STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 30 April 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Thursday, 30 April 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 29 April 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 29 April 2015
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Dow Jones 18,035.53 -74.61 (-0.41%)
S&P 500 2,106.85 -7.91 (-0.37%)
Nasdaq 5,023.64 -31.78 (-0.63%)


[font color=green]10 Year 2.04% -0.01 (-0.49%)
30 Year 2.76% -0.01 (-0.36%) [font color=black]


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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]

[Tansy_Gold]

1. bonus toon

Maybe it's just me, but I think the failure -- especially by the media -- to understand and examine the underlying issues here leads to a failure to recognize that all of these riots have the same foundations as cataclysmic revolutions.

[DemReadingDU]

2. Orioles VP Angelos Makes Profound Statement

4/27/15 Orioles VP Angelos Makes Profound Statement Following Baltimore Protests
.
.
That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.
.
.
-- Orioles Executive Vice President John Angelos
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/04/27/orioles-vp-angelos-makes-profound-statement-on-twitter-following-baltimore-protests/

[DemReadingDU]

33. Video MSNBC Chris Hayes speaks with Orioles John Angelos

4/29/15 MSNBC Chris Hayes speaks with Orioles John Angelos, whose poignant comments about the unrest in Baltimore went viral this week.
Skip to the 4 minute time on the video...
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/historic-day-at-baltimores-camden-yards-436718659955

[antigop]

36. and the Dems are complicit. nt

[mother earth]

3. No doubt Chris Hedges would agree. nt

[Demeter]

4. April ends on a wet note--and not too soon, either

I don't know about you folks, but I had a hell of a month. There's no reason to assume that the greater world is going to improve in the near future, since no one (except maybe Bernie and Elizabeth) is trying to make a difference...

But I have my work cut out for me, and it's time to get going. I'll still be posting, but perhaps not as single-mindedly, as I start Spring cleaning my life.

This Weekend, we are going to wallow in Star Wars...for a very silly reason. Other than Harrison Ford, I was never that much into it. "Return of the Jedi" was probably the first movie the Kid experienced--she was a few months old, sleeping soundly, the explosions woke her up and she screamed... So, put fresh batteries in your light saber, and may the Force be with you!

[Demeter]

5. Hillary Clinton Takes Manhattan (Money)

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-29/hillary-clinton-takes-manhattan-money-


The Democratic presidential candidate revs up her money-raising machine with three donor events in a day. Hillary Clinton's political money race has begun, and on Tuesday she channeled the Girl Scouts, saying her fundraising motto is, "make new friends, but keep the old." The Democratic presidential contender's first day of donor hobnobbing for her newly formed campaign included back-to-back-to-back stops at the homes of some of her most loyal supporters in Manhattan. Her haul, based on the number of attendees and price of admission: Somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million.

The spree gave the former first lady face time with about 350 donors, each paying $2,700, a Clinton aide said. Hosts had raised at least $27,000, giving them the rank of "Hillstarters." Clinton told donors at the final stop that she wants to raise at least $100 million for the primary contest. “I feel that’s certainly within reach,” she said. “We have put together a terrific campaign team."

A reporter was permitted to attend as Clinton, microphone in hand, addressed a group of 150 in a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows inside the midtown Manhattan apartment of Douglas and Agatha Teitelbaum. Doug Teitelbaum is founder of investment firm Homewood Capital. Investor Jay Snyder and Architectural Digest editor Margaret Russell were co-hosts. She began with commentary on the biggest stories of the day: violence in Baltimore and the the Supreme Court's oral arguments on gay marriage.

“Baltimore is burning,” she said. “It is heartbreaking. The tragic death of another young African-American man. The injuries to police officers. The burning of peoples’ homes and small businesses. We have to restore order and security. But then we have to take a hard look as to what we need to do to reform our system."

On marriage, she said, the court could give "our fellow Americans the chance under our Constitution to have equality in marriage, to broaden the circle of opportunity for all of our citizens. And we can all hope that the Supreme Court will make the right decision."

After thanking those in the room for their financial support, she said, “I want to be a president for people who dream again and feel like they can get where their ambition and hard work will take them.”

Clinton, who announced her candidacy just over two weeks ago, began her donor events at noon, at the home of Lisa and Richard Perry, a power couple who once had two large portraits of Clinton on their walls. "It's a beautiful picture because Hillary is beautiful," Lisa Perry, a designer, told the New York Times in 2007, during Clinton's previous presidential run. Her husband runs a hedge fund. Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas Lee, a private equity investor, co-hosted. An ABC reporter tweeted a photo of Full House stars Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen leaving the fundraiser...Next was an afternoon stop at the home of Arne and Milly Glimcher for an event co-hosted by investors Alan Patricof and Stanley Shuman. Arne Glimcher is a prominent art dealer and founder of The Pace Gallery. Clinton continues fundraising this week, after speaking on Wednesday at a conference at Columbia University in New York. She'll then travel to Washington, where she will participate in a "conversation" with donors at the home of Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, the former ambassador to Portugal.

A proven fundraiser, Clinton banked $229 million during her 2008 presidential campaign before conceding the nomination to Barack Obama. Yet aides and friends have been trying to tamp down expectations for her return to political fundraising, repeatedly emphasizing that she is only collecting money for the primary contest at this point.

MORE

[Demeter]

6. Bernie Sanders Says He is Running for President

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-30/bernie-sanders-sets-sights-on-white-house-and-a-democratic-fight


He could force frontrunner Hillary Clinton to reckon more seriously with the left wing of the party....Bernie Sanders, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont, said Wednesday that he will seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, setting up a progressive challenge to frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

"People should not underestimate me," Sanders, who will make a formal announcement on Thursday, told the Associated Press. "I've run outside of the two-party system, defeating Democrats and Republicans, taking on big-money candidates and, you know, I think the message that has resonated in Vermont is a message that can resonate all over this country."

Sanders, 73, would become the most high-profile socialist candidate for president since Norman Thomas made six bids last century. In a February speech, Sanders said he would “run to win” if he entered the race, and he could force Clinton to reckon more seriously with the left wing of the party. Clinton, who served as President Barack Obama's top diplomat after losing to him in the 2008 primary, announced her candidacy April 12. After making his formal announcement, Sanders will hold a rally in Burlington in May, a person familiar with his plans told Bloomberg on Tuesday after Vermont Public Radio first reported the news. Sanders is poised to run on the same message that many supporters of Senator Elizabeth Warren hoped she would deliver: that the “billionaire class,” as Sanders calls it, has too much, and the government needs to work for the middle and lower classes. Corporations and Wall Street will be his key targets.

