STOCK MARKET WATCH - Wednesday, 11 February 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, 11 February 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 10 February 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 10 February 2015
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Dow Jones 17,868.76 +139.55 (0.79%)
S&P 500 2,068.59 +21.85 (1.07%)
Nasdaq 4,787.65 +61.63 (1.30%)


[font color=black]10 Year 2.00% 0.00 (0.00%)
30 Year 2.58% 0.00 (0.00%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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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
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
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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]

[Demeter]

1. Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back

http://www.theonion.com/articles/health-experts-recommend-standing-up-at-desk-leavi,37957/



In an effort to help working individuals improve their fitness and well-being, experts at the Mayo Clinic issued a new set of health guidelines Thursday recommending that Americans stand up at their desk, leave their office, and never return.

“Many Americans spend a minimum of eight hours per day sitting in an office, but we observed significant physical and mental health benefits in subjects after just one instance of standing up, walking out the door, and never coming back to their place of work again,” said researcher Claudine Sparks, who explained that those who implemented the practice in their lives reported an improvement in mood and reduced stress that lasted for the remainder of the day, and which appeared to persist even into subsequent weeks.

“We encourage Americans to experiment with stretching their legs by strolling across their office and leaving all their responsibilities behind forever just one time to see how much better they feel. People tend to become more productive, motivated, and happy almost immediately. We found that you can also really get the blood flowing by pairing this activity with hurling your staff ID across the parking lot.”

Sparks added that Americans could maximize positive effects by using their lunch break to walk until nothing looks familiar anymore and your old life is a distant memory.

[Demeter]

2. 6 charts that show renewable energy is getting cheaper By David Roberts

http://grist.org/climate-energy/renewable-energy-is-getting-cheaper-and-cheaper-in-6-charts/


Things are changing very quickly in the world of renewable energy. The conventional wisdom — that renewables are expensive, that they depend on subsidies, that it’s too costly to integrate them into the grid — is rapidly being rendered anachronistic, though no one seems to have told U.S. policymakers and pundits. So let’s check in on the real cost of renewables. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental research organization, recently released its latest report, “Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2014,” and it’s chock full of current info.The news is mostly good...

But first, a quick note. To understand these charts you need to understand the “levelized cost of energy.” LCOE is often used as a kind of summary measure of the overall competitiveness of a particular technology or power plant. It includes capital and fuel costs, operating and maintenance costs, and financing costs, as well as the assumed rate of utilization. It does not include externalized costs, either positive (subsidies) or negative (health or environmental damages). It’s pure apples to apples. IRENA maintains a comprehensive database of LCOE costs for power projects around the world and uses those as its basis of comparison. Here’s the LCOE for different kinds of utility-scale renewable energy projects, in 2010 and 2014:



The tan horizontal band across the chart is the range of LCOEs for fossil-fueled power. As you can see, biomass for power, geothermal, hydro, and onshore wind are now squarely in that range, or even lower. And solar PV, though it ranges widely in costs, is, on average, declining quickly — increasingly it’s also in the fossil-fuel range. (It should be noted that all of these LCOE estimates exclude financial supports. This is straight-up, unsubsidized costs.) Onshore wind, in fact, is now the most competitive form of electricity generation, not just among renewables, but period. Offshore wind and concentrated solar power (CSP) are still taking baby steps. As of 2014, their total global installed capacity is still comparatively tiny — 5 GW and 8 GW, respectively — but their costs are falling and should continue falling as the industries mature. And of course the rapidly falling cost of solar PV is the clean-energy story to beat all clean-energy stories!

Here’s the same LCOE-based comparison, with a twist; in this next chart, IRENA added two key “external” costs. First it added the costs of integrating variable renewable energy into the grid (costs like spinning reserves, improving the grid, etc.), which turn out to be fairly modest, even modeled at 40 percent penetration. And it added the costs of fossil fuel’s health and environmental impacts, using a social cost of carbon ranging from $20 to $80 (which is too low). The net effect of these changes is to make renewables considerably more competitive, mainly by raising the cost of fossil fuel power, as this before-and-after chart shows:








Finally, here’s what IRENA projects will happen to renewable energy costs between now and 2025:

[Demeter]

3. Why Geoengineering is “Untested and Untestable” by Naomi Klein

http://thischangeseverything.org/why-geoengineering-is-untested-and-untestable/

Nature has a new opinion piece up that signals a bold new push for field experiments into techno-hacking the climate system, usually known as “geoengineering.” Right now there are all kinds of geoengineering experiments going on in labs and with computer modeling but “outdoor tests” are still frowned upon.

The authors of the piece—fixtures on the “geo-clique” conference circuit—boldly call for these tests to go ahead even in the absence of any regulatory system governing them. They explicitly state that “governance and experimentation must co-evolve”—which is a high-minded way of saying: roll the dice and see what happens.

