January 20, 2016

Global Stocks on Brink of Bear Market as Oil Slides; Ruble Drops

(Bloomberg) Turmoil returned to global markets as oil plunged and European stocks sank to the lowest levels in 13 months, fueling a rush into haven assets.

Earnings exacerbated the rout, sending MSCI Inc.’s gauge of global equities to the brink of a bear market. Russia’s ruble and Mexico’s peso fell to records, while bets mounted on an end to Hong Kong’s dollar peg. Yields on 10-year Treasuries dropped below 2 percent and the yen jumped to a one-year high.

“It’s back to oil and that’s what is driving everything,” said Barra Sheridan, a rates trader at Bank of Montreal in London. “We can easily run more because it’s pure fear. I don’t know what we need to change this sentiment.” .............(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-19/asian-stock-outlook-mixed-after-u-s-equities-dip-to-august-lows

January 20, 2016

'WORSE THAN 2007': Top banker warns of looming wave of worldwide bankruptcies

'WORSE THAN 2007': Top banker warns of looming wave of worldwide bankruptcies


The world’s financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, according to a leading global banker.

William White, chairman of the OECD’s review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, who suggests the stresses in the financial system are now "worse than it was in 2007."

Speaking to the UK Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard before the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, White warned that macroeconomic ammunition to fight further economic downturns is essentially “all used up”.

“Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief,” he told the Telegraph.

“It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something.” .................(more)

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-banker-warns-of-worldwide-bankruptcies-2016-1

January 20, 2016

Yahoo staffers fear company may slash 20-25% of its workforce

(MarketWatch) You’re not getting fired this week—feel better now?

That was the creepy message Yahoo boss Marissa Mayer had for employees at a companywide meeting earlier this month, drawing nervous chuckles from workers who fear for their jobs, sources told The Post.

“She said there are going to be no layoffs ‘this week,’ and many of the employees laughed at her,” said one insider who, fearing retribution, asked not to be named.

“This is the reason employee morale is so low,” the insider added, noting that most workers took the scary remark as twisted confirmation that Yahoo’s YHOO, +2.06% embattled chief executive is sharpening the ax.

Mayer, who returned to her duties at the struggling Internet pioneer just a few weeks after giving birth to twins on Dec. 10, made the less-than-reassuring comment in response to a question at an internal “Friday FYI” meeting on Jan. 8, sources said. ....................(more)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/yahoo-staffers-fear-company-may-slash-20-25-of-its-workforce-2016-01-19?dist=tcountdown

January 20, 2016

'WORSE THAN 2007'

'WORSE THAN 2007': Top banker warns of looming wave of worldwide bankruptcies


The world’s financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, according to a leading global banker.

William White, chairman of the OECD’s review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, who suggests the stresses in the financial system are now "worse than it was in 2007."

Speaking to the UK Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard before the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, White warned that macroeconomic ammunition to fight further economic downturns is essentially “all used up”.

“Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief,” he told the Telegraph.

“It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something.” .................(more)

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-banker-warns-of-worldwide-bankruptcies-2016-1

January 20, 2016

The Citadel Is Breached: Congress Taps the Federal Reserve for Infrastructure Funding

The Citadel Is Breached: Congress Taps the Federal Reserve for Infrastructure Funding

Posted on Jan 18, 2016
By Ellen Brown / Web of Debt


For at least a decade, think tanks, commissions and other stakeholders have fought to get Congress to address the staggering backlog of maintenance, upkeep and improvements required to bring the nation’s infrastructure into the 21st century. Countries with less in the way of assets have overtaken the US in innovation and efficiency, while our dysfunctional Congress has battled endlessly over the fiscal cliff, tax reform, entitlement reform, and deficit reduction.

Both houses and both political parties agree that something must be done, but they have been unable to agree on where to find the funds. Republicans aren’t willing to raise taxes on the rich, and Democrats aren’t willing to cut social services for the poor.

In December 2015, however, a compromise was finally reached. On December 4, the last day the Department of Transportation was authorized to cut checks for highway and transit projects, President Obama signed a 1,300-page $305-billion transportation infrastructure bill that renewed existing highway and transit programs. According to America’s civil engineers, the sum was not nearly enough for all the work that needs to be done. But the bill was nevertheless considered a landmark achievement, because Congress has not been able to agree on how to fund a long-term highway and transit bill since 2005.

That was one of its landmark achievements. Less publicized was where Congress would get the money: largely from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street megabanks. The deal was summarized in a December 1st Bloomberg article titled “Highway Bill Compromise Would Take Money from US Banks”:

The highway measure would be financed in part by a one-time use of Federal Reserve surplus funds and by a reduction in the 6 percent dividend that national banks receive from the Fed. . . . Banks with $10 billion or less in assets would be exempt from the cut.

The Fed’s surplus capital comes from the 12 reserve banks. The highway bill would allow for a one-time draw of $19 billion from the surplus, which totaled $29.3 billion as of Nov. 25. . . .

Banks vigorously fought the dividend cut, which was estimated to generate about $17 billion over 10 years for the highway trust fund.

