STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 29 June 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 29 June 2012[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 28 June 2012

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 28 June 2012
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Dow Jones 12,602.26 -24.75 (-0.20%)
S&P 500 1,329.04 -2.81 (-0.21%)
Nasdaq 2,849.49 -25.83 (-0.90%)



[font color=green]10 Year 1.58% -0.01 (-0.63%)
[font color=red]30 Year 2.68% +0.01 (0.37%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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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
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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
6/14/12 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.




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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. And nobody is covered in glory

or even sausage.

[Demeter]

2. US Supreme Court upholds bulk of 'ObamaCare'

The US Supreme Court has left Barack Obama’s healthcare law broadly intact but ruled that an element of the law was not valid, handing the president a political victory.

In decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the majority of justices ruled that the individual mandate that compelled every American to buy insurance was not valid under the commerce clause of the Constitution.
But they also ruled that the financial penalty outlined in the law against people who did not buy insurance was allowed. In effect, it means that the high court agreed with critics who said the mandate as written was unconstitutional, but that the implementation of the law will proceed much as it would have if the law had been completely upheld.

The mandate can now be enforced as a tax.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/6NPSBB/IIAX4Q/MJTKN/R32LZK/TUQR81/36/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=28

IF THAT MAKES SENSE TO ANYONE...SEE YOUR DOCTOR

[Demeter]

6. Bipartisan move won’t take sting out of Obamacare

Although a majority of the US Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Chief Justice John Roberts in siding with his liberal colleagues may have saved the public’s trust in the court.

But over the next four months the act will remain a political football, writes Robert Reich.

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/6NPSBB/ORW9CU/7ZY85/OR0JJU/ZGN1X0/UP/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=28

THEY'RE JOKING, RIGHT? BOB?

[Demeter]

10. Imposing a new, regressive tax was the cherry on the top

My compliments to the chefs.

[Hugin]

30. It's a trap.

Set by a guy (Roberts) who has no skin in the game so that the Repubs can wail about a new tax and Gubbermint intervention in affairs that should be between a Corporate Person and their Vault.

Begin the countdown to an incessant screech from the Right Wing about how this terrible "new tax" hurts "job creation" and to elect Their Offerings who will repeal it!1!!11 (But, will somehow never actually get around to it... Because, it's just so lucrative and useful in campaigns)

It sickens me...

Oh, forget the stopwatch. i see the refrain has already begun over at K. D.'s Market Ticker.

[Demeter]

33. And I'd like to know who set that trap

Who came up with the convenient concept of turning it into a tax liability? There are consequences to not paying taxes...

[DemReadingDU]

39. What about long term, 20 years from now, or longer

Most of us do not see the economy recovering because more companies keep going out of business or downsizing, resulting in more and more people being laid off. Obviously jobless people have little income, and actually nothing to pay for healthcare. Most likely, they won't even be afford to pay the 'tax penalty'. What happens when we become of nation of poor sick people? Will the government step in to provide basic healthcare?
edit: or will the government throw us in jail for not paying 'tax penalty'

[Demeter]

44. It won't take 20-years at this rate

Maybe two.

[girl gone mad]

93. Maybe they can introduce a new level of insurance..

even more affordable than the bronze tier. The kool-aid tier.

[westerebus]

73. It was always a tax.

Last edited Fri Jun 29, 2012, 11:00 AM - Edit history (1)

And Robert's got it right.

But, he may have caused more trouble for the right than the left side of the aisle. How so? It puts the right up against all their pledges to Norquist of no new taxes. Also, no increases in the deficit without reductions else where in the budget.

The conundrum for the right is how now to de-fund something inside the budget or wage war against the SCOTUS approved law.

Well done Chief Justice. Well done.

Dammed if they did. Dammed if they didn't. Dammed if they don't.

Now the tea party can pull out all the stops and completely give the right wing what it needs, a shot at ending "the socialism" of the New Deal. Go ahead give it a try. Bring that european austerity home and tank the market as your friends have tanked main street. Just give it a shove.

The problem is no so much the concern for the politics of the right, the concern is of who has played the left for fools?

It is a tax. Just say it. It is a tax. Was it that hard?

The left has raised a tax to begin the process of health insurance coverage for the everybody. Yes, they did.

edit: in need of a proof reader..lol

[Demeter]

83. And it's an unequal tax and unequal treatment for all citizens

It is, in short, unconstitutional in fundamental ways.

[westerebus]

91. How so?

It is far from universal and not what I would have choosen, single payer all inclusive, but it covers a lot of ground.

To what do you object?

[Demeter]

3. Banks fear for second half as deals fall

Global investment banks are bracing themselves for a dismal second half, with further cuts in costs and staff, after a sharp drop in dealmaking and capital markets activity pushed down fees in the second quarter to their worst level in three years

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/TWK799/8ZHVMG/WH2F8/8ZJ4FG/DWCZNU/6C/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=28

MY GOD! HOW WILL THEY LIVE! I KNOW...OBAMACARE!

[Demeter]

4. Iran disguises tankers in sanctions name game

Over the past month, the bulk of Iran’s fleet of oil supertankers suddenly disappeared off the map. When they re-emerged on the high seas, the freshly-painted tankers had new names, new flags and new home ports

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/VKY5JJ/B58ZIS/K91WR/JEBIIJ/II7W12/FW/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=28

[Demeter]

5. Split not for family or scandal, says Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to split the media empire he has led for 60 years has nothing to do with a desire to hand the business to his children or the UK phone hacking scandal, News Corp’s 81-year-old chairman and chief executive said in an interview on Thursday

Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/UXDMSS/JEZDI8/7ZY85/5VQ7SL/DWCZJB/AZ/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=28

I WONDER HOW IT FEELS, MR. MURDOCK, BEING RELEGATED TO THE FARTHEST OF THE BACK PAGES, UPSTAGED BY MUCH MORE INFERIOR CROOKS AND CLOWNS...WELL, YOU HAVE THE WALL ST. JOURNAL TO KEEP YOU WARM...THE THURSDAY ISSUE IS ESPECIALLY FAT AND INSULATING...

