STOCK MARKET WATCH, Thursday, July 21, 2011

[Pale Blue Dot]

Source: du

STOCK MARKET WATCH, Thursday, July 21, 2011

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON July 20, 2011

Dow 12,571.91 -15.51 (-0.12%)
Nasdaq 2,814.23 -12.29 (-0.44%)
S&P 500 1,325.84 -0.89 (-0.07)
10-Yr Bond... 2.94 +0.01 (+0.21%)
30-Year Bond 4.27 +0.02 (+0.38%)

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Market Conditions During Trading Hours

Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold

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Handy Links - Market Data and News:Economic Calendar    Marketwatch Data    Bloomberg Economic News    Yahoo! Finance    Google Finance    Bank Tracker    
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Handy Links - Government Issues:
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Handy Links - Videos:
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    William Black: This Economic Disaster    Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn

Bush Administration Officials Convicted = 2
Names: David Safavian, James Fondren
Dishonorable Mention: former House majority leader, Tom DeLay

Bush Administration Officials Charged = 1
Name(s): Richard Lopez Razo

Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = 12

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http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/sNyWxz4pEr08_ybcBDd5mw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O3E9ODU7dz05NTA-/

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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.

Read more: du

[Pale Blue Dot]

1. Today's Reports

Jul 21 08:30 Initial Claims 07/16 390K 411K 405K
Jul 21 08:30 Continuing Claims 07/9 3700K 3700K 3727K
Jul 21 10:00 Philadelphia Fed Jul 0.0 0.0 -7.70
Jul 21 10:00 Leading Indicators Jun 0.3% 0.3% 0.8%
Jul 21 10:00 FHFA Housing Price Index May NA NA 0.8%

Read more: http://www.briefing.com/investor/calendars/economic/2011/07/18-22/#ixzz1SjpC3bi8

[Pale Blue Dot]

2. Oil falls below $98 as US debt deadline looms

SINGAPORE – Oil prices fell below $98 a barrel Thursday in Asia as a stalemate dragged on among U.S. lawmakers over raising the country's debt ceiling and a survey showed a contraction in China's manufacturing.

Benchmark oil for August delivery was down 46 cents to $97.94 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude rose 54 cents to settle at $98.40 on Wednesday.

In London, the September contract for Brent crude rose 15 cents to $118.30 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

President Barack Obama met Tuesday with Democratic and Republican leaders, but so far no deal has been reached about lifting the debt limit and cutting the deficit. Analysts worry that if there is no agreement by the Aug. 2 deadline, the government's inability to borrow money and pay its bills could trigger a recession.

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/oil_prices

[Pale Blue Dot]

3. U.S. Stock-Index Futures Decline; Intel, Qualcomm, EBay Lead Share Retreat

U.S. stock-index futures fell as companies from Intel Corp. (INTC) to Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) and EBay Inc. (EBAY) declined after reporting earnings and European leaders met to discuss preventing the spread of Greece’s debt crisis.

Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker, and Qualcomm, the largest maker of mobile-phone processors, retreated more than 2.5 percent in European trading. EBay, the biggest online marketplace, dropped 2.2 percent. Medco Health Solutions Inc. (MHS) surged 24 percent after agreeing to be bought by Express Scripts Inc. for $29.1 billion.

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in September declined 0.1 percent to 1,319.6 at 1:57 a.m. in London. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures slid 16 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,491.

“Its really the problems in the euro zone that are weighing on the market this morning,” said David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-21/u-s-stock-index-futures-decline-intel-qualcomm-ebay-lead-retreat.html

[Roland99]

30. They're up quite a bit now (jobless claims up 10k, Greece debt fears ease)

[xchrom]

4. morning to all -- & doesn't a certain someone go to see harry potter today?

which is awesome!

a movie review will be in order...


:donut:

[Demeter]

10. Indeed we do!

I finally finished rereading the series, and although I got through the last book without throwing it at the wall, as I did the first time, it's still crap psychologically. Metaphysics aside, the torturing of the storyline to fit a predestined end, after wandering all over the place, is painful to read.

I'm sure that the screen writers will have resolved it better.

As I'm not in the business, I have a hard time explaining exactly what's wrong with the book. And I wouldn't want to put a more knowledgeable reader/reviewer into the funk that would result from a more scholarly, informed analysis.

Let you know if the film is better when we get back.

[Demeter]

62. Well, We Saw the Movie

We drove 35 miles to Dearborn, to the Henry Ford IMAX. It was well worth the trip. This is the first time 3D has enhanced the film, for me.

The screen play was an excellent revision of the original novel. Several creaky, clumsy plot twists were totally eliminated. Several changes of scene would skip over a hundred pages of poorly-written drivel in a flash.

Alan Rickman managed to take the bipolar, schizophrenic Snape (a grudge character written to punish a teacher Rowling hated all her life) and make his story intelligible and plausible, with the help of extensive rewriting of dialog and some rewriting of events. His death had some dignity, too.

If you haven't seen the previous films, or read the books, you will be hopelessly lost. It's a cumulative effect. And if you've read the books, the films will make sense of them.

It was well worth the investment, IMO.

I feel certain that somebody, somewhere, is already planning a remake. I do know that Rowling has locked up the rights so that nobody can do a "Son of Harry" or any other extension.

And it is as awful a day, weather-wise, as we were promised. And now,I have to go to work. Sob!

[tclambert]

64. Does Voldemort ever find his nose?

[Demeter]

66. NO

[tclambert]

68. All right, all right. You don't have to yell.

[hamerfan]

69. Does Bernanke ever find his butt?

[Demeter]

72. (He doesn't even know he's lost it)

[tclambert]

75. Too . . . many . . . punchlines. . . . Can't . . . choose. . . . Head . . . exploding.

Punchline contest in 3...2...1

Go!

[tclambert]

77. Ben! Here's a hint: It's where your head is stuck.

[tclambert]

78. Ben! Remember Gandalf in Moria? "When in doubt, follow your nose."

[tclambert]

79. Ben! Here's how you do it: First, go to the subway. Take the 8:15 to the city.

Walk from the station to your office building. Get in the elevator. Take it up to the top floor. Go to your office. (It's the big one in the corner. Maybe it's the whole floor.) Walk across to your desk. Sit down in your custom massage chair. Don't get distracted by all the buttons. Look in your chair. That's where your butt is.

What do you mean you couldn't find it? . . . You stood up to look, didn't you? Idiot.

[tclambert]

80. Seriously,

No. No he does not.

[Tansy_Gold]

81. Bravissimo!!!

:applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause::applause: :applause:

[xchrom]

5. asia: China manufacturing survey points to contraction

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hsbcs-china-flash-pmi-points-to-contraction-2011-07-20-23010?dist=beforebell

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — HSBC’s China “flash” manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a 28-month low in July, indicating activity is now beginning to contract in an economy that’s seen as a barometer of global growth and a price-setter for many commodities.

The survey’s headline reading fell to 48.9, down from 50.1 in June, marking the first time the gauge has indicated a contraction since July 2010.

The preliminary version of the PMI’s output index also showed further deterioration, dropping to 47.2 in July from 49.8 in June.

[xchrom]

17. Japan posts surprise trade surplus as exports recover

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14229316

Japan has posted a trade surplus for the first time in three months, as exports start to recover after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami disrupted production.

The country had an unexpected trade surplus of 70.7bn yen ($898m; £556m) in June, the finance ministry said.

Exports were still down from a year earlier but rose by 5.4% from May.

The data underscores a recovery in the hard-hit auto sector as production improves and shipments rebound.

[xchrom]

18. IMF urges China to 'rebalance' its economy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14229865

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said China needs to implement economic reforms and rebalance its economy.

The 'Spillover Report' on China's economy said inflation, property bubbles and the currency were risks to sustainable growth.

It said the yuan was 'substantially' undervalued by between 3%-23%, depending on how it is measured.

The Fund said changes were needed to improve Chinese living standards and minimize impact on trading partners.

[xchrom]

23. Nikkei holds gains around 10,000 before EU summit

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/07/21/markets-japan-stocks-idUKL3E7IL16G20110721

TOKYO, July 21 (Reuters) - The Nikkei stock average on
Thursday held on to most of its strong gains made the day
before, bolstered by hopes that a debt deal for Greece will be
struck at an EU leaders' summit but capped near 10,000 by
worries about the U.S. debt ceiling.

Banks and insurers led advancers after their U.S. peers
posted strong gains, boosted by a jump in US Bancorp
shares and after PNC Financial Services Group Inc's
second-quarter net income beat analysts'
estimates.

But hard-drive parts makers Nidec Corp
and TDK Corp slid after market leader Seagate
Technology's forecast for its July-September quarter
missed expectations and Intel Corp trimmed its forecast
for 2011 computer sales, warning of softness in mature markets.

"Most investors are sticking to the sidelines today ahead of
the EU summit and as nothing has been decided yet on the U.S.
debt ceiling issue," said Mitsuo Shimizu, deputy general manager
at Cosmo Securities.

[Demeter]

6. Morning, PBD and all

That's a bitter cartoon. I'm surprised the PTB didn't tombstone you over it. Maybe the cultists are waning in the face of relentless betrayal....too little and too late to encourage a primary challenge or demand a resignation...

[DemReadingDU]

14. With firefox, I don't see the cartoon anymore

But it displays in Internet Explorer. It's an unusual toon.

[Demeter]

16. I see it in Firefox

You have something else going on....

[DemReadingDU]

26. probably one of my add-ons

adblock plus, or flashblock

[tclambert]

70. It's a wishful thinking cartoon. Those guys all get golden parachutes.

Social Security for losers like us lower 99% might get cut, or eligibility ages raised, but all those types will have luxury retirements. With book deals.

