’re self-employed.

“We asked if we could go over by $100 and were told that’s just not going to work,” said Bregenzer, who bought his first home before getting married in 2008. “The process of buying a home used to be stupid easy. Now, my wife and I were buying a home with two salaries, we make a heck of a lot more than I used to, and I have to go into great and terrible detail to show documentation.”

Lenders are continuing to tighten the credit vise on homebuyers after five straight years of economic expansion, imposing the toughest standards since at least 1998, according to a new index by CoreLogic (CLGX) Inc. In May, credit availability for all home loans was half of what it was in the late 1990s, when the housing market was making steady gains much like today, according to the Housing Credit Index. Banks are less likely to overlook periodic shifts in income or brief credit lapses in adopting rigid rules to avoid losses after the housing crash, leaving creditworthy Americans without financing.

[xchrom]

14. Keystone Be Darned: Canada Finds Oil Route Around Obama

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-08/keystone-be-darned-canada-finds-oil-route-around-obama.html

So you’re the Canadian oil industry and you do what you think is a great thing by developing a mother lode of heavy crude beneath the forests and muskeg of northern Alberta. The plan is to send it clear to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast via a pipeline called Keystone XL. Just a few years back, America desperately wanted that oil.

Then one day the politics get sticky. In Nebraska, farmers don’t want the pipeline running through their fields or over their water source. U.S. environmentalists invoke global warming in protesting the project. President Barack Obama keeps siding with them, delaying and delaying approval. From the Canadian perspective, Keystone has become a tractor mired in an interminably muddy field.

In this period of national gloom comes an idea -- a crazy-sounding notion, or maybe, actually, an epiphany. How about an all-Canadian route to liberate that oil sands crude from Alberta’s isolation and America’s fickleness? Canada’s own environmental and aboriginal politics are holding up a shorter and cheaper pipeline to the Pacific that would supply a shipping portal to oil-thirsty Asia.

Instead, go east, all the way to the Atlantic.

Paul Browning, former chief executive officer of Irving Oil Ltd., smiles during a tour... Read More
Thus was born Energy East, an improbable pipeline that its backers say has a high probability of being built. It will cost C$12 billion ($10.7 billion) and could be up and running by 2018. Its 4,600-kilometer (2,858-mile) path, taking advantage of a vast length of existing and underused natural gas pipeline, would wend through six provinces and four time zones. It would be Keystone on steroids, more than twice as long and carrying a third more crude.

[xchrom]

15. U.S. Said to Prepare Charges Against Banks in FX Cases

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-08/u-s-said-to-ready-charges-against-banks-in-forex-rigging.html

U.S. prosecutors are pressing to bring charges against a bank for currency-rate rigging by the end of the year, and actions against individuals will probably follow in 2015, according to people familiar with the probe.

The Justice Department may seek guilty pleas from several firms, including at least one in the U.S., said one of the people, asking not to be named because details of the investigation aren’t public. While federal prosecutors have wrested convictions from foreign banks this year for wrongdoing, they’ve yet to win a guilty plea from a U.S. lender in that push, and they’re preparing for strong resistance if they attempt to do so.

Justice Department officials have vowed to hold more institutions and individuals accountable for criminal conduct amid public frustration over the lack of prosecutions against top Wall Street executives for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Starting currency-rigging prosecutions this year would help the Justice Department keep pace with regulators. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the U.S. Federal Reserve, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are already in settlement talks with several banks with a goal of reaching some agreements next month, people familiar with the cases have said.

[xchrom]

16. Wal-Mart Health Cuts Reopen Debate Over Obamacare Costs, Savings

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-08/wal-mart-health-cuts-reopen-debate-over-obamacare-costs-savings.html

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT)’s move to eliminate health insurance for about 30,000 part-time workers underscores the mixed benefits of Obamacare for companies and their employees.

Wal-Mart said yesterday it would no longer provide health coverage to employees who work less than 30 hours a week, following similar moves by retailers such as Target Corp. (TGT), Home Depot Inc. (HD) and Walgreen Co. (WAG) Wal-Mart had already dropped benefits for many new part-time workers in 2012.

The U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, has brought more health-care options for employees pushed out of corporate benefit plans. That may have made it more palatable for Wal-Mart to make the change, which could save the company about $50 million in premiums this year.

Still, adopting Obamacare has brought other costs, leaving the total effect on large companies unclear. Wal-Mart said in February that the Affordable Care Act contributed to a $330 million increase in health costs -- a number it later raised to $500 million. Employers shedding coverage also may have to pay workers more to make up for the loss of benefits, said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation of Menlo Park, California.

[Fuddnik]

17. Demeter will put on 5 lbs today!

It's National Pierogi Day.

http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/10/today_is_national_pierogi_day.html#incart_river


CLEVELAND, Ohio - Christmas. Easter. The Fourth of July.

Sure, those are all fine holidays. But they're no National Pierogi Day, which is today, Oct. 8. Yes, today! Wait, you didn't shop ahead?

No worries. Read on for five great Cleveland restaurants and bakeries to get your Polish (or Ukrainian) on and pick up some of those little filled doughy pillows of delight.

Share your favorite pierogi places in the comments section.

[Demeter]

18. You are assuming I get to eat today

I've had leftover salmon hollandaise with saffron rice, and two large slices of eggplant parmigiana...there's pizza at tonight's meeting.

I don't have time for pierogi....and why on a Wednesday, anyway? Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day!

Here we have Kowalski pierogi, made in Hamtramck...I have some in the freezer. And then, there's the time my sister and I made them (I was the help)....those were the best, using Grandma's recipe.