[Ghost Dog]

7. Let me repeat:

1. Global recession (no engine of growth anywhere / end of the myth of the “US recovery”) (5)
2. Growing insolvency of the Western banking and financial system and henceforth partially recognized as such
3. Growing frailty of key financial assets such as sovereign debts, real estate and CDSs underpinning the world’s major banks’ balance sheets
4. Fall off in international trade (6)
5. Geopolitical tensions (in particular in the Middle East) approaching the point of a regional explosion
6. Lasting global geopolitical blockage at the UN
7. Rapid collapse of the whole of the Western asset-backed retirement system (7)
8. Growing political divisions within the world’s “monolithic” powers (USA, China, Russia)
9. Lack of “miracle” solutions as in 2008 /2009, because of the growing impotence of many of the major Western central banks (Fed, BoE, BoJ) and States’ indebtedness
10. Credibility in freefall for all countries having to assume the double load of public and excessive private debt (8)
11. Inability to control/slow down the advance of mass and long-term unemployment
12. Failure of monetarist and financial stimulus policies such as “pure” austerity policies
13. Quasi-systematic ineffectiveness henceforth of the alternative or recent international closed groups, G20, G8, Rio+20, WTO,… on all the key topics of what is no longer in fact a world agenda absent any consensus: economy, finances, environment, conflict resolution, fight against poverty…

...

1. Iran/Israel/USA: The war too far will really happen
2. The Assyrian bomb: the Israeli-American-Iranian match put to the Syria-Iraq powder keg
3. The AfPak chaos: the US army and NATO, hostages in an exit from an increasingly difficult conflict
4. The Arab Autumn: the Gulf countries swept away in the turmoil.
5. United States: « Taxargeddon » will begin from summer 2012 – The US economy in free-fall by autumn
6. Major bank insolvencies due in September-October 2012: The City-Wall Street version of Bankia
7. The untenable irresponsibility of QE in summer 2012 - the US, British and Japanese central banks out of the game

/... http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-66-is-available-Red-alert-Global-systemic-crisis-September-October-2012-When-the-trumpets-of-Jericho-ring-out_a11079.html

[Demeter]

9. Ah, you're just trying to cheer me up

I appreciate the effort, but I'm mostly in need of rain. Tears are too salty for agriculture.

The sooner the collapse, the more likely the mice can hide the crumbs of survival and start to rebuild.

[Ghost Dog]

16. Know what you mean. What's remarkable, it seems to me,

is the fact that none, none of the young people employed in the FIRE sector I've access to, including my own niece high-up with "The Economist" and her colleagues, appear to have the slightest clue as regards the consequences and potential further consequences of their collective naive stupidity and/or culpability beyond a constant daily, hourly anxiety as regards their ability to not piss off their employers (whom, they'd rather not mentionnor acknowledge, nor their interests), keep their jobs and hang on to their increasingly unsustainable and debatably criminally complicit very highly paid jobs, plus benefits. I mean, without the nanny and the cleaner, how can one keep up appearances?

Or else, they've collectively decided not to give a shit as long as they're all right, for now, Jack.

Please allow me to share a virtual hug with you, Demeter (I don't know how you stand it).


... As for "rain", what's that? It's been so long.......

(I'd post here a video/sonido, but my current landlady's IP I'm piggybacking on appears to prohibit (claiming it's an error) any and all connection to youtube. So I think I'll be changing address, looking for better service at lower cost, shortly)...

[Demeter]

18. With the friends, no, family on SMW, of course!

How else can we deal with the intolerable, day after day? The Internet is the greatest gift to mankind, giving connection and affinity and the greatest library ever created by the human race.

Lets hope we use it wisely. Lets hope it's enough to change the tide of human events for the better.

[Po_d Mainiac]

20. ayuh

Nothing personifies the current putrid state of the U.S. economy, along with the rate of success of todays middle class better than Wal-Mart.
YMMV

[Ghost Dog]

31. Ufff. Allow me to quote (from my own, partial, translation and ipublication, some years ago):

Last edited Fri Jun 29, 2012, 12:54 AM - Edit history (2)

... The right of rebellion against tyranny, Honorable Judges, has been recognized from the most ancient times to the present day by men of all creeds, ideas and doctrines.

It was so in the theocratic monarchies of remote antiquity. In China it was almost a constitutional principle that when a king governed rudely and despotically he should be deposed and replaced by a virtuous prince.

The philosophers of ancient India upheld the principle of active resistance to arbitrary authority. They justified revolution and very often put their theories into practice. One of their spiritual leaders used to say that 'an opinion held by the majority is stronger than the king himself. A rope woven of many strands is strong enough to hold a lion.'

The city states of Greece and republican Rome not only admitted, but defended the meting-out of violent death to tyrants.

In the Middle Ages, John Salisbury in his Book of the Statesman says that when a prince does not govern according to law and degenerates into a tyrant, violent overthrow is legitimate and justifiable. He recommends for tyrants the dagger rather than poison.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, rejects the doctrine of tyrannicide, and yet upholds the thesis that tyrants should be overthrown by the people.