“I don’t want to be too dramatic here, but I happen to believe that the business model of Wall Street is fraud and deception,” Sanders said during the February speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Sanders has funded campaigns throughout his career primarily with small individual donations, and he often bemoans the influence of corporate and Wall Street money in politics. His aversion to big-dollar fundraising raises questions about whether he can collect cash at the level necessary to complete with Clinton. Sanders' team hopes to raise at least $50 million before primary voting begins early next year to establish that he is a serious candidate, Bloomberg reported in March. He has started hosting $1,000-a-plate fundraisers in cities such as Austin, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Clinton finance director Dennis Cheng has said her campaign aims to raise at least $100 million for the primary, CNN reported in April, citing a person present at the donor briefing where Cheng spoke.

In recent months, Sanders has traveled to early primary and caucus states to promote a 12-point economic agenda, a series of liberal policy goals such as eventually raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and investing in infrastructure, which he argues would create more jobs and bolster the middle class.

In addition to questioning Clinton's commitment to taking on that so-called billionaires' class, he has also targeted her on trade. An opponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership now under negotiation, Sanders said at an April 20 protest that Clinton should clarify whether she sided with “working people” or “corporate America.” Clinton, who took part in the Obama administration's early efforts to negotiate the pact as secretary of state, has said as a 2016 candidate, “Any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security.”

...Sanders would next come up for re-election to the Senate in 2018. He had $4.6 million in his Senate campaign account at the end of March, money that can be transferred to a presidential campaign.

In a national poll of Democratic voters taken by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, from April 16-21, Sanders trailed Clinton 8 percent to 60 percent. Other possible contenders likewise lagged behind Clinton. Vice President Joe Biden took 10 percent, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley took 3 percent, and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb took 1 percent. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

[Demeter]

15. Warren Said to Join Vitter in Seeking to Curb Fed Crisis Lending

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-28/warren-said-to-join-vitter-in-seeking-to-curb-fed-crisis-lending

Elizabeth Warren and David Vitter, senators at opposite ends of the political spectrum, are collaborating on legislation to further curb the Federal Reserve’s authority to bail out banks in a crisis, according to two people familiar with the matter.

They are seeking to define more clearly when a bank is solvent, and thus eligible for funding, limit the length of time a firm can borrow and set penalty rates of interest on emergency loans, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks are private.

The discussions come as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby crafts a broader bill on financial regulation. The measure may include trimming the power of the New York Fed, increasing congressional oversight of the central bank and curbing its regulatory authority.

The banking committee, which oversees the central bank, is “looking at a number of Fed reform proposals, including facets of the Vitter-Warren approach,” according to Torrie Miller, a spokeswoman for Shelby, an Alabama Republican.

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, have been united by their conviction that the Fed went too far in bailing out troubled financial firms, such as American International Group Inc., during the financial crisis of 2008-2009....MORE

[Demeter]

19. Hillary Clinton vows to rebuild state parties after Obama-era wipeout

IT'S A LITTLE LATE FOR THAT, IMO.

THAT WORK SHOULD HAVE STARTED WHEN REAGAN GOT ELECTED, THE FIRST TIME.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/hillary-clinton-rebuild-democrats-state-117381.html

Hillary Clinton had a message to relay in private meetings with state and local Democrats during her highly-choreographed swings through Iowa and New Hampshire this month: let me help you.

The implication? She’ll fix the party infrastructure that withered under President Barack Obama.

The Democratic front-runner has stressed the importance of bolstering — and in the case of Iowa, rebuilding — the state parties from the ground up, as they received scant national attention since 2008. Some Democrats even pin the blame on the president himself...

GEE, I WONDER WHY? ANYBODY LOOKED UNDER THE BUS, LATELY?

[Demeter]

7. TPP creates corporate 'nations' / LowDown By Jim Hightower

AND TURNS NATIONS INTO...WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARIES?

http://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/tpp-creates-corporate-nations/Content?oid=3037419

The Dr. Frankensteins on our Supreme Court created a monster by declaring that a lifeless, soulless corporation is a "person." But why stop there? Another coterie of Frankensteins is now trying to transform multinational private corporations into "nations." Their secretly engineered Trans-Pacific Partnership magically endows private profiteering corporations with sovereign rights equal to those of real nation-states.

Under TPP, a "corporate nation" — unlike individual citizens of real nations — could directly compel the U.S. or other countries to alter their laws in order to increase corporate profits. Of course, the Frankensteins dismiss such concerns as an "irrational fear," claiming that no corporation would actually be able to force a country to change its laws. Oh? Ask "Flipper." While not yet able to confront a nation directly, corporations can get their home governments to sue in the World Trade Organization to overrule another nation's laws. That's what happened to our "dolphin-safe" tuna-labeling law. Most Americans oppose tuna fishing with nets that also catch and kill the lovable Flipper, so we have a law encouraging dolphin-free fishing methods. Tuna packers that comply can put "dolphin-safe" on their labels, thus giving consumers a marketplace choice.

Free enterprise at work!

But some Mexican fishing companies got their government to complain that our label discriminates against their dolphin-slaughtering methods — and a WTO "compliance" panel ruled that our label is a "technical barrier to trade," essentially overruling a law that We the People enacted. And now, if TPP is approved, foreign corporations won't have to get their national governments to intervene, for they will become governments. For the lowdown on this, go tocitizen.org/trade.

Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow, on sale now from Wiley Publishing. For more information, visit jimhightower.com

[Demeter]

23. Watch ALAN GRAYSON Make The Case For Why Obama's New Free Trade Deal Would Be Awful For America

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/29/alan-grayson-free-trade_n_7175160.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

VIDEO AT LINK

[Demeter]

24. Hillary Clinton Opposes Major Obama Trade Policy

LOOKS TO ME LIKE HILLARY IS RUNNING AGAINST OBAMA...IT'S ALL GOOD! SO LONG AS SHE DOESN'T PROVE TO BE TWO-FACED, AS OBAMA DID....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/30/hillary-clinton-trans-pacific-partnership_n_7173108.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

Hillary Clinton is opposed to a critical piece of the Obama administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would give corporations the right to sue sovereign nations over laws or regulations that could potentially curb their profits.

The policy position is contained in her book Hard Choices, and was confirmed to HuffPost by a spokesperson for her presidential campaign. Obama and congressional Democrats are locked in a bitter public feud over TPP -- a deal between 12 Pacific nations -- with much of the controversy derived from concerns it will undermine regulatory standards.

