STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 15 October 2014

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, 15 October 2014[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 14 October 2014

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 14 October 2014
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Dow Jones 16,315.19 -5.88 (-0.04%)
[font color=green]S&P 500 1,877.70 +2.96 (0.16%)
Nasdaq 4,227.17 +13.52 (0.32%)


[font color=black]10 Year 2.20% 0.00 (0.00%)
[font color=red]30 Year 2.95% +0.01 (0.34%) [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]

[antigop]

1. Highly Educated, Unemployed and Tumbling Down the Ladder

http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/highly-educated-unemployed-tumbling-down-ladder-n219451

In the upside-down, topsy-turvy world of jobs these days, even an advanced degree can’t protect some Americans from tumbling down the economic ladder.

The conventional wisdom that more education bears fruit in the labor market gets turned on its head when it comes to unemployment. For people with masters and even doctoral degrees, long-term unemployment is especially insidious. At best, these formerly high-earning professionals face the prospect of a years-long climb back to their former level of income and stature, while they delay retirement to rebuild their decimated nest eggs.

Others won’t be that lucky. Debt, foreclosure and evaporated savings push them out of the middle class, and some just keep falling.

“Most of these people in this long-term unemployed category are experiencing downward financial mobility,” said Carl Van Horn, distinguished professor of Public Policy and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

[Demeter]

2. The Assassination of Detroit by Carlos Salazar

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/the-assassination-of-detroit/

Elites in Detroit say they want to turn around the city. Their plan is to privatize land and funnel more resources to the rich...“Vacant land and buildings are among Detroit’s most valuable assets for its future.” The statements sounds like a real-estate commercial parody, but it comes from the most widely cited development plan for Detroit, the Detroit Future City Strategic Framework (DFCSF).

How could anybody consider vacant lots and abandoned buildings assets? For years, vacancy, dressed as blight, has been the bogeyman of Detroit. But in the mid-2000s there began to emerge another, pastoral idea of the city. According to this vision, capitalism — and people — had left. Detroit was a non-enforcement zone. All you had to do was move in to the vacant land, start your own urban farm, and use that to build community.

Some began referring to Detroit as a new frontier, with one particularly enthusiastic Craigslist Portland poster encouraging his other Portlandians to come with him on a “Michigan trail.” The Detroit left, for their part, did take this opportunity to expand urban farms and improve food access through locally grown produce.

Unfortunately, as long as capitalism lives somewhere, it’s waiting to move everywhere. In Detroit, and cities like Detroit, the question becomes: how do we make land, and even water, speculative and valuable once again to large investors?

The DFCSF sees massive vacancy and seeks to make the land industrially productive in ways it never has been before. To achieve this, land must operate as a sinister mirror image to the Republic of New Afrika‘s old call to “Free the land”: the predominantly working-class black people who hold these resources, whether in private or in common, must give them over to private investors, the state an active partner in their expropriation. The DFCSF started as a collaboration between government, business, and nonprofit organizations, including the office of then-Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, a public-private partnership that coordinates development in Detroit. Their collaboration included several performative components of community input; sprinkled throughout the eventual publication are little cartoon figures spouting blurbs obtained from such meetings. All of this work eventually led to the publication of the DFSCF. Having been published, the DFCSF, which has not seen any of its provisions made into law, does enjoy the support of much of Detroit’s present government. Kevyn Orr, the state-imposed emergency financial manager who is still guiding the city through its bankruptcy, said he sees the DFCSF as a way for the city to recover. Mayor Mike Duggan, who has taken over from Orr the day-to-day governance of the city, supports the plan. Mayor Duggan’s economics czar Tom Lewand, Sr. told the Detroit Free Press he considers the plan “his Bible.”

Looking at its title, the Detroit Future City Strategic Framework sounds like a how-to-guide for The Hunger Games. The entire plan reads like one too, mixed with a chirpier version of Bob Dylan’s Super Bowl commercial, or maybe a condo development pamphlet. Its rhetoric has parroted and internalized much of the liberal language around city development. Wayne State University’s Peter Hammer, a vocal critic of the plan, notes that it claims to make “difficult choices.” Yet at the end of those difficult choices, the plan envisions a “green, sustainable city,” a Detroit where the most viable neighborhoods “have filled their density capacities,” and a “ city for all, with an enhanced range of choices for every resident, especially those who have stayed through the hardest times.” In short, after the fifty-year process of the plan, it announces a utopia, combining ecology, density, and equality of opportunity, all achieved through a minimal engagement process and through the freely made choices of the city’s residents. When you cut through the fancy maps and real-estate developer cheerleading, the DFCSF is a proposal for new zoning designations, land-use standards, and infrastructure. It starts by organizing Detroit into different “framework zones.” According to the plan, when determining a zone, “the most influential characteristic is vacancy, because of its infectious effect on physical and market conditions of an area.” The DFCSF presents a map of Detroit, color-coded to indicate the varying degree of vacancy.

PNAC--THE "AT HOME" VERSION

[Demeter]

3. I.M.F. Warns of Global Financial Risk From Fiscal Policies

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/business/international/imf-warns-of-global-financial-risk-.html?_r=2

As global leaders sounded the alarm about a slowing world economy, a more immediate concern drew the attention of policy makers at the International Monetary Fund’s semiannual meetings last week: inflated asset prices and increasing levels of debt overseas.

Bond markets in the eurozone are booming, debt in China is at historic highs and the United States stock market, even with its sharp fall last week, has been on a tear.

As economists and politicians heap pressure on global central banks to continue, and even escalate, their unusually loose monetary policies in order to spur global demand, the fear that these measures could provoke another market convulsion is spreading.

“A major lesson of the last crisis is that accommodative monetary policy contributed to financial excesses,” said Lucas Papademos, a former vice president of the European Central Bank. “We are pursuing a similar policy for good reason. But there are limits — if you do this for too long, risks in the financial markets will materialize.”

MORE
IT'S LIKE WATCHING BORED AND SUICIDAL MONKEYS IN A CAGE AT THE ZOO...