Martin Luther proclaimed that when a government degenerates into a tyranny that violates the laws, its subjects are released from their obligations to obey. His disciple, Philippe Melanchton, upholds the right of resistance when governments become despotic. Calvin, the outstanding thinker of the Reformation with regard to political ideas, postulates that people are entitled to take up arms to oppose any usurpation.

No less a man that Juan Mariana, a Spanish Jesuit during the reign of Philip II, asserts in his book, De Rege et Regis Institutione, that when a governor usurps power, or even if he were elected, when he governs in a tyrannical manner it is licit for a private citizen to exercise tyrannicide, either directly or through subterfuge with the least possible disturbance.

The French writer, François Hotman, maintained that between the government and its subjects there is a bond or contract, and that the people may rise in rebellion against the tyranny of government when the latter violates that pact.

About the same time, a booklet - which came to be widely read - appeared under the title Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, and it was signed with the pseudonym Stephanus Junius Brutus. It openly declared that resistance to governments is legitimate when rulers oppress the people and that it is the duty of Honorable Judges to lead the struggle.

The Scottish reformers John Knox and John Poynet upheld the same points of view. And, in the most important book of that movement, George Buchanan stated that if a government achieved power without taking into account the consent of the people, or if a government rules their destiny in an unjust or arbitrary fashion, then that government becomes a tyranny and can be divested of power or, in a final recourse, its leaders can be put to death.

John Althus, a German jurist of the early 17th century, stated in his Treatise on Politics that sovereignty as the supreme authority of the State is born from the voluntary concourse of all its members; that governmental authority stems from the people and that its unjust, illegal or tyrannical function exempts them from the duty of obedience and justifies resistance or rebellion.

Thus far, Honorable Judges, I have mentioned examples from antiquity, from the Middle Ages, and from the beginnings of our times. I selected these examples from writers of all creeds. What is more, you can see that the right to rebellion is at the very root of Cuba's existence as a nation. By virtue of it you are today able to appear in the robes of Cuban Judges. Would it be that those garments really served the cause of justice!

It is well known that in England during the 17th century two kings, Charles I and James II, were dethroned for despotism. These actions coincided with the birth of liberal political philosophy and provided the ideological base for a new social class, which was then struggling to break the bonds of feudalism. Against divine right autocracies, this new philosophy upheld the principle of the social contract and of the consent of the governed, and constituted the foundation of the English Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1775 and the French Revolution of 1789. These great revolutionary events ushered in the liberation of the Spanish colonies in the New World - the final link in that chain being broken by Cuba. The new philosophy nurtured our own political ideas and helped us to evolve our Constitutions, from the Constitution of Guáimaro up to the Constitution of 1940. The latter was influenced by the socialist currents of our time; the principle of the social function of property and of man's inalienable right to a decent living were built into it, although large vested interests have prevented fully enforcing those rights.

The right of insurrection against tyranny then underwent its final consecration and became a fundamental tenet of political liberty.

As far back as 1649, John Milton wrote that political power lies with the people, who can enthrone and dethrone kings and have the duty of overthrowing tyrants.

John Locke, in his essay on government, maintained that when the natural rights of man are violated, the people have the right and the duty to alter or abolish the government. 'The only remedy against unauthorized force is opposition to it by force.'

Jean-Jaques Rousseau said with great eloquence in his Social Contract: 'While a people sees itself forced to obey and obeys, it does well; but as soon as it can shake off the yoke and shakes it off, it does better, recovering its liberty through the use of the very right that has been taken away from it.' 'The strongest man is never strong enough to be master forever, unless he converts force into right and obedience into duty. Force is a physical power; I do not see what morality one may derive from its use. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will; at the very least, it is an act of prudence. In what sense should this be called a duty?' 'To renounce freedom is to renounce one's status as a man, to renounce one's human rights, including one's duties. There is no possible compensation for renouncing everything. Total renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man and to take away all free will is to take away all morality of conduct. In short, it is vain and contradictory to stipulate on the one hand an absolute authority and on the other an unlimited obedience ...'

Thomas Paine said that 'one just man deserves more respect than a rogue with a crown.'

The people's right to rebel has been opposed only by reactionaries like that clergyman of Virginia, Jonathan Boucher, who said: 'The right to rebel is a censurable doctrine derived from Lucifer, the father of rebellions.'

The Declaration of Independence of the Congress of Philadelphia, on July 4th, 1776, consecrated this right in a beautiful paragraph which reads: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness; That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.'

The famous French Declaration of the Rights of Man willed this principle to the coming generations: 'When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for them the most sacred of rights and the most imperative of duties.' 'When a person seizes sovereignty, he should be condemned to death by free men.' ...

(Worth reading the whole: http://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm

Historical note: Shortly after I first published this on internet, from my own site then (briefly, no longer) habana.com, back in the late 'nineties, I saw that it had been copied into the libraries of, and published on the net by, (students, professors?) quite a few first-class North American and British universities. Now it's, in English, I thought, in the publicc domain. History, free speech, open for debate.

Not long after, I observed, all such US-UK academic copies had apparently been erased (that would be state censorship?). So the primary link to the source (and according to Guurgle is now: http://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm)

[Demeter]

34. Those Were the Days When Men were Men

and Predator drones were not even a figment of a diseased imagination....

[Po_d Mainiac]

88. Some things never really change

Roman emperors 'bought' off the masses with entertainment while tossing loaves of bread in the Colluseum.

Today's version is food stamps and 'reality' TV.

