STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 3 April 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 3 April 2012[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 2 April 2012

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 2 April 2012
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Dow Jones 13,264.49 +52.45 (0.40%)
S&P 500 1,419.04 +10.57 (0.75%)
Nasdaq 3,119.70 +28.13 (0.91%)


[font color=green]10 Year 2.18% -0.01 (-0.46%)
[font color=black]30 Year 3.32% 0.00 (0.00%)
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
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
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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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Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = [/font][font color=red]12[/font]
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



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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]

[Demeter]

1. Well, that cartoon is PARTLY true

The other part is the Bernanke, trashing the dollar.

Although with everyone else debasing their currency, too, in a race for the bottom, the only winners are holding gold, silver, and oil, arable farmland, fresh water supplies, and defensible borders. And the right latitude for global warming...

An educated and civil populace, a national health care system, an international awareness....

and, please, less tolerance of TEH STUPID!

[Demeter]

4. How You Can Profit From The “Year With No Winter”

http://etfdailynews.com/2012/03/28/how-you-can-profit-from-the-year-with-no-winter-moo-dba-jjg-jja-cow/

...Contrarian and savvy investors are constantly on the lookout for unusual occurrences in the economy, the market and nature, and in turn the unique investment opportunities they present. So I’ve been searching the landscape for opportunities related to this highly unusual weather, and I came across an interesting possibility …

have traded the grain and agriculture markets for many years, getting my first exposure to them when I was a trader at a hedge fund in 2005. I was reading some research over the weekend that farmers in the heartland are reporting their fields are looking like it is already early May, instead of the end of March.

As a result, the gradual return to life that comes with spring has arrived: Animals emerging from their dens, flowers blooming, and insects buzzing around.

And it’s the buzzing insects and flowers growing 6-8 weeks early that have farmers concerned about the increasing level of risk of weeds and the potential damage to their crops. Consequently one of the offshoots of the “year with no winter” will most likely be increased demand for fertilizer, pesticides, and weed control chemicals...

WHAT A SHALLOW, STUPID MAN

[Demeter]

15. Oh Canada! Imposing Austerity on the World’s Most Resource-rich Country By Ellen Brown

http://www.nationofchange.org/oh-canada-imposing-austerity-world-s-most-resource-rich-country-1333374486

Even the world’s most resource-rich country has now been caught in the debt trap. Its once-proud government programs are being subjected to radical budget cuts—cuts that could have been avoided if the government had not quit borrowing from its own central bank in the 1970s. Last week in Ottawa, the Canadian House of Commons passed the federal government’s latest round of budget cuts and austerity measures. Highlights included chopping 19,200 public sector jobs, cutting federal programs by $5.2 billion per year, and raising the retirement age for millions of Canadians from 65 to 67. The justification for the cuts was a massive federal debt that is now over C$ 581 billion, or 84% of GDP.

An online budget game furnished by the local newspaper the Globe and Mail gave readers a chance to try to balance the budget themselves. Possibilities included slashing transfer payments for elderly benefits, retirement programs, health benefits, and education; cutting funding for transportation, national defense, economic development and foreign aid; and raising taxes. An article on the same page said, “The government, in reality, doesn’t have that many tools at its disposal to close a large budgetary deficit. It can either raise taxes or cut departmental program spending.” It seems that no gamer, lawmaker or otherwise, was offered the opportunity to toy with the number one line item in the budget: interest to creditors. A chart on the website of the Department of Finance Canada titled “Where Your Tax Dollar Goes” showed interest payments to be 15% of the budget—more than health care, social security, and other transfer payments combined. The page was dated 2006 and was last updated in 2008, but the percentages are presumably little different today.

Penny wise, Pound Foolish

Among other cuts in the 2012 budget, the government announced that it would be discontinuing the minting of Canadian pennies, which now cost more than a penny to make. The government is focusing on the pennies and ignoring the pounds—the massive share of the debt that might be saved by borrowing from the government’s own Bank of Canada. Between 1939 and 1974, the government actually did borrow from its own central bank. That made its debt effectively interest-free, since the government owned the bank and got the benefit of the interest. According to figures supplied by Jack Biddell, a former government accountant, the federal debt remained very low, relatively flat, and quite sustainable during those years. (See his chart AT LINK.) The government successfully funded major public projects simply on the credit of the nation, including the production of aircraft during and after World War II, education benefits for returning soldiers, family allowances, old age pensions, the Trans-Canada Highway, the St. Lawrence Seaway project, and universal health care for all Canadians.

The debt shot up only after 1974. That was when the Basel Committee was established by the central-bank Governors of the Group of Ten countries of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which included Canada. A key objective of the Committee was to maintain “monetary and financial stability.” To achieve that goal, the Committee discouraged borrowing from a nation’s own central bank interest-free, and encouraged borrowing instead from private creditors, all in the name of “maintaining the stability of the currency.” The presumption was that borrowing from a central bank with the power to create money on its books would inflate the money supply and prices. Borrowing from private creditors, on the other hand, was considered not to be inflationary, since it involved the recycling of pre-existing money. What the bankers did not reveal, although they had long known it themselves, was that private banks create the money they lend just as public banks do. The difference is simply that a publicly-owned bank returns the interest to the government and the community, while a privately-owned bank siphons the interest into its capital account, to be re-invested at further interest, progressively drawing money out of the productive economy.

The debt curve that began its exponential rise in 1974 tilted toward the vertical in 1981, when interest rates were raised by the U.S. Federal Reserve to 20%. At 20% compounded annually, debt doubles in under four years. Canadian rates went as high as 22% during that period. Canada has now paid over a trillion Canadian dollars in interest on its federal debt—nearly twice the debt itself. If it had been borrowing from its own bank all along, it could be not only debt-free but sporting a hefty budget surplus today. That is true for other countries as well.

The Bankers’ Silent Coup

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

2. When Bankers Rule the World

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/when-bankers-rule-the-world

How we can call out the myths, restructure the banking system, shut down the con game, and take back America...by David Korten

...insightful observers have known for years: the business purpose of Wall Street bankers is to maximize their personal financial take without regard to the consequences for others....

Why has the public for so long tolerated Wall Street’s reckless abuses of power and accepted the resulting devastation? The answer lies in a cultural trance induced by deceptive language and misleading indicators backed by flawed economic theory and accounting sleight-of-hand. To shatter the trance we need to recognize that the deception that Wall Street promotes through its well-funded PR machine rests on three false premises.

1. We best fulfill our individual moral obligation to society by maximizing our personal financial gain.
   
2. Money is wealth and making money increases the wealth of the society.
   
3. Making money is the proper purpose of the individual enterprise and is the proper measure of prosperity and economic performance.

Wall Street aggressively promotes these fallacies as guiding moral principles. Their embrace by Wall Street insiders helps to explain how they are able to reward themselves with obscene bonuses for their successful use of deception, fraud, speculation, and usury to steal wealth they have had no part in creating and yet still believe, as Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein famously proclaimed, that they are “doing God’s work.”

The devastation created by Wall Street’s failure affirms three truths that are the foundation on which millions of people are at work building a New Economy:

1. Our individual and collective well-being depends on acting with concern for the well-being of others. We all do better when we look out for one another.
   
