STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 18 May 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, 18 May 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 15 May 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 15 May 2015
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[font color=green]10 Year 2.14% -0.06 (-2.73%)
30 Year 2.95% -0.06 (-1.99%) [font color=black]


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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts







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

[Tansy_Gold]

1. And the OFIM bonus

[Demeter]

2. Attorney General Holder: Prez Can Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil March 6, 2013

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/03/attorney-general-holder-prez-can-assassinate-americans-on-u-s-soil.htmlBecause America Is a Battlefield In The Eyes of the Government

Attorney general Eric Holder wrote the following to Senator Rand Paul yesterday:

On February 20, 2013, you wrote to John Brennan requesting additional information concerning the Administration’s views about whether “the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial.”

As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts.

The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.

Were such an emergency to arise, I would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the President on the scope of his authority.

There’s more to the following statement than appears at first blush:

As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat.

Specifically, Holder did not say “we are legally constrained by the Constitution from depriving people of life, liberty or property without due process of law, and from using military force on U.S. soil”. Instead, he said that the Obama administration was so far abstaining from using a power it already has as a current “policy” decision.

John Glaser notes:

The concluding legal opinion represents a radical betrayal of constitutional limits imposed on the state for depriving citizens of life, liberty and property. Officially now, Obama’s kingly authority to play Judge, Jury, and Executioner and deprive Americans of their life without due process of law applies not only to Americans abroad but to citizens that are inside the United States.

“The US Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening – it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans,” Sen. Paul said in a statement.

Holder, along with the Obama administration, is making it seem as if the President’s use of lethal force, as in the drone war, would only be used in circumstances like another impending 9/11 attack or something. Only when an attack is imminent.

But that categorical limitation on the President’s authority to kill depends upon their definition of “imminence,” which we learned from a leaked Justice Department white paper last month, is extremely broad.

The memo refers to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than what has traditionally been required, like actual intelligence of an ongoing plot against the US.

“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states, contradicting conventional international law.

Instead, so long as an “informed, high-level” US official claims the targeted American has been “recently” involved in “activities” that pose a threat and “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities,” then the President can order his assassination. The memo does not define “recently” or “activities.”

Holder also insists that in the case of such “extraordinary circumstances,” like another impending 9/11, he ”would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the president of the scope of his authority.”

Boy, do I feel comforted.

This is not entirely surprising. As we noted in December 2011, a top constitutional expert confirmed that Obama was claiming the authority to assassinate Americans on U.S. soil. We reported that month:

For more than a year and a half, the Obama administration has said it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.

But now, as shown by the debates surrounding indefinite detention, the government is saying that America itself is a battlefield.

AP notes today:

U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.

***

The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson … said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.

Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant.

We pointed out a year ago, the director of the FBI said he’d have to “check” to see if the president had the authority to assassinate Americans on U.S. soil. We reported last October that form Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo – the guy who wrote the memo justifying torture, even of children, which was used to justify torture of innocent people, including children – said that the president has the power to assassinate Americans on U.S. soil in times of war.

And Mother Jones notes:

In a Google+ Hangout last month, President Obama refused to say directly if he had the authority to use lethal force against US citizens. As Mother Jones reported at the time, the reason the president was being so coy is that the answer was likely yes. Now we know that’s exactly what was happening.

It is not very reassuring that the same unaccountable agency which decides who should be killed by drones also spies on all Americans.

Indeed:

You might assume – in a vacuum – that this might be okay (even though it trashes the Constitution, the separation of military and police actions, and the division between internal and external affairs).

But it is dangerous in a climate where you can be labeled as or suspected of being a terrorist simply for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food. And see this.

And it is problematic in a period in which FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”, and even former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admitst hat he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.

And it is counter-productive in an age when the government – instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer – are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.

And it is insane in a time of perpetual war. See this, this, this and this.

And when the “War on Terror” in the Middle East and North Africa which is being used to justify the attack on Americans was planned long before 9/11.

And when Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”. And 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but wasn’t stopped. Indeed, no one in Washington even wants to hear how 9/11 happened, even though that is necessary to stop future terrorist attacks. And the military has bombed a bunch of oil-rich countries when it could have instead taken out Bin Laden years ago.

As I noted in [an analogous context]:

The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:

If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over

It is a perpetual war, which will never be over

Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers

But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security

We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you

Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention

See how that works?

And – given that U.S. soldiers admit that if they accidentally kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants – it is unlikely that the government would ever admit that an American citizen it assassinated was an innocent civilian who has nothing at all to do with terrorism.

Read this if you have any doubt as to how much liberty Americans have lost.

Senator Paul told MSNBC:

The response by Holder could lead to a situation where “an Arab-American in Dearborn (Mich.) is walking down the street emailing with a friend in the Mideast and all of a sudden we drop a drone” on him. He said it was “really shocking” that President Barack Obama, a former constitutional law professor, would leave the door open to such a possibility.

[Demeter]

4. Barack Obama 'has authority to use drone strikes to kill Americans on US soil'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9913615/Barack-Obama-has-authority-to-use-drone-strikes-to-kill-Americans-on-US-soil.html


President Barack Obama has the authority to use an unmanned drone strike to kill US citizens on American soil, his attorney general has said...

USING TERRA TO FIGHT TERRA

SOUNDS A LOT LIKE MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION, DOESN'T IT?

[Demeter]

7. America is shamed that only Rand Paul is talking about drone executions Amy Goodman March 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/07/america-shamed-rand-paul-drone-executions

Where are the civil libertarians in the president's party that we must rely on a Tea Party Republican to champion this issue?

TERRA, TERRA, TERRA!

[Demeter]

14. Three Democratic myths used to demean the Paul filibuster Glenn Greenwald MARCH 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/10/paul-filibuster-drones-progressives

Commencing immediately upon the 9/11 attack, the US government under two successive administrations has spent 12 straight years inventing and implementing new theories of government power in the name of Terrorism. Literally every year since 9/11 has ushered in increased authorities of exactly the type Americans are inculcated to believe only exist in those Other, Non-Free societies: ubiquitous surveillance, impenetrable secrecy, and the power to imprison and even kill without charges or due process. Even as the 9/11 attack recedes into the distant past, the US government still finds ways continuously to increase its powers in the name of Terrorism while virtually never relinquishing any of the power it acquires. So inexorable has this process been that the Obama administration has already exercised the power to target even its own citizens for execution far from any battlefield, and the process has now arrived at its inevitable destination: does this due-process-free execution power extend to US soil as well?

All of this has taken place with very little public backlash: especially over the last four years. Worse, it has prompted almost no institutional resistance from the structures designed to check executive abuses: courts, the media, and Congress. Last week's 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director by GOP Sen. Rand Paul was one of the first - and, from the perspective of media attention, easily among the most effective -Congressional efforts to dramatize and oppose just how radical these Terrorism-justified powers have become. For the first time since the 9/11 attack, even lowly cable news shows were forced - by the Paul filibuster - to extensively discuss the government's extremist theories of power and to debate the need for checks and limits.

All of this put Democrats - who spent eight years flamboyantly pretending to be champions of due process and opponents of mass secrecy and executive power abuses - in a very uncomfortable position. The politician who took such a unique stand in defense of these principles was not merely a Republican but a leading member of its dreaded Tea Party wing, while the actor most responsible for the extremist theories of power being protested was their own beloved leader and his political party.

Some Democrats, to their credit, publicly supported Paul, including Sen. Ron Wyden, who went to the Senate floor to assist the filibuster. Sens. Jeff Merkley, Pat Leahy and (independent) Bernie Sanders all voted against Brennan's confirmation, citing many of the same concerns raised by Paul. Some prominent progressive commentators praised Paul's filibuster as well: on CNN, Van Jones - while vowing that "I love this president" - said "Sen. Rand Paul was a hero for civil liberties" and that "liberals and progressives should be ashamed." But most Democratic Senators ran away as fast as possible from having anything to do with the debate: see here (LINK IN OP) for the pitifully hilarious excuses they offered for not supporting the filibuster while claiming to support Paul's general cause. All of those Democratic Senators other than Merkley and Leahy (and Sanders) voted to confirm the torture-advocating, secrecy-loving, drone-embracing Brennan as CIA chief....

[Demeter]

3. Top ten cities beloved by the super-rich 2013

New York
London
Paris
Tokyo
Hong Kong
Singapore
Sydney
Washington, DC
Toronto
Zurich

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/fameandfortune/9912691/Top-ten-cities-beloved-by-the-super-rich.html?frame=2501928

[Demeter]

5. Everything You've Been Told About Personal Finance Is Dead Wrong

http://www.alternet.org/economy/everything-youve-been-told-about-personal-finance-dead-wrong-heres-truth

According to Helaine Olen, the lion's share of financial advice served up by so-called experts is useless -- or worse. In her must-read new book, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, she reveals that to think about money solely in a personal sense causes us to miss the problem. I caught up with Olen to discuss her take on what we're missing, and how to think better and smarter about our financial lives.