[Demeter]

4. World economies warn of global risks, call for bold action

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/imf-warns-global-economy-risk-175450932.html

The International Monetary Fund's member countries on Saturday said bold action was needed to bolster the global economic recovery and they urged governments not to squelch growth by tightening budgets too drastically, although Germany poured cold water on the idea of a new global "crisis." With Japan's economy floundering, the euro zone at risk of recession and even China's expansion slowing, the IMF's steering committee said focusing on growth was the priority.

"A number of countries face the prospect of low or slowing growth, with unemployment remaining unacceptably high," the International Monetary and Financial Committee said on behalf of the Fund's 188 member countries.

The Fund this week cut its 2014 global growth forecast to 3.3 percent from 3.4 percent, the third reduction this year as the prospects for a sustainable recovery from the 2007-2009 global financial crisis have ebbed, despite hefty injections of cash by the world's central banks. The IMF has flagged Europe as the top concern, a sentiment echoed by many policymakers, economists and investors gathered in Washington for the Fund's fall meetings.



European officials sought to dispel the gloom. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the drag from fiscal tightening in the euro zone was set to fade, while German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble downplayed the idea that the region's largest economy was at risk of recession.

"There is no reason to talk about a crisis in the global economy," Schaeuble said.

MORE

CHANGE THE NAME OF THE RHINE TO DE NILE, AND YOU'VE GOT THE START OF WWIII....

[Demeter]

7. Europanic 2.0 PAUL KRUGMAN

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/europanic-2-0/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Anyone who works in international monetary economics is familiar with Dornbusch’s Law:

The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.

And so it is with the latest euro crisis. Not that long ago the austerians who had dictated macro policy in the euro area were strutting around, proclaiming victory on the basis of a modest uptick in growth. Then inflation plunged and the eurozone economy began to sputter — and perhaps more important, everyone looked at the fundamentals again and realized that the situation remains extremely dire. Now, things looked very dire in the summer of 2012, too, and Mario Draghi pulled Europe back from the brink. And maybe, just maybe, he can do it again. But the task looks much harder.

In 2012, the problem was very high borrowing costs in the periphery — which we now know were driven more by liquidity issues than solvency concerns. That is, the markets basically feared that Spain or Italy might default in the near term because they would literally run out of money — and market fears threatened to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And all it took to defuse that crisis was three words: “Whatever it takes”. Once the prospect of a cash shortage was taken off the table, the panic quickly subsided, and at this point both Spain and Italy have historically low borrowing costs.

What’s happening now, however, is very different. It’s a slower-motion crisis, involving the euro area as a whole, which is sliding into a deflationary trap with the ECB already essentially at the zero lower bound. Draghi can try to get traction through quantitative easing, but it’s by no means clear that this could do the trick even under the best of circumstances — and in reality he faces severe political constraints on what he can do. What strikes me, also, is the extent of intellectual confusion that remains. Germany still seems determined to regard the whole thing as the wages of fiscal irresponsibility, which not only rules out effective fiscal stimulus but hobbles QE, since it’s anathema for them to consider buying government debt. And it’s remarkable, too, how the logic of the liquidity trap remains elusive even after six years — six years! — at the zero lower bound. Not the worst example, but I read Reza Moghadam today:

Wages and other labour costs are simply too high, even by the standards of rich countries, let alone emerging markets competitors.

Augh! If it’s external competitiveness you’re worried about, depreciating the euro is what you want, not wage cuts. And cutting wages in a liquidity-trap economy almost surely deepens the slump. How can this not be part of what everyone understands by now? Europe has surprised many people, myself included, with its resilience. And I do think the Draghi-era ECB has become a major source of strength. But I (and others I talk to) are having an ever harder time seeing how this ends — or rather, how it ends non-catastrophically. You may find a story in which Marine Le Pen takes France out of both the euro and the EU implausible; but what’s your scenario?

DR. KRUGMAN IS BEING DISINGENUOUS...EUROPE ISN'T RESILIENT...IT'S FEEDING OFF UNCLE SUCKER

[Demeter]

12. Gartman says the euro 'is doomed to failure'

VIDEO AT LINK

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102077515

Conflicting economic priorities in Europe likely will spell the end for the region's common currency, widely followed investor Dennis Gartman said.

The author of The Gartman Letter attributes much of the global market tumult this week to weakness in the European Union, and specifically remarks Thursday from European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.

Speaking in Washington, Draghi, who famously promised two years ago to do "whatever it takes" to keep the EU together, emphasized that central banks can't by themselves save the world and need cooperation from fiscal policy. It's hardly the first time that message has been sent—former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke often pleaded with Washington for fiscal policy coordination—but Gartman, writing in his daily missive, said global markets needed to hear more:

As the world awaited a hoped-for clear and precise statement that the ECB was prepared to actually take action on monetary policy and become expansionary, it instead heard a lecture explaining that he and the others on the ECB's monetary policy committee had done all that they could do to try to strengthen the economy there and that the real battle had to be waged by the political authorities to reform the sclerotic nature of the economies there.

MORE

[Demeter]

5. Last Time It Was This Crazy, the Stock Market Crashed WOLF RICHTER

http://wolfstreet.com/2014/10/09/priming-the-startup-scene-and-ipo-market-for-burnout/

Mega-startups go parabolic. Flame-out already happening.

It’s anecdotal evidence, but it’s everywhere in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. A neighbor was cooling her heels by the curb, suitcase next to her. She’s going to Europe on a “vacation-thing,” organized and paid for by her company, she told me. A team-building perk. She’s a coder at a startup, her first job out of college. When she moved in less than two years ago, trucks kept pulling up to deliver her latest acquisitions. One day, she gingerly parked a new BMW in the garage. As we were chatting about her trip to Europe, a limo pulled up for her ride to the airport. That too was part of the perk. No expenses will be spared. This startup occupies super-expensive San Francisco office space that’s way too big for the number of employees. It’s embellished with designer furniture. Free lunches are de rigueur. All paid for with the boundless money it is getting from investors. But who cares, except for a few wayward souls in the VC community who lament those sizzling burn rates. Bill Gurley, partner at Benchmark, had stepped to the forefront a few weeks ago to warn that “the average burn rate at the average venture-backed company” is at an “all-time high since ‘99 and maybe in many industries higher than in ‘99”.