[Po_d Mainiac]

107. Thunked of u when I read this

A seat at the table of power routinely flatters pundits invited to these affairs. They dutifully report, rather than investigate, what they are told. On Latvia, The Economist, to paraphrase Paul Krugman’s characterization of US Congressman Paul Ryan, increasingly “looks likestupid person’s idea of what a smart magazine looks like.” It provides its customary breezy reporting that gets anything of importance wrong. Meanwhile, big names (one is reluctant to say heavyweights) on the circuit, such as Chrystia Freeland of Reuters, embarrassingly, for anyone that might have bothered to query the hotel bartender or taxi driver of their views on Latvia, allege, “the harsh Latvian plan worked because the whole country was committed to it.” This reminds one of the Red Cross inspections of the Theresienstadtshowcase concentration camp, who shown orchestras and clean conditions announced, “everything in order here!” Of course, Latvia is no concentration camp and its people not fascists. Indeed, Riga, its capital, is among Europe’s most beautiful, and if you have a bit of money, livable, cities. Meanwhile, others report the country feels like a prison. The reality is that there are several realities depending on one’s social class and income. To declare the “whole country” is “committed” to anything in this society deeply divided by class and ethnicity is lazy reporting at best.

http://michael-hudson.com/2012/06/lativa-no-austerity-success-extended/

[wordpix]

77. 4 decades ago I decided to drop out and go back to the land

I thought the world was falling apart then and society as we know it would end, so I'd better be growing my own food, etc.

I did it, but needed actual money to pay for things like the land, house, seeds, animal feed, vet....you get the picture. so I had to work off-farm to pay for those things.

Gradually I went to work in the "real world" full time to make that money, because there was no real money in family farming, although I ate really well.

Now thinking dropping out is a good idea again....

[Ghost Dog]

81. Maybe you have room... to be free... But I think Society,

'advancing human civilization', is a necessary evil, warts and all.

[Demeter]

84. You can offer refuge for room and board, too

and have your pick of society

[Ghost Dog]

101. Well, as a, in international and historical context, relatively "high class" individual myself,

although at present relatively 'down and out', again, but with a clear conscience (so i'm a fool):

I think your comment here is a bit harsh, Demeter.

[Demeter]

103. How is it harsh?

I mean that he can pick the best of the available pool, which will be extremely large...it's a buyers' market.

[Demeter]

8. The European Financial Transactions Tax: Robin Hood or Sheriff of Nottingham?

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10004-the-financial-transactions-tax-robin-hood-or-sheriff-of-nottingham

The leaders of continental Europe's four biggest countries agreed at last week's euro zone summit on the principle that the European Union should move toward imposing a tax on financial transactions. Though it was hardly mentioned in the US press, the agreement was big news in Europe. The leaders say they will raise funds equal to 1 percent of total euro zone gross domestic product through a financial transactions tax (FTT), though no details were forthcoming on just what would be taxed or at what rates. That President François Hollande of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Mario Monte of Italy and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy should all take time out from acute crisis talks to agree on any long-term policy position is remarkable. That they should agree on a new tax is more remarkable still. Nonetheless, Chancellor Merkel stated flatly that she was "pleased that all four here have committed to a financial transactions tax."

FFTs are nothing new. They used to be called "stamp duties" and all industrialized countries used to have them. Today, they survive mainly in real estate transfer taxes. Stamp duties on frequently traded financial instruments like stocks and bonds were eliminated in the twentieth century in most countries under pressure from the finance industry. When the world went off the gold standard in 1971 and modern foreign currency markets came into existence, economist James Tobin recommended that a small transactions tax be applied to foreign exchange transactions as a way to prevent instability in these new markets. He argued that the hyper-efficiency of foreign exchange markets could lead to unwanted volatility that might harm countries' real economies and that a transactions tax would reduce these tendencies. If Tobin was right for the foreign currency markets, he was even more right for stock markets. He couldn't anticipate in 1972 that by 2012 stocks would be traded electronically at such high speed that banks would move their computers physically closer to the exchanges so that their trading orders would be executed faster. Tobin taxes are probably more important today for damping down volatility in share markets than in currency markets.

The goal of a Tobin tax on financial transactions is not to take from the rich and give to the poor. It's to prevent the rich from destroying the economy for the rest of us. Tobin taxes are meant to slow down runaway markets, to let a little air out of inflating bubbles and in general to give people and governments just a little more time to respond to economic problems before they get out of hand. Tobin taxes give the real economy just a miniscule edge over the speculative economy. Usually, that's all that's needed to prevent the speculators from running roughshod over the rest of us. What turns a Tobin tax into a Robin Hood tax is what you do with the money you collect. President Hollande et compagnie have made no mention of taking from the rich to give to the poor. Their plan, to the extent that they have one, seems to be to use the proceeds of a FFT to fund the European Union budget. At best, the money collected might go to the poor of Europe. There's certainly no talk of spending it on the poor of the world.

And, yet, the rich countries of the world - including the euro four and the United States - have all agreed to dedicate at least 0.7 percent of their national incomes to official development assistance (ODA) to poor countries. This foreign aid commitment has been in place in various forms since 1970, though it has been met by only a few (mainly Nordic) countries. Since the beginning of the global financial crisis, levels of ODA have actually declined for many countries. United States ODA to poor countries is only 0.21 percent. The top three recipients are Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, which hardly suggests that our aid money is independent of our foreign policy goals. France, Germany, Italy and Spain give 0.50 percent, 0.39 percent, 0.15 percent and 0.43 percent, respectively (2010 figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

........................................................................

Throughout this debate it must be remembered that a well-designed FTT will pay for itself. The original Tobin tax idea wasn't about feeding the poor. It was about improving economic performance by damping down the worst excesses of financial markets. Runaway markets can severely misallocate financial capital. We should all have learned that lesson in 2007, if not in 1929. If we can save the euro while improving the economy and at the same time divert part of the benefit to help the poorest people on Earth ... why not?