   
2. Money is not wealth. It is just numbers. Sacrificing the health and happiness of billions of people to grow numbers on computer hard drives to improve one’s score on the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s richest people is immoral. Managing a society’s economy to facilitate this immoral competition at the expense of people and nature is an act of collective insanity.
   
   
3. The proper purpose of the economy and the enterprises that comprise it is to provide good jobs and quality goods and services beneficial to the health and happiness of people, community and nature. A modest financial profit is essential to a firm’s viability, but is not its proper purpose.

The critical distinction between making money and creating wealth is the key to seeing through Wall Street’s illusions.

MORE

[Demeter]

3. Can This Man Save the American Economy?

NO, I DOUBT IT, BUT IT'S AN AMUSING AFFECTATION AND ARROGANCE TO THINK SO

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/03/chicago_fed_president_charles_evans_has_an_ingenious_plan_to_save_the_american_economy_listen_to_it_ben_bernanke_.html

Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans has an ingenious plan to jump-start job creation. His Fed colleagues should listen to him.

By Matthew Yglesias

Can talking differently boost the economy? It sounds like a silly idea, but as long as the talkers have the right jobs, there’s considerable theoretical reason to believe they can make a huge difference. New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago shows that talk does matter and that the Fed could significantly improve the economy by choosing its words better.

The messenger for all this was Charles Evans, the president of the Chicago Fed, who is waging a low-profile war to revive the economy by changing how the Fed speaks. Last week, at the annual Brookings Papers on Economic Activity conference, Evans tried to make this case to an elite audience of economists and policymakers. His paper, “Macroeconomic Effects of FOMC Forward Guidance,” co-written with Chicago Fed staffers, is one of the most important policy arguments out there today, arguing that the central bank could significantly stimulate the economy simply by rephrasing its statement that “economic conditions—including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run—are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate through late 2014.”


OH, YEAH, MORE HOT AIR WILL DO THE TRICK. AFTER ALL, BERNANKE CAN'T INFLATE THAT BALLOON ALL BY HIMSELF...

[Egalitarian Thug]

76. Well, 41 did bullshit us out of the collapse of '87. Ever since Nixon finalized the

conversion of our economy to the fiction it is, the near-bottom line is that mass delusion can, and has, pushed it along nicely fro the rich.

Of course, we are playing out the final threads of that tattered string, but why not give it another try?

[Demeter]

77. Wikipedia on the crash of '87

Potential causes for the decline include program trading, overvaluation, illiquidity, and market psychology.

The most popular explanation for the 1987 crash was selling by program traders. U.S. Congressman Edward J. Markey, who had been warning about the possibility of a crash, stated that "Program trading was the principal cause."

In program trading, computers perform rapid stock executions based on external inputs, such as the price of related securities. Common strategies implemented by program trading involve an attempt to engage in arbitrage and portfolio insurance strategies. The trader Paul Tudor Jones predicted and profited from the crash, attributing it to portfolio insurance derivatives which were "an accident waiting to happen" and that the "crash was something that was eminently forecastable". Once the market started going down, the writers of the derivatives were "forced to sell on every down-tick" so the "selling would actually cascade instead of dry up".

As computer technology became more available, the use of program trading grew dramatically within Wall Street firms. After the crash, many blamed program trading strategies for blindly selling stocks as markets fell, exacerbating the decline. Some economists theorized the speculative boom leading up to October was caused by program trading, and that the crash was merely a return to normalcy. Either way, program trading ended up taking the majority of the blame in the public eye for the 1987 stock market crash.

New York University's Richard Sylla divides the causes into macroeconomic and internal reasons. Macroeconomic causes included international disputes about foreign exchange and interest rates, and fears about inflation.

The internal reasons included innovations with index futures and portfolio insurance. I've seen accounts that maybe roughly half the trading on that day was a small number of institutions with portfolio insurance. Big guys were dumping their stock. Also, the futures market in Chicago was even lower than the stock market, and people tried to arbitrage that. The proper strategy was to buy futures in Chicago and sell in the New York cash market. It made it hard -- the portfolio insurance people were also trying to sell their stock at the same time.

Economist Richard Roll believes the international nature of the stock market decline contradicts the argument that program trading was to blame. Program trading strategies were used primarily in the United States, Roll writes. Markets where program trading was not prevalent, such as Australia and Hong Kong, would not have declined as well, if program trading was the cause. These markets might have been reacting to excessive program trading in the United States, but Roll indicates otherwise. The crash began on October 19 in Hong Kong, spread west to Europe, and hit the United States only after Hong Kong and other markets had already declined by a significant margin.

Another common theory states that the crash was a result of a dispute in monetary policy between the G7 industrialized nations, in which the United States, wanting to prop up the dollar and restrict inflation, tightened policy faster than the Europeans. U.S. pressure on Germany to change its monetary policy was one of the factors that unnerved investors in the run-up to the crash. The crash, in this view, was caused when the dollar-backed Hong Kong stock exchange collapsed, and this caused a crisis in confidence.

Some technical analysts claim that the cause was the collapse of the US and European bond markets, which caused interest-sensitive stock groups like savings & loans and money center banks to plunge as well. This is a well documented inter-market relationship: turns in bond markets affect interest-rate-sensitive stocks, which in turn lead the general stock market turns....

ALL I REMEMBER ABOUT 1987 WAS THAT SPECULATION WENT CRAZY, AND IT DID SO AROUND THE WORLD.

THROW IN THE ABOVE-MENTIONED OBSTACLES, AND A CRASH WAS INEVITABLE. WITHOUT THE SPECULATION, THERE COULD HAVE BEEN NO CRASH.

I SEE THE SAME CONDITIONS BUILDING TODAY. WHEN AND HOW IT WILL CRASH DOWN, I CANNOT GUESS. I JUST HOPE IT TAKES OUT SOME OF THE BAD GUYS, THIS TIME.

PS: THAT'S WAS GREENSPAN'S FIRST BUBBLE---HE TOOK CHAIR OF FED RESERVE IN AUGUST, AND THE WORLD CRASHED IN OCTOBER....COULD HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE US SPECULATION LEVELS, AT LEAST.

[Egalitarian Thug]

83. So many problems with this Wiki piece. Does existing interest justify the time it would take to

go through it? Most of it is simply regurgitating the official line that was used to BS the market back on track.

It is conventional wisdom that the market runs on fear and greed, but BS and superstition are the lubricants for that engine.

[Demeter]

5. Debt Bubble: Why “Too Big To Fail” Banks Still Face Much Trouble Ahead

DEFINITION OF INSANITY DEFINITELY APPLIES HERE...

http://etfdailynews.com/2012/03/27/debt-bubble-why-too-big-to-fail-banks-still-face-much-trouble-ahead-xlf-skf-fas-faz-jpm-bac-c-gs/

Michael Snyder: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claims that the Federal Reserve averted a second Great Depression by bailing out the big Wall Street banks during the last financial crisis, and he says that if a similar financial crisis comes along that the correct “policy response” will be to do the exact same thing again. This was the theme of the lecture that Bernanke delivered to students at George Washington University on Tuesday. In previous lectures Bernanke has defended the existence of the Fed and detailed the history of Fed activities, but on Tuesday he addressed things that have happened since he has been at the helm of the Fed. And according to Bernanke, he has been doing a great job. Bernanke told the students that the “threat of a second Great Depression was very real” and that the Federal Reserve did exactly what needed to be done to fix the financial system. Unfortunately, the truth is that all Bernanke did was kick the can a bit farther down the road. You can’t fix a debt problem with more debt, and the debt bubble we are living in today is far larger than it was in 2008. Will Bernanke still be trying to portray himself as a hero when this house of cards finally falls apart?