[xchrom]

7. europe: European markets nervous over new bailout deal for Greece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/21/european-markets-new-bailout-greece

Markets were on tenterhooks on Thursday morning after Germany and France hammered out a last-minute deal on a second bailout of Greece intended to rescue both it and the euro from financial ruin.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy rushed to Berlin on Wednesday and spent seven hours talking to German chancellor Angela Merkel before a crisis summit in Brussels. They managed to agree a compromise on the losses that Greece's private creditors are to take in a complex new bailout for Athens.

European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet, who has been Merkel's most vocal opponent in the wrangling over how to respond to the euro crisis, attended part of the talks.

The deal, following a telephone dispute between the two leaders on Tuesday, is to be put to the heads of the European commission, council and central bank on Thursday morning before an emergency summit of the 17 leaders of eurozone countries.

[xchrom]

8. Britain's FTSE weighed down by weak commods, banks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/9755944

LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - Weakness in commodity issues and a reversal by banks pulled Britain's top share index lower on Thursday, snapping a two-session rally, with investors nervous ahead of an emergency summit meeting of euro zone leaders on the Greek debt crisis.
At 1047 GMT, the FTSE 100 index was 43.40 points or 0.7 percent lower at 5,810.42, yo-yoing around the psychologically-important 5,800 level.
Miners were the worst blue chip performers, led by Xstrata , down 3.6 percent, as the sector suffered in tandem with easier copper prices after poor manufacturing data from top metals consumer China.
China's factory output shrank in July for the first time in 12 months, according to HSBC's flash PMI data, reflecting the impact of Beijing's tighter monetary policy and slack global demand.
"With the mining sector having gained 4 percent over the last two sessions, investors have been easily drawn into locking in their profits ... particularly with the EU summit taking place today likely to influence the 'risk on' or 'risk off' environment," said Joshua Raymond, chief market strategist at City Index.
Integrated oils were also lower as the crude price fell back, with BG Group and BP off 1.2 percent and 0.9 percent respectively.

[xchrom]

9. Retail sales make subdued recovery

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/21/retail-sales-subdued-recovery

Retail sales bounced back last month as shops slashed their prices, but the 0.7% rise in volumes was too small to offset May's sharp decline.

Taking the quarter as a whole, retail sales were up marginally, by 0.2%, according to the Office for National Statistics on Thursday.

That confirms the pattern of subdued consumer demand that has characterised Britain's recession-scarred economy in recent months, and indicated that household spending is unlikely to have made a strong contribution to growth.

The ONS will give its first estimate of GDP growth in the second quarter of the year next week. Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said: "This suggests that the consumer will not have helped drive economic growth to any significant extent in the second quarter. These numbers therefore add to the risk that GDP could have declined in the second quarter."

[xchrom]

11. Ireland rules out private sector haircuts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/9756010

DUBLIN, July 21 (Reuters) - Ireland ruled out asking private investors to swallow losses on its debt on Thursday but expects to pay less interest on its EU-IMF rescue package and possibly extend its bailout loans as part of efforts to end the euro zone debt crisis.
The head of Ireland's debt management agency told Reuters that even suggesting private investors should shoulder part of the country's debt burden was extremely risky.
"Ireland doesn't need and is not suggesting that there be any private sector involvement in the Irish solution," John Corrigan, the chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), said in an interview in his offices.
"Any such suggestion would result in a permanent elevation in our borrowing costs."
Euro zone leaders are expected to agree a common position later on Thursday on a second bailout for Greece that seeks a contribution from private bondholders.

[Demeter]

12. Sounds like a demand for a pony, to me.

Good luck with that.

[xchrom]

33. European shares rise on euro zone debt deal document

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/07/21/markets-europe-stocks-idUKL6E7IL19Q20110721

LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - European shares reversed early falls to trade higher after a draft document showed plans for a wide-ranging response to the euro zone sovereign debt crisis at a meeting of euro zone leaders on Thursday.

The document detailed plans to extend the maturity of bailout loans, expand the bailout fund's mandate, stimulate growth in the Greek economy and include private sector participation.

At 1227 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading European shares was up 0.6 percent at 1,098.03 points, with almost half the gains supplied by the banking sector, which extended its rally into a third day.

Commerzbank was a top gainer across the region, up 5.9 percent, while the STOXX Europe 600 Banks index also moved higher, leading sectoral gainers with a 2.3 percent rise.

[xchrom]

53. New UK visa plan to attract global talent

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/New-UK-visa-plan-to-attract-global-talent/articleshow/9309724.cms

LONDON: Britain has announced a new visa category to facilitate the immigration for exceptionally talented people from India and other non-EU countries in the fields of science, humanities, engineering and the arts.

The new Tier 1 (exceptional talent) category will open on 9 August 2011, and will have 1000 places in the first year of operation, official sources here said.

The new category will facilitate not only those who have already been recognised but also those with the potential to be recognised as leaders in their respective fields, the sources added.

There will be 500 places available between the August 9 and November 30 and a further 500 places available from the December 1 to March 31, 2012.

[Ghost Dog]

58. Erdogan Boom Threatened as Greek Crisis Exposes Finance Risk

July 21 (Bloomberg) -- The boom that turned Turkey into Europe’s fastest-growing economy may be imperiled by the debt crisis in neighboring Greece, the continent’s worst performer.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed Turkey’s 11 percent first-quarter expansion as “magnificent” on June 30. It hasn’t prevented the lira from sliding to a two-year low, as the country’s trade deficit widens on surging demand for imports. Turkey needs increasing flows of cash to finance the gap -- just as investors take alarm at the risk of default in Greece, where output shrank 5.5 percent.

...

Erdogan’s drive to cool the economy looks enviable from Athens, where his Greek counterpart George Papandreou must impose budget cuts and fight to fend off debt default. Turkey’s success can help, Papandreou said.

“This dynamic economy is something which we can profit from too,” the premier said in a July 19 interview in Athens. “We have the biggest city in Europe right next to us, which is Istanbul, a very dynamic city. We know the Turks well, they know us well, we have a boom in tourism.”

The neighbors traded $3 billion of goods last year, with Greece enjoying a surplus for the first time in more than a decade, selling mineral fuels, oil products and plastics, according to Turkish government figures.

/... http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-07-21/erdogan-boom-threatened-as-greek-crisis-exposes-finance-risk.html

[Demeter]

74. Ah, Yes, Turkey, the Poster Child of an IMF Success Story

Grain of salt advised...

[Demeter]

13. The Value of Medicaid

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/opinion/18mon1.html

Medicaid is under assault these days from nearly every direction. Governors complain that they cannot afford to put up their share of the money. Congressional Republicans led by Paul Ryan want to reduce the federal contribution by $771 billion over the next decade and shift more costs to the states and low-income Americans. President Obama has expressed willingness to cut Washington’s contribution by $100 billion over that period to help reduce the deficit. Meanwhile, conservative critics of Medicaid — and of health care reform’s requirement to expand it — have made the outlandish claim that it provides such poor care that enrollees would be better off having no coverage. They cite a few studies that seemed to show that, in some cases, patients on Medicaid had worse outcomes than those without any insurance. They claim this is because Medicaid pays so poorly that many doctors refuse to treat the patients, who are then unable to get care or go to the least-skilled doctors.

Those claims have now been refuted by a new study of Oregon’s program, conducted under the leadership of Katherine Baicker, a Harvard health economics professor who was an adviser to President George W. Bush, and Amy Finkelstein, an economics professor at M.I.T. It found that Medicaid patients reported both better health and more financial stability than uninsured poor people. The research was made possible by unusual circumstances in Oregon, where officials had only enough money to expand Medicaid enrollments by about 10,000 people in 2008. They used a lottery to decide who got coverage among the almost 90,000 people who applied. That made it possible to conduct a “gold standard” clinical trial in which two randomly selected groups with the same demographic characteristics could be compared — those who won the lottery and those who did not. None of the studies cited by the critics had randomly selected control groups.

The Oregon study provides striking results for its first year. The group that gained Medicaid coverage was significantly more likely to have received care from a hospital or a doctor, or to use prescription drugs, belying the notion that enrollees could not find providers. The insured group was far more likely to get preventive care, like mammograms, and to have a regular doctor. Those people were also more likely to report being in better physical and mental health. And they were better off financially: less likely to pay out of pocket, have unpaid medical bills sent to collection agencies, or need to borrow money or ignore other bills to pay for medical care.

The critics rightly point out that just because the Medicaid enrollees reported that their health was better does not mean that it actually was better. In the second year, researchers are measuring actual blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood sugar and other physical data...The study estimated that the additional care the new enrollees got drove up spending (from all sources) on the average individual by about $775, roughly 25 percent, above the $3,200 average for the uninsured control group...Any politicians eager to find savings by denying poor people access to Medicaid should recognize that they will be harming the health and financial well-being of highly vulnerable Americans. Expanding Medicaid will increase spending in the short run. But the nation will benefit from a healthier, more productive population that, in the long run, may have less need for costly medical services.

[lovuian]

54. Here is a reality for your who gets better a Profit Hospital or

Nonprofit hospital?

A Medicaid patient or a platinum plus insured person

here is the answer

the Nonprofit ...and Medicaid patient

WHY?
because theirs is "nonprofit"

the patient who is for "profit" does not make the company money if they get well
only if they get sicker

that is why Medicaid is a great insurance ...

It is crazy having healthcare for profit
in America...are people statistically are sicker as a result to the whole world and pay more
to help them get sicker

that is the crazy reality of American health care

[Demeter]

15. Letting Bankers Walk By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/opinion/18krugman.html

Ever since the current economic crisis began, it has seemed that five words sum up the central principle of United States financial policy: go easy on the bankers. This principle was on display during the final months of the Bush administration, when a huge lifeline for the banks was made available with few strings attached. It was equally on display in the early months of the Obama administration, when President Obama reneged on his campaign pledge to “change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes.” And the principle is still operating right now, as federal officials press state attorneys general to accept a very modest settlement from banks that engaged in abusive mortgage practices.