The sheriff might just have to accept a happy ending after all.

[Demeter]

11. Here Is Why Our Elites Are Not Fixing The Economy By Dave Johnson

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012062627/here-why-our-elites-are-not-fixing-economy

When we had democracy, We, the People made the rules and we ran our country and our economy for our benefit. Now that we are a plutocracy things are different. The reason our elites are not doing anything to fix the economy is because from their viewpoint, things are just fine...

Our Benefit

In a democracy a successful business is the result of our investment in infrastructure, education, and a system that enables our businesses to thrive. A business can't deliver products except over the roads or ports or the Internet our government built. Our police and firefighters protect our businesses. Our schools and universities train and educate the inventors and managers and line workers. Our scientific research brings about the innovation that leads to new technologies and products.

"Entitlements" are the things We, the People are entitled to as citizens of a democracy. Those who do well as a result of our investment in our system pay back through taxes, good jobs and great products. When we were a democracy we were entitled to a minimal level of retirement, and health care, education, protection if we lost our jobs, protection of our environment, protection from corporate fraud, and other things that are now disappearing.

Now that democracy is gone, a wealthy few are living off our past investment, and cutting back on the things we used to do for each other.

[Demeter]

14. Paul Krugman: To End This Depression, What Do We Do Now?

http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/10035-to-end-this-depression-what-do-we-do-now

The Preface to Paul Krugman's "End This Depression Now!"

This is a book about the economic slump now afflicting the United States and many other countries - a slump that has now entered its fifth year and that shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Needless to say, many books about the financial crisis of 2008, which marked the beginning of the slump, have already been published, and many more are no doubt in the pipeline. But this book is, I believe, different from most of those other books, because it tries to answer a different question. For the most part, the mushrooming literature on our economic disaster asks, "How did this happen?" My question, instead, is "What do we do now?"

Obviously these are somewhat related questions, but they are by no means identical. Knowing what causes heart attacks is not at all the same thing as knowing how to treat them; the same is true of economic crises. And right now the question of treatment should be what concerns us most. Every time I read some academic or opinion article discussing what we should be doing to prevent future financial crises - and I read many such articles - I get a bit impatient. Yes, it's a worthy question, but since we have yet to recover from the last crisis, shouldn't achieving recovery be our first priority?

For we are still very much living in the shadow of the economic catastrophe that struck both Europe and the United States four years ago. Gross domestic product, which normally grows a couple of percent a year, is barely above its precrisis peak even in countries that have seen a relatively strong recovery, and it is down by double digits in several Euro- pean nations. Meanwhile, unemployment on both sides of the Atlantic remains at levels that would have seemed inconceivable before the crisis.

The best way to think about this continued slump, I'd argue, is to accept the fact that we're in a depression. No, it's not the Great Depression, at least not for most of us (but talk to the Greeks, the Irish, or even the Spaniards, who have 23 percent unemployment - and almost 50 percent unemployment among the young). But it's nonetheless essentially the same kind of situation that John Maynard Keynes described in the 1930s: "a chronic condition of subnormal activity for a considerable period without any marked tendency either towards recovery or towards complete collapse."...And that's not an acceptable condition. There are some economists and policy officials who seem satisfied with avoiding "complete collapse"; but the reality is that this "chronic condition of subnormal activity," reflected above all in a lack of jobs, is inflicting enormous, cumulative human damage. So it's extremely important that we take action to promote a real, full recovery. And here's the thing: we know how to do that, or at least we should know how to do that... MORE

[Demeter]

12. Some student loans to become more expensive despite deal

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/some-student-loans-to-become-more-expensive-despite-deal/2012/06/27/gJQAltw46V_story.html

College students are facing a roughly $20 billion increase in the cost of their federal loans, despite a much-heralded deal in Washington to contain the expense of higher education.

Starting Sunday, students hoping to earn the graduate degrees that have become mandatory for many white-collar jobs will become responsible for paying the interest on their federal loans while they are in school and immediately after they graduate. That means they’ll have to pay an extra $18 billion out of pocket over the next decade.

Meanwhile, the government will no longer cover the interest on undergraduate loans during the six months after students finish school. That’s expected to cost them more than $2 billion.

These changes have received little attention as lawmakers instead focus on preventing a spike in interest rates on federal student loans. They are the fallout of earlier political battles and compromises over broader issues such as the federal budget and the national debt ceiling. And they are forcing students such as Clarise McCants to make tough choices about how to pursue academic goals without jeopardizing financial security...

[Demeter]

13. Mad, Bad, Sad: What’s Really Happened to America’s Soldiers

IT'S CALLED SLAVERY, WHY NOT SAY SO?

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10042-mad-bad-sad-whats-really-happened-to-americas-soldiers

"PTSD is going to color everything you write," came the warning from a stepmother of a Marine, a woman who keeps track of such things. That was in 2005, when post-traumatic stress disorder, a.k.a. PTSD, wasn't getting much attention, but soon it was pretty much all anyone wrote about. Story upon story about the damage done to our guys in uniform -- drinking, divorce, depression, destitution -- a laundry list of miseries and victimhood. When it comes to veterans, it seems like the only response we can imagine is to feel sorry for them.

Victim is one of the two roles we allow our soldiers and veterans (the other is, of course, hero), but most don't have PTSD, and this isn't one of those stories...that nobody gets out of war unmarked. That’s especially true when your war turns out to be a shadowy, relentless occupation of a distant land, which requires you to do things that you regret and that continue to haunt you.