During his lecture to the students on Tuesday, Bernanke stated the following….

“I think the view is increasingly gaining acceptance that without the forceful policy response that stabilized the financial system in 2008 and early 2009, we could have had a much worse outcome in the economy.”

So what did that “forceful policy response” entail? Well, on slide 24 of his presentation to the students Bernanke tells us….

• On October 10, 2008, G‐7 countries agreed to work together to stabilize the global financial system. They agreed to:

– prevent the failure of systemically important financial institutions
– ensure financial institutions’ access to funding and capital
– restore depositor confidence
– work to normalize credit markets

Please note that not all financial institutions got bailed out. In fact, hundreds of small and mid-size U.S. banks failed during the financial crisis. It was only the “systemically important financial institutions” that got bailed out.

So who decided which financial institutions were important enough to be bailed out? The Federal Reserve made those decisions. There were no Congressional votes and no input from the public. The Federal Reserve determined who the winners and the losers would be in secret and without any public debate. Sure sounds “democratic”, eh? But we are told to trust them because they are supposedly the experts.

So once the Federal Reserve bailed out the “too big to fail” banks, what was the outcome?

On page 25 of his presentation to the students Bernanke claimed that the bailouts successfully prevented the global financial system from collapsing….

• The international policy response averted the collapse of the global financial system.

But it wasn’t just big Wall Street banks that got bailed out. Bernanke says that AIG was also bailed out because the insurance company was deemed to be too “interconnected with many other parts of the global financial system” to be allowed to fail….

Because AIG was interconnected with many other parts of the global financial system, its failure would have had a massive effect on other financial firms and markets.

Once again, we see that it is the Federal Reserve who picks the winners and the losers.

AIG got bailed out and was then able to pay 100 cents on the dollar of what it owed to Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS). That sure worked out well for Goldman Sachs. In all, the Federal Reserve issued a grand total of more than 16 trillion dollars in secret loans during the financial crisis. The big Wall Street banks got showered with cash while hundreds of smaller banks were allowed to die like dogs.

The fact that the Fed greatly favors the big Wall Street banks has allowed them to grow massively in size and in power. Back in 1970, the 5 biggest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets. Today, the 5 biggest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets. The “too big to fail” banks just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Yet during his presentation to the students, Bernanke tried to talk out of both sides of his mouth by claiming that it is not a good thing for some banks to be “too big to fail”….

“But clearly, it is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which some companies are ‘too big to fail.’”

So who is to blame for them being so big? Well, the Federal Reserve is probably the biggest culprit. Thanks Bernanke. The big Wall Street banks are bigger than ever and they are also more unstable than ever. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, the biggest U.S. banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely mind blowing. Just check out these numbers which have just been released….

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) – $70.1 Trillion

Citibank (NYSE:C) – $52.1 Trillion

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) – $50.1 Trillion

Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) – $44.2 Trillion

So what is going to happen when that bubble pops? Is Bernanke going to zap tens of trillions of dollars into existence to bail out that gigantic mess?

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! SEE LINK!

[Demeter]

14. Durable Goods, Stock Market, Fed in the Driver's Seat & Why by Ilene

http://ilene.typepad.com/ourfavorites/2012/03/durable-goods-stock-market-fed-in-the-drivers-seat-why.html


After reading Lee Adler of the Wall Street Examiner's article, Durable Goods and the Stock Market with The Fed in the Driver's Seat, I asked Lee, "Why is it the Fed's job to be propping up the stock market? Doesn't it make the whole market a Fed-controlled game, rather than what it started as - a mechanism for companies to raise money and people to invest in public companies?"

Lee answered: "Bernanke has made no bones about it. He sees the stock market as a legitimate instrument of policy manipulation. It's his biggest tool, much bigger than the ones between his ears and his legs. The Fed works for the banks, and the capital markets exist as a means for 'capitalists' to extract wealth from the public. Stock markets weren't started for the purpose of enriching the public, that's for sure... The Fed has two clients, the US Treasury, and the banking system. It operates to make sure that they stay in business."

Lee also noted that the history of the Fed is replete with a variety of programs where it tried to manipulate something. "The stock market manipulation is relatively new as an overt policy tool, but the Fed can't manipulate indefinitely. Eventually the unintended consequences will rise up and bite it in the ass."

Worth moving up, "the grateful unemployed" asked an excellent question in the comment section of Zero Hedge: "So why did the Fed precipitate the 2008 crash? Any thoughts?"

Lee: "It was just another one of their serial blunders. It's just that some of their mistakes look good on the surface for a while until the unintended consequences overwhelm the intended ones. That one went bad immediately. I was shocked at the time that they would sterilize the alphabet soup programs that started with the TAF in 2007, by pulling the funds from the SOMA, thus crippling the Primary Dealers. I warned repeatedly that it would precipitate a crash, especially as the Treasury began selling over $100 billion a week in new debt to fund the TARP in Q3 2008. Bernanke fucked up, plain and simple. They started to realize the mistake in November by starting direct purchases of limited amounts of GSE paper, but didn't go full bore until they started massive Treasury purchases in March 2009. That turned the market."


MUCH GRAPHIC PORN AT LINK

[Demeter]

6. $105,637 for Me, $80 for You! By Phil of Phil's Stock World

http://ilene.typepad.com/ourfavorites/2012/03/105637-for-me-80-for-you-.html

Isn't this economy FANTASTIC?

It sure is for those of us in the top 1% (1.4M) - people earning over $352,000 in annual income. We made $105,637 more Dollars in 2010 than we did in 2009 - thanks in large part to the Fed's fantastic policy of printing more and more money, which lets us borrow cheaply or invest with leverage in inflating equity as the Dollar collapses. Sure the Dollar collapsing hurts everyone - but an extra $105,637 keeps us ahead of inflation, right?

I'm still jealous of course (good Capitalists are always jealous), as the top .01% (14,000 people) - who earn an average of $23.8M, were able to add another $4.2M to their annual incomes in 2010. That's 52,500 TIMES the average $80 increase earned by the bottom 99% (thank goodness we're not one of THEM!). That's right, somehow, the riff-raff in the bottom 99% managed to grab 7% of the Nation's total increase in income - clearly Congress needs to make immediate changes to prevent this travesty from happening again!

Steve Rattner has a different opinion, saying: "The only way to redress the income imbalance is by implementing policies that are oriented toward reversing the forces that caused it. That means letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy and adding money to some of the programs that House Republicans seek to cut. Allowing this disparity to continue is both bad economic policy and bad social policy. We owe those at the bottom a fairer shot at moving up." That's Commie talk! If we allow the bottom 99% to make a fair share of the money, they would make 5% more and you know they would only SPEND it on stuff they need TO LIVE. Then our companies would have to provide more goods and services to the bottom 99% and jobs would be created and we, at the top, would have to WAIT for the money to trickle UP from the bottom as only companies that do a good job servicing the bottom 99% would increase in value.