Amazingly, the article completely fails to mention the most significant problem with small-scale field experiments: the fact that they are structurally incapable of answering the most significant ethical and humanitarian questions raised by these global-scale technological interventions, which relate to how geoengineering in one part of the world will impact the climate on the other side of the planet. Those questions can only be answered through planetary scale deployment.

Here’s a short excerpt from my book on why geoengineering is “untestable.” For those interested in more, see all of Chapter 8: “Dimming the Sun: The Solution to Pollution is… Pollution?” in This Changes Everything.

Like Climate Change, Volcanoes Do Discriminate

Boosters of Solar Radiation Management tend to speak obliquely about the “distributional consequences” of injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and of the “spatial heterogeneity” of the impacts. Petra Tschakert, a geographer at Penn State University, calls this jargon “a beautiful way of saying that some countries are going to get screwed.” But which countries? And screwed precisely how?

Having reliable answers to those key questions would seem like a pre- requisite for considering deployment of such a world-altering technology. But it’s not at all clear that obtaining those answers is even possible. [David] Keith and [Nathan] Myhrvold can test whether a hose or an airplane is a better way to get sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Others can spray saltwater from boats or towers and see if it brightens clouds. But you’d have to deploy these methods on a scale large enough to impact the global climate system to be certain about how, for instance, spraying sulfur in the Arctic or the tropics will impact rainfall in the Sahara or southern India. But that wouldn’t be a test of geoengineering; it would actually be conducting geoengineering.

Nor could the necessary answers be found from a brief geoengineering stint—pumping sulfur for, say, one year. Because of the huge variations in global weather patterns from one year to the next (some monsoon seasons are naturally weaker than others, for instance), as well as the havoc already being wreaked by global warming, it would be impossible to connect a particular storm or drought to an act of geoengineering. Sulfur injections would need to be maintained long enough for a clear pattern to be isolated from both natural fluctuations and the growing impacts of greenhouse gases. That likely means keeping the project running for a decade or more.

As Martin Bunzl, a Rutgers philosopher and climate change expert, points out, these facts alone present an enormous, perhaps insurmountable ethical problem for geoengineering. In medicine, he writes, “You can test a vaccine on one person, putting that person at risk, without putting everyone else at risk.” But with geoengineering, “You can’t build a scale model of the atmosphere or tent off part of the atmosphere. As such you are stuck going directly from a model to full scale planetary-wide implementation.” In short, you could not conduct meaningful tests of these technologies without enlisting billions of people as guinea pigs—for years. Which is why science historian James Fleming calls geoengineering schemes “untested and untestable, and dangerous beyond belief.”

[Demeter]

4. IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME!

My, how things have changed in Greece


This is a picture of the Greek Parliament in July, 2011.


And this is a picture of the Greek Parliament in 2012.


This is a picture of the Greek parliament last month, right before the last election.


And this is a picture of the Greek parliament shortly after the election.


And finally, these are pictures of the Greek Parliament last night.




I especially like the protest sign.

No wonder the banks (Let's stop blaming Germany, OK. It's the BANKS) are playing hard-ball with Greece.

Just imagine what would happen if the idea of democracy being more important than finance becomes popular. Where would it end?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/05/1362572/-My-how-things-have-changed-in-Greece

[Demeter]

5. Greece – a Varoufakis Conversion

http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/greece__a_varoufakis_conversion

Greece's new Syriza government has two major economic challenges to address: a Resolution of Greece's unsustainable debt burden followed by a Transition to a long term sustainable economy. Conventional resolution of sovereign debt is a debt for debt swap: replacing existing debt with new debt which requires a smaller percentage of Greece's national income and resources to service. So it is that Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has already tabled a proposal for two new types of debt, one linked to GDP for the IMF and holders of Greek sovereign debt, and the other of perpetual debt, which would replace Greek debt held by the ECB and which would be repaid as and when Greece is in a position to do so. During 2014 the average duration of Greek liabilities was about 16 years, and the interest payments by Greece required (net) some 2.6% of GDP to service. This proposal is for a conversion of the existing dated 'debt' liabilities into a modern form of the undated credit instruments ('stock') which pre-date modern banking by hundreds, if not thousands of years.

The Proposal

Firstly, Greece would dedicate an agreed proportion of tax income to long term funding. Let us say 5% of Greek tax income and an initial allocation of €12bn. Greece then issues stock (undated credit instruments) at a discount, each of which is returnable in payment for €1.00 of Greece's taxes. This new issuance would then be allocated between the different creditors in a way reflecting the repayment date and interest rate of Greek liabilities. From then on Greece would use 5% of its tax income to buy back this stock for cancellation, and the faster the growth of Greek GDP and taxation, the faster would be the rate of return of the stock.

