STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 19 January 2016

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 19 January 2016[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 15 January 2016

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 15 January 2016
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Dow Jones 15,988.08 -390.97 (-2.39%)
S&P 500 1,880.33 -41.51 (-2.16%)
Nasdaq 4,488.42 -126.59 (-2.74%)


[font color=red]10 Year 2.04% +0.02 (0.99%)
[font color=green]30 Year 2.82% -0.01 (-0.35%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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(click on link for latest updates)
Market Updates
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts
08/03/15 Former City (London) trader Tom Hayes found guilty of rigging global Libor interest rates. Each fo eight counts carries up to 10 yr. sentence.
08/21/15 Charles Antonucci Sr, former pres. Park Ave. Bank sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and attempt to steal $11MM in TARP bailout funds, as well as $37.5MM fraud on OK insurance company. To pay $54MM in restitution and give up additional $11MM.
09/21/15 Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn apologizes for VW cheating on air quality standards with emission testing avoidance device. Stock drops 20%, fines may total $18B.
09/22/15 Stewart Parnell, CEO Peanut Corp. of America, sentenced to 28 years in prison for selling salmonella-tainted peanut butter that killed nine.
12/17/15 Martin Shkreli, former CEO Turing Pharmaceuticals and notorious price gouger, arrested on securities fraud charges. Posted $5M bail, resigned as CEO.




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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]

[Proserpina]

1. Market Futures for Tuesday

are forecast down 2% or more. Easy come, easy go.

http://www.patterntrapper.com/!TT_Futures_.shtml

[Proserpina]

2. It's Cold. It's more than cold...windchills to -10F

Tomorrow might get up to 20F and windchills up to +10F. Yippee. 2 weeks to Groundhog Day.

[Proserpina]

3. Oil price dips below $28 to 13-year low as markets brace for Iranian supply

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/oil-price-dips-below-28-to-13-year-low-as-markets-brace-for-iranian-supply?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Version+A&utm_term=151651&subid=9068680&CMP=ema_565a

Brent crude bounced back in Asian trading but pressure is likely to remain on prices as the supply glut grows and Chinese growth continues to slow...The price of oil has briefly fallen below $28 to its lowest point for 13 years on concerns about a worsening supply glut after sanctions on Iran were lifted, allowing the country to resume oil exports.

The global benchmark of Brent crude tumbled to as low as $27.67 in Asia on Monday – a fall of 4.4% on Friday’s close – before rebounding to trade at $28.52 at 5am GMT. The last time Brent closed below $28 was in November 2003.

Iran is ready to increase its crude exports by 500,000 bpd, its deputy oil minister said on Sunday. Daily global demand is more than 80m bpd.

“The drop in price was due to the western sanctions on Iran being lifted. This means we will be seeing a bigger oil glut with Iranian crude exports coming back to the market,” said Daniel Ang, an analyst at Phillip Futures.

more

[Proserpina]

4. the capitalist network that runs the world

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/

...An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.”

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world’s economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy – whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group...



The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue

more

[Proserpina]

5. "Countdown To The End": EU Officials Say Europe Is "Going Down The Drain"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-18/countdown-end-eu-officials-say-europe-going-down-drain

Back in September, when Berlin and Brussels were busy devising a quota plan to settle the millions of Mid-East asylum seekers flooding into the country, Slovakia said that if Germany called for financial penalties against countries unwilling to accommodate their “share” of migrants, it would be “the end of the EU.” That might have seemed hyperbolic at the time, but since then, the situation has spiraled out of control. Border fences have been erected, refugee camps are overflowing, and anti-migrant sentiment is running high after a series of reported sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve sparked a bloc-wide scandal.

In a testament to just how tense things have become, Austria suspended Schengen on Saturday as new rules came into effect for those seeking to traverse the country on the way north.

“Anyone who arrives at our border is subject to control,” Chancellor Werner Faymann said. “If the EU does not manage to secure the external borders, Schengen as a whole is put into question... Then each country must control its national borders,” he added, before warning that if the EU could not better control its external borders “the whole EU will be in question.”

Indeed, the idea that the worsening migrant crisis could well bring an end to the EU has made its way out of Eurosceptic circles and into discussions between the bloc's top diplomats and officials.

"The Germans, founders of the postwar union, shut their borders to refugees in a bid for political survival by the chancellor who let in a million migrants," Reuters wrote on Sunday, describing a hypothetical European endgame. "And then -- why not? -- they decide to revive the Deutschmark while they're at it."