Even worse, we may have to WORK (a four-letter word) to provide goods and services for the people who have money in order to EARN (another four-letter word) our Incomes. That's no fun for us at all! We like it when we get ALL the money and we create just the jobs we choose by buying really expensive cars or really expensive homes or really expensive ($8.50) burritos at CMG because you know an $8.50 burrito creates more jobs than four $2 burritos that poor people would buy at Taco Bell - it's a Rich Person's FACT! My $1M, 6,000 square-foot home created 2 more jobs than the standard $250,000 2,000 square foot home and sure, you could argue that 4 could have been built instead of one for the same price and that 16 people could have been housed instead of 4 and - oops, what was my point going to be???

MORE AT LINK..THIS MUST BE AN APRIL FOOL'S LEFTOVER...AND THE JOKE'S ON US!

[Demeter]

9. Robert Reich - Only the rich are benefiting from America’s recovery

Luxury retailers are smiling. So are the owners of high-end restaurants, sellers of upscale cars, holiday planners, financial advisers and personal coaches. For them and their customers and clients, the recession is over. The recovery is now full speed.

But the rest of America isn’t enjoying an recovery. It’s still quite sick. The finances of many Americans remain in critical condition.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/DHGUVV/2O9IC6/SUO9T/DWJ6LK/L9VR2I/N9/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=2

----------

[DemReadingDU]

33. Yeh, it's a recovery for the rich

Several in my family are quite wealthy. They have the money to spend, and do they spend it! Luxury cars, exotic vacations, high-end clothes, jewelry, eating at fancy expensive restaurants, etc. etc. Their lifestyle is so different than mine.

And they have professional financial planners to manage their huge portfolios. I like to read forums and blogs to really learn what is going on in the world. Greece is 'over there'. They tell me that can't happen here, we have the government to protect us, as well as all the rules and regulations to prevent another depression. They are so clueless.

Edit: My sig line says it all

[Demeter]

7. European rules alarm fund managers

Some fund managers’ worst fears over pan-European regulation have re-emerged, prompting the hedge fund and private equity industries to hit back at Brussels’ proposed technical standards that they say will damage business and shut out the US and Asia.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/XYEWFF/WTK7YE/EKRAI/08MDOT/IIOEJ6/YT/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=1

[Demeter]

8. Arnab Das and Nouriel Roubini: Divorce settlement for eurozone

Splitting up may be hard to do, but it can be better than sticking to a bad marriage.

The euro periphery debt crisis threatens to engulf the core in huge bank capital shortfalls and fiscal liabilities, trapping both in protracted stagnation.

This reflects possibly intractable design flaws in the single currency. So we propose an amicable divorce settlement

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/3JFELL/ORAV6L/7ZY85/2O4P0R/NJA3SA/T3/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=2

[Demeter]

10. Zoellick throws support behind Brics bank

World Bank president warns of the dangers of multilateral organisations failing to mobilise sufficient resources to support large developing countries

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/XYEWFF/ZGIW33/JQU4J/VLVIID/HY6I8Y/MQ/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=2

THINGS THAT MAKE ONE GO HMMMMM....

[Po_d Mainiac]

16. Well we ain't gonna go to war with

Russia or China (they have the ability to melt the pavement on Wall Street)....India wood shut down all customer service lines.....tough to get popular opinion against Brazil and Carnival....If I was living in So. Africa, I'd be nervous...The horn of Africa has always been a terrorist breeding ground, we just don't know it yet.

[Demeter]

11. Greenspan defends Bernanke over attacks

Alan Greenspan has decried the Republican presidential candidates’ attacks on Ben Bernanke as ‘wholly inappropriate and destructive’

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/XYEWFF/ZGIW33/JQU4J/VLVIID/8ZP737/MQ/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=2

[Demeter]

12. German union sticks to demand for pay rise

Industrial union seeks 6.5% rise despite public sector workers abandoning a similar claim as it says it is the workers’ turn to profit

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/XYEWFF/ZGIW33/JQU4J/VLVIID/8ZP7N6/MQ/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=2

[Demeter]

13. China censors microblog websites

Suspension of comment functions comes as six people were arrested and 16 websites closed for spreading rumours about a military coup in Beijing

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/XYEWFF/ZGIW33/JQU4J/VLVIID/EXBKHY/MQ/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=2

[Po_d Mainiac]

17. The Earl is dead long live the music

a banjo can either make you wanna commit mass murder...or smile

&feature=related

[FarCenter]

18. US sues Royal Bank of Canada for massive fraud

US regulators have announced charges against Royal Bank of Canada, accusing the major Canadian bank of "washing" hundreds of millions of dollars through fraudulent trading.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Monday said it had filed a complaint in federal district court in New York accusing RBC of "conducting a multi-hundred million-dollar wash sale scheme in connection with exchange-traded stock futures contracts."

The Canadian bank and financial services company does business in New York.

"The trading scheme was allegedly designed as part of RBC's strategy to realize lucrative Canadian tax benefits from holding certain public companies' securities in its Canadian and offshore trading accounts," the CFTC said.

CFTC also charged that the bank concealed material information from, and made material false statements to, a futures exchange.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120403-us-sues-royal-bank-canada-massive-fraud-0

They may invade!

[xchrom]

19. i'm up

[Demeter]

43. Gah! I'm out of here!

Call off the bird!

[xchrom]

45. ...

that is totally how i feel today!

[xchrom]

20. French Socialist's big idea: tax the rich

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_FRANCE_TAX_THE_RICH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-04-03-02-18-22

PARIS (AP) -- French presidential candidate Francois Hollande, leading in polls but lacking in ideas that stick in voters' minds, finally dropped a bombshell: As president, he would levy a 75 percent tax on anyone who makes more than (EURO)1 million a year.

The flashy idea from the normally bland Socialist proved wildly popular, fanning hostility toward executive salaries and forcing President Nicolas Sarkozy to defend his ostentatious friendships with the rich. It also unleashed debate in the French press about whether the wealthy would decamp for gentler tax pastures.

As much as France likes the plan, it does not seem to have assured Hollande's victory, which, just three weeks before the first round of voting, is growing more uncertain as Sarkozy reaps the benefits of projecting presidential mettle following France's shooting attacks.

Polls put the two men neck-and-neck in the first round April 22, and show Sarkozy gaining on Hollande for the decisive runoff May 6.

[xchrom]

21. Oil below $105 amid mixed global economic signs

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OIL_PRICES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-04-03-05-16-28

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Oil prices fell to below $105 a barrel Tuesday in Asia as traders eyed mixed signs about the strength of the global economy.

Benchmark oil for May delivery was down 70 cents to $104.53 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $2.21 to settle at $105.23 per barrel in New York on Monday.

Brent crude for May delivery was down 45 cents at $124.98 per barrel in London.

Crude has traded near $105 a barrel since February as traders weigh an improving U.S. economy against signs of weakening growth in Europe and China.

[xchrom]

22. Eel market sizzles as prices hit $2k/lb in Maine

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FOOD_AND_FARM_EEL_FRENZY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-04-03-03-02-02

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- Tiny translucent elvers - alien-looking baby eels the size of toothpicks, with big black eyes and spines - are mysterious creatures, floating thousands of miles from their birthplace in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean before ending up each spring in Maine's rivers and streams.

