just in some kind of mood tonight...

Europe: A Thousand Miles Behind

Production and exports are plummeting in Italy, Holland, Finland, Germany, just about anywhere; in China, production growth falls sharply. But your "leaders" will keep on talking about restoring growth, recovery etc. Spain will - secretly - ask for some $200-300 billion in bank bail-outs on Saturday (and get much less, the Wall Street Journal reports it will be €125), and 24 hours later play its first game in the Euro Cup, for which it's the great favorite.

The potential Spain bailout will need to be financed through EFSF bonds. The IMF has stated that the banks will need €40 billion, but that number looks ridiculously low. €40 billion every week over the entire summer sounds more like it.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard quotes a few voices:


Is a Spanish bail-out viable?

Megan Greene, from Roubini Global Economics, says Spain's banks will need up to €250bn - a claim that no longer looks extreme. New troubles are emerging daily. The Bank of Spain said yesterday that Catalunya Caixa and Novagalicia will need a total of €9bn in new state funds.

JP Morgan is expecting the final package for Spain to rise above €350bn, while RBS says the rescue will "morph" into a full-blown rescue of €370bn to €450bn over time - by far the largest in world history.


But then there's always that nasty and inconvenient question:

http://theautomaticearth.com/Finance/europe-a-thousand-miles-behind.html

I especially like this thought....the Super Terrific Ultra Providencial Insurance Disbursment (STUPID) fund issuing yet ANOTHER set of bonds to roll over the old ones.

Breaking Market News: JPM told IMF to stick EFSF bonds where the sun don't shine....

8 days.....

The Invisible Man

With the Republican presidential nomination sewed up, Mitt Romney is now pretending to be acceptable to the moderate voters he will need to win in November.

Gone are the conservative promises of the primary: “I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism. ... I was a severely Republican governor.” Note that his so-called severity didn’t prevent him from creating Romneycare, the model for the Affordable Health Care Act.

He fakes to the center, although his ultimate policy goal is on the right, dismantling the safety net, wiping out the health care law and assuring the wealthy of continued low taxes. Or is it? What does he really believe?

In Romney’s present incarnation, he is fixated on joblessness—blaming President Barack Obama without offering any solutions of his own. This is a path designed to appeal to moderates as well as conservatives.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_invisible_man_20120607/

Only 13.5 Percent of Food Workers Earn a Living Wage

Americans love to talk about food—how asparagus is best prepared, which preservatives to avoid, which types of fish are in peril, where to find the best tacos or most delectable peach pies. Most of us spend far less time contemplating the people that pick, slaughter, sort, process, and deliver the products of this 1.8 trillion dollar industry—a group of workers that makes up one-sixth of the country's workforce.

Lowest Paying Jobs and Median Wages
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011
1. Combined Food Prep and Serving: $18,230
2. Fast Food Cooks: $18,300
3. Dishwashers: $18,360
4. Dining Room/Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers: $18,420
5. Shampooers: $18,420
6. Gaming Dealers: $18,460
7. Counter Attendants (Cafeteria, Food Concession, and Coffee Shop): $18,510
8. Hosts and Hostesses: $18,560
9. Waiters and Waitresses: $18,570
10. Ushers, Lobby Attendents, and Ticket Takers: $18,610

Unfortunately, the majority of these workers take home crummy wages and few benefits, according to a new report from the Food Chain Workers Alliance. Perhaps most strikingly, among workers surveyed by the FCWA, only 13.5 percent made a liveable wage (an amount FCWA defines as higher than 150 percent of the regional poverty level). And not a single agricultural worker of around the 90 surveyed said they earned enough to live on.

The Food Chain Workers Alliance survey results echo sobering realities about jobs across what the FCWA calls "the food chain": a vast network of laborers in the production, processing, and distribution of food. In 2011, the lowest-paying jobs nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, were combined food preparers and servers and fast food cooks; restaurant servers and hosts, farmworkers, baristas, and food preparers didn't trail far behind (and all made it in the bottom twenty).

"Jobs in the food system aren't seen as high skilled," says Joann Lo, Executive Director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance. "It's hard work; you need to know the right way to cut a chicken in a poultry plant. But the general perception is that they are low skilled and don't deserve good wages." Overall, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, food workers earn less than workers in other industries:

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/06/food-chain-workers-low-wages-report

How Big Banks Run the World - at Your Expense

The recent Public Banking conference held in Philadelphia offered a message that is at once so simple - but also so bold - it is hard for most Americans to pause long enough to understand how profoundly their thinking had been corralled by the masters of finance - in ways far, far, far more insidious and powerful than even the latest financial crisis suggests.