Both Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker were out last week with stark warnings about the prospects for the union's survival in the face of widespread disagreement among member countries regarding how to handle the influx of asylum seekers. Europe is now "vulnerable" Merkel admitted, before saying the fate of the euro is "directly linked" to how the bloc handles the refugee crisis. "Nobody should act as though you can have a common currency without being able to cross borders reasonably easily," the Chancellor, whose ratings have slipped amid the migrant debate, said at a business event in Mainz. Juncker's assessment was more dire. Europe "is on its last chance" he warned, before saying he hopes this isn't "the beginning of the end."

"Some see that as mere scare tactics aimed at fellow Europeans by leaders with too much to lose from an EU collapse," Reuters continues. "[But] empty threat or no, with efforts to engage Turkey's help showing little sign yet of preventing migrants reaching Greek beaches, German and EU officials are warning that without a sharp drop in arrivals or a change of heart in other EU states to relieve Berlin of the lonely task of housing refugees, Germany could shut its doors, sparking wider crisis this spring."

Make no mistake, were Germany to stop accepting refugees, a dangerous chain of events would unfold just as warmer weather makes the journey more appealing for refugees. Arrivals have not slowed during the winter months, a senior conservative German lawmaker said. "You can only imagine what happens when the weather improves." If Germany's open-door slams shut in the spring, millions of asylum seekers would be stuck along the Balkan route where bottlenecks led to border clashes between Hungarian riot police and migrants last year. Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia are in no position to accommodate the influx...

more

[Fuddnik]

6. Two rock legends in a week. RIP Glen Frey, Eagles Founding Member.

[Proserpina]

8. Would you be willing/able to do a memorial weekend for him?

[Fuddnik]

13. Wish I could, but I'll be working all week-end.

[Hotler]

11. Plus one funk legend. Mic Gillette of Tower of Power.

The man was the high horn in the T.O.P. horn section.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027541587

When great musicians pass the whole world looses.
A toast to David, Glen and Mic. RIP

[Proserpina]

7. America's Cash Flow Negative: Energy Companies Have $325 Billion In Debt Among Them

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-18/these-are-cash-flow-negative-energy-companies-us-total-debt-325-billion

There are roughly 80 U.S. companies that had $100mm in LTM revenue and that had negative FCF or EBITDA less CapEx.

The combined market cap of these 80 companies is just shy of half a trillion dollars.

The combined Total Enterprise Value of these 80 companies is $775 billion.

The combined debt of these 80 companies is $325 billion.

None of these companies are bankrupt, yet. As a reminder, putting as many of these companies out of business, and thus slashing non-OPEC oil production (as OPEC forecasted in its latest bulletin earlier today), is the primary motive behind Saudi Arabia's relentless pumping spree.



There is just one problem with the Saudi plan: even assuming all of these companies file Chapter 11, all that would happen is their debt would be wiped out, with the existing creditors getting the equity keys, and becoming the new owners of streamlined, debt-free corporations. This would means that the All In Cost Of Production would plunge as no debt payments would have to be satisfied with the free cash flow. Meanwhile, the entire existing E&P infrastructure would still be in place and ready to pump as before.

This means that after the default and debt-for-equity deluge, US shale would be able to pump even more at far lower breakeven costs, forcing Saudi Arabia to overproduce for even longer ultimately shooting itself in the foot when its reserves run out!

more

[Proserpina]

9. Trump’s bad bet: How too much debt drove his biggest casino aground

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/trumps-bad-bet-how-too-much-debt-drove-his-biggest-casino-aground/2016/01/18/f67cedc2-9ac8-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html


In 1990, Donald Trump opened the largest and most lavish casino-hotel complex in Atlantic City. Unlike any other casino in America, the Trump Taj Mahal was expected to break every record in the books. But just several months later, it all fell apart...For months in 1987, Donald Trump maneuvered to take control of the hulking, unfinished Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. He snapped up stock in the parent company after its owner died and then made a surprise bid to take the company private.

With the Taj, along with two casinos he already owned in the city, Trump could dominate gambling on the East Coast. But first he needed to convince state gambling regulators that he was financially stable and could raise enough cash to complete the $1 billion project. On Feb. 8, 1988, at a licensing hearing in front of the state Casino Control Commission, Trump said he could pull it off for one main reason: He was Donald Trump. Because of his reputation as a dealmaker, he said, bankers were lining up to lend him money at prime rates. That meant he could avoid the risky, high-interest loans known as junk bonds.

