STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 19 May 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 19 May 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 18 May 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 18 May 2015
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Dow Jones 18,298.88 +26.32 (0.14%)
S&P 500 2,129.20 +6.47 (0.30%)
Nasdaq 5,078.44 +30.15 (0.60%)


[font color=red]10 Year 2.23% +0.05 (2.29%)
30 Year 3.05% +0.05 (1.67%) [font color=black]


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

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


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







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

[Demeter]

1. Don't worry, Fidel, it's not going to happen

Havana is not Detroit.

[Demeter]

2. States saying 'no' to cities seeking to regulate businesses

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/37fedef057d54b2fb56600e2ff08ecdb/states-saying-no-cities-seeking-regulate-businesses#overlay-context=article/664a6dd8aa634b51983048ff69525d39/cannes-watch-sylvester-stallone-artiste-has-show

Alarmed about cities trying to outlaw plastic bags, the director of the Missouri Grocers Association decided to do something about it. So Dan Shaul turned to his state legislator— himself — and guided a bill to passage barring local governments from banning the bags.

Shaul's dual role in state government and business may be a bit out of the norm. Yet his actions are not. In capitols across the country, businesses are increasingly using their clout to back laws prohibiting cities and counties from doing things that might affect their ability to make money.

In the past five years, roughly a dozen states have enacted laws barring local governments from requiring businesses to provide paid sick leave to employees. The number of states banning local minimum wages has grown to 15. And while oil-rich states such as Texas and Oklahoma are pursuing bills banning local restrictions on drilling, other states where agriculture is big business have been banning local limitations on the types of seeds sown for crops.

It seems no issue is too small for businesses to take to capitol halls...

MEANING: WE HAVE OUR WORK CUT OUT FOR US; DRAWING A NICE, UNBREAKABLE BOUNDARY AROUND CORPORATIONS SO THAT THEY CANNOT USURP THE PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO DETERMINATION.

[Demeter]

3. The US drone economy will create 100,000 jobs, say companies who make drones Tim Fernholz 3/2013

http://qz.com/61727/the-us-drone-economy-will-create-100000-jobs-say-companies-who-make-drones/

Commercial drones, which are expected to be approved for use in the US in 2015, will create 100,000 jobs in 10 years, adding $13.7 billion to the American economy, according to a new study (pdf). The study was published by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade association with an interest in promoting the benefits of unmanned aircraft—the industry does not like the word “drone”—but its assumptions offer an interesting assessment of the sector’s opportunities.

Drone use will mostly be on farms

While people are bullish about using drones for a bunch of reasons, the study expects that 90% of drone sales will be for agricultural purposes. A key assumption of the study is that US farmers will adopt unmanned aircraft at similar rates to Japanese farmers after the government allowed their use in the early 1990s:

?w=640&h=360

Farmers use drones for precision crop-dusting and seeding, and scanning crops for health problems and growth rates. Japan’s farmers quickly adopted Yamaha products, like the one shown in the video above, although the industry seems to have reached a fairly natural saturation point. This kind of “precision agriculture” allows farmers to use less pesticide, which is good news for everyone except pesticide companies. But they won’t use fewer pilots, the study says, because they expect that anyone who loses their job due to the rise of these flying robots will likely have the skills to fly or maintain them, which does raise the question of how many net new jobs will be created. Many will be in manufacturing and maintenance for these aircraft. So robots don’t just take away jobs; in this case, they could add some in the United States.

Please don’t call us drones

There’s a reason this trade association is releasing a jobs forecast that includes a state-by-state breakdown: The Obama administration’s use of military drones has become a political touchpoint in the on-going debate about privacy, America’s military entanglements, and just how far the executive branch can bend protections on civil liberties. But UAV companies and their allies desperately need government help to get drones into the skies, financed and insured, and that won’t happen if they are the target of public ire. Hence the public case this industry is making: If it can get its birds into the skies, it can put paychecks in people’s hands.

[tclambert]

7. Gee, why am I skeptical?

An industry group (= PR firm) says their industry will create a lot of jobs. Seems like I've heard that story before (Keystone XL pipeline). It seems like it never works out as promised. I suppose one of these times someone might tell the truth. Although the temptation to exaggerate must exert a very strong pull on them.

As far as civilian drone usage, like to deliver packages, I expect the first time one of these beauties gets a tad out of control and cuts up a customer's face we will hear outraged demands to severely limit their use. Plus, a teenager in a car can deliver your pizza in the rain and on windy days, and make change, most of the time without twirling sharp blades in front of your eyes.