To understand what has happened, however, you first have to take a minute to shake a few cobwebs out of your brain about "money" - and how it is created and by whom and for whose benefit.

Money is "created"? Yes, obviously so - or did you imagine there is some fixed pile of "money" some place that exists once and for all and for all times?

Think about it: If that were true, it would be impossible for the economy ever to change and grow. If the "money supply" were not increased over time, the original economy of, say, 1776 - which served about 2.5 million Americans - would still define the amount of "money" we would have to work with today.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9658-how-big-banks-run-the-world-at-your-expense

Country for Sale

The word "takeaway" was first used in 1961, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. And then it was about Chinese restaurants. Now it is about everything, including elections.

"Three Takeaways From the Recall Vote" was the headline over the election analysis of Sean Trende, the senior election analyst of Real Clear Politics.

Trende, a great name for a political writer, began his piece on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s surviving a recall election by saying that the results don’t tell us much about 2012. He argued that special elections are poor predictors of general elections, particularly presidential elections. This one, he said, was about one governor, one state, one issue—that is, Walker’s attempt to reduce the pay and benefits of unionized state employees. He cited exit polling that indicated most voters believe that recalls should be used only in cases of corruption.

Maybe. But California’s Grey Davis was never accused of corruption when California voters turned him out in 2003 and replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trende added that the 2012 election will bring out more Democrats than this one, where Wisconsin’s Republicans turned out in record numbers to defend their man.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/country_for_sale_20120607/

Ray Bradbury...

Taxes at the Top – Graphic of the Day

According to new data from the Internal Revenue Service, the number of tax filers with zero federal income tax liability and an income of $200,000 or greater has risen past 20,000, just over half of 1% of all those with an income over $200,000. Among the 400 taxpayers at the top of the income ladder in 2009, 6 paid nothing and the other 384 paid an average tax rate just under 20%. The two graphics below help visualize these interesting facts about the taxes of those with high incomes.


http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/taxes-at-the-top-graphic-of-the-day/

Five Things to Consider in the Walker Recall Vote

That Scott Walker survived the recall in Wisconsin is a tragic setback for the stunning citizen’s movement that challenged his extremist agenda in Wisconsin. Its implications are likely to be exaggerated by the right, and underplayed by progressives. Here are some thoughts on its meaning.

1. Extremism will be challenged
Scott Walker is now a conservative hero. The right’s mighty Wurlitzer will argue that Republican Governors and legislators will be emboldened because he survived. The attack on public sector workers and basic worker rights, the sweeping cuts in education combined with top end tax cuts, the efforts to restrict voting rights, they will boast, will now spread even more rapidly across the country.

Really? Walker barely survived the backlash his policies caused. He lost effective control of the Senate even before last night’s recall returns are known. He had to go through a brutal recall, and watch his popularity plummet. I suspect that most Governors with a clue will see this as a calamity that they want to avoid. They’ll be looking to find ways to compromise, to avoid this brutal backlash. No question that the Tea Party and big money right will be lusting for more blood. But I suspect that Walker’s travails -- and those of Kasich in Ohio and Scott in Florida – will sober Republicans up a bit.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9615-five-things-to-consider-in-the-walker-recall-vote

Wisconsin: Turnout and Enthusiasm High in Recall Balloting...AFL-CIO

Turnout is high across Wisconsin today as working families are getting out the vote to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) and elect Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett as the state’s new governor. The turnout in Milwaukee has been so heavy the city Election Commission had to send extra poll workers to several sites to handle the long lines.

Voters also are casting ballots in recall races that pit Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, against Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four state Senate recalls. A pickup of one seat swings control of the Senate away from Walker’s Republican allies who spearheaded his 2011 drive to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of 380,000 public workers.

Working families also are holding Walker and his backers accountable for the nation’s worst job creation record, big new tax breaks for the rich and corporations, cuts in health care and tax increases on low-income families (read more here).

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Wisconsin-Turnout-and-Enthusiasm-High-in-Recall-Balloting#.T86cWwBTN9Y.twitter