Example

Greece has existing aggregate public liabilities of €320 billion (rounded up to the nearest €10bn). Let us say that Greece exchanges 480 billion prepay tax credits of €1.00 value each for the outstanding €320 billion debt. The holders of these instruments will make an aggregate profit of €160 billion or 50% when these instruments are returned by being bought back at €1.00 par value. The rate of return per annum then depends upon how many years it takes for Greece to buy back these instruments. At a constant GDP/rate of tax collection this will take 40 years (€480bn divided by initial tax allocation of €12bn). So the rate of return will be 50% profit divided by 40 years or 1.25% per annum. If tax collections fall (a separate subject to be addressed under the Transition heading) the rate of return will be less (slower), while if tax collections rise, whether from increased GDP or more effective tax collection or both, then the rate of return will be higher (faster).

“This Innovation Will Never Work”

Well, actually UK sovereigns funded their expenditure in precisely this way for centuries, and the evidence of that remains in the English language to this day. The phrase 'tax return' refers to the annual accounting event at which the tax credit instrument (tax prepaid at a discount) was returned to the Exchequer for accounting and cancellation. The phrase 'rate of return' was literally the rate over time at which an undated credit instrument could be returned to the issuer for cancellation against value supplied by the issuer. Finally, the 'stock' was the name given to that half of a split wooden tally stick accounting record which was given to the creditor, while the issuer retained the 'counter-stock'. This ancient asset class of undated stock – credit instruments – in fact pre-dates the conflicting forms of financial instrument which came later: common stock (shares in a Joint Stock Company) and loan stock (fixed interest 'debt').

A “Varoufakis Conversion”

The consolidation of existing liabilities is not a new concept either, and the most relevant example (albeit the UK was anything but in economic distress at the time) is the way that UK Chancellor George Goschen consolidated all existing annuities (these liabilities were not misrepresented as debt in those days) into a single class in 1888. So my proposal to Yanis Varoufakis is to take a leaf out of Goschen's book; create a new class of consolidated annuities for Greece; and carry out a debt/equity swap with Greece's creditors.

Maybe he'll start a fashion?

[Demeter]

6. YADA, YADA, YADA FROM ECB, ET AL.

Dijsselbloem gives Greece a Feb 16 deadline

Eurogroup Chairman Dijsselbloem says Greece must apply for a bailout extension on Feb 16 at the latest in order to keep its eurozone financial backing.

Eurozone ministers are meeting Wednesday.

http://www.forexlive.com/!/dijsselbloem-gives-greece-a-feb-16-deadline-20150206

Greece isolated in Euro zone, ministers to meet Feb. 11 By Jan Strupczewski

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/02/07/uk-eurogroup-greece-meeting-idUKKBN0LA0Y020150207

Greece's new government was isolated at its first meeting with senior euro zone officials but will have a chance to put forward its plans at a special meeting of finance ministers of the currency bloc next week, EU officials said on Friday.

Eurogroup finance ministers will discuss how to proceed with financial support for Athens at a special session next Wednesday in preparation for talks among European Union leaders on the issue the following day.

The meeting, to start at 4:30 p.m. in Brussels, will be a chance for the leftist-led government elected on Jan. 25 to explain how it wants to reform its economy and consolidate public finances while respecting commitments that previous Greek governments accepted.

Euro zone officials made no progress at a preparatory meeting on Thursday evening because the positions of Athens and other euro zone countries were so far apart.

"It was Greece against all others, basically one versus 18," one official said, describing the discussions....

A kick in the teeth from the ECB

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite3_1_06/02/2015_546972

On Wednesday the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds and government-guaranteed debt as collateral. Although Greece would still be eligible for other, emergency lending from the Central Bank, the immediate effect of the announcement was to raise Greek borrowing costs and squeeze its banks, and to increase financial market instability within Greece.

We should be clear about what this means. The ECB’s move was completely unnecessary, and it was done some weeks before any decision had to be made. It looks very much like a deliberate attempt to undermine the new government. They are trying to force the government to abandon its promises to the Greek electorate, and to follow the IMF program that its predecessors signed on to.

Clarity is important here because the European authorities, or the troika as they are commonly called, plunged the eurozone into at least two additional years of unnecessary recession that began in 2011 because they were playing a similar game of chicken. The ECB, for its part, deliberately and repeatedly allowed the eurozone to go the brink of financial meltdown during this period. It was not because the financial markets had the power to collapse the euro when they pushed the yield on the 10-year sovereign bonds of Italy and Spain to unsustainable levels in the range of 7 percent. It was because the ECB deliberately allowed these market actors to create an existential crisis for the euro, in order to force concessions from the governments of Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland.

These concessions were not just about paying off debt but also “structural reforms” that sought to remake the European welfare state in the weaker countries, including shrinking the size of the state, cutting spending on health care, pensions, and unemployment compensation, and changing labor laws that favored workers....