Marc Andreessen, founder of long-forgotten Netscape, then warned in a series of tweets: “When the market turns, and it will turn, we will find out who has been swimming without trunks on. Many high burn rate companies will VAPORIZE.” His final and most eloquent tweet: “Worry.” Some other VCs chimed in when they had a minute, in between throwing even more cash at these companies to drive their valuations ever deeper into the stratosphere: in the first half, they’d thrown $15.6 billion at them in later-stage financing rounds, the Wall Street Journal reported, on track to break the record of $28.4 billion set in 2000, the year of peak craziness as the whole scheme was already collapsing. So now, 49 US startups that have not yet gone public and have not yet been acquired have valuations of over $1 billion, with five of them in, or nearly in, the $10 billion club. Uber tops the list with a valuation of $18 billion. And Snapchat, one of these $10-billion outfits, doesn’t even have revenues yet though it might eventually by selling ads via its disappearing messages. Never before have there been that many startups with $1 billion valuations. The prior record was set last year when 28 companies achieved that milestone. In 2000, before it all collapsed, 10 startups had valuations over one billion. A parabolic rise of mega-valuation startups:



The overall IPO market has been whipped into a frenzy this year, with the most startups going public in the first half since 2000. But not the $1-billion-and-over kind; only 7 of them have gone public, including Alibaba that decided to sell its shares to US investors rather than to investors in China where it belongs. By contrast, in 2000, 38 companies with valuations of $1 billion or more were pushed out the IPO window. They have their reasons for not going public. Some of them, like Snapchat, don’t have revenues, so convincing even exuberant investors to pay top dollars would be a slog. While that may not be a problem for zero-revenue Biotech startups that proffer the hope for a blockbuster drug, it’s a big problem for social media companies. Other startups have revenues but are spilling prodigious amounts of red ink. That hasn’t kept them from going public, as the Twitter IPO has shown. Hope is a powerful motivator. There have to be other reasons why so many of them remain in private hands.

Turns out, it’s easier for VCs to multiply their paper profits if these startups do not go public. It’s easier because they control the valuations to a large extent. They don’t have to rely on the finicky stock market that has a nasty tendency to close the IPO window and crush these stocks just as the party is really hopping. Pre-IPO “valuations” are an artifice decided behind closed doors within a tight community where everyone benefits if the valuations are ratcheted up relentlessly. In the current climate of boundless liquidity and near-zero returns on conservative investments, there is plenty of liquidity sloshing around, waiting for the next opportunity to book a paper profit. That paper profit is nearly guaranteed as long as everyone believes that everyone believes that valuations will be higher in the near future. Look at Snapchat. It was driven from an already dizzying valuation of $2 billion last November to $10 billion earlier this year, with investors putting in an amazingly tiny amount of actual money. That kind of return would be hard to accomplish even in a frothing-at-the-mouth IPO market.

This game of multiplying valuations and paper profits in the shortest time is so appealing that the startup scene is drowning in liquidity from all over the world. But how will they get their money out? Who will bail VCs out of these sky-high valuations and give them real money?

MORE--JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN!

[xchrom]

6. OIL KEEPS CRASHING

http://www.businessinsider.com/oil-keeps-crashing-2014-10

This is just unbelievable what's happening in oil. Every day it's crashing.

Markets are drifting lower overall, contributing to the general "risk off", deflationary-winds vibe.

But man, oil!

It's close to breaking below $80.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/oil-keeps-crashing-2014-10#ixzz3GD1kYcgn

[xchrom]

8. Greece Is Getting Crushed Again

http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-down-2014-10

As if the world didn't have enough to be worried about (ISIS, Ebola, slowing China, Ukraine, Slowing Germany, Fed tightening, etc.) now look what's back: Greece.

Greece, which had been calm for awhile, is now being wracked by two separate, but related things.

One is the rise in the political popularity of left-winger Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the SYRIZA party, who if he ever got elected to power, would take a much more confrontational stance with the rest of the eurozone with regards to austerity.

Meanwhile, there's a rift growing between the current Greek government and the rest of the EU as Greece is keen to exit its bailout program. The EU is not so sure.

So now the Greek market is getting crushed. Yesterday it fell hard, and it's down another 2% today. And in general, ever since the early part of the summer it's been a major loser.

Here's the chart showing the nosedive.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-down-2014-10#ixzz3GD2R0D6H

[xchrom]

9. The 10 Most Important Things In The World Right Now

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-most-important-things-in-the-world-right-now-october-15-2014-2014-10

1. Fresh protests in Hong Kong coincide with a video taken by a local television crew that allegedly shows police officers in plainclothes kicking a protester while his hands are tied.

2. The World Health Organization warned Tuesday that there could be 10,000 new Ebola cases in West Africa each week if efforts to combat the virus are not increased within the next two months.

3. A New York Times investigation reveals that the US government kept the discovery of abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq secret and that many soldiers were exposed to the munitions between 2004 and 2010.

4. A US-led coalition has ramped up airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria over the last two days.

5. Oil prices continue to slide, posting their "biggest one-day drop in nearly two years Tuesday as a U.S.-led wave of crude has crashed into weak global demand," The Wall Street Journal said.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-most-important-things-in-the-world-right-now-october-15-2014-2014-10#ixzz3GD2yEf45

[Demeter]

13. Yes, Indeedy! No more chirping Charlie telling us not to panic in the WH

suddenly, ebola gets some respect from the corridors of power....whose denizens are all building their hidey holes full of food and water and guns and gasoline, to ride out the pandemic their stupidity has unleashed.

Is this a great country, or what?

[xchrom]

10. Europe Is Flirting With A Bizarre New Kind Of Economic Meltdown That Hasn't Been Seen Since The 1930

http://www.businessinsider.com/europe-and-deflation-2014-10

Here is how we got into this mess.