Clinton writes in her book:

Currently the United States is negotiating comprehensive agreements with eleven countries in Asia and in North and South America, and with the European Union. We should be focused on ending currency manipulation, environmental destruction, and miserable working conditions in developing countries, as well as harmonizing regulations with the EU. And we should avoid some of the provisions sought by business interests, including our own, like giving them or their investors the power to sue foreign governments to weaken their environmental and public health rules, as Philip Morris is already trying to do in Australia. The United States should be advocating a level and fair playing field, not special favors.

Obama's TPP deal would be enforced by a process known as "investor-state dispute settlement," which allows foreign companies to attack domestic laws or regulations before an international tribunal if they believe those rules unfairly curb investment returns. Those tribunals can't directly overturn laws, but they can impose hefty fines on the countries they rule against.

Financial watchdogs and environmental activists are particularly concerned the process will be used to stymie future rulemaking with the threat of international fines. Congress often considers trade commitments when debating domestic legislation, at times diluting or derailing it. Foreign countries have halted anti-smoking rules over ISDS lawsuits...

MORE

[Demeter]

29. Obama Laments Poverty In Baltimore While Pushing TPP

http://firedoglake.com/2015/04/29/obama-laments-poverty-in-baltimore-then-pushes-tpp/

we are at the NO-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION point...

President Obama’s lamentations on poverty might be taken more seriously if he was not actively working to impoverish more Americans. Obama has defended TPP as “the most progressive trade deal in history” and, much like the White House’s “most transparent administration in history” claim, it sets a low bar and fails to meet it.

[Fuddnik]

34. She's running against herself.

Since she was one of the principals responsible for negotiating the monstrosity. Lying out of both sides of her mouth again.

I've got to get out and change my voter registration back to Dem, so I can vote for Sanders in the primary.

[Demeter]

39. Got to look into that, myself

In order to get a precinct chair job, I switched my registration to the less popular one....and it worked! And I was so pissed off at O-man, I didn't care. Our primary is in March...unless the legislature changes their minds, again. I'll have to find out what is required...

[Demeter]

8. URBAN RENEWAL: How Cities’ Funding Woes Are Driving Racial and Economic Injustice—And What We Can Do

https://www.thenation.com/article/205433/how-cities-funding-woes-are-driving-racial-and-economic-injustice-and-what-we-can-do-

It doesn’t stop with Ferguson—common underlying problems create conflict and tension across the country...To many, it was no surprise to learn that, for years, African-American residents of municipalities throughout St. Louis County have been disproportionately and illegally stopped for minor offenses. Blacks are far more likely to be stopped, searched, ticketed, fined, and arrested. Many wind up jailed, leading to a cycle of lost jobs, drivers’ licenses, homes, or child custody. Some are beaten, terrorized, or—like Michael Brown—even killed. It was more surprising to learn that in Ferguson, “Driving While Black” isn’t only about racial profiling: it’s also about municipal revenue. Fines and court fees have become the city’s second largest revenue source, and the over-criminalization of Black people has become a strategy for collecting taxes.

It is important to understand and address the revenue crisis facing U.S. municipalities. As cities have become unable to pay their bills, they often turn to regressive strategies that disproportionately harm people of color and low-income residents.

Ithaca, NY is like Ferguson. Up until January 2014, residents had to pay for installations and repairs of public sidewalks adjoining their properties—with one notable case in which 28 homeowners were forced to pay a combined $100,000 out of their personal pockets to the city for repairs. Detroit, MI is like Ferguson. After the city filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history, the city’s water department responded to pressures to lower their $90 million portion of the overall $20 billion debt by shutting off crucial water services to mostly Black low-income residents who owed over a mere $150 on their water bills. This April, Baltimore followed Detroit’s lead. (EVEN IN ANN ARBOR, UNTIL RECENTLY, HOMEOWNERS HAD TO PAY FOR SIDEWALK REPAIRS BORDERING THEIR PROPERTY...)

These cities are like Ferguson because of a common underlying problem: All across America, cities and towns are struggling to maintain enough revenue to provide crucial services to residents. The collateral damage of this revenue crisis—over-criminalization, utility shut-offs, the withdrawal of public services, and slashed budgets for schools—is dire...The roots of the municipal revenue crisis were decades in the making. Following the post-war desegregation of housing and education, and other civil rights victories of the 50’s and 60’s, racial animosity and the conservative backlash against taxation—referred to by historians as the tax revolt—helped to fuel the exodus of higher-income families from urban centers to suburban enclaves. This “white flight” dramatically eroded the tax base of urban centers like Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis—and later of first-ring suburban municipalities like Ferguson.

The tax revolt also led directly to policies that dramatically reduced the ability of cities to collect enough revenue through property and other taxes. Most dramatic was the 1976 passage of Prop 13 in California, which contributed heavily to the erosion of California’s public education system and other public services. In 2008, the Great Recession caused the municipal revenue crisis that had been brewing for decades to explode...Luckily, there are creative and progressive strategies that municipalities can adopt to generate more revenue in a progressive way, such as:

● Expanding the progressivity of existing local income taxes by creating more tax brackets with greater differences between brackets, and doing the same for property taxes in order to generate more revenue from commercial and high-end development.

● Eliminating corporate tax breaks at the city level, particularly Tax Increment Financing and business improvement districts that come with tax breaks

● Restructuring fines so that residents pay different rates based on income. A $200 traffic ticket has no deterrent effect for a millionaire, but can be devastating for a low wage worker; a more rational fine system, like the one adopted in Finland, would be more fair and generate more revenue.

● Mandating that major tax-exempt institutions like hospitals and universities make genuine and fair payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) to help cover the costs of crucial city services that they use.

● Converting city services into municipality-owned utilities when possible, charging utility fees to all users, and applying conservation pricing so lower-income households pay a lower rate while bulk users—such as commercial and industry—pay higher rates

● Forming statewide coalitions of municipal elected officials, grassroots organizations, school boards, and other affected parties to change preemption and revenue policies at the state level.

THIS IS BOLD POLICY...AND IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPECT TO SEE IT IN A CITY NEAR YOU...MORE

[Demeter]

9. How Two Billionaires Are Remaking Detroit in Their Flawed Image

http://gawker.com/how-two-billionaires-are-remaking-detroit-in-their-flaw-1700397768?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Jerome Robinson only got to live in the home of his dreams for five years before he was told to leave... when a Section 8-funded apartment in a Downtown building for the elderly opened up in 2007, he jumped at the opportunity.

“I thought, This is where I’m going to live until I die,” Robinson said. “I have bad eyes. I can’t drive. But I could go anywhere in the city I wanted from there. The bus was down the street, my bank was around the corner.”

Downtown Detroit is home to dozens of vacant buildings, but in 2013 developers set their eyes on 1214 Griswold, where Robinson and more than 100 other seniors lived. The developers, Broder & Sachse, wanted to convert the building into luxury condos. They told the residents they had to be out within the year.