Why the kid-gloves treatment? Money and influence no doubt play their part; Wall Street is a huge source of campaign donations, and agencies that are supposed to regulate banks often end up serving them instead. But officials have also argued at each point of the process that letting banks off the hook serves the interests of the economy as a whole. It doesn’t. The failure to seek real mortgage relief early in the Obama administration is one reason we still have 9 percent unemployment. And right now, the arguments that officials are reportedly making for a quick, bank-friendly settlement of the mortgage-abuse scandal don’t make sense...Why the rush to settle? As far as I can tell, there are two principal arguments being made for letting the banks off easy. The first is the claim that resolving the mortgage mess quickly is the key to getting the housing market back on its feet. The second, less explicitly stated, is the claim that getting tough with the banks would undermine broader prospects for recovery.

Neither of these arguments makes much sense.

The claim that removing the legal cloud over foreclosure would help the housing market — in particular, that it would help support housing prices — leaves me scratching my head. It would just accelerate foreclosures, and if more families were evicted from their homes, that would mean more homes offered for sale — an increase in supply. An increase in the supply of a good usually pushes that good’s price down, not up. Why should the effect on housing go the opposite way?

You might point to the mortgage relief that would supposedly be extracted as part of the settlement. But if mortgage relief is that crucial, why isn’t the administration making a major push to reinvigorate its own Home Affordable Modification Program, which has spent only a small fraction of its money? Or if making that program actually work is hard, why should we believe that any program instituted as part of a mortgage-abuse settlement would work any better?...Sorry, but the case that letting banks off the hook would help the housing market just doesn’t hold together...The big drag on the economy now is the overhang of household debt, largely created by the $5.6 trillion in mortgage debt that households took on during the bubble years. Serious mortgage relief could make a dent in that problem; a $30 billion settlement from the banks, even if it proved more effective than the government’s modification program, would not.

So when officials tell you that we must rush to settle with the banks for the sake of the economy, don’t believe them. We should do this right, and hold bankers accountable for their actions.

[Demeter]

19. Default could 'sink the whole boat'

http://news.yahoo.com/default-could-sink-whole-boat-094300985.html

FOR THOSE OF US TREADING WATER ALREADY, THIS IS NOT A CREDIBLE THREAT...

The warnings are apocalyptic. “Armageddon,” President Barack Obama intones. “Catastrophic,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner insists. “Calamitous,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke admonishes.

But suppose — just suppose — the unthinkable happens: Despite all the talk of deals — small, medium or large — and of clever ways to pass the political buck, Congress and Obama can’t agree on legislation to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling before the U.S. government’s credit line runs out around Aug. 2...A few prominent Republicans, such as Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, a presidential candidate, say nothing much would happen and blast the administration for its “scare tactics.” But financial experts say hitting the debt ceiling or coming really close to it would destabilize the markets and the economy. Just how dire the consequences would be is difficult to predict, but many Americans could feel the impact almost immediately.

Stock markets are almost certain to drop sharply. Some analysts say interest rates for Treasury bills and private borrowing would rise abruptly. Others say the flight to safety might actually make investors dump stocks and buy Treasury securities in the short term.

The first major hurdle comes on Aug. 3, when the U.S. government is scheduled to pay $23 billion in benefits to Social Security recipients. Only $12 billion in revenue is expected that day, leaving the Treasury $11 billion short — and $20 billion in the red when other scheduled payments for that day are taken into account. Obama said in an interview with CBS News last week that he couldn’t guarantee Social Security payments will go out, a statement that could send retirees and disability recipients into a panic. “I’d say it’s at risk,” said Jay Powell, a former senior Treasury Department official now with the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The president’s statement is correct on its face. He said he can’t guarantee those payments will be made. Even if you pay nothing other than interest, you can’t guarantee it.”

The next D-day is Aug. 15, when Treasury owes $29 billion in interest but will already have missed $54 billion in scheduled payments if the debt ceiling hasn’t been extended. “I believe Treasury will always make sure, before all other government spending, enough cash to pay the interest on the bonds. That has to be the highest priority,” Powell said. “If we default on interest payments, we can sink the whole boat.”....“If there is a strong view that the bond interest payment won’t be made, and congressional leaders say they are nowhere near passing an increase in the debt limit, then you would start to see the basic underpinnings of the financial system come undone,” said a senior strategist at one of Wall Street’s largest banks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.

Analysts and former government officials said they expect Treasury to hoard all the cash it can to avoid a default. Doing that would mean slashing all other government expenses by 44 percent, according to a Bipartisan Policy Center analysis. There are various options for choosing who would get government payments — none of them good.

MORE MELODRAMA AT LINK

[xchrom]

20. Insider trader Danielle Chiesi jailed for 30 months

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14229447


Prosecutors accused the 45-year-old Chiesi of using her charms to illicit inside information from men


Danielle Chiesi, a former Bear Stearns hedge fund trader said to have used her charms to gain insider tips from company executives, has been jailed.

Chiesi, 45, was handed a two-and-a-half year sentence after pleading guilty in New York for her part in the Galleon hedge fund insider trading case.

In a recorded telephone conversation she described how she played an insider source "like a finely tuned piano".

[Demeter]

25. Tammy Faye, is that you?

[xchrom]

35. ...

:spray:

[MilesColtrane]

57. Too bad she won't have access to peroxide on the inside.

That's going to make for a nice two-toned prison do after a month or so.

[Demeter]

21. Bernanke: Fed May Launch New Round of Stimulus

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43739458

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Wednesday (JULY 15) that a new stimulus program is in the works that will entail additional asset purchases, the clearest indication yet that the central bank is contemplating another round of monetary easing. Bernanke said in prepared remarks that the economy is growing more slowly than expected, and should that continue the central bank stands at the ready with more accommodative measures. "Once the temporary shocks that have been holding down economic activity pass, we expect to again see the effects of policy accommodation reflected in stronger economic activity and job creation," he said..."However, given the range of uncertainties about the strength of the recovery and prospects for inflation over the medium term, the Federal Reserve remains prepared to respond should economic developments indicate that an adjustment in the stance of monetary policy would be appropriate."

Markets reacted immediately to the remarks, sending stocks up sharply in a matter of minutes. Gold prices continued to surge past record levels, while Treasury yields moved higher as well. But some analysts pointed out that, while Bernanke was suggesting the Fed might add stimulus, he also was saying that the current "soft patch" may prove temporary. "The bottom line is that he has to say he will respond if needed, but it seems he's saying it more as lip service than anything because ultimately he still expects that this slowdown was temporary," said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist for RBS Capital Markets in New York.

Later Wednesday, another Fed member said he opposed any further easing.

"I will not support further monetary accommodation," Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher told reporters after a speech at the Rotary Club of Dallas. "I do not personally see the benefit of more monetary accommodation even if the economy weakens further. Because again, there's so much liquidity out there, what's the trigger to put it to work?"

[Demeter]

22. FLORIDA: Foreclosure fraud investigators forced out at attorney general's office

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/foreclosures/foreclosure-fraud-investigators-forced-out-at-attorney-generals-1603854.html

A lead foreclosure fraud investigator for the state said she and a colleague were forced to resign from the Florida attorney general's office, unexpectedly ending their nearly yearlong pursuit to hold law firms and banks accountable.

Former Assistant Attorney General Theresa Edwards and colleague June Clarkson had been investigating the state's so-called "foreclosure mills," uncovering evidence of legal malpractice that also implicated banks and loan serv­icers.

Despite positive performance evaluations, Edwards said the two were told during a meeting with their supervisor in late May to give up their jobs voluntarily or be let go. Edwards said no reason was given for the move.

"It all happened very abruptly," said Edwards, who had worked in the attorney general's office for about three years.

[plumbob]

61. See, they thought they were supposed to prosecute malefactors.

I made the same mistake over 20 years ago when a company hired me to resolve their inventory. I did. They were short many millions, and the shop foreman and his brother were selling it out the back door and putting the cash in their pockets. I got fired the same day.

The owner (whose brother in law was the foreman) thought I would find a clever way to hide the shortage. Nobody told me, and I must have missed the wink and nod when hired.

Same thing happened to these folks, obviously. It can be very dangerous doing your job around crooks and money.

[Demeter]

24. Eighteen Percent of the EU is Literally Junk, Carried As Risk Free Assets at Par Using 30x+ Leverage

....Bank Collapse is Inevitable!!!

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/eighteen-percent-eu-literally-junk-carried-risk-free-assets-par-using-30x-leverage-bank-coll?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29

I have found what looks like the next TWO (That's right! Two as in number 2) Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns sitting right there smack in the middle of plain site in Europe and I will need some time to work on it with my analysts. The meltdown should occur just as it did here in the US save the world 2nd largest hedge fund probably will not have the resources to pull that funny little, furry financial creature from the family Leporidae out of their hat like the world's largest hedge fund did in the case of Bear Stearn's and Lehman Brothers. For those of you who do not know, I called the collapse of both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers months before the face while they were both trading at healthy stock prices, rated investment grade by "you know who" and rated "buy" by those whose name we shall not utter while still in the confines of downtown Manhattan!

TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT AT LINK

[Demeter]

27. The Beginning of the End of Europe

http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2011/07/beginning-of-end-of-europe.html

Yesterday, the European contagion spread to Italy and Spain. The sovereign debt of those two countries swooned—for no discernible reason.

No discernible reason whatsoever: The Italian and Spanish bond markets just sort of . . . plopped, like when a learning-to-walk toddler suddenly plops on his behind? Exactly like that: For no reason whatsoever.