Lynn Parramore: Why does America need a book on the personal finance industry? We're messed up about money, right? Don't we need help?

Helaine Olen: We need help, but not the way we think. In a society where salaries have stagnated and fallen, net worth has plunged, even as the costs of things like healthcare, housing and education have gone up at rates well beyond that of inflation, it’s not surprising most of us have financial problems. But most of us still don’t see that we have a societal problem. Instead, we listen to people and organizations that insist our problem is an individual one. As a result, we gobble up books and television programs that offer us the promise of the magical tip that will allow us to fix all our financial woes. Of course, that’s not really possible. So … enter Pound Foolish. You can think of it as the anti-personal finance advice personal finance advice book.

LP: What are the biggest factors that have contributed to our current retirement crisis?

HO:There are so many factors contributing to the retirement crisis it is hard to succinctly list them all. But once upon a time, a majority of us at least had the possibility of receiving a pension when we retired. That’s no longer the case. We’re now expected to do this on our own. And, frankly, most of us aren’t capable of this task, and we have 30 years of evidence – that is, the lifespan of the 401(k) – to prove this fact. We do everything wrong we possibly can. We are unable to save enough money and we don’t invest it well. At the same time, we lack the crucial ability to see the future. We don’t really know when we will retire and why that will occur. We don’t know if our investments will pan out. We don’t know how the greater economic environment will either play out or interact with our lives.

I was reporting on this stuff 15 years ago and I can tell you just about no one said anything like “oh, by the way, you’ll need more than $200,000 just for medical expenses in retirement.” It’s just unfair to expect people – who are not financial experts – to be able to pull this off. The fact is Social Security and other such schemes were created for a reason. There was no imagined past where people saved up for their old age. As the family farm gave way to urbanization and industrialization, old people had this distressing tendency to end up in workhouses – which were as Dickensian as they sound – if they couldn’t convince a relative to take them in. And many couldn’t. Yes, the rates of intergenerational living were higher than they are now, but it wasn’t all The Walton’s.

LP:How does the industry prey on our fears about our inability to save and plan for the future?

HO: We can’t articulate that for all too many of us our problem is not an inability to manage and invest money effectively; it’s that we’re expected to do more and more with less and less. So we think we are individually messing up, that we lack the financial skills and smarts to get ahead. The financial services industry presents itself as our savior. But by doing that, it has to confirm our cultural bias that we are alone responsible for our financial fates.

You see this dynamic especially in personal finance and investment initiatives aimed at women, which contain an almost odd mix of the language of empowerment and infantalization. They tell us we are women, we are so strong because we do so much more around the home and work than men, but yet we are financial illiterates who have no clue. In fact, both sexes have low financial knowledge. Men have more money than women for the most obvious of reasons: they earn more.

LP:You mention the work of economist Teresa Ghilarducci, "the most dangerous woman in America." Who is afraid of her and why?

HO: It became very clear to me while reporting this book that Teresa Ghilarducci had hit a nerve in the financial services sector that no one else had. The reason, to me, was obvious. Most other people discussing retirement reform schemes (Auto IRAs, Save More Tomorrow and the like) were talking about expanding the role – or at least the bottom line of -- the current dominant players on the retirement scene. I mean the retail brokerages, the 401(k) plan providers, the dominant mutual fund companies and the like. Ghilarducci’s Guaranteed Retirement Accounts calls BS on this model. First, she points out how much money the current retirement is making on what we think is our money. Second, her model would bring new players in and I mean new, powerful players – state pension funds, institutional investors, and hedge funds – into the game.

LP:Media figures like Suze Orman, David Bach and David Ramsey tell us, "Follow my advice and everything will be OK." Why is this promise a lie?

HO: All of these people are in the business of selling simplistic solutions to complex problems. Should we live below our means? Of course. Is it always possible to do so? No. It’s not easy to live within your means if your means are a $300-a-week unemployment check. As if that were not enough, some of the advice they are purveying is flat-out wrong. Our financial woes are not the result of spending our funds on lattes and other small luxuries, like David Bach says. You can’t choose not to participate in a recession, despite what Dave Ramsey thinks. Personal finance can’t do it all for us.

LP:You write about the financial literacy movement, which, on first glance, looks like a helpful educational crusade. How has it conspired to make us poorer? What does it mean that big banks like Capital One promote it?

HO: Financial literacy classes sure sound good. But students who take the classes don’t seem to retain much of the knowledge. And, when you think about it for a moment, that makes sense. The idea that taking a class on how finance works at the age of 17 can save someone from a predatory 100-page small-print mortgage when they are 40 is just preposterous. Don’t believe me? Tell me how the French and Indian War contributed to the American Revolution. See what I mean? I swear that was taught in your high school history class.

So you need to move on to the next part of the equation. Why is financial literacy being promoted when we know it doesn’t do much at all for consumers? Well, take a look at who is funding it. It’s the banks and the rest of the financial services sector. Now think about it for a moment. Wouldn’t it just be a heck of a lot easier to not offer certain products, or design them in such a way so that they are easily comprehended, than to take on the seemingly hopeless task of teaching a consumer what a structured product is? Of course. So why isn’t this happening? Well, a cynic might say that’s because financial literacy works quite well at what it was really designed to do and that’s head off legislative protection of consumers.

LP:How does the personal finance industry shape our views about government regulation, like rules that protect consumers?

HO: This is a mixed bag. There are many respectable personal finance journalists pushing for greater transparency and more legal protections for consumers. Ron Lieber at the New York Times, for example, was harping on the need for 401(k) fee disclosure for years before it became law. On the other hand, the financial services industry is always pushing the idea that we can do it, and that we can do it alone. How much that’s impacting our views? Hard to know. They keep telling us we can prepare for retirement ourselves, but the survey data shows that 80 percent of us are out-and-out petrified and want some form of pension back. Perhaps the right question to ask is not how the financial services sector shapes our views about government regulation to protect consumers, but how it shapes the views of the legislators whose campaign they contribute to.

LP:Has your research changed your own behavior and attitude toward personal finance?

HO: Yes, but not in the ways that you would think. I don’t spend any less money, but I am more conscious of spending it in ways that are meaningful. Take my Katie, our poodle. She dines on high-quality dog food (not to mention quite a bit of anything that can be begged), but her “bed” in my office is actually a 20-year-old blanket that I’d never put on a bed any longer but has somehow never gotten tossed. I mean, what does she care if she’s not sleeping on an official dog bed from the pet store versus a blanket that no longer has a color? On the other hand, the quality of the food she eats impacts her health and that I care about quite a bit.

LP:What's the best hope for our financial health? Are we completely screwed?

HO: Our best hope for our personal finances is to realize we aren’t in this alone. There is a powerful culture of shame around money in this country, and it is so powerful it actually seems to prevent us from stepping forward, saying things aren’t working out for us financially, and asking not for charity, but for substantive legislation designed to help us all.


Lynn Parramore is contributing editor at AlterNet. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of "Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture." She received her Ph.D. in English and cultural theory from NYU. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.

[Demeter]

6. Demographic Shift Underway: Majority of Babies are Minorities May 17, 2012

http://www.governing.com/blogs/by-the-numbers/minority-children-census-data-for-states.html

GRAPHICS AT LINK

[Demeter]

8. Germany's (New) Anti-Euro Party MARCH 2013

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-party-in-germany-goes-after-euro-skeptic-voters-a-887744.html

Anti-euro political parties in Europe in recent years have so far tended to be either well to the right of center or, as evidenced by the recent vote in Italy, anything but staid. But in Germany, change may be afoot. A new party is forming this spring, intent on abandoning European efforts to prop up the common currency. And its founders are a collection of some of the country's top economists and academics. Named Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), the group has a clear goal: "the dissolution of the euro in favor of national currencies or smaller currency unions." The party also demands an end to aid payments and the dismantling of the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund.

"Democracy is eroding," reads a statement on its website (German only). "The will of the people regarding (decisions relating to the euro) is never queried and is not represented in parliament. The government is depriving voters of a voice through disinformation, is pressuring constitutional organs, like parliament and the Constitutional Court, and is making far-reaching decisions in committees that have no democratic legitimacy."

The sentiment, of course, is hardly new. Euro-skeptics are everywhere these days, particularly in those southern European countries that have been hit hardest by the crisis that continues to plague the common currency. And even in mainstream parties, concerns about the path on which the EU currently finds itself are common. But in Germany, as elsewhere in northern Europe, the most vocal critique of the euro has tended to come from right-wing populist parties.

Prominent Supporters

Alternative for Germany appears to be different, though it has yet to produce a party manifesto. Its impressive list of prominent supporters includes a large number of conservative and economically liberal university professors. The most notable name on the list is Hans-Olaf Henkel, the former president of the Federation of German Industries, but it also includes such economists as Joachim Starbatty and Wilhelm Hankel, who were part of the group that challenged Greek bailout aid at Germany's Constitutional Court....

[Demeter]

13. Germany's anti-euro party is a nasty shock for Angela Merkel

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9920666/Germanys-anti-euro-party-is-a-nasty-shock-for-Angela-Merkel.html

A new party led by economists, jurists, and Christian Democrat rebels will kick off this week, calling for the break-up of monetary union before it can do any more damage.