The European Central Bank and the Bank of England both target 2% inflation, like the US Fed. That rate keeps prices basically stable, and people are incentivized to be productive because they know in future their money will be worth a little bit less. But that "less" isn't too catastrophic in the short-term — it allows people to plan ahead, in other words, and plan for growth.

But they're nowhere near that level of healthy-but-minimal inflation. They're way below it, flirting with deflation.

Here are the latest deflation figures from Europe, for September.

Italy: -0.1%. Italy is in its second month of deflation
Spain: -0.3%. Spain has the most serious deflation of any large eurozone economy, it's in its third consecutive month
Germany: 0.8%. The fact that Germany has some of the highest inflation in the eurozone tells you a lot.
France: 0.4%. A five year low. Core inflation is actually now at zero, the lowest in modern history.
The UK: 1.2%. The UK isn't in the eurozone, but inflation is also at a five year low.
That's making economists extremely worried about deflation, when prices go completely into reverse. The International Monetary Fund's latest world economic outlook (WEO) has put the probability of deflation in the eurozone at 30%, up from 20% earlier this year.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/europe-and-deflation-2014-10#ixzz3GD3aihT7

[Demeter]

11. Edward Snowden: Supreme Court Will Strike Down NSA Spying Programs

YES, BUT...WHEN? IT WON'T BE UNTIL A COUPLE OF TROLLS DIE OFF THE COURT (OR GET IMPEACHED, BUT THAT WOULD MEAN A NUMBER OF CONGRESSIONAL TROLLS WOULD HAVE TO BE ELIMINATED, FIRST)

http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/edward-snowden-supreme-court-will-strike-down-nsa-spying-programs-20141011

Fugitive leaker Edward Snowden said Saturday he believes the Supreme Court will review the legality of the U.S. government's mass surveillance programs and ultimately find them unconstitutional.

"These programs themselves are unconstitutional," Snowden said during an interview with journalist Jane Mayer at the New Yorker festival in New York City. "I am confident that the Supreme Court will agree these programs went too far."

Snowden cited a ruling by a federal judge last year that found the National Security Agency's bulk collection of American phone records likely unconstitutional as one reason for his confidence. He also noted that two presidential advisory panels have raised concerns about the lack of judicial oversight of the agency's programs.

Snowden, appearing via a video stream, was responding to a question from Mayer, who asserted that the dragnet programs Snowden exposed last summer were legal. Most whistle-blowers, Mayer said, have come forward to shed light on illegal activity, making Snowden's situation different.

Snowden disagreed, saying he "would dispute that no crimes have been shown." He pointed to government officials who appear to have lied to Congress under oath, and said the programs have been routinely abused by employees.

"We have had serial abuse from NSA agents spying on exes, lovers … never prosecuted. That's a felony," he said.

Snowden also addressed recent moves by both Apple and Google to ensure tighter encryption protections on their phones, saying the measures only go so far. Spies and law enforcement officials can still obtain records from phone companies, and encryption does not protect data uploaded to cloud services, such as iCloud, he said.

"Even if encryption were this unbreakable, impenetrable shield, we live in the cloud era," Snowden said. "That data[in the cloud is not encrypted."

He blasted concerns raised by some officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director James Comey, that such safeguards could impede criminal or national security investigations. That complaint is "not only ridiculous, it's offensive," Snowden said.

MUCH MORE

[xchrom]

14. UK UNEMPLOYMENT HITS RECORD LOW

http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-unemployment-falls-to-6-lowest-since-2008-2014-10

Unemployment in the UK has fallen to 6%, the lowest rate since 2008, right before the economic crash, according to the Office for National Statistics. Unemployment is now literally at the same level it was when Lehman Bros. collapsed.

Don't get too excited though. After inflation is taken into account the real value of people's wages is actually falling — and that's not a good sign. More on that below.

The unemployment rate is a little bit lower than expected. Analysts were forecasting 6.1%.

The country added 46,000 jobs in the most recent period. Unemployment also dipped below the headline grabbing 2 million mark: "There were 1.97 million unemployed people," the ONS said. "538,000 fewer than a year earlier. This is the largest annual fall in unemployment on record."



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-unemployment-falls-to-6-lowest-since-2008-2014-10#ixzz3GD6vWIH0

[Demeter]

36. Do they "disappear" their long-term unemployed over there, too?

[xchrom]

15. European Markets Are Down

http://www.businessinsider.com/market-update-oct-15-2013-2014-10

France's CAC 40 is down 0.77%

Spain's IBEX is basically flat, down 0.52%

Italy's FTSE MIB is down 0.69%

Britain's FTSE 100 is down 1.11%

Germany's DAX is down 0.75%

In Asia, it was a good night for the Nikkei after several bad ones, closing up 0.92%. The Hang Seng also closed up 0.61%.

US futures are mixed and effectively flat: Dow futures are up 0.02%, and S&P futures are down 0.07%.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/market-update-oct-15-2013-2014-10#ixzz3GD7UDGUI

[Demeter]

16. 12 Charts That Show The Permanent Damage That Has Been Done To The U.S. Economy

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/12-charts-that-show-the-permanent-damage-that-has-been-done-to-the-u-s-economy

Most people that discuss the "economic collapse" focus on what is coming in the future. And without a doubt, we are on the verge of some incredibly hard times. But what often gets neglected is the immense permanent damage that has been done to the U.S. economy by the long-term economic collapse that we are already experiencing. In this article I am going to share with you 12 economic charts that show that we are in much, much worse shape than we were five or ten years ago. The long-term problems that are eating away at the foundations of our economy like cancer have not been fixed. In fact, many of them continue to get even worse year after year. But because unprecedented levels of government debt and reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve have bought us a very short window of relative stability, most Americans don't seem too concerned about our long-term problems. They seem to have faith that our "leaders" will be able to find a way to muddle through whatever challenges are ahead. Hopefully this article will be a wake up call. The last major wave of the economic collapse did a colossal amount of damage to our economic foundations, and now the next major wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.