The only conclusion that I can draw from this Monday swoon is that we’ve hit the tipping point: This is the start of the eurozone endgame. It is now only a matter of time before the eurozone breaks apart. Therefore, get back in your seats, buckle up, and brace yourselves good—‘cause it’s gonna be a bumpy ride....What do you call it, when a borrower has to take out more loans to pay off the maturing debts? A Ponzi scheme. ‘Nuff said.

[DemReadingDU]

29. Lira: Why is this happening now

more from Lira's posting...
What happened Monday wasn’t a panic, precisely: It was more of a pre-panic. Think of it like a sharp tremor before The Big One: A taste of what a true sovereign debt panic would be like. Now, why is this happening? That is, why is this happening now—what triggered it?

Nobody knows—and that’s precisely the problem. It could have been the ECB’s decision last week to raise interest rates 25 basis points to 1.5%—even as there is no inflationary smoke anywhere on the eurozone horizon. It could have been the IMF’s Christine Lagarde trying to sound tough over the weekend, saying essentially that all options were on the table with regards to Greece, including default. It could have been that some random bond salesman woke up gloomy because his football team lost on Sunday night, and spread his foul mood to his whole trading desk, and from thence to the entire eurobond market.

There are tons of explanations. But really, nobody knows why the eurobond markets swooned yesterday.

Ultimately, what triggered this swoon is a pointless question—like asking which of the last five straws broke the camel’s back. As it is, if it hadn’t been overloaded, this particular camel—or rather, this particular PIIG—would have been able to easily stand up to any one of those straws.

But on Monday, a tipping point was reached—the camel’s back was broken—the glass began to overflow: Pick your metaphor—the result is all the same:

The bond markets all now believe that Italy and Spain are in serious trouble—which is of course a self-fulfilling prophecy.

more...
http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2011/07/beginning-of-end-of-europe.html

[Demeter]

28. Buying Passivity With Food Stamps, Unemployment Checks – How Much Longer 'til the Status Quo Unravel

http://ampedstatus.org/buying-passivity-with-food-stamps-and-unemployment-checks-how-much-longer-until-the-status-quo-unravels/

Poverty is on the rise in America, and buying passivity with cheap bribes has limits when applied to a fraying middle class. If jobs are not coming back, then we as a nation need a conversation about poverty in America. The Status Quo assumption is that this is just another garden-variety recession, and that employment will bounce back, along with the “animal spirits” that drive borrowing and spending...As of August 2011, it will be three years since the global financial meltdown. In three years, the Savior State has borrowed and blown $6 trillion maintaining the Status Quo, and the Federal Reserve has printed almost $3 trillion and shoveled that vast sum into “risk assets” to keep housing on life support and the stock market rising. The Fed has also devalued and debased the dollar, stealing wealth from the citizenry and holders of U.S.-denominated debt in the process, to serve two goals: 1) spark inflation and thus avoid deflationary deleveraging of the nation’s fast-growing mountain of debt, and 2) to enable servicing that debt with cheaper dollars. None of these grandiose manipulations has healed the economy or fixed the structural problems which made the meltdown inevitable. The irony here (among many) is that so many people believe the Power Elites controlling the nation have some sort of god-like ability to maintain their grip on the levers of power. While it’s certainly true that the wealth of the Power Elites has increased as a result of the meltdown and Fed/Savior State response, ultimately the Financial and Political Elites’ power depends on the passivity and complicity of the citizens. This means the Power Elites must buy off or co-opt the majority of citizens to keep them politically neutered and malleable. The Status Quo has two basic methods of buying the citizen’s complicity: a vibrant economy that supports a middle class that thus has a stake in maintaining the Status Quo, and cash bribes to everyone else to keep quiet, i.e. “social benefits” a.k.a. entitlements and welfare. This renders everyone either dependent on cash payments from the Savior State or a stakeholder in the Status Quo...


Some observers see the middle class as the natural enemy of the State and Corporatocracy, but this misses the essential relationship of the Power Elites to their citizenry: the need of the Elites to buy complicity and passivity by the cheapest methods available. It’s certainly possible to use repression to keep a populace under control, but repression is expensive and it doesn’t encourage productive “buy-in”; rather, it encourages opting out and resentful compliance. This leaves less for the Elites to skim off. Over time, it’s rather obvious that regimes that rely on heavy-handed repression tend to fall while those that offer a small, low-cost stake to citizens are much more profitable to the ruling Elites and also more stable. The crumbling of the credit-bubble economy has mortally wounded the middle class, and this has created a serious problem for the Power Elites. In extending the credit-bubble economy–that is, “wealth” is created via exponential expansion of debt–to housing, the Power Elites undermined the multigenerational bedrock of middle class wealth. With housing equity stripped away, the erosion of middle class income and non-housing wealth has now been exposed.

The Power Elites’ other wealth technique, globalization, has also gutted the middle class below the top 10% level of technocrats, and decimated the working class that had aspirations of joining the middle class, i.e. the lower middle class...Global Corporate America has decoupled from the American middle class; its interests are now international rather than domestic.The Power Elites cannot understand why making credit cheap isn’t creating jobs. Like decrepit generals fighting the last war, they keep sending waves of credit into the system to overpower deflation and reignite “animal spirits,” but the waves of credit are being mowed down by deleveraging and the exhaustion of credit as a stimulus. In other words, they are clueless to the reality that conventional economics has failed. They have no Plan B. Their only plan, such as it is, is to borrow more money and spend it propping up the current Status Quo. Unfortunately for them, the middle class is unraveling at the edges, and the surest evidence of that is the loss of middle class jobs. Without good-paying jobs with benefits and rising housing equity, then the citizens have no stake left in the Status Quo. That leaves entitlements and welfare as the cash bribes for keeping quiet. What’s remarkable about the current pastiche of social benefits is how cheap it is to the Power Elites; extended unemployment ($158 billion), food stamps ($68 billion), Section 8 housing ($20 billion), and Veterans Administration medical care for vets ($47 billion)–all together that’s $293 billion, a mere 7.7% of Federal spending...




There are two cultural issues in play as well. One of the key characteristics of the middle class is high expectations for future power and prosperity. The poor have lower expectations and so it’s relatively easy to buy them off with small sums...The middle class, however, is less satisfied with crumbs, and getting paid to stay home and watch TV does not appeal to their values or expectations of life in America. Making people dependent on the Savior State is not “ending poverty”–it is creating a deeper, more pervasively destructive poverty of lost opportunity and shriveled enterprise. People naturally want to contribute to something meaningful and to be respected, and being paid to sit home watching TV does neither. What it does do is fuel a low-intensity resentment against dependency and a pathological incentive for victimhood, neither of which are healthy for the society or those reduced to dependency on the Savior State. The Power Elites are slowly losing their grip on the middle class. Once people no longer have a stake in the Status Quo, then they might become dissatisfied with the cheap bribes to stay home and rot away, consuming Pringles and “entertainment” on the telly. Those citizens who are paying the tab for the Power Elites’ debt excesses are also seeing their stake in the Status Quo slip in value: being reduced to a tax donkey does not fulfill their expectations.The bottom line is poverty on several levels is rising in America, and cash bribes are not a stable “solution,” though they certainly are a cheap one to the Power Elites.

[DemReadingDU]

31. Ohio - extended unemployment to expire in early 2012

7/18/11 Thousands set to lose jobless benefits
They are Ohioans whose extended benefits will end early next year.

Jobless benefits for thousands of displaced Ohio workers are set to expire at the beginning of next year, an event some economists fear will sap hundreds of millions of dollars in personal income from the state’s economy and further stall the economic recovery.

Others, however, say the end of extended benefits will be good for the economy because it will force jobless workers to step up their job searches and bring down the unemployment rate.

The end of extended unemployment benefits that Congress approved in December 2010 for up to 99 weeks will, at least in the short run, put added pressure on food pantries and other social service agencies that are already struggling with growing demand from jobless workers.

More than 33,000 Ohioans have exhausted their unemployment benefits so far this year, putting the state on pace to exceed the 47,241 beneficiaries who received their final unemployment checks in 2010, based on figures from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

In Ohio, unemployment checks average just over $287 a week, which means about $1.2 billion a year in income derived from jobless benefits has disappeared from the state economy.


more...
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/thousands-set-to-lose-jobless-benefits-1209494.html

[Demeter]

32. Wall Street’s Euthanasia of Industry By Michael Hudson

http://michael-hudson.com/2011/07/the-euthanasia-of-industry/


“When I was in Norway one of the Norwegian politicians sat next to me at a dinner and said, “You know, there’s one good thing that President Obama has done that we never anticipated in Europe. He’s shown the Europeans that we can never depend upon America again. There’s no president, no matter how good he sounds, no matter what he promises, we’re never again going to believe the patter talk of an American President. Mr. Obama has cured us. He has turned out to be our nightmare. Our problem is what to do about the American people that don’t realize this nightmare that they’ve created, this smooth-talking American Tony Blair in the White House.”

Topics: The jobless recovery; the debt ceiling and default charade; China; Greece: banks, not countries, receive the bailouts; financial warfare; IMF and EU; European Central Bank; US credit default swaps; US agricultural exports create food dependency; currency devaluation devalues the price of labor; class war of banks against the rest of society.

AUDIO INTERVIEW AT LINK: http://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/audio/Hudson_July2011_Bonnie.mp3

[Tansy_Gold]

41. Dear Mr. Hudson

You didn't have to go all the way to Norway for that.




TG

[Demeter]

43. Morning, Madame President to be

It's very likely that you will win by default, as no one will want to be in the hot seat...

[Hotler]

52. k&r Nice find Demeter. This needs to be shared

with the crowd in GD just to watch the heads of the Obama defenders explode. :evilgrin:
I have no hope. I see no future.

[Demeter]

63. If you go there, you are welcome to cross post

I don't see anything like a continuum, for certain. There's going to be a great disconnect. Whether this nation goes up in the flames of the 3rd revolution, or drops into the pits of Armageddon, never to rise, is up to the American People, just rousing from their American Dream to the daily nightmare.