But there's no mystery about what's drawing hundreds of fishermen to riverbanks to catch the creatures during the two-month fishing season. The price of the eels has skyrocketed to unparalleled levels, with catches bringing up to $2,000 a pound.

A worldwide shortage of the prized dinner fare, imported in infancy from Maine to Asia to be raised in farm ponds, has buyers paying top dollar for the baby American eels. A pound of eels should be worth around $30,000 on the open market once grown to market size, according to one dealer.

Elver prices go up and down all the time, but nobody's seen them shoot up the way they have over the past two seasons. Last year, at $891 per pound, elvers became Maine's fourth most-valuable wild fishery, worth more than well-known traditional fisheries such as groundfish, shrimp and scallops.

[Po_d Mainiac]

30. Really big elver runs

The Maine version of the 'gold rush'...here are a few eel tidbits.

30 years ago the market was for adults, then the 'glass'eel' trade took off.

The 80's saw an Asian market collapse. then it went crazy in the early-mid ninety's. Stocks of elvers nosed dived a few years after just about every tributary along the East Coast got netted off. (Which led to the crash 6-8 years ago, and an effort to get ES listing) Hopefully the regulators get it right.

A bladder parasite was cited as a major reason for premature mortality BUT, a lot of that so-called 'research' was funded by the hydro industry (Add ample salt as needed)

Females can go as long as 10 years in fresh water before returning to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.

They don't seek out a 'home' water in the same manner as Salmon. They will take to land in order to get over dams.The return is where adults can get trashed in hydro turbines. Intakes now have some protections, which are at least moderating the impact. Males will stay in the brackish water (tidal zones) and are a staple grocery for Stripers.

There is a lot more to this, if u want to do some reading.....Hydro Electric generation ain't as environmentally friendly as it is often portrayed!

The species could reproduce enough to survive the predation, parasites, hydro and other industrial intakes (cooling shafts) but when the tribs were blocked off, it was more than Mother Nature could handle.

[xchrom]

32. i think it was one of the cooking channels where i first learned this was happening

thanks for the info on the hydro electric thing -- california has reached the place where they have to consider taking down their dams.

[Po_d Mainiac]

34. We're (Maine) already doing it

On the Kennebec: (and tribs)
Edwards Dam in Augusta came down in 1999....
http://www.nrcm.org/historyedwards.asp

Halifax Dam (on the Sebasticook in 2008)
http://www.nrcm.org/fort_halifax_removal.asp

Madison Electric (on the Sandy Riverin 2006)
http://www.nrcm.org/news_detail.asp?news=898

And there is a major project in place on the Penobscot. The last river to support a viable Atlantic Salmon run in the US. ESA for the Gulf of Maine was attained a couple years ago. This is a BFD...Breaching, ladders and by-passes plus moving generators. This is the manual being written for the West Coast efforts.
http://www.penobscotriver.org/

[xchrom]

38. very good news!

[Tansy_Gold]

59. Fossil Creek Dam in AZ

removed in 2005.

There is so very little free-flowing water in this state any more. . .

[xchrom]

61. isn't that lovely?

that's AZ the way i like it.

[Tansy_Gold]

62. It's truly amazing

Even the little temporary streams like this in Hierglyphic Canyon are so glorious




Arizona isn't the Sahara, with mile after mile of barren sand. We actually have an incredibly diverse ecosystem, from alpine to sub-tropical all at the same time.

[xchrom]

65. as someone who is not very outdoorsy -- one of things i love best about AZ --

is the fact that a lot of AZ outdoors is pretty easy to get around.

i mean you can do rugged -- for sure -- but a lot places -- really beautiful places are pretty accessible.

[Tansy_Gold]

67. (Don't tell anyone, or they'll want to come here, too!)

Maybe two miles off Highway 88, aka the Apache Trail, one of the most heavily traveled tourist roads in the state, lies Willow Springs. With a BLM pass to get through the gate, you can drive within a few 100 yards of this, or make a moderate hike in from the parking lot at Bulldog Canyon

[Demeter]

68. The only part of Arizona I ever saw was Tempe

Not bad, looks like Mars on a good day...

?Log=1

[xchrom]

71. Boy is that lovely!

I'm telling all my redneck relatives they JUST MUST go visit Miss Tansy.

[xchrom]

23. Spain's jobless level hits record 4.75 million

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17594684

The number of Spanish jobseekers rose for the eighth month in a row in March to hit a record 4.75 million.

The Labour Ministry said the number of people filing for unemployment benefits rose by 38,769 with the services sector seeing the most jobs lost.

The jobless rate in Spain stood at 23.6% in February, according to EU figures released on Monday.

The situation is even worse for young Spaniards as youth unemployment is running at 50%.

[xchrom]

24. MPs criticise UK's 'unwise' approach to EU fiscal pact

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17589971

The government is being "profoundly unwise" in its approach to the new EU fiscal pact, a group of MPs has said.

The European Scrutiny Committee said ministers clearly had reservations about the pact's legality but had not said what action they planned to take.

It also warned that the pact may be "politically impossible to enforce" and "some form of breakdown of the eurozone clearly remains possible".

The UK refused to join 25 other EU nations in signing up to the agreement.

[xchrom]

25. Barnier hits out at lobbying 'rearguard'

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/02/business/europe-barnier/index.html?hpt=ibu_c1


EU commissioner for Internal Market and Services Michel Barnier at the EU Headquarters in Brussels, March 19, 2012.

(Financial Times) -- Europe's most senior financial regulator has hit back at "rearguard lobbying" by the hedge fund and private equity industries, saying he "will not be intimidated" by an attempt to undermine a deal to regulate the industry for the first time.

The fightback from Michel Barnier, the European Union commissioner for the single market, comes after the industry publicly raised the alarm over technical standards proposed to implement the alternative investment fund managers directive (AIFMD).

While the European Commission's 110-page draft of "supplementing rules" relates to highly specialist issues, the proposed legal text has revived the industry's worst fears that the rules will damage business and exclude US and Asian fund managers.

Mr Barnier's angry response flatly rejects the claim that the Commission are trying to roll-back the political compromises that underpinned the AIFMD deal in 2011. Instead he puts the complaints down to the industry "trying to reopen old issues".

[xchrom]

26. Fiscal Therapy

http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/fiscal-therapy

For years now, whenever I've been invited to lecture students on how our tax system works, I have asked a simple question: What is the purpose of the United States of America? The most common answer, be it at prestigious universities, elite prep schools, rural community colleges, or crowded urban high schools, is this: To make people rich.

This should come as no great surprise. For anyone born after, say, 1970, the world has been shaped by Ronald Reagan's remaking of government's relationship with private interests—a vision of lower taxes, less regulation, and maximum economic leeway for those at the top. In this view, the pursuit of wealth is the warp and weft of America; everything else will follow.

By contrast, the preamble to the Constitution tells us the nation's reason for being in 52 words that can be reduced to six principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Individual riches don't make the list. They are a product of American society, not its guiding purpose. Progress, then, must begin with a return to the best of the values that created this Second American Republic—one born, it's worth remembering, from the failure of the Articles of Confederation, whose principles (weak government, unfettered capitalism) found their resurrection in the economic policies of the past three decades.