As Detroit’s government has been hollowed out by forces beyond its control—emergency management, a fleeing tax base, cuts to federal funding—a small group of rich investors have descended on the city, filling in public sector gaps with personal funds, and remaking Detroit in their image. On top of this, local politicians—like Democratic Mayor Mike Duggan and Republican Governor Rick Snyder—as well as national media, have become enamored with these men, painting them as philanthropists on a mission to rescue Detroit.

Dan Gilbert, billionaire chairman of the mortgage company Quicken Loans, owns over 70 buildings Downtown and has been heralded as Detroit’s “new Superhero” and “missionary.” Mike Ilitch, the billionaire owner of Little Caesars Pizza, convinced the state to give him hundreds of millions for a new hockey arena because he has the “boldest” and “most innovative” plans for Detroit in decades (not because he’s grifting a poor state for personal profit).

If you read these stories, and only these stories, you’d be convinced that just months after emerging from a bankruptcy in which city workers had their pensions slashed and city department budgets were cut even further to the bone, Detroit is back. But beyond the new and restored gleaming skyscrapers of Downtown Detroit, and the puff pieces they inspire, is a grimmer reality. The rest of Detroit has become a wasteland. Areas like Jefferson Chalmers, Delray, and 8 Mile have been ravaged by foreclosures on houses with mortgages that banks should’ve never made; pockmarked by foreclosures on houses owned by people who owe just a few hundred dollars in taxes to the county, which is just now beginning to clamp down on past-due bills, threatening residents with evictions; and slowly left to rot by corporations who couldn’t figure out how to pay people a living wage and remain in business. As Downtown and Midtown gleam and bustle, residents of Detroit’s outer neighborhoods are fleeing. And instead of helping these people, the city seems to be courting those who need help the least—the Gilberts and the Ilitches, moneyed barons who can afford to buy up Detroit without regard for the people who made the Motor City what it is.

What Detroit is doing is not about indifference to the poor, but to the active support of projects that stand to benefit the rich the most. MORE

Peter Moskowitz is a writer based in New York. He’s writing a book about gentrification.

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10. Why Baltimore Rebelled

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/baltimore-freddie-gray-unrest-protests/


The most salient thing in Baltimore isn’t the damage caused by protestors, but the grinding poverty and neglect wrought by capital. Baltimore yesterday.

Days before social unrest in Baltimore reached levels unseen in decades, Dan Rodricks, the Baltimore Sun‘s resident liberal columnist, painted a picture of Saturday afternoon’s march against police violence. Peaceful. Family friendly. An expression of justifiable anger.

But he concluded somberly: “And as I write those words, the Freddie Gray march turned violent . . .”

“The dream of the Next Baltimore is cracked.”

What was the cause of Rodricks’s lamentations? The destruction of a handful of police cars, it seems, and the smashed windows of some businesses in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

And the “Next Baltimore” occupying his imagination? A vision built not on pouring investment into long-neglected communities, but attracting young professionals and tourists. It’s a vision that left intact racial and class inequality — even as it trumpeted inclusiveness and opportunities to come.

Baltimore, then, is like so many other cities with their own Freddie Grays: a place in which private capital has left enormous sections of the city to rot, where a chasm separates the life chances of black and white residents — and where cops brutally patrol a “disposable” population.

MORE

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11. Envoy Predicts Greece Will Stick With Euro

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-28/greece-to-stick-with-euro-as-u-k-stays-in-eu-envoy-predicts

"Self-Reliance" is an essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reliance

THE CONSEQUENCE OF TEENAGE YEARS SPENT IN NEW ENGLAND...IT WON'T HELP TO POINT OUT THAT EMERSON WAS ANYTHING BUT SELF-RELIANT...HE MIGHT MAKE A GOOD WEEKEND TOPIC IN THE FUTURE....DEMETER

Greece will remain in the euro currency zone and the U.K. will stay in the European Union, the EU’s ambassador to the U.S. predicted.

While negotiations over the terms of an EU-backed bailout for Greece “have been dragging on,” Ambassador David O’Sullivan said on Tuesday that he’s confident a solution will be found and that “Greece will very definitely stay within the euro.”

Speaking with reporters and editors at Bloomberg’s Washington bureau, O’Sullivan cited polls indicating that an overwhelming majority of Greeks want to stay in the 28-member European Union and said he expects the new Greek government to keep its pledge to meet the conditions needed to retain the currency shared by 19 of those states.

No one “is saying there’s no room for compromise,” with Greece over the terms of the bailout, O’Sullivan said. “I think what people are saying is that we need from the Greek government a clear plan of how they propose to make the numbers add up, how they propose to balance the budget, and how they propose to achieve the overall targets which we know are there.”

The European economy has “clearly turned a corner” because of the success of fiscal consolidation in troubled economies, quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, the depreciation of the euro and a decline in oil prices, said O’Sullivan, a former Irish diplomat who previously served as chief operating officer of the EU’s foreign service....MORE

SO NOW YOU KNOW...IT'S A LOAD OF BLARNEY

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12. Bundesbank head: euro state insolvency possible without system collapsing

THE GERMANS, HOWEVER, ARE SIMPLY DELUSIONAL

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/28/germany-bundesbank-greece-idUSL8N0XP5TT20150428

The head of Germany's Bundesbank criticised Greece's government on Tuesday for failing to implement reforms and said it was possible for a country within the currency union to become insolvent.

"Member states must take responsibility for the consequences of their political decisions," Jens Weidmann, also a member of the European Central Bank's Governing Council, told an audience in Essen. "There must be a match between control and liability."

"Ultimately, this requires the possibility of a state insolvency, without the financial system collapsing," he said in the text of his speech.

Answering a question about the possibility of Greece leaving the euro, he said the currency union had become more resilient to economic shocks than before the financial crisis, "meaning these types of contagion effects (would be) reduced".

MORE INSANITY AT LINK

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13. Are Creditors Pushing Greece Deliberately Into Default?

THEY WILL DO ANYTHING TO SUCK THE MARROW FROM THE BONE--BUT IS THERE ANY MARROW THERE TO SUCK?

http://www.socialeurope.eu/2015/04/are-creditors-pushing-greece-deliberately-into-default/

The Greek drama has entered its endgame. The Greek government has to repay loans to the IMF and other public institutions in the near future but does not have the cash to do so. The lenders refuse to come forward in providing liquidity as long as the Greek government does not accept the conditions they impose.

We now hear from the finance ministers that the Greek government is unreasonable because it does not want to accept these conditions. These are that austerity be fully implemented and that the structural reforms that have been agreed to by the previous Greek government, be fully carried out.