"An end to this euro," is the first line on the webpage of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). "The introduction of the euro has proved to be a fatal mistake, that threatens the welfare of us all. The old parties are used up. They stubbornly refuse to admit their mistakes."

They propose German withdrawl from EMU and return to the D-Mark, or a breakaway currency with the Dutch, Austrians, Finns, and like-minded nations. The French are not among them. The borders run along the ancient line of cleavage dividing Latins from Germanic tribes....


I DON'T KNOW IF ANGELA HAS GOTTEN OVER IT...BUT SHE DOES SEEM TO BE GETTING OVER UKRAINE AND ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA....

[Demeter]

9. Mondragon: Spain's giant co-operative where times are hard but few go bust 3/2013

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/07/mondragon-spains-giant-cooperative

The northern Spanish town is dominated by its eponymous €15bn corporation that controls over 100 smaller co-ops...José María Ormaetxea is the co-founder of Spain's seventh biggest industrial group, but he potters around Mondragon in a Ford Fiesta and lives in an ordinary flat in this industrial town tucked into a valley in the country's northern Basque region.

"Imagine how rich he could have been if he had founded a different sort of company," said Kepa Oliden, a local newspaper reporter from this town of 23,000 people. "But you won't find anyone driving a Rolls-Royce in Mondragon."

Visitors also find little of the new poverty sweeping through other parts of Spain, for up the steep slopes of what locals jokingly call the "sacred mountain" lies the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation, the remarkably recession-proof company that Ormaetxea helped found in 1956.

There is little flashy about the offices of the Basque country's biggest industrial company, but then there is nothing normal about what is now the world's biggest workers co-operative … with global sales of €15bn (£13bn). Whereas workers at other Spanish companies must answer to shareholder needs – often by sacrificing their jobs – that is not true at Mondragon, which acts as the parent company to 111 small, medium-sized and larger co-ops.

And as Spain struggles through double-dip recession, fierce austerity and 26% unemployment, this is one company that is not about to collapse. Nor has it shed many jobs, with the workforce remaining steady at around 84,000 people worldwide – about a sixth of them outside Spain....

MORE

[Demeter]

10. 9th Circuit: 4th Amendment Applies At Border; Also: Password Protected Files Shouldn't Arouse Suspic

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130308/13380622263/9th-circuit-appeals-court-4th-amendment-applies-border-also-password-protected-files-shouldnt-arouse-suspicion.shtml

from the well-that's-a-surprise dept

Here's a surprise ruling. For many years we've written about how troubling it is that Homeland Security agents are able to search the contents of electronic devices, such as computers and phones at the border, without any reason. The 4th Amendment only allows reasonable searches, usually with a warrant. But the general argument has long been that, when you're at the border, you're not in the country and the 4th Amendment doesn't apply. This rule has been stretched at times, including the ability to take your computer and devices into the country and search it there, while still considering it a "border search," for which the lower standards apply. Just about a month ago, we noted that Homeland Security saw no reason to change this policy. (MARCH 2013)

Well, now they might have to.

In a somewhat surprising 9th Circuit ruling (en banc, or in front of the entire set of judges), the court ruled that the 4th Amendment does apply at the border, that agents do need to recognize there's an expectation of privacy, and cannot do a search without reason. Furthermore, they noted that merely encrypting a file with a password is not enough to trigger suspicion. This is a huge ruling in favor of privacy rights. The ruling is pretty careful to strike the right balance on the issues. It notes that a cursory review at the border is reasonable:

Officer Alvarado turned on the devices and opened and viewed image files while the Cottermans waited to enter the country. It was, in principle, akin to the search in Seljan, where we concluded that a suspicionless cursory scan of a package in international transit was not unreasonable.

But going deeper raises more questions. Looking stuff over, no problem. Performing a forensic analysis? That goes too far and triggers the 4th Amendment. They note that the location of the search is meaningless to this analysis (the actual search happened 170 miles inside the country after the laptop was sent by border agents to somewhere else for analysis). So it's still a border search, but that border search requires a 4th Amendment analysis, according to the court.

It is the comprehensive and intrusive nature of a forensic examination—not the location of the examination—that is the key factor triggering the requirement of reasonable suspicion here....

Notwithstanding a traveler’s diminished expectation of privacy at the border, the search is still measured against the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement, which considers the nature and scope of the search. Significantly, the Supreme Court has recognized that the “dignity and privacy interests of the person being searched” at the border will on occasion demand “some level of suspicion in the case of highly intrusive searches of the person.” Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 152. Likewise, the Court has explained that “some searches of property are so destructive,” “particularly offensive,” or overly intrusive in the manner in which they are carried out as to require particularized suspicion. Id. at 152, 154 n.2, 155–56; Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 541. The Court has never defined the precise dimensions of a reasonable border search, instead pointing to the necessity of a case-by-case analysis....

For years, we've repeated two key arguments for why border searches of laptops and other devices should be illegal.

You mostly store everything on your laptop. So, unlike a suitcase that you're bringing with you, it's the opposite. You might specifically choose what to exclude, but you don't really choose what to include.

The reason you bring the contents on your laptop over the border is because you're bringing your laptop over the border. If you wanted the content of your laptop to go over the border you'd just send it using the internet. There are no "border guards" on the internet itself, so content flows mostly freely across international boundaries. Thus if anyone wants to get certain content into a country via the internet, they're not doing it by entering that country through border control.

We'd never seen a court even seem to acknowledge that content on devices is different than contents in a suitcase... until now. One interesting tidbit, is that they specifically note that "secure in their papers" part of the 4th Amendment, while noting that what's on your device is often like your personal "papers."

NO KIDDING! MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

11. The Cassandra Complex by Ian Welsh 2013 March

http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-cassandra-complex/


The prophet Cassandra was blessed with the ability to foretell the future: but cursed that no one would believe her. Except that this is the way that prophecy works, if people believe a dire prophecy, it generally doesn’t come true. My friend Stirling Newberry calls this a “self-unfullfilling prophecy”. This relates also to the joke about nobodies, as in “nobody predicted the financial crash.” Because if you predicted it, you’re a nobody. So you have fools saying “it couldn’t have been predicted” when it very clearly was. I even publicly predicted the exact month the stock market would crash, about a year in advance. Every once in a while I get an email from someone who saved a lot of money by listening.

Well, ok, every once in a very long time. Most people read it, shrugged, and didn’t do anything.

There are a lot of organizations you want run by pessimists (for example, nuclear reactors.) The sort of people who have posters proclaiming “Murphy was an optimist” on their walls. The sort of people who told the Japanese how to fix their reactors in the 80s, who had they been listened to, would have avoided a meltdown.

But the problem with such people is that they run themselves out of jobs. They make prophecies, scare people, get the problems fixed, and so their prophecies don’t happen. Absent major disasters for long enough, people become complacent and decide they don’t need to spend money, time and trouble on the warnings of fools whose prophecies never come true. They look at all the money they can save, or make, by getting rid of regulations, gutting inspections and running without precautions, and they realize that that even if something bad happens, the odds of them being held accountable are infinitesimal. After all, when the Japanese financial bubble burst, senior people committed suicide.

Did anyone responsible for the nuclear meltdown in Japan commit suicide? No.
They should have. And I’m quite serious about that.

When accountability goes away, when the elites no longer believe they have a responsibility to anyone but themselves, and often not even that, your society is in for disaster after disaster. And so, in the US, you have the Iraq war, Katrina, the great financial collapse, weather disaster after weather disaster without anything being done to protect against the next one. You have the near-absolute certainty of a billion or more incremental deaths from climate change, the near-certainty of drought in large parts of the world, the near-certainty of dust-bowls, and on and on. And they yawn. They laugh at the Cassandras. Maybe they even know the Cassandras are right.

The next age will take its prophets very seriously. And they will produce self-unfulfilling prophecies. And so the cycle will go on. Unless we learn how to break this, and many other cycles, we are doomed by the sad human fact that the vast majority of people don’t really learn from anyone’s experience but their own. And one day it will catch up to us, and it will push us to extinction, because we now have the means, and more than the means to destroy ourselves utterly. If we do not grow up as a species, if we do not gain wisdom, we may not be long for this world.

Edit: changed wording on suicides to make clear that the people RESPONSIBLE did not commit suicide.