Even judged by its own yardstick, the trickle-down approach has failed to deliver: Rather than getting richer, we have been slowly impoverishing ourselves. While incomes at the very top have soared to levels beyond imagining even a generation ago, the average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent of earners was lower in 2006 than it was back in 1973. And since 2000, the median income of all Americans has actually slipped, proof that tax cuts for the rich do not create general prosperity. Today, more and more of us do not have enough money to live on without going into debt. For each dollar of equity people gained in their homes from 1980 to 2006, they borrowed two—and while a portion of that is accounted for by poor decision making, much has to do with the sheer impossibility of making ends meet.

[Demeter]

44. Good Luck With That

I'm beginning to think the American people are ineducable. 4 generations AE (After Emigration) the rot has set in.

[xchrom]

27. Austerity needed to avoid fate of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, says PM{spain}

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/04/02/inenglish/1333391837_491132.html

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Monday blamed the swingeing cuts in spending included in this year’s state budget on the errors of the previous administration, and argued that without the austerity drive Spain would face the same fate as Ireland, Portugal and Greece in needing a bailout.

The public deficit last year came in at 8.5 percent of GDP instead of the six percent pledged by the outgoing Socialist government. The Rajoy administration last Friday unveiled an austerity budget including savings of 27 billion euros, in order to meet the deficit target for this year of 5.3 percent of GDP.

“If the previous government had met its deficit target of six percent, the cuts would have been 18 billion euros less,” Rajoy told a meeting of his Popular Party’s executive committee.

Rajoy said there is “no alternative” to unpopular measures such as the budget and a drastic overhaul of the country’s labor laws. “We are taking measures that we don’t like, but we have no alternative,” he said in a speech that was televised for journalists.

[xchrom]

28. BRICS prepares for Mexico showdown

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ND04Dj03.html

GENEVA - Trade ministers of the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa - say that at the Group of 20 trade ministerial summit in Mexico this month they will try to ensure that attempts by industrialized countries to frame a new trade agenda do not drown development-led trade liberalization and World Trade Organization (WTO) talks.

"We will all attend the Cancun meeting to ensure that any agreement to hasten progress in further trade liberalization is informed by the Doha Agenda," South Africa's Minister of Trade Rob Davies told Inter Press Service (IPS).

The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) was launched by the WTO almost 11 years ago to correct the historical imbalances and asymmetries in the global trading system. It was designed to
enable poorer countries to integrate into the system.

"This is a most dangerous move by the industrialized countries, which are determined to undermine the independence and multilateral character of the WTO, where a large majority of countries are asking for developmental flexibilities for implementing liberal trade commitments," said a trade envoy, referring to the agenda for the meeting.

"The G-20 is not representative of the WTO because the poorest countries and countries in Africa, except for South Africa, have no say in setting the trade agenda," the envoy said. [1] The rich countries have overwhelming influence in setting the agenda at the G-20 meetings, the envoy said.

[xchrom]

29. So rich - and so poor {canada}

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ND04Dj06.html

Even the world's most resource-rich country has now been caught in the debt trap. Its once-proud government programs are being subjected to radical budget cuts - cuts that could have been avoided if the government had not quit borrowing from its own central bank in the 1970s.

Last week in Ottawa, the Canadian House of Commons passed the federal government's latest round of budget cuts and austerity measures. Highlights included chopping 19,200 public sector jobs, cutting federal programs by US$5.2 billion per year, and raising the retirement age for millions of Canadians from 65 to 67. The justification for the cuts was a massive federal debt that is



now over C$581 billion, or 84% of gross domestic product. (The US and Canadian dollars are a par).

An online budget game furnished by the local newspaper the Globe and Mail gave readers a chance to try to balance the budget themselves. Possibilities included slashing transfer payments for elderly benefits, retirement programs, health benefits, and education; cutting funding for transportation, national defense, economic development and foreign aid; and raising taxes.

An article on the same page said, "The government, in reality, doesn't have that many tools at its disposal to close a large budgetary deficit. It can either raise taxes or cut departmental program spending."

[xchrom]

31. Egypt's Looming Economic Shock Doctrine

http://www.thenation.com/article/167159/egypts-looming-economic-shock-doctrine

Egypt is teetering on the edge of an economic crisis. Cast adrift in a deepening political quagmire over the past fourteen months, the economy has now reached a critical juncture, as the country faces the pressing challenge of financing a large budget deficit as rapidly dwindling foreign currency reserves threaten to crack apart an already fragile situation.

Yet, more than a year after the launch of a revolution driven in large part by economic grievances, the budgetary and fiscal proposals being considered to secure external financial assistance are geared more towards furthering Mubarak-era policies than to promoting social justice.

The state deficit for the fiscal year that ends in June is expected to exceed 140 billion Egyptian pounds ($24 billion), or 8.7 percent of expected economic output, according to the Finance Ministry. Meanwhile, the central bank's foreign reserves have been shrinking by roughly $2 billion every month, precipitated by a sharp decline in tourism and foreign direct investment since the revolution began.

Over the past year, the government has used up more than $20 billion to prop up the local currency. In February, foreign reserves stood at $15.7 billion, enough for just three months of imports, and with it, the looming prospect of devaluation.

[Tansy_Gold]

35. 29, again?

Well, let's party like it is anyway!

















(Happy Birthday!)

[xchrom]

37. DAMN YOU! now i want cake. nt

[Tansy_Gold]

39. I know someone who was looking for chocolate last night. . . . .

?1296073294

[xchrom]

41. ...

i chocolate.

[Demeter]

48. Too pretty to eat!

PS I found the chocolate.

[DemReadingDU]

75. Happy Birthday!

Hope you had a fun day!

[Demeter]

78. I cooked a lot

Since, after cleaning the freezer, I could find stuff.

[Demeter]

46. Eternally 39, Like the Immortal Jack Benny

and if that isn't dating myself...this aired the day I was born.

[Tansy_Gold]

51. Aww, you're just a kid! n/t

[Demeter]

54. That's the way they treat me

When do I get my gravitas?

[Demeter]

56. Franklin Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/03/franklin-roosevelts-first-inaugural.html

&feature=player_embedded

"And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order.

There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people's money."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1933

The year 1933 was a pivotal year in modern history. While Roosevelt spoke these words, Adolf Hitler had already risen to the post of Chancellor of Germany after the Reichstag fire. By April 1 the Enabling Act had made him the dictator of Germany. The autocratic leader of Italy, Mussolini, published La dottrina del fascismo, The Doctrine of Fascism. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations and had invaded Manchuria and bombed Shanghai. And a small group of wealthy Americans were already plotting a fascist military coup by a band of hired brigands designed to overturn the Constitution and place the country in the hands of the rich and the powerful as they had helped to do in Germany.

It is our generation that allowed the repeal of these safeguards created during the depths of the Great Depression, epitomized by the long campaign to overturn Glass-Steagall, and the handing back the republic, and the fate of our children and their children, to the unscrupulous monied interests. Even now, people act reflexively to this warning, conditioned by years of propaganda and public relations to hate their protectors and love those who plunder them, in the hopes that they will be spared, and perhaps even participate in such spoils.

What a generation of the craven, the self-loving, the deluded, and the foolishly proud.

President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:

This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency, I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels.

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure, as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy, the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves, to our fellow men.

Recognition of that falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation is asking for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great -- greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.

Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.

Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products, and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it.