“I’m talking about banking institutions, not these junk bonds, which are ridiculous,” Trump testified, according to transcripts of the hearing. “The funny thing with junk bonds is that junk bonds are what really made the companies junk.”

Trump received the approvals he needed for the Taj, but the prime-rate loans never materialized. Determined to move forward, he turned to the very junk bonds he had derided in the hearing. He agreed to pay the bond lenders 14 percent interest, roughly 50 percent more than he had projected, to raise $675 million. It was the biggest gamble of his career....


more

[Proserpina]

10. Denmark Just Broke The World Record For Wind Energy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/denmark-record-wind-energy_us_569d5125e4b00f3e9862847a?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business&section=business

For the second year in a row, Denmark is the most wind-powered country in world history, Danish officials announced this weekend.

The Scandinavian country produced a whopping 42 percent of its electricity from wind power in 2015, the highest proportion ever achieved by a country, according to Denmark’s utility company, Energinet.

And for the first time ever last year, the country was able to turn off its large central power stations for an entire day and provide all electricity from wind turbines and other renewable energy sources.

This is the second year in a row that Denmark has set the record for wind energy; in 2014 it generated 39 percent of its electricity from the turbines.

more

[antigop]

12. Democratic Debate: Alan Greenspan’s Spouse Should Not Have Co-Hosted

http://wallstreetonparade.com/

Leave it to NBC to remind us that corporate media is tone deaf when it comes to facing up to outrageous conflicts of interest. The final presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary aired last night on NBC and was co-moderated by Lester Holt and Andrea Mitchell. Given the public focus on Hillary Clinton’s financial ties to Wall Street, it was clear that hard-hitting policy questions on reforming Wall Street would need to be asked during the debate.

So why put Andrea Mitchell on that stage instead of an objective media moderator? Mitchell is married to Alan Greenspan, the man whose 18-year stint as Fed Chairman included a two-term appointment by Bill Clinton’s White House. Greenspan was correctly dubbed by Time Magazine as “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis”; was the man who played a key role together with the Clinton administration’s Wall Street sycophants Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in repealing the Glass-Steagall Act that ushered in the devastating deregulation of Wall Street and subsequent collapse in 2008; and the man who attempted to lend credence to the nutty “selfishness is good/government regulation is the enemy” theories of Ayn Rand, Greenspan’s long-time economic mentor.

[Fuddnik]

14. They figured (hoped) nobody would be watching anyway.

[Proserpina]

15. It's the talent shortage

Not enough people with the brains, training and stamina in the country to do the heavy lifting....

[Proserpina]

16. Puerto Rico's debt crisis just got worse

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/18/news/economy/puerto-rico-debt-crisis/index.html

...The island has even less money than everyone thought, according to the latest figures out Monday, and it's having to resort to "extraordinary measures" to pay its bills.

The cash crunch is so bad that Puerto Rico's prison system is no longer paying the vendor that supplies food for inmates, and some special education instructors have stopped getting paid, according to a senior government official. The island is also delaying people's tax refunds.

Over the next decade, Puerto Rico must close a nearly $24 billion funding hole, worse than previously projected in September. That's after raising taxes and severely cutting expenses.

The island's problems center on how to deal with just over $70 billion in total debt.

"A significant restructuring of the Commonwealth's debt is inevitable," the government report concluded.

[DemReadingDU]

17. Univision to purchase satirical website, The Onion

1/19/16 Univision to purchase satirical website, The Onion

MIAMI — The country's most popular Spanish-language TV network is growing its brand with an unlikely purchase: the country's most popular English-language satirical website.

Univision said it plans to announce on Tuesday that it is acquiring a 40% controlling stake of The Onion, the humor site founded as a small newspaper in Madison, Wis., 28 years ago.

The Onion staff will remain in its current headquarters in Chicago, but Univision will have the option to purchase the company outright.

The pairing may seem odd: a network that features racy soap operas, sports and news targeted at the nation's 50 million Hispanics, and the nation's preeminent satirical site that pokes its finger at everything from politics to pop culture to the minutiae of Americans' daily lives (recent headline: "Corn added to list of items that upset Grandma's stomach&quot .

Yet the purchase follows a years-long effort by Univision executives to reach portions of the U.S. population they feel are under-served by traditional news outlets.