[Demeter]

12. SAMPLE CASSANDRA REPORT: The Hard Road Ahead / The Archdruid Report MARCH 2013

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-hard-road-ahead.html


...At a time when the United States is spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year it doesn’t happen to have, and making up the difference by spinning the printing presses at ever-increasing speeds, a strong case can be made that rolling back spending increases and giving up tax breaks are measures that deserve serious consideration. Any such notion, though, is anathema to most Americans these days, at least to the extent that it might affect them. Straight across the convoluted landscape of contemporary American political opinion, to be sure, you can count on an enthusiastic hearing if you propose that budget cuts ought to be limited to whatever government payouts don’t happen to benefit your audience. Make even the most timid suggestion that your audience might demand a little bit less for itself, though, and your chances of being tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail are by no means small. The only consensus to be found about budget cuts in today’s America, in other words, is the belief that someone else ought to take the hit. As politicians in Washington DC try to sort out which of the many groups clamoring for handouts get how many federal dollars, that consensus isn’t exactly providing them useful guidance. I’ve wondered more than once if the whole sequestration business is a charade, crafted by the leadership of both parties and tacitly accepted by the rank and file in Congress, that permits them to impose roughly equivalent budget cuts on as many federal programs as they think they can get away with, while giving each party enough plausible deniability that they can still manage to keep blaming everything on the other side. If so, it’s an ingenious strategem; the real challenge will come when Congress runs out of gimmicks of this kind and has to admit to the crowd of needy, greedy pressure groups crowding close around the feeding trough that the gravy train has come to an end.

That latter detail is the one piece of news you won’t hear anywhere in the current uproar. It’s also the one piece of news that has to be understood in order to make sense of the American politics in the present and the near future. When the economics of empire start running in reverse, as they do in the latter years of every empire, familiar habits of extravagance that emerged during the glory days of the empire turn into massive liabilities, and one of the most crucial tasks of every empire in decline is finding some way to cut its expenses down to size. There are always plenty of people who insist that this isn’t necessary, and plenty more who are fine with cutting all expenditures but those that put cash in their own pocket; the inertia such people generate is a potent force, but eventually it gives way, either to the demands of national survival, or to the even more unanswerable realities of political, economic, and military collapse.

Between the point when a nation moves into the penumbra of crisis, and the point when that crisis becomes an immediate threat to national survival, there’s normally an interval when pretense trumps pragmatism and everyone in the political sphere goes around insisting that everything’s all right, even though everything clearly is not all right. In each of the previous cycles of anacyclosis in American history, such an interval stands out: the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, when leaders in the American colonies insisted that they were loyal subjects of good King George and the little disagreements they had with London could certainly be worked out; the bitter decade of the 1850s, when one legislative compromise after another tried to bandage over the widening gulf between slave states and free states, and succeeded only in making America’s bloodiest war inevitable; the opening years of the Great Depression, when the American economy crashed and burned as politicians and pundits insisted that everything would fix itself shortly.

We’re in America’s fourth such interval. Like the ones that preceded it, it’s a time when the only issues that really matter are the ones that nobody in the nation’s public life is willing to talk about, and when increasingly desperate attempts to postpone the inevitable crisis a little longer have taken over the place of any less futile pursuit. How long the interval will last is a good question. The first such interval ran from the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 to the first shots at Lexington in 1775; the second, from the Compromise of 1850 to the bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861; the third, the shortest to date, from the stock market crash of 1929 to the onset of the New Deal in 1933. How long this fourth interval will last is anyone’s guess at present; my sense, for what it’s worth, is that historians in the future will probably consider the crash of 2008 as its beginning, and I would be surprised to see it last out the present decade before crisis hits.

During the interval before the explosion, if history is any guide, the one thing nobody will be able to get out of the federal government is constructive action on any of the widening spiral of problems and predicaments facing the nation. That’s the cost of trying to evade a looming crisis: the effort that’s required to keep postponing the inevitable, and the increasing difficulty of patching together a coalition between ever more divergent and fractious power centers, puts any attempt to deal with anything else out of reach. The decade before the Civil War is as good an example as any; from 1850 until the final explosion, on any topic you care to name, there was a Northern agenda and a Southern agenda, and any attempt to get anything done in Washington DC ran headlong into ever more tautly polarized sectional rivalry. Replace the geographical labels with today’s political parties, and the scenery’s all too familiar.

If there’s going to be a meaningful response to the massive political, economic, and social impacts of the end of America’s age of empire, in other words, it’s not going to come from the federal government. It probably isn’t going to come from state governments, either. There’s a chance that a state here and there may be able to buck the trend and do something helpful, but most US state governments are as beholden to pressure groups as the federal government, and are desperately short of discretionary funds as a result. That leaves local governments, local community groups, families and individuals as the most likely sources of constructive change—if, that is, enough people are willing to make “acting locally” something more than a comforting slogan....

MUCH MORE MUSING AT LINK--AND STILL RELEVANT

[Demeter]

15. As Cosma Shalizi Says, "The Singularity Is in Our Past"

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/03/as-cosma-shalizi-says-the-singularity-is-in-our-past-saturday-twentieth-century-economic-history-weblogging.html#more

Saturday Twentieth Century Economic History Weblogging

Look at the bleeding edge of urban North Atlantic or East Asian civilization, and you see a world fundamentally unlike any human past. Hunting, gathering, farming, herding, spinning and weaving, cleaning, digging, smelting metal and shaping wood, assembling structures--all of the “in the sweate of thy face shalt thou eate bread” things that typical humans have typically done since we became jumped-up monkeys on the East African veldt--are now the occupations of a small and dwindling proportion of humans. And where we do have farmers, herdsmen, manufacturing workers, construction workers, and miners, they are overwhelmingly controllers of machines and increasingly programmers of robots. They are no longer people who make or shape things--facture--with their hands--manu.

At the bleeding edge of the urban North Atlantic and East Asia today, few focus on making more of necessities. There are enough calories that it is not necessary that anybody need be hungry. There is enough shelter that it is not necessary that anybody need be wet. There is enough clothing that it is not necessary that anybody need be cold. And enough stuff to aid daily life that nobody need feel under the pressure of lack of something necessary. We are not in the realm of necessity. What do modern people do? Increasingly, they push forward the corpus of technological and scientific knowledge. They educate each other. They doctor each other. They nurse each other. They care for the young and the old. They entertain each other. They provide other services for each other to take advantage of the benefits of specialization. And they engage in complicated symbolic interactions that have the emergent effect of distributing status and power and coordinating the seven-billion person division of labor of today’s economy. We have crossed a great divide between what we used to do in all previous human history and what we do now. Since we are not in the realm of necessity, we ought to be in the realm of freedom.
But although we have largely set these post-agrarian post-industrial patterns for the next stage of human history, the human world of this next stage is only half-made. The future is already here--it is just not evenly distributed. Of the 7.2 billion people alive in the world today, at least 25% billion still live lives that are hard to distinguish from the lives of our pre-industrial ancestors. Only 5% of today’s world population lives in countries where income per capita is greater than $40,000 per year; only 10% lives in countries where income per capita is greater than $20,000 per year.

The bulk of the world’s population is on the stairway to modernity. The patterns are set. The top of the stairway is visible--although it is not clear which top we shall reach: many possible tops are immanent in the patterns. Nevertheless, the climb will be hard. And that is what much of the history of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries is likely to be about. So how did this great transformation happen? And how did the way it happened shape who we are now and who we will be in the future? The traditional tools, practices, patterns, and molds of history are not as much help in telling this story as one might hope. The history of how the world was greatly transformed is primarily economic and technological, and secondarily political and social. But historians are not used to placing the economic and technological in first place. In the study of any period back before 1800, there is no way that economic history can be seen as even one of the principal axes. Before 1800, most history at even the century-level--let alone the decade-level or the year-level--could not be economic history. History is change. And before 1800 economic factors changed only slowly. The structure and functioning of the economy at the end of any given century was pretty close to what it had been at the beginning. The economy was then was much more the background against which the action of a play takes place than like a dynamic foreground character. Changes in humanity's economy--how people made, distributed, and consumed the material necessities and conveniences of their lives--required long exposures to become visible. Economic history could be--indeed, had to be--a specialized “long duration” history. It required a scope of perhaps 500 years, if not more, to be properly placed in the foreground of any historical canvas. And even then the story told was of recurrent patterns and cycles rather than development and change.

But since 1750 or so things have been different. The pace of economic change has been so great as to shake the rest of history to its foundation. For perhaps the first time, the making and using the necessities and conveniences of daily life--and how production, distribution, and consumption changed--has been the driving force behind a single century’s history. Even in the most long-established of professions, the pattern and rhythm of work life today is so very different from that of our ancestors as to be almost unrecognizable. It is these changes in production and also in home life and consumption, and the reactions to them, that make up the center ring action of the history that has made us who we are. This post-1750 history takes place in two stages. The first stage is the nineteenth century: the century of the British Industrial Revolution. Call it 1750-1870. It opens up the possibilities. The second stage is the twentieth century. Call it 1870-2010. It sets the patterns into which the human world is likely to grow in the future...

[Demeter]

16. Clintons "Earned" at Least $30 Million in 16 Months

I PUT THE QUOTE MARKS ON "EARNED"....NO ONE OR TWO PEOPLE "EARN" THAT KIND OF MONEY...FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/16/clintons_earned_at_least_30_million_in_16_months.html



Call them part of the 0.1 percent. Hillary and Bill Clinton have earned at least $30 million since January 2014, mostly for giving paid speeches, according to financial disclosure forms filed on Friday. Around $25 million of the total came from giving around 100 speeches while Hillary Clinton earned around $5 million in royalties for her book, Hard Choices. “The Clintons' income puts them at the upper end of the top 0.1 percent of earners in the U.S. population, according to government data,” notes Reuters.