[Demeter]

34. More Wall Street Bailouts to Come – Why We Must Break Up the “Too Big to Fail” Banks Now

http://ampedstatus.org/more-wall-street-bailouts-to-come-why-we-must-break-up-the-too-big-to-fail-banks-now/

The biggest banks are insolvent. By failing to break up them up, the government will keep taking emergency measures to try to cover up their insolvency – further draining the life blood out of the real economy...Anyone who thinks that Congress will use the current financial regulation – Dodd-Frank – to break up banks in the middle of an even bigger crisis is dreaming. If the giant banks aren’t broken up now - when they are threatening to take down the world economy – they won’t be broken up next time they become insolvent either. In other words, there is no better time than today to break them up...



Why Break Up the Giant Banks?

Virtually all independent economists and financial experts say that the giant banks are too big, and that their very size is hurting the economy:

• Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz
  
  
• Nobel prize-winning economist, Ed Prescott
  
  
• Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman
  
  
• Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan
  
  
• Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker
  
  
• Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich
  
  
• Dean and professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School, and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, R. Glenn Hubbard
  
  
• Former Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers
  
  
• Former chief IMF economist and economics professor Simon Johnson
  
  
• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas Hoenig
  
  
• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard Fisher
  
  
• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Thomas Bullard
  
  
• Deputy Treasury Secretary, Neal S. Wolin
  
  
• The President of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington-based trade group with about 5,000 members, Camden R. Fine
  
  
• The Congressional panel overseeing the bailout (and see this)
  
  
• The head of the FDIC, Sheila Bair
  
  
• Former Tarp overseer and creator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren
  
  
• The head of the Bank of England, Mervyn King
  
  
• The leading monetary economist and co-author with Milton Friedman of the leading treatise on the Great Depression, Anna Schwartz
  
  
• Economics professor and creator of the “efficient market hypothesis”, Eugene Fama
  
  
• Economics professor and senior regulator during the S & L crisis, William K. Black
  
  
• Economics professor, Nouriel Roubini
  
  
• Economics professor, James Galbraith
  
  
• Economist, Marc Faber
  
  
• Professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the Chicago Booth School of Business, Luigi Zingales
  
  
• Economics professor, Thomas F. Cooley
  
  
• Economist Dean Baker
  
  
• Economist Arnold Kling
  
  
• Former investment banker, Philip Augar
  
  
• Chairman of the Commons Treasury, John McFall
  
  
• Leading bank analyst, Chris Whalen
  
  
  Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11/justice-department-plans-_n_201409.html
  
  
  
  ...And as I noted in December 2008, the big banks are the major reason why sovereign debt has become a crisis...The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is often called the “central banks’ central bank”, as it coordinates transactions between central banks. BIS points out in a new report that the bank rescue packages have transferred significant risks onto government balance sheets, which is reflected in the corresponding widening of sovereign credit default swaps:
  
  The scope and magnitude of the bank rescue packages also meant that significant risks had been transferred onto government balance sheets. This was particularly apparent in the market for CDS referencing sovereigns involved either in large individual bank rescues or in broad-based support packages for the financial sector, including the United States. While such CDS were thinly traded prior to the announced rescue packages, spreads widened suddenly on increased demand for credit protection, while corresponding financial sector spreads tightened.
  
  In other words, by assuming huge portions of the risk from banks trading in toxic derivatives, and by spending trillions that they don’t have, central banks have put their countries at risk from default.
  
  **********************************************
  
  These concepts have been known for hundreds of years:
  
  “When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”
  - Napoleon Bonaparte
  
  “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
  - John Adams
  
  “If the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied”.
  — Thomas Jefferson
  
  “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the Government, to whom it properly belongs.”
  - Thomas Jefferson
  
  “ the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the Revolutionary War.”
  - Benjamin Franklin
  
  “The Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever understanding the agenda of bankers, and they frequently referred to them and their kind as, quote, ‘friends of paper money. They hated the Bank of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful in winning our independence from England and King George, we could never truly be a nation of freemen, unless we had an honest money system. ”
  -Peter Kershaw, author of the 1994 booklet “Economic Solutions”
  
  “he creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary assemblies…coming as they did upon the heels of the strenuous efforts made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America acts of defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown that forgiveness was thereafter impossible . . . here was but one course for the crown to pursue and that was to suppress and punish these acts of rebellion…Thus the Bills of Credit of this era, which ignorance and prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a reckless financial policy were really the standards of the Revolution. they were more than this: they were the Revolution itself!”
  - Historian Alexander Del Mar
  
  “The British Parliament took away from America its representative money, forbade any further issue of bills of credit, these bills ceasing to be legal tender, and ordered that all taxes should be paid in coins … Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies . . . discontent became desperation, and reached a point . . . when human nature rises up and asserts itself.”
  - British historian John Twells

[Demeter]

36. Soybeans Gain for Ninth Session, Longest Streak Since August; Rice Climbs

THIS IS A WEEK OLD, BUT I DOUBT THINGS HAVE CHANGED DIRECTION

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-14/rice-jumps-to-highest-since-2008-as-thailand-helps-farmers-supply-drops.html

Soybeans rose for a ninth session in Chicago, the longest streak since August, on speculation hot weather in the U.S. will reduce yields and curb global stockpiles. Rice reached the highest price since Oct. 9, 2008.

Almost a third of soybeans in the U.S. Midwest including Iowa and Illinois, the biggest growing states, may be hurt by unusual heat and dryness over the next 15 days after high winds affected some plants in the states this week, Commodity Weather Group LLC predicted yesterday. The oilseed has gained 7 percent since June 30, the last time prices declined.

“Hot, dry weather is expected to prevail across the Midwest, which could affect crops during the crucial August growing period, lowering yields,” said Justine White, an analyst at VM Group in London.


MICHIGAN IS SUPPOSED TO HIT 100 AND HEAT INDEX OF 108...THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE, IN DETROIT OF THE SIXTIES, I RECALL MANY 100 DEGREE DAYS--BUT THAT WAS WITH LOTS OF AIR POLLUTION TO CUT THE SUN, AND LOTS OF ASPHALT TO ABSORB IT...

WE'VE HAD NO SIGNIFICANT RAIN FOR OVER A MONTH NOW.

[Demeter]

37. Obama names new acting head of FHA

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-names-new-acting-head-of-fha/2011/07/11/gIQACAQw9H_story.html

President Obama has named Carol Galante as the acting commissioner of the Federal Housing Adminstration, effective Tuesday JULY 11. The appointment makes Galante, 56, the second consecutive acting commissioner since April to head the agency, which guarantees residential mortgage loans for low-income borrowers. She was previously deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing at the FHA’s parent, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Galante replaces Robert C. Ryan, who had served as acting commissioner since David H. Stevens left the post to head the Mortgage Bankers Association at the end of March. Until then, Ryan was the agency’s first chief risk officer.

Ryan is now taking on a new role as a senior adviser to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, where he’ll focus on housing finance issues such as mortgage servicing standards and compensation.

“I am thrilled to have both Carol and Bob on board as we continue our mission to help the housing market recover,” Donovan said in a statement.

[Demeter]

38. Gang of Six Plan Gives Tax Breaks for Wealthy, Social Security Cuts for Ordinary Workers

http://www.truth-out.org/gang-six-plan-gives-tax-breaks-wealthy-social-security-cuts-ordinary-workers/1311112585

By: Dean Baker, The Center for Economic and Policy Research | News Analysis

Washington, D.C.- The budget plan produced by the Senate’s “Gang of Six” offers the promise of huge tax breaks for some of the wealthiest people in the country, while lowering Social Security benefits for retirees and the disabled. Despite claiming that they will "reform" Social Security on a "separate track, isolated from deficit reduction," the plan includes cuts to Social Security that would be felt in less than six months, as the plan calls for a new inflation formula that will reduce benefits by 0.3 percentage points a year compared with currently scheduled benefits. The plan also calls for a process that is likely to reduce benefits further for future retirees.

The proposed cuts to Social Security are cumulative. This means that after ten years, a beneficiary in her 70s will see a cut of close to 3 percent. After 20 years, the cuts for beneficiaries in their 80s will be close to 6 percent, while the reduction in annual benefits will be close to 9 percent by the time beneficiaries are in their 90s. For a beneficiary in her 90s living on a Social Security income of $15,000, this means a loss of more $1,200 a year in benefits.

The plan also calls for large cuts in tax rates including a targeted top rate of between 23-29 percent, which will be at least partially offset by elimination of tax deductions. For the highest-income people, this is likely to mean a very large reduction in taxes. For example, Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein, the CEOs of J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs, respectively, are both paid close to $20 million a year at present. If this pay is taxed as ordinary income, then they would be paying close to $7.5 million a year in taxes on it after 2012. However, if the top rate is set at 29 percent, they may save as much as $1.9 million a year on their tax bill. If the top tax rate is set at 23 percent then the Gang of Six plan may increase their after-tax income by more than $3 million a year.

It is striking that the Gang of Six chose to respond to the crisis created by the collapse of the housing bubble by developing a plan that will give even more money to top Wall Street executives and traders. By contrast, the European Union is considering imposing financial speculation taxes to reduce the power of the financial industry and raise more than $40 billion a year in revenue....

[Demeter]

39. Six Ways to Liberate America From Wall Street Rule

http://www.truth-out.org/how-liberate-america/1311104394

The dominant story of the current political debate is that the government is broke. We can’t afford to pay for public services, put people to work, or service the public debt. Yet as a nation, we are awash in money. A defective system of money, banking, and finance just puts it in the wrong places.

Raising taxes on the rich and implementing financial reforms are essential elements of the solution to our seemingly intractable fiscal and economic crisis. Yet proposals currently on the table fall far short of the need.