MORE

SYRIZA’s leadership, headed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, are playing it smart. They responded to the ECB’s assault without animosity or denunciations. They are not going to voluntarily leave the euro or even suggest the possibility. Like the peaceful protesters of the US civil rights movement in the 1960s, they are facing down the police dogs and fire hoses with courage and equanimity.

They want the world to know who is the aggressor here, and who is being reasonable. This is important because we are witnessing a political battle for democracy in Europe, and the outcome of this chapter will be partly decided by what the troika can get away with politically. Much noise is made about German voters opposing concessions to the Greeks, but this is only possible because the whole fight has been misrepresented to them for years. The European authorities transferred massive amounts of debt from reckless private lenders to EU governments (including Germany) and at the same time increased Greece’s debt load from 115 percent to more than 170 percent of GDP by shrinking the Greek economy at a rate comparable to the worst of the US Great Depression. Most Europeans, including Germans, would not blame the Greek people for the resulting unpayable debt, if they understood what really happened.

The troika should be happy with what they have already “accomplished.” The Greek state has been shrunk by 19 percent of its labor force. Six years of depression and a 25 percent decline in living standards (actually much greater than that if you count the decline in imports) should discourage any European country from ever reaching the terrifying predicament of having to borrow from the punishers at the troika. The economic adjustment has been done: the country is running a primary (not including interest payments) budget surplus and a current account surplus.

SYRIZA has backed off from its initial demand that Greece’s debt stock be reduced, and is offering reasonable proposals to allow them the fiscal space to be able to recover – i.e. a primary budget surplus of 1-2 percent of GDP rather than 4-5 percent under the troika’s program. After six years of depression, that is hardly too much to ask. Nor is reversing some of the worst abuses such as the minimum wage cuts.

The ECB should be ashamed of its latest assault on Greek democracy. And they should not be able to get away with disguising it as anything less than that.

[Demeter]

7. Only 20% are Middle-Class, Most Don't Come Close

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/only-20-are-middle-class-most-dont-come-close-5679

Noah Smith (at Bloomberg) recently wrote: "A plurality of Americans still consider themselves middle-class.” (A plurality meaning, more than any other, but not an absolute majority.) But he linked to The Guardian to make his case, which appears to be saying something completely different:

The number of 18-29 year olds who consider themselves lower-middle-class has doubled since 2008 reaching 49% ... Average household income hovers around $51,700 – which is how much Americans were earning back in 1995. Yet even as 14.5% of Americans meet the actual definition of living in poverty, only about 7% of them will define themselves as lower-class. The definition most of them prefer is lower-middle-class. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of those who define themselves as lower-class or lower-middle-class has gone up to 40% in 2014, increasing by 15% since 2008 ... In 2008, 21% of [wealthy individuals] identify as in the upper-class or upper-middle-class. Even Hillary Clinton, who reportedly made over $100 million along with her husband President Bill Clinton since leaving the White House, said that she didn’t consider her family as being "truly well-off".

Noah Smith also believes if you think “I’m doing OK, and most people around me are doing OK too” — then you’re in the middle-class. He also links to Ezra Klein at VOX, who recently wrote:

There's no analogous middle-class line. In the New York Times, [they] try to create one, defining middle-class as households making more than $35,000 and less than $100,000. Using this definition shows that the ranks of the middle-class have been thinning for decades ... "Although many Americans in households making more than $100,000 consider themselves middle-class, particularly those living in expensive regions, they have substantially more money than most people."

Ezra Klein also says, "Middle-class is, in some ways, a state of mind, or at least a state of comfort." He links to a New York Times poll which shoes that 38 percent of Americans considered themselves middle-class. (This might be the "plurality" Noah Smith was referring to.) But almost as many — 33 percent — considered themselves working-class. And another 12 percent thought they were upper-middle-class.

On the extreme peripheral of this debate (as to what defines middle-class), Stephen Moore at the Heritage Foundation (when discussing the inheritance tax) actually used the term middle-class when referencing a $5 million tax exception in the same sentence — as though trust-fund babies and middle-class workers were one and the same.

But if by using the New York Times' definition for what might be considered middle-class (those earning more that $35,000 a year, but less than $100,000), then according to Social Security data for wage earners, then 34.5 percent earn a middle-class wage.

58.5 percent earn $35,000 or less
34.5 percent earn between $35,000 and $100,000
6.9 percent earn $100,000 or more

But who can seriously believe that $35,000 a year (especially when compared to other incomes) is a reasonable middle-class income? Can one pay a mortgage, make a car payment, raise two children, save enough for college and also plan for a modest retirement — all on a mere $35,000 a year? A more reasonable assumption might be (at the very least) $50,000 a year before payroll taxes — in which case, only 19.4 percent of all wage earners would generate a true middle-class income — meaning most others don't even come close. Whether they admit it to themselves or not, they are either lower-middle-class, lower-class, or poor. (And for the sake of argument, for a dual-income household — if each wage earner were making $50,000 a year — only then might we assume this to be an upper-middle-class household.)