But are these conditions reasonable?

The austerity measures that were imposed since 2011 led to devastating effects on the Greek economy. They drove millions of people into unemployment and poverty, and produced intense political instability that is responsible for the rise of Syriza. Insisting on further austerity does not seem reasonable when the failures of this strategy have become so obvious. The surprising thing is that ministers of finance continue to hold the moral high ground and preach to the Greek that they should be more reasonable. Being reasonable is equated to accepting the conditions of the creditors even if these conditions have failed to produce positive results. It is even more surprising that most of the media have now accepted this story.

Some of the structural reforms the creditors insist on are badly needed. Tax reform that would lead the rich to pay taxes is one. But surely this is a reform that the Tsipras government, in contrast to the previous government, is willing to introduce. But other structural reforms are patently unreasonable. The privatization program that was agreed with the previous government and that the creditor nations insist should be implemented does not make sense. A country should not be pushed into disposing of its valuable assets in a forced fire sale. This will lead to very low revenues for the Greek government and will mainly profit the buyers, some of which are companies in the creditor nations.

MORE

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32. Majority of Financial Pros Now Say Greece Is Headed for Euro Exit

BUT DO THE GREEKS WALK OUT, OR GET PUSHED?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-29/majority-in-bloomberg-poll-now-says-greece-is-headed-to-euro-exit



Greece, mired in a protracted financial crisis and at loggerheads with its bailout stewards, will leave the euro, according to the majority of investors, analysts, and traders in a Bloomberg survey. Fifty-two percent of the respondents in the Bloomberg Markets Global Poll believe the cash-strapped country will leave the 19-nation bloc at some point, compared with 43 percent who see Greece remaining in the euro for the foreseeable future. In answer to the same question in mid-January, just 31 percent of poll respondents predicted a Greek exit and 61 percent had the country staying in. The downbeat assessment of Greece’s prospects, more than five years after the country’s first bailout, comes as the country stands on the edge of a financial abyss. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has so far failed to squeeze a loan payment out of his country's institutional creditors as he sticks to his pledge to dial back austerity, while the nation’s banks stay on European Central Bank life support....Eighteen percent of respondents in the April survey predict a departure this year, with a further 22 percent saying a Grexit would come before the end of 2016. An additional 12 percent said that while the country will battle through its most immediate difficulties, it will leave the euro area at some point after 2016.



While Greece remains a problem, it’s not affecting optimism about the euro-area economy as a whole. Gross domestic product in the euro area will increase 1.4 percent in 2015 and 1.7 percent in 2016, according to the median forecast of 59 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

The contagion risk from a Greece exit has been limited, according to Gizem Kara, an economist at BNP Paribas in London. The dangers posed by a departure of the region’s most indebted country have been mitigated by the ECB’s outright monetary transactions and quantitative easing programs, as well as by the creation of the euro area’s rescue fund and central bank supervisor. At the same time, banks have been recapitalized, and governments have narrowed their deficits.

“In March we scaled up our growth forecasts quite significantly, and one of the major reasons for that is the ECB’s QE,” Kara said. “Lower interest rates will feed into investment growth, and better demand outlook in general will push corporates to invest more and employ more.”

The Bloomberg poll, conducted April 14-15, shows the proportion of respondents who believe the euro-zone economy is improving has hit 39 percent, up from 14 percent in January. While 33 percent believe the situation is deteriorating, this is half the number who said they agreed with that statement when polled four months earlier. Twenty-six percent believe the area’s economy to be stable, according to this month’s poll. Asked to choose the one or two markets that offer investors the best opportunities over the next 12 months, Bloomberg subscribers made the euro zone their first choice, at 35 percent, beating out the U.S., which got 33 percent.



Still, there’s danger in believing Greece is the only large risk to the European economy, according to Ludovic Subran, chief economist at Paris-based trade-credit insurer Euler Hermes...

MORE

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14. Canadian Solar Sees Panel Shortage in Second Half on More Demand

IT'S SPRING, AND THE HUGE WIND TURBINES ARE TRUNDLING DOWN MICHIGAN AVENUE...BOUND FOR I-KNOW-NOT-WHERE...BUT THEY'VE BEEN DOING THAT FOR YEARS NOW.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-28/canadian-solar-sees-panel-shortage-in-second-half-on-more-demand

Canadian Solar Inc., the third-biggest panel maker, expects a potential shortage of supply in the second half of this year as demand increases worldwide. “Imbalance may appear,” Chief Executive Officer Shawn Qu said in an interview in Shanghai on Tuesday. “Customers’ real demand has been growing.” The forecast for scarcity contrasts with a glut that wiped out profits across the industry in the early part of this decade. It helps explain decisions by the top manufacturers including Trina Solar Ltd. and JinkoSolar Holding Co. to build more capacity. The industry may install about 57.2 gigawatts this year, up from 40 gigawatts in 2013, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates.

Canadian Solar plans to almost double its own panel capacity from 2013 levels. It maintained its plans to expand to 3.5 gigawatts after June from more than 3 gigawatts currently, Qu said. Along with supply from original equipment manufacturing, total capacity will reach more than 4 gigawatts, he said. Its new cell factory in Funing, Jiangsu province, will also add 400 megawatts of capacity in the fourth quarter to bring the total to as much as 2 gigawatts.

Canadian Solar earned a record $239 million last year on $2.96 billion in sales and panel shipments of 3.1 gigawatts. It expects to sell as much as 4.3 gigawatts of panels this year, a 39 percent increase.

MORE

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16. Bernanke Joins Pimco; Second Consulting Job in Two Weeks

IS UNCLE BEN FACING MASSIVE LAWSUITS? RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT? A GREEDY PIG? MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES? GETTING HIS PAY-OFF?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-29/bernanke-joins-pimco-second-consulting-job-in-two-weeks

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is joining Pacific Investment Management Co. as a senior adviser, his second consulting agreement with a top money manager in as many weeks.

Bernanke will contribute his economic expertise to the firm’s investment process, the Newport Beach, California-based firm said Wednesday. Bernanke previously spoke at Pimco’s client conference in March and advised on the last two of its quarterly economic forums that guide investment strategy.

“We think our clients expect this of us -- we’ve had a long history of attracting top-notch talent and contributors,” Group Chief Investment Officer Daniel Ivascyn said in a telephone interview. “Obviously his experience within central banking is important at the moment, given where we may be in terms of the U.S. economic cycle, but we’re looking for and excited about his ability to make broad-based contributions to our strategy.”