A newly released report of the New Economy Working Group, coordinated by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, goes beyond the current debate to call for a deep restructuring of the institutions to which we as a society give the power to create and allocate money. How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule spells out the steps required to rebuild a system of community-based and accountable institutions devoted to financing productive activities that create good jobs for Americans and generate real community wealth.

Despite the financial crash of 2008, the financial assets of America’s billionaires and the idle cash of the most profitable corporations are now at historic highs. Their biggest challenge is figuring out where to park all their cash.Over the past 30 years, virtually all the benefit of U.S. economic growth has gone to the richest 1 percent of Americans. Effective tax rates for the very rich are at historic lows and many of the most profitable corporations pay no taxes at all.

Corporations are using their stores of cash primarily to buy back their own stock, acquire control of other companies, invest in off-shoring yet more American jobs, and pay generous dividends to shareholders and outsized bonuses to management.Unfortunately, most of those who hold the cash and the corporations they control have lost interest in long-term investments that build and expand strong enterprises. The substantial majority of trades in financial markets are made by high-speed computers in securities held for fractions of a second. Business pundits still refer to this trading as investment. It bears no resemblance, however, to the investment required to put people to work rebuilding a strong America.

Help fight ignorance. Click here for daily Truthout email updates.

It was not always so. In response to the Great Depression, our country enacted financial reforms that put in place a system of money, banking, and investment based on community banks, mutual savings and loans, and credit unions. These institutions provided financial services to local Main Street economies that employed Americans to produce and trade real goods and services in response to community needs and opportunities.

This system, which Wall Street interests dismiss as quaint and antiquated, financed the U.S. victory in World War II, the creation of a strong American middle class, an unprecedented period of economic stability and prosperity, and the investments that made America the world’s undisputed industrial and technological leader.

The consequences include the erosion of the middle class, an extreme concentration of wealth and power, a costly financial collapse, persistent high unemployment, housing foreclosures, collapsing environmental systems, the hollowing out of U.S. industrial, technological, and research capacity, huge public and international trade deficits, and the corruption of our political institutions.In the 1970’s Wall Street interests began pushing a deregulation agenda that led to a transfer of financial power from Main Street to Wall Street. Wall Street’s mega-banks lost interest in real investment and developed a new business model. They now specialize in charging excessive fees and usurious interest rates, providing leverage to speculators, speculating for their own accounts, luring the unwary into mortgages they cannot afford, bundling junk mortgages to sell them as triple-A securities, betting against the clients to whom they sell the overrated securities, extracting subsidies and bailouts from government, laundering money from drug and arms traders, and offshoring their profits to avoid taxes.

Wall Street profited at every step and declared its experiment with deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy a great success. It now argues for extending the same measures even further.

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule spells out details of a six-part policy agenda to rebuild a sensible system of community-based and accountable financial services institutions.

1. Break up the mega-banks and implement tax and regulatory policies that favor community financial institutions, with a preference for those organized as cooperatives or as for-profits owned by nonprofit foundations.
   
   
2. Establish state-owned partnership banks in each of the 50 states, patterned after the Bank of North Dakota. These would serve as depositories for state financial assets to use in partnership with community financial institutions to fund local farms and businesses.
   
   
3. Restructure the Federal Reserve to function under strict standards of transparency and public scrutiny, with General Accounting Office audits and Congressional oversight.
   
   
4. Direct all new money created by the Federal Reserve to a Federal Recovery and Reconstruction Bank rather than the current practice of directing it as a subsidy to Wall Street banks. The FRRB would have a mandate to fund essential green infrastructure projects as designated by Congress.
   
   
5. Rewrite international trade and investment rules to support national ownership, economic self-reliance, and economic self-determination.
   
   
6. Implement appropriate regulatory and fiscal measures to secure the integrity of financial markets and the money/banking system.

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule is the product of extended discussions among representatives of a diverse group of organizations committed to deepening and reframing the conversation on financial reform to focus attention on the serious financial system restructuring required to build a strong new American economy adequate to the social and environmental challenges of the 21st century. It may be freely shared, reproduced and distributed with appropriate citations.

[Demeter]

40. 5 Disastrous Consequences Of A Debt Ceiling Meltdown

http://www.alternet.org/story/151631/5_disastrous_consequences_of_a_debt_ceiling_meltdown?akid=7281.227380.RHQ51n&rd=1&t=17

According to the conventional wisdom, the stakes around a default* are so great that after a brief game of brinksmanship, lawmakers will eventually come to their senses and raise the debt ceiling as the deadline nears.

That view, based on past precedent, will likely prove correct. But this is an exceptional moment in our political history. At this point, neither Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, nor Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, can truly claim to speak for their caucuses. Many within the Tea Party caucus refuse to vote for a debt ceiling increase under any circumstance, and Boehner needs a good number of Dems to pass it. But the Dems have offered most of what the GOP wants, only to see them walk away from the table, insisting that all tax loopholes are sacrosanct.

Obama wants a big, grand bargain – possibly to include cuts to Medicare and Social Security – while the Democratic rank-and-file wants to run on protecting those programs next fall. So, improbable as a protracted period of default might be, with all these political divides deepening it's no longer out of the question.

Most Americans are unsure what a default actually means, and with good reason – it's virtually (but not entirely) unprecedented. So what might happen if the worst-case scenario should come to pass? We run down some possibilities below.

• 1. Around August 3, Some People the Federal Government Owes Money To Will Stop Getting Paid...
  
  
• 2. Real People Would be Hurt, Badly (Especially in the 'Red' States)...
  
  
• 3. Hurting the Economy: Demand Would Crash Further; Personal Debt Would Rise...
  
  
• 4. Hurting the Economy: Interest Rates May Skyrocket...
  
  
• 5. It Would Increase the Deficit...

DETAILS AT LINK

[Demeter]

42. AND THEY'RE OFF! +42 AT OPEN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXRj9lSnJnI

[Demeter]

44. Joseph Stiglitz: Eurozone’s problems are political, not economic

Europe faces a critical juncture on Thursday – one that may determine not only whether the euro will survive, but whether the global economy will be once again plunged into turmoil.

To an economist what needs to be done is simple and clear: Greece’s debt has to be brought to a sustainable level. That can only be done by lowering the interest rate that Greece pays, lowering its indebtedness, and/or increasing gross domestic product.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/WDI4RR/166U9I/CWSVD/72OTF1/MS98FJ/VU/t?a1=2011&a2=7&a3=20

[Demeter]

45. Bill Gross: Developed world cannot thrive at ‘stall speed’

Debt is the disease – growth is the cure, but as the latter falters, economies and their associated financial markets hang in the balance.

Academics Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart have outlined what happens when countries assume liabilities that future growth cannot comfortably pay. Ninety per cent debt to gross domestic product is their Maginot line beyond which leverage dynamics begin to work in reverse, slowing growth instead of enabling it, promoting too much risk as opposed to potential gains.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/2SRI11/622B9B/87I64/XTPSED/AM7R4E/7V/t?a1=2011&a2=7&a3=20

[Demeter]

46. Mario Monti: Eurobonds are the only answer to Europe’s crisis

Eurozone leaders face a fundamental choice when they meet on Thursday. Either they declare, once again, that they stand ready to do “whatever is necessary” to overcome the eurozone crisis, or they actually do it.

In the first case, markets are likely to step up to the next stage of their challenge to the European authorities. They will target larger countries, such as Italy and Spain, thus making the “whatever necessary” ever more costly and ever less credible.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/TWK799/YBBNM4/204L2/FXMC1K/8ZAS79/OS/t?a1=2011&a2=7&a3=20

[Demeter]

47. Signing Away the Right to Govern

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19tue1.html?_r=1

It used to be that a sworn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution was the only promise required to become president. But that no longer seems to be enough for a growing number of Republican interest groups, who are demanding that presidential candidates sign pledges shackling them to the corners of conservative ideology. Many candidates are going along, and each pledge they sign undermines the basic principle of democratic government built on compromise and negotiation.

Both parties have long had litmus tests on issues — abortion, taxation, the environment, the social safety net. The hope was that the candidates would keep their promises, and, when they didn’t, voters who cared deeply about those issues could always pick someone else next time. Human beings, after all, do not come with warranties.

But iron-clad promises were just what the most rigid Republican ideologues wanted. They had seen too many presidents — specifically Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush — bend when confronted by a complex national reality. Both those presidents agreed to new taxes and some Republicans said they did not fight hard enough to outlaw abortion or cut spending to the point where government was unrecognizable. In other words, they compromised a bit, to keep divided government from destroying itself. Washington, the ideologues decided, corrupted true conservatives into moderates.

More was needed to keep them in line, which gave birth to the signed pledge — no more enforceable than a spoken promise, but a politician’s actual signature was seen as more binding. The oldest and most pernicious of these modern oaths was dreamed up by Grover Norquist, the leader of Americans for Tax Reform, who has managed to get 95 percent of all Republicans in Congress to pledge never to raise taxes for any reason. If they end tax deductions, Mr. Norquist’s pledge-takers say they will match the increase in revenue with further tax cuts.

That pledge is the single biggest reason the federal government is now on the edge of default. Its signers will not allow revenues in a deal to raise the debt ceiling...

[xchrom]

48. EMs growing at three times the rate of developed markets: BoA Merrill Lynch

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/ems-growing-at-three-times-the-rate-of-developed-markets-bofa-merrill-lynch/articleshow/9311390.cms

ET Now caught up with Joe Zidle , Head-Global Wealth Management , Bank of America Merrill Lynch , for his views on the Eurozone crisis and its effect on emerging markets like India. Excerpts:

ET Now: The big concern really for every investor across the world is the crisis that we are seeing play out in the Eurozone. Do you believe the crisis there will resolve itself or do you believe that Europe is actually in for much more difficult times?