Theoretically, whole countries go to war, not just their soldiers, but not this time. Civilian sympathy for “the troops” may be just one more way for us to avoid a real reckoning with our last decade-plus of war, when the hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown up on the average American’s radar only if somebody screws up or noticeable numbers of Americans get killed. The veterans at the heart of this story -- victims, heroes, it doesn’t matter -- struggle to reconcile what they did in those countries with the "service" we keep thanking them for. We can see them as sick, with all the stigma, neediness, and expense that entails, or we can recognize them as human beings, confronting the morality of what they've done in our name and what they’ve seen and come to know -- even as they try to move on.

....a 1985 BBC series called "Soldiers" in which a Marine commander says, "It's not that we can't take a man who's 45 years old and turn him into a good soldier. It's that we can't make him love it." Like many soldiers, Andy had assumed that his role would be to protect his country when it was threatened. Instead, he now considers himself part of "something evil." So at a point when his therapy stalled and his therapist suggested that his spiritual pain was exacerbating his psychological pain, it suddenly clicked. The spiritual part he now calls his sacred wound. Others call it “moral injury.” MORE

YES, BY THE TIME A MAN REACHES 45, HE MAY HAVE DEVELOPED A MORAL SENSE, AND STANDARDS...UNLESS HE'S IN POLITICS, OR BUSINESS, AND A PSYCHOPATH.

[Demeter]

15. In Florida, Minimum Mandatory Sentencing Laws Fuel Push for Private Prisons

IT'S ANOTHER FORM OF SLAVERY...ADMIT IT!

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10020-in-florida-minimum-mandatory-sentencing-laws-fuel-push-for-private-prisons

On Valentine's Day this year, Florida almost made the unprecedented move to privatize 29 of its prisons, but the legislation was narrowly defeated. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the state prison guard unions were able to squeak out a victory, and the ACLU said:

The defeat of the privatization bill is a victory for Florida. As Julie Ebenstein, Policy & Advocacy Counsel at the ACLU of Florida, explained shortly after the bill's defeat: "Florida's prison system needs reform, but private prisons aren't reform - they deform the process by linking corporate profit to incarceration. The bottom line is that private prisons make money by keeping people in prison when we should be looking for ways to keep them out in the first place."

This win against privatization was surprising because of the powerful forces of the private prison industry, especially because the two largest private prison companies, the Geo Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), had poured campaign money into the state to get a chance to run these privatized prisons and perhaps move to privatize the rest of the prisons in Florida. The Florida House and Senate lawmakers, fueled by that campaign money, had been trying to slip a proviso to privatize these prisons into another bill last fall hoping that it would sneak through. The union at that time for the prison guards, the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), caught wind of this effort, which would affect 16,000 prisoners, and filed suit to stop this legislative effort, claiming that it would threaten public safety (and their jobs) and claiming that Florida law required that any attempt at privatizing state entities or contracts had to show that it was cost effective.

A Florida court agreed and, according to an exhaustive investigation by Prison Legal News:

The court further found that the FDOC [Florida Department of Corrections] had not prepared any "cost comparison study, cost-benefit analysis, or business case study analysis."... Also, "it appears that the rush to meet the deadlines in the proviso has resulted in many shortcomings in the evaluation of whether privatization is in the best public interest as it relates to cost savings and effective services."

The private prison advocates, flush with cash from the industry, tried again to pass a bill while pressing state officials to say that the privatizing was cost effective. The effort to pass this bill was a case study in self-dealing and influence peddling at its best, along with trying to force state officials to fudge the legal justifications. This story by Prison Legal News, written by David M. Reutter, outlines these efforts including forcing out a FDOC official who did not sign on to phony studies, a state official who wrote up some of the review contracts to benefit her husband's firm, blatant conflicts of interest by a hired consultant to the state to study the problems, attempts to document results after the fact and whipping up unproven claims that the state prison system would save 7 percent a year by privatizing these prisons...

[Demeter]

17. ON THE WEEKEND

We will be conflating gangsters and gangster movies with Nora Ephron and romantic comedy, and then use both to explore this new world of Obamneycare.

I am hoping that by then the shock will have worn off, or become a permanent form of nerve damage. It doesn't matter which, so long as I can function again....

It's 9:30 PM and it's finally dropped down to 89F out there....I wouldn't be surprised if it was hotter in Ann Arbor than in Tansy's Arizona desert today. Dust Bowl, here we come!

[Tansy_Gold]

24. Back porch thermometer

4:00 p.m. and 109 degrees. No rain on the horizon, but humidity jumped to 16% today.

[Demeter]

19. Meanwhile, Europe Slowly Sinks By Ed Kilgore

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_06/meanwhile_europe_slowly_sinks038232.php

Here was the Guardian’s Ian Traynor late yesterday with the most important development prior to today’s EU summit:

Germany has flatly ruled out any pooling of eurozone debt in response to the single currency crisis, seeming to set the scene for clashes at an EU summit that looks unlikely to take any big decisions to quickly stabilise the euro.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, sharply criticised a seven-page blueprint drawn up by four senior EU leaders on opening the way to a eurozone political federation.

She made it clear she would not yield to pressure to move towards the common issuance of eurozone debt in the form of eurobonds, to lower the cost of borrowing for vulnerable countries such as Spain and Italy.

Unless this is just posturing for the cameras and the leverage, this could be very bad news for the European and global economies.

Today markets are dropping; there are rumors Italian P.M. Mario Monti may resign; and things are tense all round. If there’s going to be a breakthrough, it’s certainly taking its time to arrive.

**********************************************************************************

Ed Kilgore is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly. He is is managing editor for The Democratic Strategist, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and a Special Correspondent for The New Republic.