At Pimco, which suffered record redemptions following the departure last year of co-founder Bill Gross, Bernanke will also engage with clients. The 61-year-old, who led the U.S. central bank during the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, earlier this month joined Citadel, the hedge fund run by Chicago billionaire Kenneth Griffin, to advise on monetary policy, financial markets and the global economy...

VIDEO AND MORE TEXT AT LINK...SOUNDS LIKE ALL OF THE ABOVE...

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17. Record Financial Engineering Will Goose Stocks: Goldman by Wolf Richter

http://wolfstreet.com/2015/04/28/goldman-forecasts-banner-year-for-financial-engineering/

GE, in order to paper over a net loss of $13.6 billion and declining revenues in the first quarter, said on April 10 that it would buy back $50 billion of its own shares. That’s on top of the $10.8 billion in actual buybacks last year. The announcement was beat only by Apple’s $90 billion announcement last year, to which it added another $50 billion on Monday.

It’s going to be a great year, not for revenues and earnings, but for share buybacks. Hence for share prices and executive bonuses, despite crummy revenues and earnings. Goldman Sachs says so. In a note to clients, Goldman predicted that companies would goose share buybacks by 18% over 2014 and dividends by 7%. That would be a $1-trillion banner year.

The year has started out on the right foot. Repurchase plans, including GE’s mega-dose, have already reached $337 billion through April 24, Reuters reported, based on data from Birinyi Associates. That’s a 34% jump over the same period last year. The next party of actual repurchases will commence in a week or so, Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin wrote in the note. Turns out, that’s when about 80% of the S&P 500 companies will have exited their blackout period for share repurchases, which stretches from about five weeks before they report earnings to two days afterwards.

So be it if actual earnings, as reported under GAAP, are in the doldrums. By reducing the number of shares outstanding, companies automatically increase their earnings per share. And EPS is the magic metric, particularly “adjusted” ex-bad items EPS. It performs outright miracles...Goldman reminded its clients what this is all about: Buybacks tend to boost share prices. That too is a fundamental principle of financial engineering – getting share prices to rise while bad stuff is happening at the company. And as these shares rise, they will goose the entire market, the note added. Buy, buy, buy. It has worked perfectly so far, pushing the stock market from one new high to the next. By now, companies are the biggest buyers of their shares. The entire stock market valuation is based on the premise that companies will forever buy their own shares. And most companies have to go out and borrow this money. So they issue bonds – nearly free money these crazy days – and they use this cash to become the relentless bid in the market. They buy when shares hit highs because it drives them even higher, and they buy when shares sag because it puts a floor under them. In the process, they load up their balance sheet with debt, and they hollow out stockholder equity. They’re becoming a precarious structure that balances an enormous amount of debt on an ever shakier foundation. The hope is that there will always be enough nearly free money around to roll over this ever growing mountain of debt endlessly. Because if the money gets more expensive or dries up, that precarious structure is going to topple (unless the Fed steps in again, as during the Financial Crisis, to bail them out).


MORE

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27. A financial transaction tax is a Pigouvian tax!

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/a-financial-transaction-tax-is-a-pigouvian-tax/

This morning’s NYT tells of prosecutors finally catching up with the alleged perp behind the “flash crash” in 2010, when the Dow fell almost 600 points in a few minutes. It bounced back soon after, but not until everyone’s nerves were seriously jangled and confidence in the soundness of the equity markets took a big hit. US prosecutors allege that the crash was the work of a guy in a London row house a few miles from Heathrow. That’s right, some schlub in his bathrobe supposedly tanked the markets by “spoofing:” algorithmic trading that executes tens of thousands of buy and sell orders only to cancel them milliseconds later. Once the market reacts to the spoofer’s large bets for or against the stock, she moves in and cashes in on the price change. Basically, a high-frequency variation of “pump-and-dump.” As the Times notes:

The case also played into worries that have swirled around the increasingly automated and complex financial markets, where regulators have struggled to keep up with nimble new participants like high­-frequency trading firms that use sophisticated networks to make money in milliseconds using rapid-fire trades.

Regulators have various ideas of how to regulate against spoofing, front-running (where flash traders get information on trades milliseconds before the public), and other such high-frequency fun and games; I’ve written about them before. They generally work by creating speed bumps in the trading process, say by moving from continuous trading to “batch trading,” thereby taking away the millisecond advantages of the flashers. That might work, but it might not. You ask me, an arms race against quants who live to write regulation-beating algorithms is a recipe for more of the same. For example, suppose batch trades across different exchanges are not perfectly synchronized. That’s an opportunity for high-frequency arbitrage.

A better, simpler way—and one with numerous positive externalities—is a financial transaction tax, a small excise tax on the security trades, typically a few basis points (hundredths of a percent) on the value of the trade. A three basis points FTT is scored as raising over $300 billion over 10 years, a score that includes its dampening impact on trades. Of course, that last bit is a feature, not a bug. We’d have to try it to find out, but it is widely believed that an FTT, even one of the tiny magnitude just noted, would wipe out most high-frequency trading. Though the flash boys can generate huge payouts, the volume of trades they must execute to do so quickly becomes too costly once they’re taxed.

In that regard, the FTT is a Pigouvian tax: a tax that offsets the significant, external costs imposed on the larger society by activities like smoking or polluting. And it does so while generating much needed revenue. There are, of course, arguments against the FTT—by reducing trading, it dampens liquidity; it pushes traders to other exchanges to escape the tax. I deal with some of these concerns...

MORE

I SEE NO GREAT OUTCRY FROM WALL ST. TO END THE HFT REIGN OF MISRULE, HOWEVER....AND EVEN LESS OUTCRY FOR NEW REVENUE TO THE GOVERNMENT

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28. The Wolf of Wall Tweet

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/04/bot_makes_2_4_million_reading_twitter_meet_the_guy_it_cost_a_fortune.html

On the afternoon of Friday, March 27, as several news outlets reported at the time, somebody apparently made $2.4 million from a tweet. That tweet was a bit of breaking news from Wall Street Journal writer Dana Mattioli:


SEE TWEET AT LINK


Quicker than any human seemingly could have done it, someone—or rather something—bought $110,530 worth of cheap options on Altera, a company that makes digital circuits.* Over the next several minutes and until the end of the day, as humans digested Mattioli’s takeover rumor at human speed, Altera’s stock price rose. When all was said and done, those cheap options had resulted in a $2.4 million profit. Speculation immediately centered on the idea that an automated program (a “bot”) had scanned the tweet, interpreted its meaning, and instantly bought those options based on an algorithm. The robot had read the tweet and made a killing on it before anyone knew what was going on....