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

8. UKRAINE: Talks in Moscow - a two-part analysis by Alexander Mercouris

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/02/talks-in-moscow-two-part-analysis.html

...Part two (On 7th February 2015)

I am coming increasingly round to the view of Alastair Newman that Merkel and Hollande came with no plan to Moscow but with the purpose of having what diplomats call "a full and frank discussion" in private with Putin looking at all the issues in the one place in Europe - the Kremlin - where they can be confident the Americans are not spying on them. That must be why they sent their officials away. It is also clear that Merkel's and Hollande's visit to Kiev before their flight to Moscow was just for show.

Poroshenko's officials are insisting that the question of federalisation was not discussed during Poroshenko's meeting with Hollande and Merkel. Hollande has however now come out publicly to support "autonomy" for the eastern regions i.e. federalisation, which makes it a virtual certainty that in the meeting in Moscow it was discussed. The point is that Merkel and Hollande did not want to discuss federalisation with Poroshenko because they know the junta adamantly opposes the idea and did not want him to veto it before the meeting in Moscow had even begun.

The problem is that since everyone pretends that federalisation is an internal Ukrainian issue to be agreed freely between the two Ukrainian sides, its terms will only be thrashed out once constitutional negotiations between the two Ukrainian sides begin. Since the junta will never willingly agree to federalisation, in reality its form will have to be hammered out in private by Moscow after consultations with the NAF and with Berlin and Paris and then imposed on the junta in the negotiations.

Saying this shows how fraught with difficulty this whole process is going to be.

Not only are there plenty of people in the Donbass who now oppose federalisation (and some in Moscow too I suspect) but this whole process if it is to work would somehow have to get round the roadblock of the Washington hardliners, who will undoubtedly give their full support to the junta as it tries to obstruct a process over which it has a theoretical veto. Frankly, I wonder whether it can be done.

MUCH MORE AT LINK....

THEY ARE PROBABLY HIDING FROM GEORGE SOROS' SPIES

[Demeter]

9. Adjunct professors get poverty-level wages. Should their pay quintuple?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/06/adjunct-professors-get-poverty-level-wages-should-their-pay-quintuple/

It’s been true for a long time now that academia — or at least the part of it that teaches students — relies heavily on the labor of adjunct faculty. As the number of tenured professors has fallen, universities have filled more than half of their schedules with teachers who work on contract. And no wonder: They’ll work for less than half what a full-time professor makes, at a median wage of just $2,700 per course, with scant benefits, if any.

Now, a union that’s been rapidly organizing adjuncts around the country thinks that number should quintuple. Last night, on a conference call with organizers across the country, the SEIU decided to extend the franchise with a similar aspirational benchmark: A “new minimum compensation standard” of $15,000. Per course. Including benefits.

Since getting into the game a few years ago, the Service Employees International Union has won elections covering about 24,000 contingent faculty across 25 campuses. That’s fitting, considering that the union specializes in organizing low-wage sectors, like property maintenance and home health care — as well as fast-food workers, where it’s run a high-profile campaign for a $15 an hour wage.
A minimum wage for adjuncts?

At the moment, the $15,000 number sounds even more outlandish than $15 did when fast food workers started asking for twice the federal minimum wage. But organizers argue that if you’re teaching a full load of three courses per semester, that comes out to $90,000 in total compensation per year — just the kind of upper-middle-class salary they think people with advanced degrees should be able to expect. (Most adjuncts teach part-time, which would put them at $50,000 or $75,000 per year.)

NOTHING OUTLANDISH ABOUT IT AT ALL....

[Demeter]

10. The future according to HHS: 800-900 Medicare ACOs four years from now.

WHY, OH WHY, CAN WE NOT JUST HAVE THE ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL, MINIMAL PAPERWORK, NO CONFUSION UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER?

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/blog/future-according-hhs

At a Jan. 26 Department of Health and Human Services meeting with consumers, health plans, healthcare providers and business leaders, HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced concrete goals and a timeline for shifting Medicare payments from fee for service to fee for value.

HHS has, for the first time in the history of the Medicare program, set a goal of pushing a significantly larger share of Medicare payments through alternative payment models such as accountable care organizations (ACOs) and bundled payments. The shift will be from 20 percent ($72.4 billion) in 2014 to 30 percent ($113 billion) in 2016 and 50 percent ($213 billion) in 2018—a compound annual growth rate of 31 percent for 2014-2018.