[Demeter]

21. THAT GUARDIAN ARTICLE: Germany rules out pooling of eurozone debt

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/27/germany-eurozone-eurobond-debt-angela-merkel

...Merkel's tough stance appeared to open up the prospects of a clash with Mario Monti, the Italian prime minister, who is trying to restructure Italy's creaking economy but is impotent in the face of the financial markets raising the price he pays to borrow. Italy was forced to offer a yield of 2.96% to sell six-month bills, up from 2.1% a month ago. Its benchmark 10-year yield was up slightly at 6.22% and faces an important test with an auction of €5.5bn (£4.4bn) of five and 10-year bonds. There were also no signs of any concessions from Merkel towards President François Hollande of France, who will use the summit to claim he has forced the EU or the eurozone to adopt policies shifting the emphasis from austerity and spending cuts to a growth and jobs agenda.

The summit is likely to agree TO a "growth pact," nominally dedicating €130bn to foster job creation and infrastructure projects. But the scheme is essentially an exercise in repackaging already agreed measures or re-directing already committed EU funds. Merkel told parliament in Berlin, before going off to Paris to see Hollande, that she would not allow "Germany to be overstretched" by bankrolling borrowing to save the euro. Unusually, she predicted "controversial discussions" at the two-day summit, signalling that she was ready for a row.

"I fear that at [the summit] there will again be far too much talk about all possible ideas for common liability and far too little about better controls and structural measures," she said. Eurobonds, eurobills, or a debt redemption fund – all ways of pooling eurozone debt liability – were illegal and counter-productive, Merkel said.

On Tuesday, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council who chairs the summits, announced an ambitious plan to build a eurozone political union within a decade, entailing the surrender of national powers to Brussels. Merkel attacked the plan as again being too keen on pooling liability with not enough emphasis on fiscal discipline. Senior French officials said, by contrast, that Hollande was "at ease" with the blueprint, which was "balanced."...EU and French officials agreed that the two-day summit is the most important in years, probably since the 1990s, but that it could end in a stalemate that rattles the markets and increases the pressure on the euro from Monday. There was talk in Brussels of coming up with short-term measures to relieve the market pressure on Spain and Italy.
....................................................................

The summit is likely to take the first steps towards establishing an EU or eurozone banking union, with the aim of setting up common systems for winding up bad banks, recapitalising them, and standing behind savers' deposits under the overall authority of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Britain wants nothing to do with it and there are certain to be conflicts in the months ahead as the Cameron government seeks to quarantine the City from the new regime's remit. But the banking union proposal is hugely complex. The devil is in the detail. While many of the governments say they support it, they will be at odds over its scope and powers.

A third of EU countries also look likely to press ahead with moves to launch a levy on financial transactions or Tobin tax. The tax is strongly supported by Hollande and by Austria. Merkel said that the Germans had signed up nine countries, the number required for so-called "enhanced cooperation" policies under the Lisbon Treaty Critics say introducing the tax in only nine countries will distort the market and trigger an exodus of financial institutions to other places. Adherents say you have to start somewhere and more will join later.

Britain is prepared to provide more than £1bn to help recapitalise the European Investment bank to stimulate growth in the EU. The summit in Brussels will examine proposals to increase the "paid-in capital" of the EIB, which underwrites investment projects, by £8bn. Britain has a 16% shareholding in the EIB which means it would provide £1.28bn.

[Demeter]

22. No one can agree on how to fix Europe (in one crazy Venn diagram) by Brad Plumer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/06/25/no-one-can-agree-on-how-to-fix-europe-in-one-crazy-venn-diagram/

Another week, another European summit. On Thursday, E.U. leaders will huddle together in Brussels to try and fix the euro zone. And no one has high hopes — financial markets are all tanking Monday because, apparently, they’re already gloomy about the outcome...Why so much pessimism? One problem is that the leaders of the euro zone’s four biggest economies — Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Francois Hollande, Spain’s Mariano Rajoy, and Italy’s Mario Monti — can’t agree on what steps need to be taken to get Europe growing again. This Venn diagram from a new Exane BNP Paribas report (pdf) illustrates.



They all agree that growth is the answer. It’s just tough to see how they get there. In the middle are the handful of consensus items: The euro zone should get a tiny — possibly very tiny — stimulus by giving the European Infrastructure Bank more money. The E.U. will also slap a small tax on all financial transactions. And yet, as BNP Paribas notes, “the growth pact in its current form is likely to have a very limited impact on growth and hence is not a game changer.”

Meanwhile, there are plenty of other ideas to boost European growth, but it’s tough to get all four European leaders to agree. Hollande, Monti and Rajoy all want to carry out austerity measures at a more gradual pace, for instance, but Merkel is resistant. And Hollande has plenty of grand ideas (like “fiscal transfers,” in which richer countries would give poorer countries free money, essentially) that no else seems to like.

The BNP report also offers a broader preview of what to expect from this week’s summit. Many analysts expect that officials will approve the European Stability Mechanism, the new bailout fund (which is too small to save Spain and Italy should those countries get into bond-market trouble). They’ll also likely sign off on the modest growth package list above. But the real mystery is whether they’ll take additional steps — whether it’s giving Greece more flexibility in pursuing its deficit goals or pushing for a banking union. So far, few onlookers are optimistic.