[Demeter]

4. David Dayen: How Deadbeat Banks Pushed Detroit To The Brink

http://www.nationalmemo.com/how-deadbeat-banks-pushed-detroit-to-the-brink/

Detroit faced major challenges even before the Great Recession, with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the auto industry and the hollowing out of the urban core (“white flight” into the ring suburbs robbed Detroit of its tax base going back several decades). The financial crisis and subsequent economic crash sent these problems into overdrive. But lately a new meme has arisen from supporters of the emergency manager ruling: Scapegoating the citizens of Detroit by characterizing them as a bunch of tax cheats. A report in the Detroit News asserted that only half of city property owners pay their property taxes, leaving $246.5 million uncollected annually. This figure represents the highest rate of unpaid property tax among major U.S. cities.

Rather than demonizing “deadbeat” homeowners, however, we should examine who actually evades responsibility for paying taxes on those properties. Detroit has been ravaged by an unending foreclosure crisis. Predatory loans trapped borrowers into monthly mortgage rates they couldn’t pay, with lenders particularly targeting lower-income minority areas like Detroit. Many of those homeowners are gone now, evicted from their properties. It is a pattern that has sunk property values, making the high property tax rates in Detroit even more unsustainable. But it also has turned banks into the real deadbeats, depriving the city of revenue.

In a foreclosure, the property reverts back to the bank, which then becomes responsible for all maintenance and upkeep, as well as any fees. Some banks simply ignore these responsibilities and refuse to pay taxes or keep the vacant property in good order. The more clever banks stick evicted homeowners with the bill. Across the country and particularly in Detroit, banks have engaged in “walkaways,” where they start foreclosure proceedings but then find them too costly to complete. They choose not to finish the legal steps to foreclosure, leaving the properties vacant. Banks that walk away from homes do not have to notify the city, or even the borrower, that they have abandoned the foreclosure process. Borrowers kicked out of their homes then find themselves still responsible for property tax payments. We know this kind of behavior has occurred all over the country, leaving foreclosure victims stuck with the “zombie title” to an old property for years. And Detroit is ground zero for the phenomenon. A 2010 report of the Government Accountability Office found 500 bank walkaways in just four Detroit zip codes.

It’s impossible to know the real number of bank walkaways in Detroit without a house-to-house study. Nevertheless, we know of the staggering number of vacant homes in Detroit, particularly in the neighborhoods ringing downtown. Someone is responsible for those properties, and it’s probably the bank. And we know that banks have a financial incentive to cut and run from cities like Detroit, starving their budgets and creating a cascade of blighted properties in their wake.

So while it’s easy to blame Detroit’s financial troubles on deadbeat homeowners, the more appropriate parties to blame may well be the deadbeat banks.

[Demeter]

5. Michael Perelman: The Dysfunctionality of Slavery and Neoliberalism

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/michael-perelman-the-dysfunctionality-of-slavery-and-neoliberalism.html

By Michael Perelman, a professor of economics at California State University, Chico who also writes at Unsettling Economics

We are all patriotic. Let’s start with the Star Spangled Banner. You all are familiar with some of it, but perhaps some of you may not know this particular stanza: Don’t worry, I won’t sing it:

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.” Keep in mind that the militias referred to in the Second Amendment seem to have been the groups that hunt down escaped slaves.

The elevation of slave owners’ property rights easily morphed into the expansive property rights of those who hired wage labor. This power allowed capitalists to call upon the state rather than militias of slave captors to keep workers’ rights and wages in check. This arrangement supposedly served the public interest because low wages mean high profits, which, in turn meant increased investment, which translates into shared prosperity, presumably even including otherwise downtrodden labor — a bourgeois version of the unity of opposites...Despite the neoliberal obsession with wage suppression, history suggests that such a policy is self-destructive. Periods of high wages are associated with rapid technological change. For example, after the scourge of the Black Death, which eliminated about a third of the population of Europe, the surviving workers were in a better bargaining position in terms of both wages earned and rents paid. Rapid technological change emerged as a means to cope with workers' temporary advantage. The historian, Richard C. Allen, makes the case that wars in the late 18th century removed significant portion of the labor force, again creating higher wages. The combination of higher wages and the availability of cheap fossil fueled another burst of rapid technological change, which we now know as the Industrial Revolution.

Another historian, H. J. Habakkuk published a book identifying the long-standing domestic labor shortage as the central force pushing the early United States to industrialize so fast that it rapidly caught up with England. The geography of the United States provided a natural experiment for testing Habakkuk’s theory. The southern states, unlike their northern counterparts turned to a more primitive remedy for its labor shortage in the form of African slaves. Slavery was not unknown in the northern states, but they did not put much of a dent in the northern labor shortage.

Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for designing New York’s Central Park and also a correspondent of Karl Marx, toured the southern states reporting on their technological backwardness. Recent research does describe significant technological advances in the South in developing machinery to help prepare cotton for sale, but the South remained technologically backward relative to the North, because southern industry was unprepared for modern development...This split between the North and the South spilled over into a destructive form of economic theory. The South was adamant about ensuring a weak government, fearing that public sentiment might eventually encourage the government to abolish slavery. Toward that and, the southern states were able to effectively shape the Constitution in a way that would guarantee a weak central government and special political powers for the southern states. For example, the Electoral College gave disproportionate power to the lightly-populated slave states. Counting slaves as 3/5 of a person, although one without a vote, added to South’s the representation of the in the House of Representatives. Including Senate seats in the Electoral College gave large and small states alike had two more votes, further adding to the Southern advantage.

On the ideological front, the South adopted a shallow, but rigid libertarian perspective which resembled modern neoliberalism. Samuel Johnson may have been the first person to see through the hypocrisy of the hollowness of southern libertarianism. Responding to the colonists’ complaint that taxation by the British was a form of tyranny, Samuel Johnson published his 1775 tract, “Taxation No Tyranny: An answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress,” asking the obvious question, “how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” In The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Political Tracts. Political Essays. Miscellaneous Essays (London: J. Buckland, 1787): pp. 60-146, p. 142.

MORE

[DemReadingDU]

6. DON'T WORRY. It's different this time.

via blogger kliguy38...
It's different this time. Its all being CONtrolled as the entire world assists in the Pavlovian dog experiment of the Millenium. Don't ya feel it? Its not a lie. Its real. You can feel it. Its warm and comfortable. Its reassuring. Just like eating hot meatloaf and potatoes and gravy in the dead of winter. It feels good, but there's something missing and you just don't quite know what it is. Oh, its peas. You have to have peas with your winter meatloaf and potatoes.

Where are the peas? That has to be what makes it different this time. You're told that Chicago is bankrupt. We know Detroit already defaulted. We're told most of our pensions are badly underfunded without any mathematical possibility of survival. So which ones? We know they have already defaulted many corporate pensions in industries such as the airlines and in many cases the recipients lost 80% of their monthly pension payments, but which are next and how many? Why isn't that being discussed. How can the Bund have its interest blow 7 fold in just a few weeks? What's wrong? Why can't we raise interest rates by just 0.25%? Why can't we do that? Its a quarter of one point. That seems strange.

What's wrong with the stock market? It can't correct even 5%. Why do we have a 5% unemployment rate when there are 93 million working age Americans not working? Why didn't anyone on Wall Street go to prison for the 2008 debacle? Why can no major banking figures be prosecuted? Does someone know something. Maybe that's why there were so many middle level bankers committing suicide recently.

Does anyone else out there find the daily news cycle very boring now as if everything that comes out is being filtered through some time of invisible hand designed to keep us in a state of suspended animation. Even much of the alternative media seems to be in this fog. I'm not. I'm enjoying every phony, contrived day they give me. Hope you are too. BTW take a look at that newspaper above. Quite a bit goin' on back then. gl

http://kliguy38depression2news.blogspot.be/2015/05/dont-worry.html

[Demeter]

8. TPTB Are Holding Their Breath for Fast Track and TTP

and maybe the ultimate Greek Default.


The suspense is like the scene in Guys and Dolls....when Sky rolls for everyone's soul.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. Exclusive: GE says to lose Angola locomotive deal if Ex-Im Bank closes

Hat tip, Trainorders: GE's export locomotive business in jeopardy

Exclusive: GE says to lose Angola locomotive deal if Ex-Im Bank closes

Business | Tue May 19, 2015 5:32pm EDT
WASHINGTON | By David Lawder

General Electric Co would lose a $350-million deal to build locomotives for Angola, and perhaps billions of dollars more in future export opportunities, if Congress closes the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a senior GE executive told Reuters. ... "It would be gone," GE Transportation unit president Russell Stokes said of a not-yet-finalized agreement announced by the global conglomerate in March for 100 lightweight diesel-electric locomotives to be built in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Up to 1,800 jobs at GE, its suppliers and local businesses in 12 states would be put at risk because, without Ex-Im financing, Angola would buy Chinese-built locomotives, he said.

GE, along with other major U.S. exporters including Boeing Co and business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, is fighting to save the Ex-Im Bank. The export credit agency's critics, mostly conservative Republicans, want Congress to allow Ex-Im's charter to expire on June 30.
....

The bank's opponents argue that its loans put taxpayers at risk, distort free enterprise and amount to "corporate welfare." GE reported revenues of $149 billion and profits of $15 billion in 2014. ... "GE should seek private financing if it wants the Angola deal to go through," said David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, an advocacy group allied with Republican politicians attacking Ex-Im. "It's not the role of the federal government to secure sales for GE."