#1 Employment

The mainstream media is constantly telling us about the "employment recovery" that is happening in the United States, but the truth is that it is just an illusion. As the chart below demonstrates, just prior to the last recession about 63 percent of all working age Americans had a job. During the last wave of the economic collapse, that number dropped to below 59 percent and stayed there for a very long time. In the past few months we have finally seen the employment-population ratio tick back up to 59 percent, but we are still far, far below where we used to be. To call the tiny little bump at the end of this chart a "recovery" is really an insult to our intelligence...

OUR INTELLIGENCE IS INSULTED ON AN HOURLY BASIS, BUT FINALLY, THE WORLD IS NOTICING



#2 The Labor Force Participation Rate

The percentage of Americans that are either employed or currently looking for a job started to fall during the last recession and it has not stopped falling since then. The labor force participation rate has now fallen to a 36 year low, and this is a sign of a very, very sick economy...



#3 The Inactivity Rate For Men In Their Prime Years

Some blame the decline in the labor force participation rate on the aging of our population. But it isn't just elderly people that are dropping out of the labor force. In fact, the inactivity rate for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) continues to rise and is now at the highest level that has ever been recorded...



#4 Manufacturing Employees

Once upon a time in America, anyone that was reliable and willing to work hard could easily find a manufacturing job somewhere. But we have stood by and allowed millions upon millions of good paying manufacturing jobs to be shipped out of the country, and now many of our formerly great manufacturing cities have been transformed into ghost towns. Over the past few years, there has been a slight "recovery", but we are still well below where we were at just previous to the last recession...



#5 Our Current Account Balance

As a nation, we buy far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. In other words, we perpetually consume far more wealth than we produce. This is a recipe for national economic suicide. Our current account balance soared to obscene levels just prior to the last recession, and now we have almost gotten back to those levels...



#6 Existing Home Sales

Our economy has never fully recovered from the housing crash of 2007-2008. As you can see from the chart below, the number of existing home sales is still far below the level that we hit back in 2006. At this point we are just getting back to the level we were at in 2000, but our population today is far larger than it was back then...



#7 New Home Sales

Things are even more dramatic when you look at new home sales. This is an industry that have been absolutely emasculated. The number of new home sales in the United States is just a little more than half of what it was back in 2000, and it isn't even worth comparing to what we experienced during the peak of 2006.



#8 The Monetary Base

In a desperate attempt to get the economy going again, the Federal Reserve has been wildly printing money. It has been so reckless that it is hard to put it into words. When I look at this chart, the phrase "Weimar Republic" comes to mind...



#9 Food Inflation

Thankfully, much of the money that the Federal Reserve has been injecting into the system has not made it into the real economy. But enough of it has gotten into the system to force food prices significantly higher. For example, my wife went to the store today and paid just a shade under 10 bucks for just four pieces of chicken. And as you can see from the chart below, food prices have been steadily going up in America for a very long time...



#10 The Velocity Of Money

One of the reasons why we have not seen even more inflation is because the velocity of money is extraordinarily low. In general, when an economy is healthy money tends to flow through the system rapidly. People are buying and selling and money changes hands frequently. But when an economy is sick, money tends to stagnate. And that is exactly what is happening in the United States right now. In fact, at this point the velocity of the M2 money stock has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded...



#11 The National Debt

As our economic fundamentals have deteriorated, our politicians have attempted to prop up our standard of living by borrowing from the future. The U.S. national debt is on pace to approximately double during the Obama years, and it increased by more than a trillion dollars in fiscal year 2014 alone. Despite assurances that "the deficit is under control", the federal government borrows about a trillion dollars a year to fund new spending in addition to borrowing about 7 trillion dollars to pay off old debt that is coming due. What we are doing to future generations of Americans is absolutely criminal, and it is just a matter of time before this Ponzi scheme totally collapses...



#12 Total Debt

Of course it is not just the federal government that is gorging on debt. When you add up all forms of debt in our society (government, business, consumer, etc.) it comes to a grand total of more than 57 trillion dollars. This total has more than doubled since the year 2000...



If you know anyone that believes that we are in good economic shape, just show them these charts....

AND ALL THESE CHARTS ARE COURTESY OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE! SO THEY CAN'T POSSIBLY CLAIM IGNORANCE

[xchrom]

17. EUROPEAN STOCKS WALLOW, ASIA GAINS ON OIL SLUMP

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-15-05-06-38

KEEPING SCORE: Amid the prospect Europe will relapse into recession, France's CAC 40 sank 0.8 percent to 4,057.65 and Germany's DAX lost 0.6 percent to 8,767.19. Britain's FTSE 100 swooned 1.2 percent to 6,314.50. Futures augured losses on Wall Street. Dow futures fell 0.2 percent and S&P 500 futures shed 0.3 percent.

ENERGY SLUMP: The price of oil suffered its biggest drop in nearly two years after the International Energy Agency reduced its forecast for demand for this year and 2015. The benchmark U.S. crude futures contract fell $3.90 to close Tuesday at $81.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was the biggest drop since November of 2012, and it's the lowest closing price since June of 2012. The contract was down $1.14 at $80.72 on Wednesday.

ASIA UPSIDE: Countries such as Japan, China, India, Indonesia and South Korea are major importers of oil and other fuels. They could benefit in multiple ways from a sustained drop in crude prices from improved trade balances to reduced subsidy bills. Lower overall energy prices could also flow through to higher disposable income for consumers.

THE QUOTE: "Lower energy prices are having a positive effect on the perception of improved real wages, i.e., inflation-adjusted wages, while many emerging markets are seeing increasing `real' bond yields, which in turn could attract capital," said Chris Weston, chief market strategist at IG in Melbourne, Australia. "In the U.S., gasoline has fallen of late and should positively impact household wealth, which in turn should support future retail sales, promoting upside in GDP."

ASIA'S DAY: Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average closed up 0.9 percent at 15,073.52 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.4 percent to 23,140.05. China's Shanghai Composite rose 0.6 percent to 2,373.67 Seoul's Kospi fell 0.2 percent to 1,925.91 after the central bank cut its growth forecasts for this year and next. Markets in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand were higher.