The financial disclosure report makes it clear that even though Hillary Clinton may be the one who is running for president, the former president still gets more money for speaking, around $250,000 compared to $235,000, reports the New York Times. Bill Clinton has earned as much as $500,000 for one speech, while Hillary Clinton’s top-earning speech earned her $350,000.

The financial disclosure form confirms what was already clear: Clinton is among the wealthiest of the 2016 presidential candidates. That fact could complicate Clinton’s efforts to portray herself as a champion of the struggling middle class. Yet it does illustrate how far the couple has come since 2001, when they left the White House and Hillary Clinton described the family as being “dead broke,” notes the Wall Street Journal. Since leaving the White House, the Clintons have earned at least $130 million in speaking fees.

[Demeter]

17. Obamas worth millions, disclosure forms reveal

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/242279-obamas-worth-millions

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama’s assets total somewhere between $1.9 million and $6.9 million, according to financial disclosure forms released Friday by the White House. The bulk of the Obamas’ wealth is invested in U.S. Treasury bills and notes, the total being estimated between $1.25 million and $5.25 million. The rest of the money is held in retirement savings accounts, checking accounts, a pension fund, and college savings accounts for their daughters, Malia and Sasha.

Sales of two of the president's books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father, allowed the Obama’s to take in $30,000 and $100,000 in royalties in 2014.

The first family’s only disclosed liability is the mortgage on their Chicago home, listed between $500,000 and $1 million.

The Obamas are required to submit the financial disclosure forms each year under federal law. They allow public officials to list the value of their assets and liabilities in broad ranges, making it difficult to calculate their exact net worth.

[Demeter]

19. It Would Be Great if Millionaires Would Not Lecture Us on 'Living With Less'

http://gawker.com/5989989/it-would-be-great-if-millionaires-would-not-lecture-us-on-living-with-less

There is something about achieving great financial success that seduces people into believing that they are life coaches. This problem seems particularly endemic to the tech millionaire set. You are not simply Some Fucking Guy Who Sold Your Internet Company For a Lot of Money; you are a lifestyle guru, with many important and penetrating insight about How to Live that must be shared with the common people.

We would humbly request that this stop.

Meet Graham Hill. Graham Hill became a multimillionaire at a very young age when he sold his internet company in 1998. Good for him. We would not be telling you about Graham Hill at all, except for the fact that he wrote a remarkable op-ed in the New York Times Sunday Review yesterday in which he instructs you, the common man, on the virtues of "Living With Less." He bases this prescription on the wisdom he has learned on his own personal journey, from millionaire with a big house and many material possessions to millionaire with a smaller house and fewer material possessions, but just as many liquid assets. And what did it take for this millionaire to learn that his 3,600-square-foot Seattle home, personal shopper, and cars and furniture and other expensive baubles just weren't worth it?

MORE

[Demeter]

18. Trans Pacific Partnership: A new Constitution MARCH 2013

http://angrybearblog.com/2013/03/trans-pacific-partnership-new.html

...The TPP is not being written by a secret elite looking to rule the world. On the contrary, the document is being written in secret such that we do not know the specific persons involved, but everyone knows the class or groups represented. The authors/parties feeling of need for secrecy only speaks to their understanding of the potential opposition and not to a devious plot of mad scientist. It’s not a James Bond story. This TPP is not about ruling the world. I very much doubt those involved want such a responsibility. This document is about reducing the regulation a sovereign entity may apply to an investment to the point that any investment is almost certain to pay out whether by actually carrying out the investment or through reimbursement for not being able to carryout the investment. Heads you lose, tails I win. This is accomplished in many ways (kind of covering all bases) but mostly by giving a representative of an investment equality to a nation in the eyes of the “law”. It is the elevation of an entity created solely for the purpose of profit (though there is some language toward nonprofit) all the rights and liberties that a nation of people reserve for themselves. There is one thing the investment entity receives that the nation entity (“party” as used in the document) does not: A guarantee against loss. This guarantee comes in the form of insurance. The insurance is the full faith and credit of the nation…it is the ability to tax it’s citizens. That is a new world order as in: any period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power.


This past week the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement has been post worthy on a couple of the more read blogs. There are specific groups working to get the public up to speed on this treaty. One is the Citizens Trade Campaign. Crooks and Liars posted Lee Camps Moment of Clarity episode regarding the treaty. Common Dreams posted a video by Friends of the Earth. This potential treaty has direct bearing on the subject of innovation, production and infrastructure as discussed in the posts regarding Richard Elkus’s thesis in his book Winner Take All and MIT’s latest report on the subject....Basically this is being referred to as NAFTA on steroids. It is an agreement being negotiated in complete secrecy with only those considered to be a direct player called “clear trade advisers”(600 in the US) having access. Direct players are not you and me, nor congress (you thought the drone unitary executive stuff is tough to get? Ha!) nor that fourth branch known as the press. Yes, Obama is up on this in that he is pushing it...Recently a portion of this document was leaked. It is called the “Investment Chapter”. Public Citizens has a review of it here.(SEE OP FOR LINK)

I have read the first 17 pages of the Investment Chapter. It is these pages that provide the definitions and the cans and can nots for the signatories. The remainder of the document provides the means for achieving satisfaction. (Do read at least the definitions of what is considered “investment”.)

What struck me in Public Citizens review was that the system being setup as the arbiter of the trade agreement is following the US’ fascination with “extra judicial” proceedings as a viable means of following the ideals of our Constitution. It’s those same thought processes that gave us rendition, enhanced interrogation, military tribunals, unitary executive. You can’t help but see our past 35 years of leadership in the realm of pioneering new concepts in equality, fairness, justice, and processes to achieve such. Concepts of “free market”, “invisible hand”, and process of deregulation, economies of scale, etc. How else do you explain the use of rotating corporate tied lawyers as judges? Where is the separation of the judge and the plaintiff? This is right out of the current US play book on how to better your nation with the social institution known as “revolving door”?

You can see in this document the culmination of work performed over the last 40 years (yes Carter started the deregulation) by the conservative (internationally known as neoliberal) ideology merged with Milton Friedman’s economics and Ayn Rand’s objectivism. Dare I say, the TPP is to capitalism what our Constitution was to democracy?

And that is where I really started thinking. This document is not just about the particulars. It’s not just about how trade will or will not happen, or whether a company will be able to privatize the gains and socialize the risks and losses, or whether people will be harmed. All those things will be the result of the document.
Nope, this document is much more.

This document is the constitution of a new world order. It is an order that has been the dream of many for ages upon ages that until this time in humanity was not possible do to the limits of the technology of the time. This is the document of what I coined a few years ago as The United Corporations of Global. It is this aspect of the document that the people of the world should be most fearful of. It is not a trade agreement as I believe the common man (as in the court concept of the “common man”) would think of the phrase “trade agreement”. This is a constitution that is coming prepackaged with the rules and regulations already written. Only, there is no need for ratification to be a part of the creative process. This document comes pre-ratified in that all a nation has to do is say “I’m in”. It does not take a majority of the worlds nations or a super majority like the original 13 colonies for this document to have power. It has power because those writing it already agree to follow it. Passing it in the US? Can you say “fast track”?

The document's greatest power is what I alluded to when I mentioned rendition, unitary executive, enhanced interrogation, military tribunals. Rationalization. This document codifies the use of rationalization as a viable thought process for achieving the advancement of humanity. It reinstates the fallibility of human thinking, turning on its head the enlightenment age because this document believes it is of enlightened thought. It rationalizes as enlightenment the freeing of people to trade to the greatest level of monetary efficiency. Such a thought is putting a human creation ahead of humanity. It is totally antithetical to the goal of enlightenment...

What follows below are specific excerpts from the document. It is legal speak. But it is not hard to understand. I feel it is important that people read these excerpts as this is how you will know the thinking and overall goal of the document beyond the obvious selfish power grab by any particular player or industry. This is a document written by people who envision the world structured far differently than how we are taught to view our social organization based on the US Constitution and its meaning to the world. It does not matter if you believe our national identity is a lot of myth, that we don’t hold up well to our constitutional ideals. The fact is, the myths and ideals have influence and they are not the myths and ideals held by those writing the TPP at worst or are considered not applicable nor appropriate for their desired structure at least. This document is not just about how nations will relate to each other, it also gives the same rights and privileges to individual investor entities as representative of a nation. Thus, keep in mind that anything you read here also means a rich person or a business entity is treated as if they are the nation. However, citizens are not at anytime mentioned as being a “party” of any type other than when it comes to citizens potentially creating a loss for a “party” or it’s investor representative. In other words, “citizens” are at all times considered to have lesser status such that citizens have no claim to inalienable rights and the resultant rule of law. It is less than slavery for in this document, the only recognized covered entities are “party” which means a nation of signature and it’s participants in the sector of said parties social interaction referred to as “investment”. In fact, there is a defined party entity specifically that is not of the party:

investor of a non-Party means, with respect to a Party, an investor that attempts to make, is making, or has made an investment in the territory of that Party, that is not an investor of a Party

There is nothing in the list of definitions that suggest or implies “citizen”. The only entities covered and regulated by the TPP are those entities that are creations of man. Man is of no consideration regarding the benefits of the relationships developed in this new constitution. Man is only mentioned as a consequence of potential harm to the “parties” in the form of financial loss. That’s it.