Joe Zidle: We do not see the crisis in Europe being resolved anytime soon unfortunately. Instead what we see is European leaders so called kicking the can down the road. There are no real easy solutions that we think will happen overnight unfortunately, and we think that will continue to cause volatility in global markets as investors become further risk averse. In other words, the problems like Greece is having and the prospects for contagion are driving up borrowing costs and they are causing uncertainty for global investors and uncertainty is the enemy of growth.

ET Now: There are many who argue that as the Eurozone crisis worsens, emerging markets like India stand to benefit as foreign investment funds are likely to divert funds meant for the Euro area to investments into emerging markets. Would you go with that theory?

Joe Zidle: The real story is that the crisis in Europe and even the debt crisis in the United States of course with the ongoing talks over a debt ceiling, the real story is that it will shine a brighter light on the growth stories in emerging markets, the growth stories here in India, the growth stories in China. Because what you find is this widening gap in economic performance between faster growth healthier emerging markets and slower growth, deeply indebted developed markets. So the problems in Europe and the problems in the southern Europe really are shining a spotlight on these faster growth economies, they do not have the debt levels. They are not dealing with the same type of debt crisis. Sure there are inflationary problems, but the emerging market central banks have been hiking rates in order to try to tame inflation, but really when you think about the economic performance, emerging markets are growing at nearly three times the rate of developed markets.

[xchrom]

49. Apple likely to replace Exxon Mobil as world's most valuable company

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/apple-likely-to-replace-exxon-mobil-as-worlds-most-valuable-company/articleshow/9307319.cms

SAN FRANCISCO: Based on Apple's growth trajectory, and a number of catalysts in the pipeline -- from a possible new iPhone this fall to expansions in China -- investors and analysts say Apple could unseat Exxon in the next six months, or latest by the middle of next year.

The market value of the top U.S. technology company was only $52 billion short of Exxon's $410 billion on Wednesday, even though the largest of the oil majors rakes in more than four times Apple's annual revenue.

In the past month alone, Apple's market capitalization has risen by $66 billion to $357.8 billion, fueled by optimism of a monstrous second half that could include the iPhone 5 and the new online music and data storage service called iCloud.

"Apple has the business momentum and the growth to become the largest capitalized company in the U.S." said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in Bedford Hills, New York. "It's certainly headed in that direction. It almost seems inevitable."

[Demeter]

65. I'll take a hard commodity over Knowledge Any Day

Knowledge is great, knowledge is important. Technology is very useful. But it doesn't exist without the hard commodities that are the raw material. And the people who need to be fed and educated, and provided with health care, and support for their families, etc....

[xchrom]

50. south asia: Nifty ends below 5550; RCom, RIL, Kotak, IDFC down

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/market-news/nifty-ends-below-5550-rcom-ril-kotak-idfc-down/articleshow/9311879.cms

MUMBAI: Benchmarks ended in the negative terrain for second consecutive session due to lack of buying activity amid weak global cues. Realty, banks and healthcare sectors led the losers pack while technology space edged higher.

Investors seem to have adopted sell-on-rallies strategy due to growing global economic concerns and rate hike worries by the Reserve Bank of India, say dealers. The market may continue to slip lower towards support levels as the earnings from corporates have not been encouraging enough to boost sentiments.

Meanwhile, food inflation for the week ended July 9 eased to 7.58 per cent compared to 8.31 per cent a week ago. The primary articles index fell to 11.13 per cent compared to 11.58 per cent in previous week.

"If this declining trend continues, I do hope it will have a moderating influence on the price front," said Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee .

[xchrom]

51. Kerala temple treasure shows India's legendary hunger for gold

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/rediscovering-keralas-forgotten-history/articleshow/9304186.cms

George Varghese K argues the discovery of the 1-trillion-worth treasure from the secret chambers of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple puts the spotlight on a piece of forgotten history

The recent discovery of treasure worth nearly a trillion rupees from the bowels of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram has brought to the fore what I call the state's 'golden' past.

The death of TP Sundararajan, a former IPS officer who was instrumental in the opening up of the treasure vaults through a court verdict against the royal house of Travancore has added a tinge of mystery to the whole affair. Suddenly, there is this talk of "the curse of the treasure". Falling back on such irrational logic to explain away the news of a man's death makes no sense. However, mystery still remains as to why the temple became home to treasure, mostly in gold, of this magnitude and scale.

As per historian Fernand Braudel, the movement of this metal determined history. What is crucial is that all through history, gold has moved towards Asia, not away from it. According to gold expert Peter Bernstein, Asia is the sink of gold and once it enters this sink it never escapes. Within Asia, India is the preferred point of accumulation, gold experts say.

[xchrom]

55. Food inflation falls to 7.58%

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Food-inflation-falls-to-758/articleshow/9308831.cms

NEW DELHI: Food inflation declined to 7.58 per cent for the week ending July 9, compared to 8.31 per cent in the previous week as prices of onions, milk, eggs and meat eased, according to official data released on Thursday.

Food inflation had shot up for the week ending July 2.

The primary articles index also fell to 11.13 per cent for the week under review, compared to 11.58 per cent in the previous week, according to data released by the ministry of commerce and industry.

The index for fuels and power continued to hold steady at 11.89 per cent for the week ended July 9. The index for non-food articles, however, rose 15.5 per cent from 15.2 per cent in the previous week.

[xchrom]

56. US to its companies: Tap Indian middle class' growing appetite

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/US-to-its-companies-Tap-Indian-middle-class-growing-appetite/articleshow/9293680.cms

WASHINGTON: Concerned over the escalating competition from India and China, a top US official has asked the American companies to "flex muscles" and tap the expanding middle class in these countries.

"It is critical we understand that the world has changed. Competition from countries like India and China is more intense," the undersecretary of commerce for international trade, Francisco Sanchez, said at the National Association of Counties Annual Conference Location in Portland, Oregon.

"It is time, really past time, for us to flex our muscles and improve the economic competitiveness of the United States," he said.

Sanchez urged the American companies to take benefit of the emerging middle class in these countries.

[Ghost Dog]

59. Economic gaps widening in affluent Israel

21 July 2011, Thursday / AP, JERUSALEM First came a revolt over cheese that forced Israel's largest dairy companies to lower their prices. Now, with consumer rage mounting over what is widely seen as a staggering cost of living, tent camps have sprung up across Israel to protest housing prices that climbed while costs fell globally amid the world's financial meltdown. The camps draw inspiration from the mass demonstrations in the Arab world, and illustrate Israel's paradox: While its economy is roaring, many Israelis aren't enjoying the good times.

The country has one of the highest poverty rates and income gaps in the developed world. Food prices have surged in recent months, as have fuel costs, while recent strikes by social workers and doctors spotlight how the frustration has cut across all layers of the society. But with prices for modest apartments well over $500,000, it's the housing crunch that has Israelis like Lital Yitzhak and her husband, a warehouse manager, fuming. Eight months ago, the couple was forced to move in with her mother because the $900 per month they were paying to rent a small, two-bedroom apartment in one of Jerusalem's poorest neighborhoods left them heavily in debt. "I don't know what a young couple is supposed to do," said Yitzhak, a substitute preschool teacher who, together with her spouse, earns about $1,800 a month - at the low end of what Israel's working class pulls in.

However, the crunch many like them endure is not reflected through the country's main economic indicators. A month ago, Israel's central bank raised its official 2011 growth forecast to 5.2 percent, more than twice the International Monetary Fund's estimate released in June for real GDP growth for advanced economies. Unemployment in Israel has fallen to 5.8 percent, its lowest level in decades. The current government "has had significant economic achievements," Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz boasted in a television interview on Tuesday.

On the surface, the gains are impressive. Expensive apartment complexes are being built, new cars ply the streets, and pricey restaurants are packed. But many Israelis complain that the overt signs of economic growth are misleading - reflecting the benefits enjoyed by a wealthy minority while the majority struggles. Due to heavy taxes, gasoline, for instance, costs $8 a gallon, and a family sedan carries a price tag of $35,000 or more. A standard, 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) apartment can easily top $600,000 in metropolitan centers like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and $200,000 to $300,000 in second-tier areas. Meanwhile, the average Israeli salary stands at about $2,500 per month, with key professions like teachers, civil servants and social workers typically earning less than $2,000 a month. Many jobs are available only for part-time employees or offer low wages with few benefits, experts say, while the government's critics point to an underdeveloped public transportation system as curtailing access to better paying jobs. "The trouble is, too little trickles down and too much stays in the hands of a very small proportion of the population, which certainly has become much richer in recent years," said John Gal, dean of the school of social work and social welfare at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

/... http://www.todayszaman.com/news-251168-economic-gaps-widening-in-affluent-israel.html

(Emphasis added).

[Roland99]

60. 11:30 - To the moon! (oil nears $100/bbl again)

Dow 12,696 +124 +0.99%
Nasdaq 2,833 +18 +0.65%
S&P 500 1,340 +14 +1.05%
GlobalDow 2,142 +30 +1.41%
Gold 1,601 +4 +0.28%
Oil 99.64 +1.20 +1.22%

[tclambert]

67. Minkow Gets Five Years for Stock-Fraud Conspiracy, Must Pay $583 Million

Barry Minkow, a convicted confidence man who started a fraud-detection firm, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a stock-manipulation scheme.

Minkow, 45, was also ordered today in Miami federal court to pay $583 million in restitution. U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz gave Minkow, who pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit securities fraud, 60 days to surrender so he can get his sons settled in school.