[xchrom]

18. AILING GLOBAL ECONOMY COULD LEAD FED TO DELAY HIKE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FED_GLOBAL_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-14-17-45-53

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Just as the U.S. job market has finally strengthened, the Federal Reserve now confronts a new worry: A sputtering global economy that's spooked investors across the world.

The economic slump could spill into the United States, potentially weakening job growth and keeping inflation well below the Fed's target rate. Such fear has led some analysts to suggest that the Fed might wait until deep into next year to start raising interest rates - and then raise them more gradually than expected.

"I'm beginning to think that the Fed might delay (a rate increase)," said Bob Baur, chief economist at Principal Global Advisors, an asset management firm. "If we don't see a better situation in Europe and better things out of Japan and stability in China, they might hang on just a little bit longer."

Yet so far, the prospect of continued lower rates - which make loans cheaper and can fuel stock gains - is being outweighed by investors' mounting fears of weakness from Asia to Europe to Latin America. After shedding 223 points Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average is now more than 5 percent below its September peak. Americans with stocks in their retirement accounts have taken a beating - at least for now.

[xchrom]

19. CITIGROUP TO EXIT RETAIL BANKING IN 11 MARKETS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CITIGROUP_RESTRUCTURING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-14-15-00-49

NEW YORK (AP) -- Citigroup customers across Central America and parts of Eastern Europe will be looking for a new place to bank next year.

Citigroup said Tuesday that it will bow out of the retail banking business in 11 markets, part of its ongoing effort since the financial crisis to restructure and slim down. The news came as the bank announced third-quarter earnings.

Citi said the impact would primarily be smaller countries in Latin America: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru. It will also exit consumer banking in Egypt, Japan, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Guam.

The bank is exiting those areas to focus on market share and growth potential in places where it believes it can be competitive, Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said in a statement. It will still have institutional banking operations in these areas.

[Demeter]

37. Getting out while the getting is good

right ahead of the pitchforks and torches...

[xchrom]

20. MACY'S TO OPEN EVEN EARLIER ON THANKSGIVING

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MACYS_THANKSGIVING_HOURS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-14-17-21-00

NEW YORK (AP) -- Macy's Inc. is opening its stores at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, two hours earlier than last year, to lure holiday shoppers.

The Cincinnati-based department store chain opened on Thanksgiving for the first time last year. In 2012, it opened at midnight after the holiday.

More retailers have been opening on Thanksgiving night to win over holiday shoppers. Target and Wal-Mart began offering holiday discounts on Thanksgiving night two years ago instead of waiting for the day after, which is known as Black Friday. The holiday season can account for up to 40 percent of a retailer's annual sales.

The company says workers can receive higher pay for working on Thanksgiving and take off Black Friday.

Macy's is the first major retailer to announce its Thanksgiving hours this year.

[Demeter]

21. And now, a brief respite from reality...

[DemReadingDU]

29. What does Mr. Rogers have in his fingers

at appx 35-36 seconds, he is holding something in his right hand between his thumb and finger. I could never figure out what it is.

[Tansy_Gold]

31. Looks like it might be a house key n/t

[Demeter]

35. Microphone, perhaps?

[xchrom]

22. TRIAL BEGINS FOR EX-UBS BANKER IN TAX EVASION CASE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UBS_SECRETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-14-17-35-48

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- Trial began Tuesday for a former top executive at Swiss banking giant UBS AG on charges of conspiring with other bankers and thousands of wealthy Americans to conceal $20 billion in assets from the IRS.

Raoul Weil, who once ran the global wealth management operations for UBS, faces up to five years in prison if convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. Prosecutors say he oversaw a lucrative, illegal business in the U.S. that recruited the wealthy to hide money behind opaque Swiss bank secrecy laws and using phony companies, foundations and other entities.

"You had to have a plan, and it was a plan to defraud the IRS. And the defendant was in on that plan," said Mark Daly, a Justice Department tax division trial attorney, in an opening statement. "Whether you're at the bottom or the top, you're still in on that conspiracy."

Daly described elaborate efforts by UBS bankers to conceal who they worked for and what they were doing on trips to the U.S., such as using laptop computers with hidden hard drives that contained secret client information and frequently switching hotels. The bankers lured rich clients at such South Florida events as the Art Basel sales and the annual Key Biscayne tennis tournament, he said.

[xchrom]

23. LONG-TERM JOBLESS PROJECTS GET $170M IN GRANTS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_UNEMPLOYED_GRANTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-15-00-01-25

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is announcing $170 million in grants divided among 23 work projects across the country that aim to reduce the number of long-term unemployed Americans.

Administration officials said that while the number of workers who are jobless for more than 26 weeks has declined, it remains at a historic high and is a lingering blemish in the economic recovery. The concern is that the longer someone is out of a job, the harder it gets to find a new one.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez and National Economic Council director Jeff Zients announced the grant awards late Tuesday. The two officials and Vice President Joe Biden will hold a round-table meeting with top corporate CEOS on Wednesday at the White House to discuss their efforts to meet commitments earlier this year to hire more long-term unemployed workers.

CEOs from companies like Apple, Walmart, Visa and Boeing were among more than 300 companies who agreed in January to step up efforts to target and prepare those workers for openings in their businesses.

[Demeter]

39. Give me a Break!

Take that money, divide it up into $50K chunks, hold a lottery, and you'll have 3400 families or roughly 10,000 people saved from total deprivation. Repeat yearly or maybe monthly...After all, the OFFICIAL U6 rate is 12%, down from 16% peak. The Shadowstats rate is

?hl=ad&t=1412342247


Hand out money by helicopter drops, until the demand the spending generates has brought employment back to healthy levels.

I haven't time to figure out what the base employment number (100%) is, but you can see it's not a pretty picture.

[xchrom]

24. Crumbling U.S. Fix Seen With Global Trillions of Dollars

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-15/crumbling-u-s-fix-seen-with-global-trillions-of-dollars.html


The concrete piers of two new bridges are rising out of the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky, and southern Indiana, as crews blast limestone and move earth to build the roads and tunnels that will soon connect the twin spans to nearby interstate highways.