WE HAVE TO COME TO KNOW THE MIND OF THE DOCUMENT! Even if we can prevent this document from taking effect, we will not put an end to the ideology behind the document if we only defeat the document based on its ability to do material harm. We have to come to know the mind of this document so that we can be certain to identify the thought within the new words that will be written and spoken when those behind this document make their new attempt at forming the world according to their ideology. We need to know the mind so that we can educate those who will certainly face the next attempt to implement such an ideology. This is why the document is being created in such secrecy. We have learned from NAFTA et al and those that are the mind of the document are aware of our knowledge.
Thus I present the sections as they relate to what I believe is the thinking of this new constitution so that we can be aware of the overriding concepts that ultimately reorder societies and would require a new thinking regarding who and what we are, what our purpose is and where we are going as a species on this planet. The TPP is presenting a new ideal of social order. It is one I that find represents the worst of humanity...


- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2013/03/trans-pacific-partnership-new.html#sthash.BSjfqGMG.dpuf

[Demeter]

20. What is Modern Monetary Theory, or “MMT”? By Dale Pierce. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectiv

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/what-is-modern-monetary-theory-or-mmt.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Modern Monetary Theory is a way of doing economics that incorporates a clear understanding of the way our present-day monetary system actually works – it emphasizes the frequently misunderstood dynamics of our so-called “fiat-money” economy. Most people are unnerved by the thought that money isn’t “backed” by anything anymore – backed by gold, for example. They’re afraid that this makes money a less reliable store of value. And, of course, it is perfectly true that a poorly managed monetary system, or one which is experiencing something like an oil-price shock, can also experience inflation. But people today simply don’t realize how much bigger a problem the opposite condition can be. Under the gold standard, and largely because of the gold standard, the capitalist world endured eight different deflationary slumps severe enough to be called “depressions.” Since the gold standard was abolished, there have been none – and, as we shall see, this is anything but coincidental.

The great virtue of modern, fiat money is that it can be managed flexibly enough to prevent *both* deflation and also any truly damaging level of inflation – that is, a situation where prices are rising faster than wages, or where both are rising so fast they distort a country’s internal or external markets. Without going into the details prematurely, there are technical reasons why a little bit of inflation is useful and normal. It discourages people from hoarding money and encourages healthy levels of consumption and investment. It promotes growth – provided that a country’s fiscal and monetary authorities manage it properly.

The trick is for the government to spend enough to ensure full employment, but not so much, or in such a way, as to cause shortages or bottlenecks in the real economy. These shortages and bottlenecks are the actual cause of most episodes of excessive inflation. If the mere existence of fiat monetary systems caused runaway inflation, the low, stable rates of consumer-price inflation we have seen over the past thirty-plus years would be pretty difficult to explain.

The essential insight of Modern Monetary Theory (or “MMT”) is that sovereign, currency-issuing countries are only constrained by real limits. They are not constrained, and cannot be constrained, by purely financial limits because, as issuers of their respective fiat-currencies, they can never “run out of money.” This doesn’t mean that governments can spend without limit, or overspend without causing inflation, or that government should spend any sum unwisely. What it emphatically does mean is that no such sovereign government can be forced to tolerate mass unemployment because of the state of its finances – no matter what that state happens to be.

MORE--GOOD REFERENCE

[Demeter]

21. every year it's the same, jump from too cold to too hot overnight

it's 70F and 70% humidity at 10:30 at night....frost warnings on Wednesday...it's enough to destabilize the sanest person, a status to which I have no claim.

So far, I have resisted the air conditioner (but keep flipping on the heat when the house drops below 55F). While it was nice to have a whole 10 days of almost Spring...I still can't get the windows washed.

[kickysnana]

22. So glad they have finally decided it is climate change...

Auntie wanted the AC uncovered for Saturdays high that never came. So warm and humid this morning. So cold and humid tonight. Cat was terrified of the wind whistling in the window screens tonight.

One of our PCA's mother is coming up on 62 and she has been working the same place over 20 years and can retire and is going to. Union place, but she is being bullied by younger people so she is going to pack it in and go back home "up North". That PCA , a good one, will probably follow her.

Auntie has been having trouble sleeping from pain and such and then she has some memory and discretion lapses which I am just going to have to roll with. Most of the time it is no matter but when she starts giving out her secret bank question as a good story, randomly, I better keep a closer eye out for her now. That said I spent 20 minutes looking for my keys one day last week and I lost track of the date, knowing it was May 2015 and Friday but no idea which Friday until I looked it up on the computer. I may need help myself before too long. LOL.

[Demeter]

24. We all need help...but good luck getting it in this world

[Demeter]

23. Well....I got up at 6 AM to a humid, cloudy sky

went out on the roof and washed the windows, finally. No more whining about that!

I must be out of my mind. I'm definitely wringing with sweat, but the windows are much less depressing.

This is going to be the kind of year where work must be done before sunrise, if it involves any major muscle groups.

Maybe I can do it again in the fall, to get the streaks I missed. It's damn near impossible to do this job properly, but there's a definite improvement already. Step one to a habitable room...

[Demeter]

30. Nowthat the sun shines fully on the glass

I can see where I missed...sigh.

[Demeter]

25. Etihad Airways says US carriers got $70bn in government aid

http://gulfbusiness.com/2015/05/etihad-airways-says-us-carriers-got-70bn-government-aid/#.VVnJz1Ierkp


The claim follows US carriers' allegations that Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways have received more than $40 billion in state subsidies...Etihad Airways has answered U.S. airlines’ claims that the Abu Dhabi-based carrier benefits from subsidies, alleging that those airlines received more than $70 billion in government support since 2000, largely via bankruptcy protection and pension guarantees. Etihad presented its subsidy claims as the Obama administration is slated to broaden its review of U.S. carriers’ allegations that Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways have received more than $40 billion in Gulf-state subsidies, letting them lower prices and push U.S. competitors out of certain markets.

The Gulf carriers have denied the subsidy allegations. Rather, Etihad says it has received equity and loans from its sole shareholder, the government of Abu Dhabi. Risk Advisory Group Plc, hired by Etihad, reviewed public data on Delta Air Lines Inc, United Continental Holdings Inc, American Airlines Group Inc and the companies with which they have merged to arrive at the $70 billion figure.

“We simply wish to highlight the fact that U.S. carriers have been benefiting and continue to benefit from a highly favorable legal regime,” Etihad’s General Counsel Jim Callaghan said in a news release.

U.S. airlines have dismissed similar charges.

“The Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) process is not a ‘subsidy,’ as established by international trade law,” said Jill Zuckman, spokeswoman for a U.S airline-union coalition known as the Partnership for Open & Fair Skies. “In addition, U.S. taxpayers are not liable for any restructuring of airline pension plans in bankruptcy.”

THAT'S WHAT THEY'D LIKE YOU TO BELIEVE, ANYWAY

[MattSh]

26. The 4th Media » US wakes up to New (silk) World Order

by Pepe Escobar

History may signal it all started with this week’s trip to Sochi, led by their paperboy, Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Foreign Minister Lavrov and then with President Putin.

Arguably, a visual reminder clicked the bells for the real Masters of the Universe; the PLA marching in Red Square on Victory Day side by side with the Russian military. Even under the Stalin-Mao alliance Chinese troops did not march in Red Square.

As a screamer, that rivals the Russian S-500 missile systems. Adults in the Beltway may have done the math and concluded Moscow and Beijing may be on the verge of signing secret military protocols as in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The new game of musical chairs is surely bound to leave Eurasian-obsessed Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski apoplectic.

And suddenly, instead of relentless demonization and NATO spewing out “Russian aggression!” every ten seconds, we have Kerry saying that respecting Minsk-2 is the only way out in Ukraine, and that he would strongly caution vassal Poroshenko against his bragging on bombing Donetsk airport and environs back into Ukrainian “democracy”.

Complete story at - http://www.4thmedia.org/2015/05/us-wakes-up-to-new-silk-world-order/

Hopefully he's on to something, though I say it's still to early to tell.