In 2013, in partnership with Disney's ABC television network, Univision launched Fusion, an English-language news and entertainment channel designed to attract "young, diverse and inclusive" viewers. In 2015, Univision purchased The Root, a news and opinion website dedicated to African-American issues that was founded by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Adding The Onion, and its legion of young readers, represents the next step in that process to reach younger readers and viewers.

The Onion's enduring popularity is due in part to its ability to transition from a weekly newspaper to a 24/7 digital operation, constantly reacting to news of the day with its unique brand of humor.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/01/19/univision-the-onion-purchase/78971420/

[DemReadingDU]

18. J&J to cut 3,000 jobs in medical devices division

1/19/15 J&J to cut 3,000 jobs in medical devices division

Healthcare conglomerate Johnson & Johnson said it would cut about 3,000 jobs within its medical devices division, or between 4 percent and 6 percent of the unit's global workforce, over the next two years.

The company said on Tuesday that it expected to record pre-tax restructuring charges of $2.0 billion to $2.4 billion in connection with these plans, of which about $600 million will be recorded in the fourth quarter of 2015.

Leerink analysts said the announcement meant that an acquisition was still on the cards for J&J, given that it had about $37 billion in cash as of the end of the third quarter.

"We continue to believe JNJ is an active acquirer with a focus likely heavily weighted toward it's lagging Medical Devices business...it's a matter of when, not if, JNJ does a deal", they wrote in a note.

more...
http://news.yahoo.com/johnson-johnson-cuts-medical-device-division-workforce-4-120108158--finance.html

[DemReadingDU]

19. Ilargi: Why This Slump Has Legs

via The Automatic Earth

1/18/16 Why This Slump Has Legs

We’ve only really been in two weeks of trading in the new year, things are looking pretty bad to say the least, so predictably the press are asking -and often answering- questions about when the slump will be over. Rebound, recovery, the usual terminology. When will we get back to growth?

For me personally, but that’s just me, that last question sounds a bit more stupid every single time I hear and read it. Just a bit, but there’s been a lot of those bits, more than I care to remember. Luckily, the answer is easy. The slump will not be over for a very long time, there will be no rebound or recovery, and please stop talking about a return to growth unless you can explain what you want to grow into.

I’m sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear, but life’s a bitch and so’s the economy. You’ve lived on pink fumes for a long time, most of you for their whole lives, but reality dictates that real ‘growth’ stopped decades ago, and you never figured that out because, and I quote here (see below), you and the world you’re part of became “addicted to borrowing money, spending it, and passing this off as ‘growth'”.

That you believed this was actual growth, however, is on you. You fell for a scam and you’re going to have to pay the price. If there’s one single thing people are good at, it’s lying. It’s as old as human history, and it happens every day, so you’re no exception to any rule. You’re perhaps just not particularly clever.

How do we know a ‘recovery’ is so far off it’s really no use to even talk about it? As I said, it’s easy.
.
.
The ‘least worst’ place to be for what money will be left is US dollars, US treasuries and perhaps metals. But there’ll be a whole lot less left than just about anyone thinks. That’s the price of deleveraging.

The price of not deleveraging, on the other hand, is what we see in the markets today. And there is no cure. It must be done. The price for keeping up the facade rises sharply with each passing day, and the effort will in the end be futile. All bubbles have limited lifespans.


much more...
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/01/why-this-slump-has-legs/

[antigop]

20. Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/business/doctors-unionize-to-resist-the-medical-machine.html

An Oregon medical center’s plan to increase efficiency by outsourcing
doctors drove a group of its hospitalists to fight back by banding together.

Outsourced hospitalists tend to make as much or more money than those that hospitals employ directly, typically in excess of $200,000 a year. But the catch is that their compensation is often tied more directly to the number of patients they see in a day — which the hospitalists at Sacred Heart worried could be as many as 18 or 20, versus the 15 that they and many other hospitalists contend should be the maximum. (Mark Hamm, executive vice president of EmCare, a physician services firm based in Dallas that has no connection to Sacred Heart, said the hospitalists employed by many staffing companies typically see 15 to 18 patients a day, though he said that was true of those who were directly employed by hospitals as well.)

It was the idea that they could end up seeing more patients that prompted outrage among the hospitalists at Sacred Heart, which has two facilities in the area, with a total of nearly 450 beds. “We’re doctors, we’re professionals,” Dr. Alexander said. “Giving me a bonus for seeing two more patients — I’m not sure I should be doing that. It’s not safe.” (A hospital representative said patient safety was “inviolate.”)

Some Sacred Heart hospitalists left for other jobs, and the rest formed a union, one of the first of its kind in the country.