For more than two decades, the project languished. Business and political leaders on both sides of the river couldn’t agree on how to relieve snarled traffic, improve safety and spur development that was bypassing the region for Indianapolis and Nashville.

The Ohio River Bridges project is an American anomaly that has the potential to become a model while lack of money and political will are allowing many of the nation’s roads and bridges to crumble. Along the shores of the Ohio, Democrat-led Kentucky and Republican-run Indiana have forged a partnership to rebuild U.S. infrastructure at a time of partisan gridlock and untapped trillions in private dollars.

“It’s an enduring irony that the U.S., allegedly the home of innovation, is absolutely block-headed and backwards in this one respect,” former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, now the president of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, said in an interview. “America needs the upgrade and modernization of our infrastructure, and I don’t think you’ll get there if you keep excluding, or at least discouraging, private capital.”

[Demeter]

41. My trip to Boston was revealing

The bridges there are returning to dust! Except in Boston, where the graft brought in some Big Money and wasted it on the Big Dig.

In Detroit, there's been extensive bridge rebuilding...lots of it by "charity" from the Silverdome owner and other big business honchos, who couldn't see a profit if nobody went anywhere in the Motor City (now there's irony for you).

[DemReadingDU]

43. More on the Ohio Brent Spence bridge here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1116&pid=59436

[xchrom]

25. EU Toughens Banker-Bonus Cap as EBA Restricts Allowances

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-15/eu-toughens-banker-bonus-cap-as-eba-restricts-allowances.html

The European Union’s top banking regulator closed a loophole in rules on bonuses, banning the use of role-based allowances to boost executive pay.

The European Banking Authority said 39 banks in EU countries are using “role-based” or “market-value” allowances, which they classify as fixed pay. “In most cases,” these discretionary payments to staff on top of their base salary “are not fixed, are not permanent,” violating the EU’s bonus rules, the EBA said in a report published today.

EU lawmakers last year adopted the world’s toughest bonus rules in a bid to tackle what they called a gambling culture blamed for triggering the 2008 financial crisis. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) have been among European banks responding by giving employees cash allowances depending on seniority, known as role-based pay, to evade the restriction on bonuses of more than twice fixed pay.

“Institutions which use such discretionary role-based allowances will be expected to treat them as variable remuneration and change their remuneration policies so that they comply,” the London-based EBA said. The caps will first apply to compensations based on bankers’ performance in 2014.

[xchrom]

26. Your Xmas List Just Got Cheaper Amid China Factory Slump

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-15/china-factory-gate-price-drop-ties-asian-crisis-record.html

Christmas shoppers rejoice!

China’s factory-gate prices fell in September from a year earlier for a record-tying 31st month. Input-cost moves influence China’s export prices, meaning consumers from New York to Berlin pay less for toys, tools and T-shirts.

For the global economic outlook, the 1.8 percent drop in China’s producer-price index in September is more worrying, signaling deepening slack in capacity.

“If Chinese factories are paying less for commodity imports, they will charge less overseas and can therefore export deflation,” said Shane Oliver, a Sydney-based global strategist at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., which oversees about $131 billion. “It’s all part of the world running below full capacity, resulting in the risk of deflation.”

The International Monetary Fund last week cut its outlook for global growth in 2015 and said Europe’s policy makers may need to do more to stave off declining prices. For China, the PPI decline and the slowest consumer inflation since January 2010 add to signs of a loss in growth momentum.

[xchrom]

27. ‘The Roman Guide to Slave Management’ Is Brilliant: Hoelterhoff

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-15/-the-roman-guide-to-slave-management-is-brilliant-hoelterhoff.html



These days, PAs and nannies do what they can, but in the golden days of Rome, life required slaves.

Lots of them.

How and where to buy the best gets “The Roman Guide to Slave Management: A Treatise by Marcus Sidonius Falx” off to a captivating start.

Chapter headings like “When Only Torture Will Do” keep our interest throughout.

Falx credits his father, a minor nobleman, for helping him understand the many ways slaves are beneficial to non-slaves. “Showing off” is top of the list. Slaves confer status and the more you have, the better you look.

[Demeter]

38. Any relation to Marcus Didius Falco?

Marcus Didius Falco is the fictional central character and narrator in a series of historical mystery novels by Lindsey Davis. Using the concepts of modern detective stories (with Falco as the private investigator, roughly translated into the classical world as a "private informer&quot , the novels portray the world of the Roman Empire under Vespasian. The tone is arch and satirical, but the historical setting is largely accurate.

Falco was born on 20 or 21 March 41 AD[1] to Marcus Didius Favonius and Junilla Tacita. His father is a somewhat shady auctioneer, and his family is of Plebeian rank, but Falco himself eventually achieves Equestrian rank.

While Falco is still young, his father leaves his mother and the family home to live with another woman, changing his agnomen (a form of nickname) from Favonius to "Geminus". When his brother is killed, Falco is effectively head of the family and in the position of responsibility his father has abdicated.

Falco joins the Roman Army and serves in the Second Augusta legion in Britain during the Boudiccan Revolt. Some time after that he manages to get himself "invalided out" with a relatively minor wound in AD60. His elder brother Festus served in the legio XV Apollinaris and was posthumously awarded the mural crown after he was killed in 68 AD on active service during the First Jewish-Roman War in Judaea.

Falco and his father are forced to an uneasy accommodation in the course of Poseidon's Gold and see one another on occasions thereafter, but Falco's sympathies remain with his mother.

Falco met his wife, Helena Justina, the divorced and patrician daughter of a senator, while on an investigation in Britannia (The Silver Pigs), but their very different circumstances made their relationship difficult. After a series of successful missions for the emperor, Falco has risen to a certain level of respectability – he has achieved equestrian rank (One Virgin Too Many) – and he and Helena now live together with their two daughters, in an arrangement acceptable to his in-laws. In Nemesis, it is revealed that Helena Justina has been pregnant once again. Tragically the baby, Marcus Didius Justinianus, dies shortly after birth on the day that Geminus, Falco's father, also dies. At his father's wake Falco discovers that he is to become a brother yet again when Thalia, an old friend he met in Venus in Copper, Last Act in Palmyra and Alexandria, reveals that she is expecting a child – she claims by Geminus.