[MattSh]

27. A little bit of Russian for today...

Red Square - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Origin and name

The name Red Square does not originate from the pigment of the surrounding bricks (which, in fact, were whitewashed at certain times in history) nor from the link between the color red and communism. Rather, the name came about because the Russian word красная (krasnaya), which now means "red," originally meant "beautiful"; in this meaning, it was applied to a small area between St. Basil's Cathedral, the Spassky Tower of the Kremlin, and the Lobnoe Mesto (place of execution), and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich officially extended the name to the entire square, which had previously been called Pozhar, or "burnt-out place." Several ancient Russian towns, such as Suzdal, Yelets, and Pereslavl-Zalessky, have their main square named Krasnaya ploshchad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Square - Red Square - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivan the Terrible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The English word terrible is usually used to translate the Russian word grozny in Ivan's nickname, but the modern English usage of terrible, with a pejorative connotation of bad or evil, does not precisely represent the intended meaning. The meaning of grozny is closer to the original usage of terrible—inspiring fear or terror, dangerous (as in Old English in one's danger), formidable or threatening, tough, strict, authoritative. V. Dal defines grozny specifically in archaic usage and as an epithet for tsars: "courageous, magnificent, magisterial and keeping enemies in fear, but people in obedience". Other translations were also suggested by modern scholars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible - Ivan the Terrible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</a>

[Demeter]

33. When my grandfather painted his house interiors

back in the 60's, he mixed the tints himself. He said they were krasnya....all shades of very light pink.

He was marched from Poland all the way to Kamchatka during WWI, and studied agricultural techniques in Bolshevik schools... My great grandmother had gone back for a visit with her two young sons... Our family is famous for its bad timing.

Obviously, they eventually made it back. His new siblings were born at the same time as my mother.

[Demeter]

28. Other Economies Are Possible by ETHAN MILLER

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/15/other-economies-are-possible/

Consider this: thousands of diverse, locally-rooted, grassroots economic projects are in the process of creating the basis for a viable democratic alternative to capitalism. It might seem unlikely that a motley array of initiatives such as worker, consumer, and housing cooperatives, community currencies, urban gardens, fair trade organizations, intentional communities, and neighborhood self-help associations could hold a candle to the pervasive and seemingly all-powerful capitalist economy. These “islands of alternatives in a capitalist sea” are often small in scale, low in resources, and sparsely networked. They are rarely able to connect with each other, much less to link their work with larger, coherent structural visions of an alternative economy.

Indeed, in the search for alternatives to capitalism, existing democratic economic projects are frequently painted as noble but marginal practices, doomed to be crushed or co-opted by the forces of the market. But is this inevitable? Is it possible that courageous and dedicated grassroots economic activists worldwide, forging paths that meet the basic needs of their communities while cultivating democracy and justice, are planting the seeds of another economy in our midst? Could a process of horizontal networking, linking diverse democratic alternatives and social change organizations together in webs of mutual recognition and support, generate a social movement and economic vision capable of challenging the global capitalist order?

To these audacious suggestions, economic activists around the world organizing under the banner of economia solidaria, or “solidarity economy,” would answer a resounding “yes!” It is precisely these innovative, bottom-up experiences of production, exchange, and consumption that are building the foundation for what many people are calling “new cultures and economies of solidarity.”

ORIGINS OF THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY APPROACH

The idea and practice of “solidarity economics” emerged in Latin America in the mid-1980s and blossomed in the mid to late 90s, as a convergence of at least three social trends. First, the economic exclusion experienced by growing segments of society, generated by deepening debt and the ensuing structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund, forced many communities to develop and strengthen creative, autonomous and locally-rooted ways of meeting basic needs. These included initiatives such as worker and producer cooperatives, neighborhood and community associations, savings and credit associations, collective kitchens, and unemployed or landless worker mutual-aid organizations.

Second, growing dissatisfaction with the culture of the dominant market economy led groups of more economically privileged people to seek new ways of generating livelihoods and providing services. From largely a middle-class “counter-culture”-similar to that in the Unites States since the 1960’s-emerged projects such as consumer cooperatives, cooperative childcare and health care initiatives, housing cooperatives, intentional communities, and eco-villages. There were often significant class and cultural differences between these two groups. Nevertheless, the initiatives they generated all shared a common set of operative values: cooperation, autonomy from centralized authorities, and participatory self-management by their members.

A third trend worked to link the two grassroots upsurges of economic solidarity to each other and to the larger socioeconomic context: emerging local and regional movements were beginning to forge global connections in opposition to the forces of neoliberal and neocolonial globalization. Seeking a democratic alternative to both capitalist globalization and state socialism, these movements identified community-based economic projects as key elements of alternative social organization....

MORE

[Demeter]

29. Black Co-ops Were A Method of Economic Survival

http://www.geo.coop/story/black-co-ops-were-method-economic-survival

Author’s note: In this interview we use “Black” to denote “race.” This identification question is a complicated issue, and there’s usually disagreement among black people about what we call and how we define ourselves. The Urban Dictionary uses “Black” to encompasses all people of color as a race. To simplify matters, GEO capitalized Black in this interview and used it interchangeably with African American.


Editors note: Collective Courage can be purchased online from PSU Press here. Use the code JGN14 at checkout to recieve a 20% discount. Please encourage your local libraries and co-ops to purchase a copy of this important resource. This is history that deserves to be shared.


AJOWA: Finally! This very important and much needed work is finished. I see it as a very important work because it is the only book to chronicle the Black cooperative experience in the U.S. since W.E.B. Du Bois1’ study in 1907. Without being modest, Jessica, what do you see as the value of your work and the book specifically?

JESSICA: I was smiling when you said “finally” because I have been working on this a long time. I started out thinking it would be a two- or three-year project and now it’s actually like 14 or 15 years. I have been able to both compile and chronicle the major activities of African Americans in the United States who have been involved in some form of cooperative business development or collective economics. And, why is that important? Because when I first got interested in using cooperative models for community economic development, particularly in Black communities, everywhere I went people kept telling me that black people don’t do co-ops.

And every time I went to a co-op meeting there was almost nobody else of color, particularly not African American, except sometimes there were the people from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives who were supporting mostly farm and agricultural co-ops in the South. So I wanted to promote the model because I had already been convinced that it was an important community development model, but I didn’t know how to get people on board, to get people excited about it. So thought, “Okay, we know that W.E.B. Du Bois promoted economic cooperation. We know that he was an editor of the NAACP‘s magazine for 25 or 30 years, so he must have said something in his magazine about co-ops” -- even though nobody really knows much about Du Bois’ work on co-ops. They know Du Bois for a million other reasons.

AJOWA: Right.

JESSICA: Luckily, at that point I was in position to have a graduate research assistant (TJ Lerman), and I said to him, “go look at every issue of The Crisis magazine, and every time there’s any mention of the word ‘co-op’, make me a copy.” And he did, faithfully. And I suddenly found out that over a period of about 25 years, starting around 1918, there were at least seven different articles about Black cooperatives or cooperative economics.

DU BOIS PUSHED “ ECONOMIC COOPERATION” BECAUSE CAPITALISM FAILED US

These articles mentioned actual cooperatives like one in Memphis, TN. He highlighted some co-ops. He talked about a meeting that he had that turned out to be the Negro Cooperative Guild that he started in 1918. Some of the articles were about how important it was to use economic cooperation. For example, Du Bois has the president of the Cooperative League of America (later becomes the Cooperative League of the USA and then known as the National Cooperative Business League), James Warbasse to write an article in The Crisis called “The Theory of Cooperation” where he explains that because Negroes are so exploited, cooperatives are an important strategy to pursue.

MORE

[Demeter]

31. Goldman Sachs cuts crude price forecasts for the next five years

NOW, MY FIRST TENDENCY IS TO TAKE WHATEVER GS SAYS, AND INVERT IT...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/18/us-oil-forecast-goldman-idUSKBN0O30YG20150518?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Goldman Sachs slashed its crude oil price forecasts for 2016 to 2020, citing improved U.S. shale efficiency meeting global oil demand, coupled with unimpeded OPEC productivity.

However, the U.S. investment bank, in a note published on Saturday, raised its view of the average 2015 Brent price to $58 per barrel from its earlier forecast of $52 and lifted its outlook for the average WTI price to $52 per barrel from $48

The bank assumes a $5 per barrel Brent-WTI spread through 2016-2020, consistent with transportation economics.

On May 12, the U.S. investment bank had cautioned that the recent rally in oil prices was 'premature,' and a sequential weakening of prices was required for the rebalancing of the market to resume.

Oil prices have recovered this year, after sharp falls prior to 2015. Benchmark Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 has rallied about 12 percent since the beginning of the year, and are up by about 40 percent from their 2015 low.

BECAUSE GS HAS A HABIT OF LYING IN PUBLIC AND DOING THE OPPOSITE FOR ITS OWN PURPOSES...BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, THE NEW SAUDI KING HAS LOST HIS MIND AND SOME PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING TO AVOID A FRACKING BLOODBATH...

[Demeter]

32. Why the Fed is starting to get nervous

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/5/18/us-economy/why-fed-starting-get-nervous

Economists remain fairly optimistic about the US economy but the Federal Reserve may not be thinking along the same line. Despite a string of poorly received data, economists still believe that the US economy will bounce back over the remainder of the year. But as the ordinary data persists into April -- several months longer than initially expected -- it begs the question: is the US economy not as strong as we initially thought? The latest Wall Street Journal survey shows that economists remain fairly optimistic about the US economy. Much like the Federal Reserve, economists have decided en masse that the US economy has little to fear from its slow start to the year. About 73 per cent of economists surveyed believe that the Fed will begin hiking rates in September. Back in January, around half of all economists surveyed thought that the Fed would raise rates in June. What’s striking is that so few economists have shifted their views significantly; the share of economists who believe a rate hike will be delayed until next year is practically unchanged since the surveys conducted in January and February. It’s fair to say that US economists have taken the Fed’s line that recent weakness was merely transitory hook, line and sinker. But as the poor data stretches into April do we require a rethink on how the world’s biggest economy is travelling and what that means for policy normalisation?