In addition, HHS wants to tie 85 percent of all fee-for-service Medicare payments to quality or value by 2016, and 90 percent by 2018, through programs such as the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing and Hospital Readmissions Reduction Programs.

In support of these two goals, as well as broader expansion of alternative payment models, HHS is creating a Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network. Through this new organization, which will start meeting in March, HHS will work with private payers, employers, consumers, providers, states and state Medicaid programs, and other partners to add alternative payment models into their programs.
Implications

HHS’s bold, significant announcement certainly begs the question as to how the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be able to engineer such significant shifts in the way the federal government will pay for healthcare services for much of the Medicare population. There are a number of important implications of this announcement....

[Demeter]

11. The Rise of the Frugal Economy WELL, THAT'S ONE WORD FOR IT

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/peer-to-peer-economy-by-navi-radjou-1-and-jaideep-prabhu-2015-02

PALO ALTO – In a famous 1937 essay, the economist Ronald Coase argued that the reason Western economies are organized like a pyramid, with a few large producers at the top and millions of passive consumers below, is the existence of transaction costs – the intangible costs associated with search, bargaining, decision-making, and enforcement. But with the Internet, mobile technologies, and social media all but eliminating such costs in many sectors, this economic structure is bound to change.

Indeed, in the United States and across Europe, vertically integrated value chains controlled by large companies are already being challenged by new consumer-orchestrated value ecosystems, which allow consumers to design, build, market, distribute, and trade goods and services among themselves, eliminating the need for intermediaries. This bottom-up approach to value creation is enabled by the horizontal (or peer-to-peer) networks and do-it-yourself (DIY) platforms that form the foundation of the “frugal” economy.

Two key factors are fueling the frugal economy’s growth: a protracted financial crisis, which has weakened the purchasing power of middle-class consumers in the West, and these consumers’ increasing sense of environmental responsibility. Eager to save money and minimize their ecological impact, Western consumers are increasingly eschewing individual ownership in favor of shared access to products and services.

As it stands, nearly 50% of Europeans believe that, within a decade, cars will be consumed as a “shared” good, instead of privately owned, and 73% predict the rapid growth of car-sharing services. BlaBlaCar, Europe’s leading car-sharing service, now transports more passengers monthly than Eurostar, the high-speed rail service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. And the better-known service Uber is causing panic among taxi companies worldwide. Despite recent controversy, the company, founded in 2009, is valued at more than $40 billion.

This shift in consumer attitudes extends far beyond transport...

[Demeter]

12. Last Vestige of Motorola Empire Up For Sale

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-06/motorola-solutions-said-to-explore-sale-of-87-year-old-company


The last vestige of the Motorola empire is on the block after struggling with stagnant earnings.

Motorola Solutions Inc., the $15.6 billion maker of two-way radios and other communications equipment, is exploring a possible sale, according to people familiar with the matter. Buyers could include private-equity firms or companies such as Raytheon Co., Honeywell International Inc. and General Dynamics Corp., said one of the people, asking not to be named because the information is confidential.

A sale could mark the final step in the dismantling of Motorola Inc., which was split up four years ago into Motorola Solutions and a handset unit after a campaign by billionaire Carl Icahn. The handset business was sold to Google Inc., which then sold pieces of it to Lenovo Group Ltd.

Motorola Solutions is working with financial advisers as it seeks a buyer, the people said. A transaction isn’t imminent, though a sale process has been under way for several months, one of the people said.

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

Motorola Inc. was founded in Chicago in 1928 as Galvin Manufacturing Corp. to make a device that allowed battery-powered radios to run on household electricity. The company started producing car radios and expanded into communications with public-safety radios. That led to the two-way walkie-talkie and carphones. In 1973, the company began research on a portable phone prototype, using a concept for a cellular network developed by the former AT&T Corp. ....MORE

[kickysnana]

13. Ineffective Motorola radios hindered in 911 rescues, (No Bid contract)

So I am not sad at all.

[xchrom]

14. Greece is trying to recover $2.8 billion through a ruthless crackdown on tax evasion

http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-greeces-new-anti-corruption-minister-battles-tax-evasion-scourge-2015-2

Greece's new anti-corruption tsar Panagiotis Nikoloudis has been tasked with recovering 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion) for the debt-strapped government's coffers through a ruthless crackdown on tax evasion.

The former Supreme Court deputy prosecutor and Greece's first anti-corruption minister told AFP he was itching to tackle the scourge blamed for the country's financial woes and its lack of credibility among its EU peers.

"I've heard so many times, 'We're going to fight corruption,' always, 'We're going to, we're going to,' and I was speechless, thinking, 'But why don't we do it now?'" the 65-year-old said in an interview.

"If the new government has come to see me, it's because it really wants to act," said the bushy-eyebrowed minister, who describes himself as a stubborn man who "never stops, even when I hit a wall."