We must act. We must act quickly.

And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order. There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people's money. And there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the 48 States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time, and necessity, secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor, as a practical policy, the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment; but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not nationally -- narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in and parts of the United States of America -- a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor: the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others; the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize, as we have never realized before, our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take, but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective.

We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at the larger good. This, I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us, bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image, action to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has ever seen.

It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly equal, wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But, in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis -- broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded, a permanent national life.

We do not distrust the -- the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication -- In this dedication of a Nation, we humbly ask the blessing of God.

May He protect each and every one of us.

May He guide me in the days to come.

[xchrom]

36. Wolfson Prize shortlist: five ways to break up the eurozone

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/03/wolfson-prize-shortlist-eurozone-breakup


Prize on the eurozone break-up is sponsored by Lord Wolfson, chief executive of Next. Photograph: Wpa Pool/Getty Images

A £250,000 prize for the best contingency plan for a breakup of the single currency has been narrowed down to a shortlist of five.

Prompted by the sovereign debt crisis that has gripped the single currency for the past two-and-a-half years, more than 400 entries were received for the award, sponsored by the chief executive of Next, Tory peer Lord Simon Wolfson, and the second most lucrative for economics after the annual Nobel prize.

The winner of the prize will be announced in July but the chairman of the judges, Derek Scott, said that all five contenders had provided valuable ideas about how a country could exit the euro.

Those on the shortlist – a team from Capital Economics led by Roger Bootle; private investor Cathy Dobbs; Jens Nordvig and Nick Firoozye, of Nomura Securities; Neil Record, of Record Currency Management; and Jonathan Tepper, from Variant Perception – are assured a £10,000 share of the prize and have until the end of May to develop their argument.

[kickysnana]

57. A little Paul Simon to go with that

[xchrom]

58. i'd like to help you in your struggle to be free...nt

[Demeter]

69. Well, I put the board president on IGNORE

Sang a rousing performance of the Vengeance Aria in a hot shower, put on the pearls from Hawaii my sis sent me for this natal day...



It's a double-length strand of green, gold, pink, white, silver and bronze (all flattering to my sallow skin) of substantial size (1/4 in diam).. Real pearls are HEAVY!

&feature=related

[Po_d Mainiac]

40. Dead line approaches..Trout Camp

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112710992

Cameo appearances in the video of self and me mutt...I'm the real crusty looking one

[xchrom]

42. Why do bankers get to decide who pays for the mess Europe is in?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/02/bankers-decide-pay-mess-europe

What you're about to read does, I admit, sound like a conspiracy theory. It involves powerful people meeting in private offices, hundreds of billions of euros, and clandestine deals determining the fates of entire countries. All that's missing is a grassy knoll or a wandering band of illuminati. There are, however, two crucial differences: these events are still unfolding – and they're more worrying than any who-killed-JFK fantasy I've ever heard.

Cast your mind back to the euro crisis talks last year, when the future of Greece was being decided. How much Athens should pay its bailiffs in the banks, on what terms, and the hardship that ordinary Greeks would have to endure as a result.

There were times when the whole of 2011 seemed to be one long European summit, when you heard more about Papandreou and Merkozy than was strictly necessary. Yet you probably didn't catch many references to Charles Dallara and Josef Ackermann.

They're two of the most senior bankers in the world – among the top 1% of the 1%. Dallara served in the Treasury under Ronald Reagan, before moving on to Wall Street, while Ackermann is chief executive of Deutsche Bank. But their role in the euro negotiations, and so in deciding Greece's future, was as representatives of the International Institute for Finance.

[xchrom]

47. Shifting foundations threaten to undermine China's cities

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/03/china-cities-suffer-land-subsidence

A crack in the tarmac on a road in the middle of the Pudong business district told Shanghai residents that the subsoil of their city was shifting. It was not so much the size of the rift – about eight metres long and only a few centimetres across – more its location that caused concern. It was at the foot of the Shanghai Tower project.

Due for completion in 2014, the tower will stand 632 metres high, and is just next to two other giants, the World Financial Centre and Jinmao Tower, rising, respectively, 492 and 420 metres into the air.

The appearance of cracks in the ground and the publication of photographs on blogs have fuelled questions in recent weeks. "The surface cracks, which were caused by a usual settlement of the foundation ditch, are in a controlled and safe state," the Shanghai Tower Construction and Development Company said in a statement to the China Daily.

The problem of subsidence in Chinese cities is nevertheless very real. "The pressure exerted by skyscrapers is a minor cause," says Li Qinfen, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Geological Survey. Excessive pumping of groundwater to service new urban developments is the key factor.

[Demeter]

49. And we are off to a good start, down, just like Europe and Asia

[Demeter]

50. Murdoch to resign as BSkyB chairman

James Murdoch has decided to step down as chairman of British Sky Broadcasting, a person familiar with his plans said on Tuesday.

The “escalating” publicity about stories involving News Corp, the 39.1 per cent controlling shareholder of BSkyB where Mr Murdoch is deputy chief operating officer, made him believe that stepping down was in the best interests of the satellite broadcaster, the person said.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/M2ZOXX/AMU1NA/YGZ3O/HY3CZH/FKGS6I/9A/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=3

LIGHT DAWNS ON MARBLEHEAD

[Fuddnik]

74. Marblehead?

He's more of a knucklehead.

[Demeter]

79. It's a Yankee Expression

I picked it up in exile...

[Demeter]

52. GE takes $1bn risk in bringing jobs home

Jim Immelt says the decision to put $1bn into General Electric’s domestic appliances business is “as risky an investment as we have ever made”
Read more >>

http://link.ft.com/r/YIQXNN/7ANFO6/DXJ2Y/NJHMXR/AM1XQA/QR/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=3

IS THIS GUY FOR REAL? FAR MORE LIKELY HE NEEDS ANOTHER BAILOUT OF HIS SHADOW BANK, AND GOT AN ULTIMATUM FROM GEITHNER....

[Hotler]

82. How do people like him go through life without

running into a common man in a mens room somewhere and get the shit kick out him and left laying on the floor under a urinal?

[Demeter]

53. Women voters surge to Obama

Barack Obama has opened a large lead over Mitt Romney among women voters after the recent conservative debate in the US over contraception

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/J0VG55/B51U9Z/WH2F8/L9LZ5D/XHY62X/XL/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=3

FOR LACK OF A BETTER ALTERNATIVE...

[AnneD]

70. I am seeking revenge against the system.....

I will not be surging toward Obama, but voting for the turd in the punch bowl.

[xchrom]

55. The trillion-euro illusion

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/1736811-trillion-euro-illusion

In fact, there are no 1,000 billion dollars for the European Stability Mechanism (MES), the emergency fund that Spain and Italy will have to fall back on if bankruptcy threatens.

There are no 800 or 700 billion euros either, which are the amounts that the official declaration of the Ministers cites with pride. What De Jager and his European colleagues have rolled out is a sham. It’s a way of juggling numbers that undermines from the start the credibility of the relief fund, which will become operational on 1 July.

The foundations of this mathematical magic were laid down by the European heads of government. Last autumn, they decided that the combined lending capacity of the existing relief fund [the European Financial Stability Fund, EFSF, created in 2010] and the one yet to be created should be limited to a maximum of 500 billion – in their joyful message, they decided, particular emphasis would be placed on the number 500.