MORE PROOF THAT THE RIGGING WILL CONTINUE FOR THE DURATION

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31. Exchanges win dismissal of U.S. high-frequency trading lawsuits

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/29/highfrequencytrading-lawsuits-idUSL1N0XQ1BZ20150429

A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits accusing several major U.S. exchanges of cheating ordinary investors by selling early access to market data to high-frequency traders, giving them a split-second advantage in making trades.

In a decision released Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said the claims raised against Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange Inc's New York Stock Exchange, BATS Exchange and other exchanges must be reviewed first by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, not the courts.

Harold Lanier, the named plaintiff in all three proposed class actions, said the exchanges violated his contractual right to timely market data by letting high-frequency traders pay "substantial premiums" to receive market data more than 1,000 microseconds sooner, a "virtual eon" in the marketplace.

The Fairhope, Alabama investor said the exchanges did this by letting preferred traders receive unconsolidated data before a processor consolidated that data for distribution to others, causing ordinary investors like himself to receive stale data....


GAME, SET, MATCH

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18. In Stunning Reversal, the Roberts Court Upholds a Vital Campaign Finance Restriction

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/04/29/roberts_sides_with_liberals_to_uphold_judicial_campaign_finance_restriction.html


Campaign finance reform is Chief Justice John Roberts’ bête noire. From the moment he joined the court, Roberts engineered a judicial revolution that overturned decades of precedent upholding reasonable restrictions on donations, solicitations, and expenditures. After Justice Samuel Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Roberts had the votes to blast away one campaign restriction after another. And that he did, eventually masterminding the notorious Citizens United and calamitous McCutcheon v. FEC. After those catastrophes, it seemed Roberts would devote much of his tenure to obliterating every restriction on campaign finance under the theory that they violate millionaires’ constitutional freedom of speech.

On Wednesday, Roberts halted his crusade against campaign finance reform in a stunning reversal that almost nobody—myself included—saw coming. In Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, Roberts joined the liberals to uphold a Florida measure that barred elected judges from personally soliciting campaign funds. (This is only the second time Roberts has sided with the four liberals against four dissenting conservatives; the first time was in the 2012 Obamacare case.) In his opinion, Roberts explains:

Judges are not politicians, even when they come to the bench by way of the ballot. And a State’s decision to elect its judiciary does not compel it to treat judicial candidates like campaigners for political office. A State may assure its people that judges will apply the law without fear or favor—and without having personally asked anyone for money.

Roberts’ logic here is simple and commonsensical. A state’s judiciary can function healthily only if citizens are content that judges apply the law impartially. If a judicial candidate is permitted to personally ask individuals to donate to her campaign, she may be tempted to treat her donors more favorably in the courtroom. Even if the judge herself remains unbiased, a reasonable observer may still believe that when she rules in favor of a donor, his donation influenced her thinking—consciously or unconsciously. This risk of corruption, actual or perceived, is enough to justify Florida’s narrow, sensible restriction on speech.

Why, then, does the hypothetical risk of corruption not justify restrictions on legislative campaign finance and solicitation? Roberts doesn’t say, exactly—but the answer likely has something to do with judicial dignity. The conservative justices seemed skeptical of this notion at oral arguments, but between then and now, Roberts seems to have realized that permitting judges to panhandle would seriously undermine “public confidence in judicial integrity.” Roberts just isn’t that concerned about public confidence in legislative integrity—perhaps because he’s a judge, not a legislator, and understands that when judges beg people for money then rule in their favor, the principle of impartiality takes a huge hit. (On the other hand, Roberts seems to think that legislators voting in the interests of their highest donor is just democracy in action.)...Roberts’ opinion on Tuesday won’t solve the problem of multimillion-dollar judicial elections, a problem he helped create with Citizens United. It will, however, encourage states to experiment with rules that help put breathing space between judges and the donors who may one day appear in their courtrooms. That alone won’t guarantee judicial impartiality in the 39 states that elect their judges. But after the Roberts court’s campaign finance revolution, it may be the most these states can do.


Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers science, the law, and LGBTQ issues.

VIDEO AT LINK, AND MORE

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20. More Nails in the Coffin of the Middle Class: 5 Things That Could Make Life Even Worse

http://www.alternet.org/economy/more-nails-coffin-middle-class-5-things-could-make-life-even-worse-most-americans?akid=13039.227380.iwRz5q&rd=1&src=newsletter1035438&t=4

If trickle-down economics were anything other than a cruel deception, the United States’ embattled working class would have many reasons to join Wall Street in singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Giant megabanks have been reporting huge profits for 2015’s first quarter, including $5.91 billion at JPMorgan Chase (the largest bank in the country) and $5.8 billion at Wells Fargo. But trickle-down economics doesn’t work, and in working-class America, there isn’t much to celebrate. According to UNICEF, the United States has one of the highest child poverty rates in the developed world—and the fact that 46 million Americans are receiving food stamps (compared to only 17 million in 2000) demonstrates that Wall Street’s profits certainly aren’t trickling down to Main Street. Even when the news seems good on the surface, one needs to read the fine print. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ official unemployment rate fell to 5.5% in February (the lowest since May 2008), but that figure ignores all of the Americans who have been out of work for so long that the federal government pretends they no longer exist and the fact that many of the jobs being created are low-wage service jobs.

Between the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs, outsourcing, neoliberal trade agreements, growing inequality, low interest rates (which make it much more difficult to save), and the lingering effects of the economic crash of September 2008, serious damage has been done to the American working and middle classes. And unless the U.S. changes course economically, the worst may be yet to come. Below are five things that could drive even more nails in the coffin of the American middle class.

1. The Trans Pacific Partnership, a.k.a. “NAFTA on Steroids”: The “Giant Sucking Sound” Could Get Much Louder

2. Elimination of Jobs Because of New Digital Technologies

3. Union-Busting Continues to Accelerate

4. The Privatization of Medicare and Social Security: A Recipe for Disaster

5. Savvy Economic Voices Warn: Another Major Banking Crash Is a Strong Possibility

Millions of Americans have yet to recover from the financial meltdown of September 2008, and one can only imagine the type of damage that another event of that magnitude would do to America’s working class. All the celebrating on Wall Street does not mean that the U.S.’ megabanks have become any less bloated or reckless than they were in 2008. Quite the contrary—the bailouts, corporate welfare and lack of financial reform that followed the Panic of 2008 only encouraged the U.S.’ megabanks (including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Goldman Sachs) to grow much larger. Wells Fargo, for example, had $1.69 trillion in assets in 2014 compared to only $609 billion before 2008. As author Nomi Prins (a former Goldman Sachs/Lehman Brothers employee who has become a fierce critic of Wall Street) notes, JPMorgan Chase now controls 43.8% of the U.S.’ bank trading assets—and she is correct in asserting that at this point, the American financial system has way too much “consolidation” for its own good. Prins recently warned that “we are living with the instability of a system that is supported by central bank maneuvers and the leveraging of them, not by anything organic or independently sustainable.” And Prins is not the only one who is worried: Reich has warned that a repeat of the 2008 fiasco “is not unlikely.” The banking consolidation that Prins is so critical of would not have come about had it not been for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which mandated a strict separation of commercial and investment banking. The repeal of Glass-Steagall helped pave the way for the Panic of 2008, and Elizabeth Warren has been a strong proponent of a “new 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act.” Wall Street banksters are vehemently opposed to that idea and have plenty of lobbying dollars to fight against it. But unless such legislation comes about, Wall Street will remain dangerously volatile—and American workers will continue to be threatened by the possibility of a financial crisis that is as bad as the Panic of 2008 or even worse.