Falco and Helena adopted Flavia Albia, a British child, whom they rescued in London in The Jupiter Myth. At the age of 28, in AD 89, she is a widowed informer and the central character of Davis's book The Ides of April, with the series title "Falco: The New Generation".

Several novels suggest that Falco survived quite a few years after the cliffhanger ending of his last novel, Nemesis. in 77 AD. The first Flavia Albia novel, The Ides of April, is set in 89 AD. While Falco does not actually appear as a character, he is alluded to at several points. Ode to a Banker suggests that Falco managed to survive as late as 94 AD (narrating events in 74 AD but apparently recounted twenty years later). In Last Act in Palmyra (p. 367), set in 72 AD, Falco is talking to the Roman garrison commander in Palmyra and asks this question:

[Fuddnik]

40. I think he was the grandfather of Pontius Pilate's centurion friend

In the "Life of Brian".

Biggus Dickus.

[xchrom]

28. German States Join Ranks Pressing Merkel to Spur Spending

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-15/german-states-join-ranks-pressing-merkel-to-spur-spending.html

Germany’s state governments stepped up calls for infrastructure spending, adding another source of pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel to boost investment as economic growth falters.

Much like Merkel’s national government, the states are caught between a deteriorating growth outlook and the balanced-budget drive that Germany started in response to the euro area’s debt crisis. It’s making the 16 regions set aside political differences to challenge the status quo, from rich Bavaria to rural Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the east, home to Merkel’s electoral district.

A day after the German government lowered its growth outlook, proposals to spend more on projects such as highways in Europe’s biggest economy are on the table at a retreat of state premiers starting today that Merkel plans to attend.

“To unleash growth impulses, additional investment is needed in infrastructure and other future-oriented sectors,” according to a summary of the states’ negotiating position in fiscal talks with the federal government that was prepared for the meeting in Potsdam and obtained by Bloomberg News. The states want a “lasting” funding boost, saying a lack of spending is holding back economic development nationwide.

[Hotler]

30. Tin foil hat time again.

Now that Ebola is loose in the USA we will finally be able to put the FEMA camps that were built during G.W. Bush's term to good use.

[Tansy_Gold]

32. The question is who will be put into them. n/t

[Fuddnik]

34. One of the few "A" lists I'm probably on.

[kickysnana]

44. There is a special catagory for DU SMW folks.

[Hotler]

48. We can keep each other company. n/t

[Fuddnik]

33. Dow opens with a thud.....again.

Down 125 pts around 10.00am.

[Demeter]

42. It's been nice knowing you all

[kickysnana]

45. My nightmare home in dream location is down to 39k this week.

[bread_and_roses]

46. What's up? 1%ers askeered of Ebola?

Can't they retreat to their guarded, gated mansions, like the aristos during the Black Plague?

meant to add this but clicked too soon

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/15/profit-healthcare-under-fire-ebola-spreads-second-us-healthcare-worker

A growing number of health experts are drawing a line between this gross unpreparedness and the United States' for-profit healthcare system, under which there is minimal oversight and no uniformity between healthcare providers.

[DemReadingDU]

47. 132 pasengers on Frontier flight need to be notified of possible ebola contamination

Uh oh

10/15/14
CDC and Frontier Airlines Announce Passenger Notification Underway

On the morning of Oct. 14, the second healthcare worker reported to the hospital with a low-grade fever and was isolated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms that the second healthcare worker who tested positive last night for Ebola traveled by air Oct. 13, the day before she reported symptoms.

Because of the proximity in time between the evening flight and first report of illness the following morning, CDC is reaching out to passengers who flew on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth Oct. 13.

CDC is asking all 132 passengers on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth on October 13 (the flight route was Cleveland to Dallas Fort Worth and landed at 8:16 p.m. CT) to call 1 800-CDC INFO (1 800 232-4636). After 1 p.m. ET, public health professionals will begin interviewing passengers about the flight, answering their questions, and arranging follow up. Individuals who are determined to be at any potential risk will be actively monitored.

The healthcare worker exhibited no signs or symptoms of illness while on flight 1143, according to the crew. Frontier is working closely with CDC to identify and notify passengers who may have traveled on flight 1143 on Oct. 13. Passengers who may have traveled on flight 1143 should contact CDC at 1 800-CDC INFO (1 800 232-4636).

more...
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/s1015-airline-notification.html

[Demeter]

52. There goes Cleveland

[Fuddnik]

53. Figures

The Browns finally gave the Steelers a good, old-fashioned ghetto stomping, and now they're all gonna die!

[Lns.Lns]

51. Perhaps just a forced October surprise

There is nothing that hasn't been known for weeks now... but all of a sudden huge drops right before the election. In 2010 it was if you don't vote Republican there will never be any jobs again. The economy (not for all which is a fine line the President has to walk) is doing much better. Our country is basically the bright spot in the world now. Pretty decent job growth, housing rebounding, consumer spending picking up... "the world is ending" is ending. The Fed is officially ending QE this month with an eye to raising rates sometime next year. So what other "real" explanation is there? Iran, Russia calming, ISIL is long term and just as important in diplomatic terms as it is in military terms... the region needs to be addressed by the countries there with strategic support only from us and I haven't heard anything yet (no matter how much talk you hear) that changes that picture. So what, Ebola? Seriously.

[Hotler]

49. Did you folks see this over in Jones Town (GD)?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025669468#post6

[Fuddnik]

50. I saw the original pics.

Hope he had a peaceful ending.

Good dog.

[Tansy_Gold]

54. I won't click, I don't want to know the details

One of my dogs is at the vet's right now, another rattlesnake bite. prognosis good, but with no guarantees. bill is obscene.

[Hotler]

55. You don't have to look, but they are happy pictures and

it is a great tribute to a good dog. Hope your dog gets better. I hope all your critters are doing well.

[Tansy_Gold]

56. Thanks, hotler

He's doing much better this morning. He doesn't look very pretty at the moment due to massive swelling, but that will subside in a few days, and he's gonna be okay.