According to Zachary Warmbrodt, writing in Politico in November, the Fed registered “strong concerns about using the resources of the Federal Reserve to finance fiscal spending.” But former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who is now at the Brookings Institute, acknowledged in a blog post that the Fed could operate with little or no capital. His objection was that it is “not good optics or good precedent” to raid an independent central bank. It doesn’t look good. ...............(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_citadel_is_breached_congress_taps_the_fed_for_20160118

January 19, 2016

The Clintons (cartoon)

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/the_clintons_20160118

January 19, 2016

Night of the Living Dead, Climate Change-Style

from TomDispatch:


Night of the Living Dead, Climate Change-Style
How to Stop the Fossil Fuel Industry From Wrecking Our World

By Bill McKibben


When I was a kid, I was creepily fascinated by the wrongheaded idea, current in my grade school, that your hair and your fingernails kept growing after you died. The lesson seemed to be that it was hard to kill something off -- if it wanted to keep going.

Something similar is happening right now with the fossil fuel industry. Even as the global warming crisis makes it clear that coal, natural gas, and oil are yesterday’s energy, the momentum of two centuries of fossil fuel development means new projects keep emerging in a zombie-like fashion.

In fact, the climactic fight at the end of the fossil fuel era is already underway, even if it’s happening almost in secret. That’s because so much of the action isn’t taking place in big, headline-grabbing climate change settings like the recent conference of 195 nations in Paris; it’s taking place in hearing rooms and farmers’ fields across this continent (and other continents, too). Local activists are making desperate stands to stop new fossil fuel projects, while the giant energy companies are making equally desperate attempts to build while they still can. Though such conflicts and protests are mostly too small and local to attract national media attention, the outcome of these thousands of fights will do much to determine whether we emerge from this century with a habitable planet. In fact, far more than any set of paper promises by politicians, they really are the battle for the future.

Here’s how Diane Leopold, president of the giant fracking company Dominion Energy, put it at a conference earlier this year: “It may be the most challenging” period in fossil fuel history, she said, because of “an increase in high-intensity opposition” to infrastructure projects that is becoming steadily “louder, better-funded, and more sophisticated.” Or, in the words of the head of the American Natural Gas Association, referring to the bitter struggle between activists and the Canadian tar sands industry over the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, “Call it the Keystone-ization of every project that’s out there.”

Pipelines, Pipelines, Everywhere

I hesitate to even start listing them all, because I’m going to miss dozens, but here are some of the prospective pipelines people are currently fighting across North America: the Alberta Clipper and the Sandpiper pipelines in the upper Midwest, Enbridge Line 3, the Dakota Access, the Line 9 and Energy East pipelines in Ontario and environs, the Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipelines in British Columbia, the Piñon pipeline in Navajo Country, the Sabal Trail pipeline in Alabama and Georgia, the Appalachian Connector, the Vermont Gas pipeline down the western side of my own state, the Algonquin pipeline, the Constitution pipeline, the Spectra pipeline, and on and on. ...................(more)

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176092/tomgram%3A_bill_mckibben%2C_the_real_zombie_apocalypse/

January 19, 2016

U.K. Court, In David Miranda Case, Rules Terrorism Act Violates Fundamental Rights of Free Press

(The Intercept) Jan. 19 2016, 7:02 a.m.

A BRITISH APPEALS COURT has ruled that the United Kingdom’s broad counterterrorism laws breach fundamental rights in a case involving the seizure of encrypted documents from David Miranda, the partner of Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald, at a London airport in 2013.

Miranda (pictured above) was detained and interrogated for nine hours at Heathrow Airport in August 2013 while he was assisting Greenwald’s reporting on documents about government mass surveillance leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Last year, the High Court in London dismissed a legal challenge brought by Miranda over the case on the grounds that it reasonably regarded his actions as “terrorism” as defined by the law. However, that decision was partially overturned Tuesday by the Court of Appeal in a ruling that will be viewed as a major victory for press freedom campaigners.

The ruling finds that the police followed the law when detaining Miranda under a controversial section of the Terrorism Act, Schedule 7. However, crucially, it asserts that the statute itself “is not subject to adequate safeguards against its arbitrary exercise” and is “incompatible” with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides the right to “receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” ............(more)

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/19/miranda-appeal-uk-terrorism-fundamental-rights-violated/

January 19, 2016

'Arrest Gov. Snyder' protesters chant outside his Ann Arbor condo

ANN ARBOR, MI – More than 100 people stood Monday outside Gov. Rick Snyder's downtown Ann Arbor condo calling for his arrest for his handling of the Flint water crisis.

"Arrest Governor Snyder! Make him drink the water!" they chanted as snow swirled and the windchill fell below zero.

Michigan Rising hosted the march and protest Jan. 18. Protesters started outside the University of Michigan Rackham Building on East Washington and headed west to Main Street and Snyder's condo above the Four Directions retail shop, 211 S. Main St.



They marched around the block on Main Street from Liberty Street to Washington Street, chanting and cheering when cars honked in support. ..............(more)

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2016/01/arrest_gov_snyder_protesters_c.html#incart_river_home

January 19, 2016

D.C.: Metro turnaround a top priority for area Congress members

WASHINGTON — After a tumultuous year for Metro, local members of Congress have no plans to ease the pressure on the transit agency’s leaders.

Members from D.C., Virginia and Maryland include the struggling public transportation system among their top priorities for 2016.

“We can’t be complacent and let the current system continue,” said Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Virginia. “We have to see changes and consequences and accountability.”

Area lawmakers helped push through a $150 million annual contribution to Metro through an omnibus spending bill that will keep the federal government working into September.

The year-end spending bill also secured a higher commuter benefit that covers up to $255 a month for riding Metro and could help boost dragging ridership. ................(more)

http://wtop.com/congress/2016/01/metro-turn-around-top-priority-area-congress-members/