Alex Henderson's work has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, Creem, the Pasadena Weekly and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter @alexvhenderson.

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21. The ultimate sign that Wall Street's pecking order has been totally upended

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ultimate-sign-wall-streets-pecking-155631864.html


If Wells Fargo becomes a bank where Wall Street's top talent wants to work, then financial-crisis-era regulators really would have pulled off something. They will have at least partly changed the calculus Wall Street bankers make from one that looks like a risk-reward culture to one that looks more like safe and secure.

We already know there has been a seismic shift on Wall Street since the financial crisis. Big banks are getting smaller and simpler to deal with new regulation. The question is whether that will really change the pecking order of where people want to work. Before the crisis, the pecking order was clear. Traders were on top, and so were banks with storied trading operations. That meant everyone wanted to work at those shops — places like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan. Now trading — and other risky operations — are hamstrung by regulations, so simpler banks are doing well. Wells Fargo, once derided in Wall Street circles for not even having an investment bank, is now looking really good. In terms of assets, it is about to catch up to the US' third-largest bank, Citigroup; it has grown its assets by 20% in two years; and it is also about to purchase a bunch more in the GE Capital fire sale. Wells Fargo could continue to expand its traditional lines of business — such as its retail banking division — picking up retail assets being peeled off international firms like Credit Suisse, or, potentially, HSBC, as foreign banks appear increasingly willing to throw in the towel on US expansion plays.

Of course, this is Wall Street, and this revolution will not really be complete until top talent heads to Wells — until the stigma of Wells being a simple retail bank has faded away.

I THOUGHT WELLS FARGO WAS RENOWNED FOR ITS SLEAZINESS AND WILD-WEST ATTITUDES....OF COURSE, THAT WAS THE 80'S...MAYBE IT'S CHANGED SINCE THEN...

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22. Oil prices stay supported as crude trades at year-high

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-stay-supported-as-crude-trades-at-year-high-2015-04-30?siteid=YAHOOB




Weaker dollar also helps out oil...BLATHER AT LINK

AS I SUSPECTED...ANOTHER BUBBLE IN OIL IS PUSHING UP PRICING AT THE PUMP

[Demeter]

26. Witnessing A Fundamental Change In The Oil Sector

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/04/witnessing-fundamental-change-oil-sector.html

By Arthur Berman, a petroleum geologist with 36 years of oil and gas industry experience. He is an expert on U.S. shale plays and is currently consulting for several E&P companies and capital groups in the energy sector. Berman is an associate editor of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, and was a managing editor and frequent contributor to theoildrum.com. He is a Director of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, and has served on the boards of directors of The Houston Geological Society and The Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists. Originally published at OilPrice

The U.S. oil production decline has begun.

It is not because of decreased rig count. It is because cash flow at current oil prices is too low to complete most wells being drilled.

The implications are profound. Production will decline by several hundred thousand barrels per day before the effect of reduced rig count is fully seen. Unless oil prices rebound above $75 or $85 per barrel, the rig count won’t matter because there will not be enough money to complete more wells than are being completed today.

Tight oil production in the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Permian basin plays declined approximately 111,000 barrels of oil per day in January. These declines are part of a systematic decrease in the number of new producing wells added since oil prices fell below $90 per barrel in October 2014...


GRAPHS AND MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

25. Have a good Thursday, Everybody!

We've almost made it to the Weekend....

[MattSh]

37. A good part of the world is beating you Americans to this weekend.

International Workers' Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 May was chosen to be International Workers' Day in order to commemorate the 4 May, 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. The police were trying to disperse a public assembly during a general strike for the eight-hour workday, when an unidentified person threw a bomb at the police. The police responded by firing on the workers, killing four demonstrators.[7][8]

Complete story at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%27_Day



States and dependencies colored by observance of International Workers' Day or a different variant of May Day or Labour Day:

  Labour day falls or may fall on May 1st - Dark Blue
  Another public holiday on May 1st - Light Blue
  No public holiday on May 1st, but Labour Day on a different date - Light Red
  No public holiday on May 1st and no Labour Day - Dark Red

[Demeter]

40. Yeah, I know

I did a Weekend on that, in a previous year, and how the US picked Labor Day in September, to avoid cross-contamination with the Commies and Socialists and Unionists, and all those other "undesirables" on May Day.

[Demeter]

30. Ignore the 'whiff of panic' as US economy stalls By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11571395/Ignore-the-whiff-of-panic-as-US-economy-stalls.html


The economy contracted in the first quarter once inventories are stripped out. 'It is hard to put lipstick on that pig,' said UniCredit. The US economy has suddenly stalled. A blizzard of shockingly weak figures raise the awful possibility that America's six-year growth cycle since the Great Recession has already rolled over, with unsettling implications for the world.

Worse yet, this apparent exhaustion is taking hold even before the Federal Reserve has begun to raise interest rates or to drain any of its $3.7 trillion of quantitative easing and balance-sheet expansion.

Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned in Davos earlier this year that the Fed typically needs to cut rates by three or four percentage points to combat each cyclical downturn. It is currently at zero. "Are we anywhere near the point when we have 3pc or 4pc running room to cut rates? This is why I am worried," he said.

"Nobody over the last 50 years, not the IMF, not the US Treasury, has predicted any of the recessions a year in advance, never," he said.

MORE OPTIMISTIC HAND-WAVING AT LINK

[DemReadingDU]

35. Those who panic first, panic best

[DemReadingDU]

38. Something changed today in Firefox

Previously, for an embedded video, I would see a black box. Now I see a picture of the video.

[Demeter]

41. I've always seen the video in Firefox

[DemReadingDU]

42. The issue is not being able to watch the video

I could always click the black box to watch the embedded video. But today, instead of a black box, I see the picture before I click to start the video.
I'll check to see if the ad-blocker changed.

[Fuddnik]

43. Hmmm. I've always seen a pic of the video too.