What becomes immediately apparent when analysing the suite of US data is that it is currently a study in contrast. It is difficult, for example, to square away the strength in the US labour market with the weakness apparent in other economic variables such as retail sales and industrial production. Non-farm payrolls continue to rise at a rapid pace -- albeit somewhat slower than over last year -- and the unemployment rate has fallen to 5.4 per cent -- a level that is only slightly higher than the Fed’s estimate of the neutral interest rate.



Initial jobless claims -- often the best leading indicator of the US labour market -- is at its lowest level since 2000. Adjusting for the size of US labour market -- courtesy of Calculated Risk -- we find that jobless claims are at their lowest since 1967. If these were the only variables relevant to monetary policy then the Fed would be faced with an easy choice. But measures of actual economic activity remain weak, as does inflation and other measures of capacity utilisation.

Retail spending, for example, remained subdued in April -- missing market expectations -- and is just 0.9 per cent higher over the year. Lower oil prices continue to weigh on nominal spending but despite acting as a tax cut for most Americans this has yet to flow through to noticeably higher spending on other products or a significant boost to retail volumes. Meanwhile, industrial production has declined for the past five months -- driven by a sharp fall in mining activity -- to be 1.9 per cent higher over the year. Activity in April was 0.5 per cent below its March quarter average. Manufacturing production -- the biggest subcomponent -- was unchanged in April and is now 2.6 per cent higher over the year. Mining production is down 4.2 per cent since the end of last year.



Measures of capacity utilisation -- a key concern for the Fed -- remain below their pre-crisis level indicating that there remains a fair degree of spare capacity across the broader economy. This helps to explain why inflation and wages remain well contained despite the presence of historically strong employment growth last year. Capacity utilisation fell by 0.4 percentage points in April and is now 0.8 percentage points lower over the past year.



On balance, it remains reasonable for economists and the Federal Reserve to assume that this weakness is merely temporary. The combination of poor weather, port disruptions and the sharp decline in oil prices has made economic indicators more volatile than usual. But we could also reasonably expect to be seeing greater evidence of recovery by now. That we haven't provides tentative evidence that the US economy may not be travelling that great and we shouldn't automatically assume a strong back half to the year. The Atlanta Federal Reserve, for example, puts together real-time estimates of quarterly growth based on a range of published data. The data is revised as new data is released. Based on the available data thus far, the US economy is set to rise by just 0.2 per cent in the June quarter. There is obviously a great deal of uncertainty surrounding that estimate. Such estimates remain particularly sensitive to new information and revisions of past data. But it does highlight how disappointing the data for April and May has been and the likelihood that economists will downgrade their expectations over the next few months.

If the Fed is truly data dependent then they have to be getting nervous. At this stage, a rate hike in September remains possible but appears increasingly unlikely -- despite the view of US economists -- particularly since inflation has shown little sign of genuine momentum. The one thing we do know with a fair degree of certainty is that the Fed will take a cautious approach to policy normalisation and that means if there is any doubt, any doubt at all, then they'll wait until next year.

[Demeter]

34. How to live a middle-class life in New York City on less than $5,000 a year

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/16/new-york-city-freegan-dumpster-diving-food-waste?CMP=ema_565



...Kalish had collected the carrots on the street, just like the parmesan Marie was grating had been rescued from the trash. The pair became friends when Marie started dumpster diving three years ago...Drifting from the American philosophy of incessant consumption, some have adapted to a system of interdependence and sharing – and eating for free is just the first step....Marie lives a New York middle-class life spending less than $5,000 a year. Kalish, who travels more, needs $10,000. They work, eat, have a home, but there’s no rent bill or grocery shopping. No regular salary, even. Money isn’t their currency.

Marie is a petite, black-haired French woman who looks just like the conventional fortysomething Brooklynite. But she has no job, no visa, and lives in a three-story house for free. Living in the US also comes with an additional bit of daring: she’s an illegal immigrant. For privacy reasons, she asked to be identified with her first name only. Eight years ago Marie arrived in the US, where she decided to remain. She has been staying for five years with her friend Greg, a real estate agent. They met in upstate New York in 2010 at a permaculture internship in which Marie spent a month learning how to farm sustainably. She needed a place to stay, he had a vacant room, so she became his home keeper, cleaning, gardening and bringing dumpster-dived food in lieu of rent.

“I count my blessings,” she said. “I’ve always tried to make it work fairly, to bring food in exchange. But it’s important that I never planned it this way. I didn’t leave France thinking ‘I’ll be illegal’; I didn’t move to Greg’s thinking I’d stay long for free.”

...Going with the flow, Marie has now decided to go back to France. In June she will book a plane ticket and ask to be deported.

“I’m aware that being French, and not Latino for example, makes things easier,” she said. Since she will leave prior to deportation, the main consequence of her overstay will be a ban from re-entering the US for 10 years.

“It’s a one-way trip anyway,” she shrugged. “I’ll pay what it costs.”

The price of the ticket may be more than she has spent in the past several months combined: a few hundred dollars. She receives rent from a house she owns in France, but that’s money she never uses. She lives on cash from baby- and dog-sitting. The $1,000 she recently was paid for painting a house “can go a long way”. Her clothes are finds and she travels by bike, even from Crown Heights to Manhattan. Sometimes she books cheap opera tickets: she saw Don Giovanni at the Met in March. For $15 a month, she’s on Greg’s family cellphone plan. When she dumpster-dives, she can bring $60 worth of food home in a night. “Marie’s the most earth-friendly person I know,” said her landlord Greg. “She doesn’t own a car, wears only used clothes, fixes broken things. She fills holes in the system and leaves zero footprint.”

Back in France, Marie worked as an accountant. “I had buried my head in the sand, convincing myself that was life. But that just wasn’t what I wanted, counting others’ money. I’m still not sure what I want.”

I'M SURE THAT ISN'T WHAT I WANT...FOR ANYBODY!

[Demeter]

35. 1% of the Bitcoin Community Controls 99% of Bitcoin Wealth

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/1-bitcoin-community-controls-99-bitcoin-wealth/

Recently, I ran across this very interesting distribution table on Quora that made me reminisce about the old days of Occupy Wall Street. We are the 99%, right? Maybe in more ways than one, as the table would go on to show. It makes it all seem very clear to me that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Rumor has it that Bitcoin’s original creator, the legendary Satoshi Nakamoto himself, collected the first one million Bitcoins for himself. This would leave a mere 20 million available to the rest of us. And current Bitcoin moguls The Winklevoss Twins have said that they own about 1% of all the bitcoins in existence, as of 2013. That may give you a window into how the bitcoin wealth tends to get distributed.

99% of the Bitcoin Addresses have no Bitcoin Wealth

The table below is a snapshot of where the Bitcoin community, based upon all of the bitcoin addresses ever created, is when seen through the distribution of total bitcoin wealth. That it is so precise about the overall wallet content of Bitcoin community is somewhat startling, but a publicly distributed digital ledger should do that fairly well, I reckon. Anyway, this economic community photograph comes from around March 31st of 2015. That was when the amount of Bitcoin was set to pass the 14 million mark, which is exactly 2/3 of all of the bitcoins that will ever be created.



As you can see, this shows how top-heavy the Bitcoin community is. First, there are a lot of bitcoin addresses that are either dead, abandoned or lost due to forgetting passwords/keys/usernames/, etc. Or just tens of millions of test addresses that are empty and never were destined to hold bitcoin, just to exist. Almost 99% of all the bitcoin addresses have less than one-tenth of a bitcoin, which is less than $24 USD worth at present. This is pretty startling to see if you aren’t expecting it. It is hard to compare to any other store of value easily or fairly since most do not have a finite unit count built-in...The U.S. Government has no problem making trillions of brand new U.S. Dollars every year since the inflation is spread throughout the global economy. Being the “global reserve currency” certainly has its advantages, mainly you have an unlimited credit card the rest of the world’s economies help you pay off every day. Exporting inflation is so sweet! Should anything that has lost over 98% of its value over the last century be considered a “store of value?” Gold also does not have a finite limit in its mining, and there are several mining operations worldwide working on producing more 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How much gold there is also is unknown. So how much concern there should be about such an imbalance is questionable.

Funny thing is this table also may help debunk the rumor of Nakamoto holding 1 million Bitcoins. The three addresses at the top of the Bitcoin address mountain have less than half of a million BTC held. Therefore, he would have to spread that large cache across several addresses, which may or may not be the case. This at least makes the rumor slightly less likely, but we may never know....