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-greeces-new-anti-corruption-minister-battles-tax-evasion-scourge-2015-2#ixzz3RR8JB2DR

[xchrom]

15. The 10 most important things in the world right now

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-most-important-things-in-the-world-right-now-feb-11-2015-2

1. Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis will ask the eurozone's finance ministers for a bridging loan to hold the country over until the summer, in a meeting of the Eurogroup on Wednesday.

2. Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister of Greece's new radical government, won a parliamentary confidence vote Tuesday after vowing not to return to the era of austerity.

3. Apple has become the world's first $700 billion (£4.6 billion) company.

4. Jon Stewart is leaving "The Daily Show" later this year after 17 years as its anchor.

5. "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams has been suspended for six months without pay for misrepresenting events that occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-most-important-things-in-the-world-right-now-feb-11-2015-2#ixzz3RR8nkji3

[Demeter]

23. Ask me if I care about Brian Williams

Don't know him, don't want to know him, and don't need to know anything about him. Nor does anyone else, as far as I can tell.

[xchrom]

16. Germany tells Greece to accept bailout or 'it's over'

http://www.businessinsider.com/finance-ministers-prepare-for-crucial-eurogroup-meeting-over-greece-bailout-2015-2

Today's crucial meeting of European finance ministers to discuss whether to renegotiate terms with the new Greek government over its bailout deal. And the two sides couldn't be further apart.

Over the past week German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has done his uppermost to douse any talk of renegotiating the bailout deal saying, archly, that the country doesn't have to accept any more bailout money if it doesn't want to.

On Tuesday he told reporters in Berlin that if Greece refuses to accept the final €7 billion tranche of the current bailout programme then "it’s over". He also denied reports that the European Commission were looking at granting the Greek government a 6 month extension to the programme saying they "can't negotiate about something new" and casting doubt on a bridging loan deal.

This poses a huge problem for the new administration in Athens led by the leftist Syriza party. The government came to power just two weeks ago on the commitment to stop the austerity measures required under a memorandum signed with its European partners, the European Central Bank and the IMF in 2012 and renegotiate a new deal for Greece.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/finance-ministers-prepare-for-crucial-eurogroup-meeting-over-greece-bailout-2015-2#ixzz3RRBv2Uqv

[Demeter]

24. Pride goeth before a fall, Wolfgang

And Germans stuff themselves on undeserved pride.

[xchrom]

17. Greece is seeking a cash lifeline today

http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-greece-set-for-critical-eu-talks-2015-2

Athens (AFP) - Greece is to seek a cash lifeline at an emergency meeting of eurozone finance ministers Wednesday, as Athens struggles to persuade its EU creditors to renegotiate its massive bailout deal.

The talks come after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he would not bow to German demands that his hard-left government first complete a pending loan agreement with the EU and the IMF.

"I want to repeat today, no matter how much (German Finance Minister Wolfgang) Schaeuble asks it, we are not going to ask to extend the bailout," Tsipras told lawmakers late Tuesday ahead of a confidence vote that the government won by 162 votes to 137.

The EU had earlier warned Greece's new leftist government to scale back its plans to revise the country's unpopular bailout if it wants to secure a six-and-a-half month lifeline that will enable it to meet pressing debt repayments in the coming months.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-greece-set-for-critical-eu-talks-2015-2#ixzz3RRCXInnA

[xchrom]

18. GREEK UNCERTAINTY OBSCURING UNDERLYING EUROPEAN RECOVERY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_RECOVERING_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-11-04-54-12

EVIDENCE

For years, the eurozone has been in intensive care, sliding into two recessions as it struggled with a debt crisis that raised questions over the survival of the euro. Since ECB President Mario Draghi said in July 2012 that the bank would do "whatever it takes" to save the euro, tensions in financial markets have eased.

Despite that, the eurozone, which emerged from its last recession in the spring of 2013, has faltered, with even Germany slowing down. But recently, there's been evidence of a turnaround.

- Retail sales across the eurozone have risen for three straight months, meaning the sector will contribute to growth in the last quarter of 2014.

- Though high at 11.4 percent, unemployment has edged down over the past year and surveys are pointing to a pick-up in hiring. That's been particularly noticeable in Spain, which along with Greece witnessed a huge increase in joblessness, particularly among the young.

[Demeter]

25. People have a different definition of 'recovery'

which would probably shock the banksters into silence, as they are trundled off to prison.

[xchrom]

19. OIL'S SLUMP A BLOW TO MEXICO AMID TOUTED ENERGY REFORMS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_MEXICO_OIL_WOES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-11-00-04-58

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The lowest oil prices in nearly six years couldn't have come at a worse time for Mexico, which last year opened up oil-sector investment to private companies for the first time in decades.