Bluff and leftovers

That there were only 300 billion euros of fresh money – since 200 billion from the older fund had already been used to save Greece, Portugal and Ireland from a rout – was passed over in silence.

[Demeter]

60. Beyond Robo-Signing: 3 Other Ways Bank of America Is Screwing Americans

http://www.alternet.org/story/154778/beyond_robo-signing%3A_3_other_ways_bank_of_america_is_screwing_americans?page=entire

1. Siccing collections agencies on people who are not in debt

2. Sneakily ratcheting up fees on the 99%

3. Exploiting the unemployed to rake in fees

DETAILS AT LINK, IF YOU CAN STAND IT

[Demeter]

63. Foreclosure reforms to widen

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/forclosure-reforms-to-widen/2012/04/02/gIQAyhOerS_story.html

State and federal officials who recently completed a $25 billion settlement with five of the nation’s largest banks over shoddy foreclosure practices have begun discussing how to apply some of the terms of that deal to a wider array of financial firms.

The landmark agreement finalized in February in part forces the five major banks to overhaul flawed and fraudulent foreclosure practices that had become common in recent years. Those changes include forbidding “robo-signing” of documents and providing a single point of contact to homeowners, who in the past often faced foreclosure from the banks even as they were negotiating ways to remain in their homes...

GEE WILLIKERS! WE ARE GOING TO FORBID ILLEGAL PRACTICES! IS THIS A GREAT NATION, OR WHAT?

[Demeter]

64. Have Rising Imports Cost 1.3 Million Jobs Since 2007?

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-02/have-rising-imports-cost-1-dot-3-million-jobs-since-2007

If you go by the official data, U.S. workers have benefited from international trade in the past few years. The reported deficit in the trade of goods fell 25 percent from 2007 to 2011, adjusted for price changes. A shrinking trade gap is good for workers because it means more Americans are being kept busy producing things for domestic and foreign consumption.

But what if those trade numbers are wrong? After all, the U.S. lost 2 million manufacturing jobs from 2007 to 2011. A new research report from the Democratic-leaning Progressive Policy Institute says the trade deficit is worse than officially stated. It says the government is understating how much of what Americans consume is actually produced abroad, particularly in such low-cost nations as China. Report authors Michael Mandel and Diana Carew calculate that rising imports account for the loss of about 1.3 million American jobs from 2007 to 2011, or about one-third of all the job losses in the private sector outside construction over that period...

WOW! THE GOVERNMENT LIES TO US! WHATEVER WILL WE LEARN NEXT?

[Demeter]

66. Small Banks Shift Charters to Avoid U.S. as Regulator

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/business/small-banks-shift-charters-to-avoid-us-as-regulator.html?_r=1&ref=business

A small community bank in New Hampshire found a demand from its regulator last month just too much. Monadnock Community Bank in Peterborough was ordered to do a thorough review of how it collected payments on its delinquent loans, said William Pierce, the chief executive. That meant diverting three of its 18 employees to comb through reams of mortgages.

“We’ve had two foreclosures in the last four years, and yet here we had to do it anyway because our regulator only knows how to deal with the behemoth banks,” said Mr. Pierce, referring to the regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Frustrated, Mr. Pierce agreed to sell his institution, which has $82 million in assets and a charter as a savings and loan association, to the GFA Federal Credit Union in Gardner, Mass., a credit union overseen by the National Credit Union Association — not the comptroller’s office. An increasing number of the nation’s more than 600 savings and loan associations are fleeing the comptroller’s office as they navigate a shifting regulatory landscape. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law closed their longtime regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and moved them to the comptroller. A few of these institutions are trying to become credit unions, and many others are choosing state oversight. Nationally, 35 have applied to switch from national to state charters since July 2011.
While the banks say that they are looking for a regulatory agency that understands them, some former industry experts have expressed concern that the financial institutions are regulator shopping. The Office of Thrift Supervision was a notoriously easy supervisor, said James Gilkeson, a former regulator at the comptroller’s office. “Going to state and credit union regulators is clearly a search for the next best thing,” he said.

Banks are displaying a familiar pattern, Mr. Gilkeson said. After each financial crisis, lawmakers try to buttress regulation by closing a weak supervisor and consolidating oversight under a stronger central agency. Then many banks, faced with a new regulator, try to find more lenient supervision. In the late 1980s, because of the savings and loan crisis, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board was closed and the new Office of Thrift Supervision, he said, was going to be the “big muscle.” The latest migration is getting bank regulators’ attention. “We are dealing with a false perception that the O.C.C. doesn’t understand community banks,” said Jennifer Kelly, senior deputy comptroller for midsize bank supervision in the office. The agency says it is committed to local regulation. As an example, it points to its team of 207 midsize or community bank examiners in Texas alone. Still, New York has seen an uptick in applications from nationally chartered banks that want to be overseen by the state, according to Benjamin M. Lawsky, the New York superintendent of financial services.Community bankers vociferously deny that they are hunting for lax regulators. What they want, they say, is a regulator more in touch with the issues faced by the nation’s smaller banks, which are different from the ones faced by their larger national counterparts. “The O.C.C. basically punishes the community banks as if we committed the sins of risky lending that the biggest banks did,” Mr. Pierce said.

No one disputes that regulators allowed banks to distribute risky loans to subprime borrowers, among other dubious practices, leading up to the financial crisis. But some community bankers say that the tighter regulation that has resulted has gone too far and should be focused more on the nation’s largest banks. Even though their capital requirements are different from those of the biggest banks, the smaller banks say that requirements for loan-loss reserves, for example, are depleting them of capital that could be otherwise used for loans...Despite their complaints, small banks were not immune from the financial crisis. This year, 16 community banks, which have up to $10 billion in assets, have failed. The pace of bank failures is slowing, though. Last year, 92 community banks failed. To get a new regulator, banks have two options under state and federal banking laws. They can become a credit union — either through a charter conversion or through an acquisition, as Mr. Pierce’s bank did — or they can convert to a state charter....If a bank switches to a credit union charter, it may save in another way: on taxes. Credit unions are exempt from taxes because of their nonprofit status. They were originally created to serve distinct communities of people, like union workers.

[DemReadingDU]

72. Oops, What did Ben do now?

Market down -120

4/3/12
Federal Reserve policymakers appear less keen to launch a fresh round of monetary stimulus as the U.S. economy improves, according to minutes for the central bank's March meeting.
more...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-softens-tone-stimulus-talk-180436972.html

[Demeter]

80. Hasn't he done enough, already?

[hamerfan]

73. Analysts look toward $1,000 share price for Apple

Over the past two days, a couple of high-profile research analysts have issued reports predicting that Apple's stock will reach the $1000/share milestone within the next year or two, a move that would see that company's market capitalization push toward an unprecedented trillion-dollar market capitalization.

Yesterday, analyst Brian White issued his first research note on Apple in his new position with Topeka Capital Markets. White had previously worked at Ticonderoga Securities, which ceased operations earlier this year. In his initiation report for Topeka, White offers a 12-month price target of $1001 for Apple, citing the appeal of 4G LTE, booming growth in China, and an expected Apple television set as drivers for the company's growth.


http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1353145

[Demeter]

81. Good video choice!

I'd definitely say that was a Sell Signal.