Prosecutors said Minkow made false and misleading statements about Miami homebuilder Lennar Corp. (LEN)’s financial condition to drive down the company’s share price. The U.S. said Minkow also abused his relationship with federal law enforcement agents to get non-public information about Lennar and traded on that information.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-21/fraud-detector-minkow-gets-five-years-in-prison-for-stock-fraud-conspiracy.html
_______________________________

Does the tote board include Barry Minkow yet? He spent 7 years in prison for frauds he committed with the company ZZZZ Best Co. This time, he apparently used his position at the Fraud Discovery Institute to commit fraud. And it got discovered. And he will be institutionalized. There ya go with three ironies in one.

[Demeter]

71. How hot is it?

http://65.55.40.23/att/GetInline.aspx?messageid=0493b85b-b3ca-11e0-9192-00215ad73a24&attindex=0&cp=-1&attdepth=0&imgsrc=cid%3a_2_0913E1AC0913DC440068CA14852578D3&hm__login=kdmpf&hm__domain=hotmail.com&ip=10.12.140.8&d=d4849&mf=0&hm__ts=Thu%2c%2021%20Jul%202011%2019%3a13%3a43%20GMT&st=kdmpf&hm__ha=01_1201ce9cae316d3b4d04224e7598a6a430e048b799781be617bc5e28ba291377&oneredir=1

[tclambert]

73. Isn't the Ann Arbor Art Fair going on now? Outside in the street?

Any candelmakers or wax sculptors must be crying their eyes out. Hell, the glass sculptures may be sagging.

[Demeter]

82. 10:30 & 88F

[hamerfan]

85. 2:40AM & 87F here n/t

[Demeter]

76. On top of Everything Else, the Blue Angels Are in Town

They like to fly over our condo place. We saw them playing tag over 94 on the way home. I hate to think how much $$$$ (Jet Fuel) they go through on a daily basis. Or even hourly.

I believe they are here to scare the shit out of the Art Fair Attendees, half a million suspected-liberal fools courting heatstroke downtown....and give the Tea Party some alternative entertainment, but then, I'm getting paranoid in my old age.

[Festivito]

83. Debt: 07/19/2011 14,342,898,467,069.07 (DOWN 11,102,259.67) (Tue, UP a little.)

(OVER the old debt limit of 14.294-trillion dollars by 49-billion dollars. Good day.)
Another in a series of long days.
(Debt under Obama seems to jump up big then drop slowly maybe up a little and down a little for days--repeat.)
= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 9,753,904,328,297.12 + 4,588,994,138,771.95
UP 61,099,321.97 + DOWN 72,201,581.64

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 312-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.20 THAT'S 1B$, and $3,200.19 makes 1T$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.60, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 12 seconds we net gain another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 312,480,992 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 10/04/2010 04:37 -> 310,403,677
Currently, each of these Americans owe $45,900.07.
A family of three owes $137,700.2. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 20 reports in the last 30 to 32 days.
The average for the last 20 reports is -83,052,242.80.
The average for the last 30 days would be -55,368,161.86.
The average for the last 32 days would be -51,907,651.75.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 174 reports in 253 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.33B$ per report, 5.07B$/day so far.
There were 249 reports in 365 days of FY2009 averaging 7.57B$ per report, 5.16B$/day.
There were 251 reports in 365 days of FY2010 averaging 6.58B$ per report, 4.53B$/day.
There were 197 reports in 292 days of FY2011 averaging 3.97B$ per report, 2.68B$/day.
Above line should be okay

PROJECTION:
There are 551 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 14.3 and 17.2T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
07/19/2011 14,342,898,467,069.07 BHO (UP 3,716,021,418,155.99 so far since Obama took office.)

FISCAL YEAR DEBT CHANGE, Sep 30 prior year to Sep 30 named year:
(One "* " for each 40B$ reached)
FY1994 +0,281,261,026,873.94 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1995 +0,281,232,990,696.07 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1996 +0,250,828,038,426.34 ------------* * * * * * WJC
FY1997 +0,188,335,072,261.61 ------------* * * * WJC
FY1998 +0,113,046,997,500.28 ------------* * WJC
FY1999 +0,130,077,892,735.81 ------------* * * WJC
FY2000 +0,017,907,308,253.43 ------------WJC
FY2001 +0,133,285,202,313.20 ------------* * * C&B
01-WJC +0,053,598,528,417.78 ------------* WJC 31% of FY, 40% of FY-Debt
01-GWB +0,079,686,673,895.42 ------------* GWB 69% of FY, 60% of FY-Debt
FY2002 +0,420,772,553,397.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2003 +0,554,995,097,146.46 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2004 +0,595,821,633,586.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2005 +0,553,656,965,393.18 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2006 +0,574,264,237,491.73 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2007 +0,500,679,473,047.25 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2008 +1,017,071,524,649.92 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2009 +1,885,104,106,599.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B&O
09GWB +0,602,152,152,000.60 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB 31% of FY, 32% of FY-Debt
09-BHO +1,282,951,954,598.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO 69% of FY, 68% of FY-Debt
FY2010 +1,651,794,027,380.00 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
FY2011 +0,781,275,436,177.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
Endof11 +0,976,594,295,221.63 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO

LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
06/24/2011 +001,084,698,810.36 ------------*********
06/27/2011 -002,470,523,317.36 -- Mon
06/28/2011 -005,425,153,798.63 --
06/29/2011 +007,017,747,779.06 ------------*********
06/30/2011 +003,977,538,029.63 ------------*********
07/06/2011 +006,618,560,773.63 ------------********* Wed
07/07/2011 +001,077,509,146.64 ------------*********
07/08/2011 -000,834,469,945.40 ---
07/11/2011 -004,122,303,723.36 -- Mon
07/12/2011 -003,634,448,925.47 --
07/13/2011 +010,692,053,599.69 ------------**********
07/14/2011 -001,516,331,672.50 --
07/15/2011 +003,100,504,281.51 ------------*********
07/18/2011 +000,238,790,593.83 ------------******** Mon
07/19/2011 +000,061,099,321.97 ------------*******

15,865,270,953.60 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
DUer primer on National debt

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4928039&mesg_id=4928430

[Festivito]

84. Debt: 07/20/2011 14,342,887,364,361.82 (DOWN 11,102,707.25) (Wed, DOWN a little.)

(OVER the old debt limit of 14.294-trillion dollars by 49-billion dollars. Good day.)
Too hot.
(Debt under Obama seems to jump up big then drop slowly maybe up a little and down a little for days--repeat.)
= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 9,753,657,737,209.51 + 4,589,229,627,152.31
DOWN 246,591,087.61 + UP 235,488,380.36

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 312-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.20 THAT'S 1B$, and $3,200.12 makes 1T$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.60, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 12 seconds we net gain another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 312,488,192 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 10/04/2010 04:37 -> 310,403,677
Currently, each of these Americans owe $45,898.97.
A family of three owes $137,696.92. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 20 reports in the last 30 days.
The average for the last 20 reports is -81,841,085.31.
The average for the last 30 days would be -54,560,723.54.

There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 174 reports in 253 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.33B$ per report, 5.07B$/day so far.
There were 249 reports in 365 days of FY2009 averaging 7.57B$ per report, 5.16B$/day.
There were 251 reports in 365 days of FY2010 averaging 6.58B$ per report, 4.53B$/day.
There were 198 reports in 293 days of FY2011 averaging 3.95B$ per report, 2.67B$/day.
Above line should be okay

PROJECTION:
There are 550 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 14.3 and 17.2T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
07/20/2011 14,342,887,364,361.82 BHO (UP 3,716,010,315,448.74 so far since Obama took office.)

FISCAL YEAR DEBT CHANGE, Sep 30 prior year to Sep 30 named year:
(One "* " for each 40B$ reached)
FY1994 +0,281,261,026,873.94 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1995 +0,281,232,990,696.07 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1996 +0,250,828,038,426.34 ------------* * * * * * WJC
FY1997 +0,188,335,072,261.61 ------------* * * * WJC
FY1998 +0,113,046,997,500.28 ------------* * WJC
FY1999 +0,130,077,892,735.81 ------------* * * WJC
FY2000 +0,017,907,308,253.43 ------------WJC
FY2001 +0,133,285,202,313.20 ------------* * * C&B
01-WJC +0,053,598,528,417.78 ------------* WJC 31% of FY, 40% of FY-Debt
01-GWB +0,079,686,673,895.42 ------------* GWB 69% of FY, 60% of FY-Debt
FY2002 +0,420,772,553,397.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2003 +0,554,995,097,146.46 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2004 +0,595,821,633,586.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2005 +0,553,656,965,393.18 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2006 +0,574,264,237,491.73 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2007 +0,500,679,473,047.25 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2008 +1,017,071,524,649.92 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2009 +1,885,104,106,599.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B&O
09GWB +0,602,152,152,000.60 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB 31% of FY, 32% of FY-Debt
09-BHO +1,282,951,954,598.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO 69% of FY, 68% of FY-Debt
FY2010 +1,651,794,027,380.00 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
FY2011 +0,781,264,333,470.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
Endof11 +0,973,247,377,872.31 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO

LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
06/27/2011 -002,470,523,317.36 -- Mon
06/28/2011 -005,425,153,798.63 --
06/29/2011 +007,017,747,779.06 ------------*********
06/30/2011 +003,977,538,029.63 ------------*********
07/06/2011 +006,618,560,773.63 ------------********* Wed
07/07/2011 +001,077,509,146.64 ------------*********
07/08/2011 -000,834,469,945.40 ---
07/11/2011 -004,122,303,723.36 -- Mon
07/12/2011 -003,634,448,925.47 --
07/13/2011 +010,692,053,599.69 ------------**********
07/14/2011 -001,516,331,672.50 --
07/15/2011 +003,100,504,281.51 ------------*********
07/18/2011 +000,238,790,593.83 ------------******** Mon
07/19/2011 +000,061,099,321.97 ------------*******
07/20/2011 -000,246,591,087.61 ---

14,533,981,055.63 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
DUer primer on National debt

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4929275&mesg_id=4930406