The landmark energy reform aimed to boost revenue by enabling Mexico to tap undeveloped fields and adopt newer technology to reverse a decade-long slide in production.

Instead, the drop in oil prices has forced Mexico's government to slash $8.4 billion from its 2015 budget, with most of the cutbacks expected to come in the energy sector. Analysts predict the energy partnerships made possible by the reform will attract initial bids lower than anticipated, some exploration projects will be delayed, and state oil company Pemex will see a cash crunch and slow job growth.

"If we continue for the next year in the scenario that we're currently in today, it will have an impact because Pemex, i.e. Mexico, will not be getting the same revenues that it's getting out of their current production," said Jorge Pinon, an oil and energy analyst at the University of Texas. "That's simple arithmetic."

[xchrom]

20. GREECE HEADS FOR CLASH WITH CREDITORS AT EMERGENCY MEETING

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GREECE_BAILOUT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-11-06-05-57

BRUSSELS (AP) -- Greece's new government is set to clash with its eurozone creditors at an emergency meeting in Brussels over its request to ease the terms of its bailout program.

Wednesday's gathering of finance ministers from the 19 eurozone countries was called to find common ground on Greece's demand to reduce the burden of its bailout loans and ease back on budget austerity measures.

The new radical left government won elections last month on a promise to get concessions from Greece's creditors, which also include the International Monetary Fund.

On the eve of the meeting, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said there is "no way back" for his government in its quest to rewrite the bailout terms.

[xchrom]

21. STOCKS MUTED AHEAD OF EMERGENCY MEETING ON GREEK DEBT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS_?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-11-05-11-45

KEEPING SCORE: France's CAC 40 fell 0.4 percent to 4,678.78 and Germany's DAX edged down 0.1 percent to 10,748.79. Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.1 percent to 6,837.62. Futures augured a weak start for Wall Street. S&P 500 futures fell 0.1 percent to 2,060.50. Dow futures were down 0.1 percent to 17,778.

GREEK DRAMA: Finance ministers from euro nations are holding an emergency meeting in Brussels on Greece later Wednesday, which will be the group's first opportunity to hear directly from the new left-wing anti-austerity Greek government. Greece wants to renegotiate the terms of its international bailout that has imposed years of punishing austerity on the country; the current agreement expires in late February. Speculation that Greece could be granted extra time to hold new negotiations buoyed European and U.S. markets Tuesday.

THE QUOTE: "the headlines out of this meeting will dictate the price action for global markets," Stan Shamu, market strategist at IG, said in a commentary. "At the moment, it seems European leaders and Greece are willing to meet each other in the middle and this has comforted investors' concerns after the aggressive tone by Greek Prime Minister Tsipras over the weekend."

ASIA'S DAY: South Korea's Kospi rose 0.5 percent to 1,945.70 and China's Shanghai Composite added 0.5 percent to 3,157.70. Stocks in Southeast Asia and Taiwan also rose. Hong Kong was among the few Asian markets in the red; the Hang Seng fell 0.9 percent to 24,315.02. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.5 percent to 5,769.10. Japan was closed for a holiday.

ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude added 45 cents to $50.47 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $2.84 to close at $50.02 a barrel on Tuesday. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils, was down 27 cents to $57.22 in London. The International Energy Agency said that the recent rebound in oil prices "will be comparatively limited in scope."

CURRENCIES: The dollar strengthened to 119.81 yen fro

[xchrom]

22. OPEC Producers Cut Oil Prices to Asia in Battle for Market Share

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-10/iran-s-heavy-crude-price-set-at-3-66-bbl-discount-for-march


(Bloomberg) -- Iraq, Kuwait and Iran joined Saudi Arabia in cutting their March crude prices for Asia, signaling the battle for a share of OPEC’s largest market is intensifying.

Iraq’s Basrah Light crude will sell at $4.10 a barrel below Middle East benchmarks, the deepest discount since at least August 2003, the Oil Marketing Co. said Tuesday. National Iranian Oil Co. said its official selling price for March Light crude sales will be a discount of $2.10 a barrel, the widest since at least March 2000, according to a company official who asked not to be identified because of corporate policy. Kuwait Petroleum Corp. said Wednesday its discount will be $4.10, the biggest since August 2008.

The cuts come after Saudi Arabia, the largest crude exporter, reduced pricing to Asia last week to the lowest in at least 14 years. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries left its members’ output targets unchanged at a November meeting, choosing to compete for market share against U.S. shale producers rather than support prices. Iraq is the second-biggest producer in OPEC, Kuwait is third and Iran fourth.

“This is an effort by some producers to protect market share,” Sarah Emerson, managing principal of ESAI Energy Inc., a consulting company in Wakefield, Massachusetts, said by phone Tuesday. “It’s really straightforward; cutting prices is how you keep your foot in the door.”