[Demeter]

23. The 5 possible parts of a “master plan” to save the euro by Brad Plumer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-would-a-master-plan-for-fixing-europe-look-like/2012/06/11/gJQA61SMVV_blog.html?wprss=rss_ezra-klein

...European officials have hinted, rather cryptically, that they’re working on a “master plan” to salvage the euro zone. They won’t, however, divulge much in the way of detail. So here’s a rundown of some of the elements that might be in such a plan:

1) A banking union: One of the euro zone’s most urgent crises is the slow-motion bank run occurring across Europe. If you have euros stashed in a Spanish or Greek bank, your deposits are technically insured by the Spanish or Greek governments. But what if those governments themselves run out of money? Or what if those countries decide to leave the euro? Suddenly, your deposits won’t be quite worth as much. So, quite reasonably, depositors in those countries are yanking their euros out of these banks and sending them to safe havens like Germany. And that’s making financial institutions in Greece and Spain even more rickety, which is hurting economic growth and deepening the crisis...One way to stop the bank run and re-instill confidence in the banking system is to loan the banks more money. That’s what Spain recently announced it would do, borrowing money from the rest of Europe to inject into the banks. But, remember, people are worried about Spain itself running out of money. So this move hasn’t quelled the panic...An alternative would be a European-wide “banking union.” This would entail some sort of pan-European deposit insurance, so that if a bank in Spain or Italy goes bust, all of Europe would help bail out the depositors. This would have to be combined with some sort of broader bank supervision as well as a way to restructure or close failing banks. The system would resemble the federal deposit insurance that the United States has — if a bank in Texas goes bust, the federal government guarantees (through the FDIC) that ordinary people gets their money back. That’s why bank runs in the United States are rare. The catch? For one, taxpayers in other euro zone countries would be responsible for how a bank in, say, Italy behaves. There’s the risk of subsidizing irresponsible lending. Second, any system for Europe to bail out banks directly — rather than funneling the money through, say, the Spanish government — could require E.U. treaty changes that could take months or years to ratify. Not ideal for stopping an immediate crisis.

2) Eurobonds: There’s a second crisis plaguing the euro zone. Right now, lenders and investors are nervous that a bunch of individual countries on the euro — from Spain to Portugal to Greece — might not repay their debts. So the cost of borrowing money for those countries has been spiking at various points. (Spain and Italy are the latest casualties.) That, in turn, makes those nations’ debt crises even worse, which raises the risk of a horrible death spiral, and so on. The logic behind eurobonds is that, rather than individual countries trying to borrow money on their own, the entire continent would borrow money together, as a unit. Spain and Greece would, in effect, pay the same interest rates on their debts as France and Germany do. Since the euro zone as a whole is large and rich, that would calm the panic over individual countries. And troubled nations would get a bailout. If Portugal only had to pay the average interest rate of euro members, its annual debt payments would fall by €15 billion, or 9 percent of its GDP. Not surprisingly, German politicians aren’t tickled by this idea — Germany would have to pay much more to borrow money under this arrangement. So one recent compromise proposal, according to Der Spiegel, is to split country borrowing into two parts. Individual nations would still be on the hook for debt that they’ve already racked up. But new debt could be financed by joint eurobonds. It remains to be seen whether this would be big enough to help troubled periphery countries.

3) More stimulus: If euro zone countries could only grow at a faster pace, their large debt burdens would be less of a concern. But how do you get Europe’s countries to grow faster? One proposal now in the works is for various euro zone countries to chip in about $12.47 billion to the European Investment Bank, which will fund infrastructure projects around the continent. The upside here is that most E.U. governments are on board with this idea. The downside is that this is a tiny stimulus. Remember, economic growth in many euro zone countries is still being weighed down by austerity measures — tax hikes and spending cuts. Analysts at ING recently estimated that core countries (like Germany and France) would need to provide stimulus worth about 1 percent of their GDP to boost growth in places like Italy and Spain by 1 to 2 percentage points. Or the European Central Bank could provide some more inflation and monetary stimulus to boost growth. But these latter, more drastic proposals have all been deemed “politically unrealistic.”

4) But also… more oversight: You’ll notice that most of the ideas above are basically schemes of transferring money from taxpayers in “core countries” like Germany, France, Netherlands, and Finland to troubled countries like Spain, Greece, and Portugal. Yet German politicians aren’t just going to hand this cash out freely. They want new conditions that would restrain other European countries from taking on new debt and getting into this crisis again. One possibility that’s been floated: All countries would have to receive explicit permission before borrowing more than 3 percent of GDP.

5) Preparing for Greek turmoil: ...The big question is whether this new GREEK government will repudiate an earlier agreement that gave Greece billions of dollars in aid in exchange for new spending cuts. If Greece does repudiate the agreement, there’s a possibility that the country would be forced to leave the euro. According to Reuters, euro zone officials are quietly discussing how to prepare for this scenario. That would include everything from limiting the size of ATM withdrawals to tightening up the borders and constraining the flow of capital — all in order to prevent further bank runs and alleviate fears that Spain or Italy might leave next (those countries are big enough that their exit would be really unwieldy).

So that, in a nutshell, is what a master plan might look like. Here’s how Der Spiegel sums it up: “Germany would have to take on additional risks within the euro zone. In return, southern Europeans would have to grant Brussels control over their national budgets — according to German principles.” Now who wants to bet on the odds of this happening?

[Demeter]

27. Open letter to a good friend and colleague (who happened to become Greece’s Finance Minister yesterd

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/06/27/open-letter-to-a-good-friend-and-colleague-who-happened-to-become-greeces-finance-minister-yesterday/


...You must bind the Europeans to one or two moves that will deter any thoughts of Greece being chucked out of the Eurozone within the next few months. Moves that will, at the same time, help shift the Econfin agenda in ways that may help avert the impending euro-deconstruction. Which moves?

Move 1: Seek no new loans, even though you know perfectly well that the coffers are empty and the timeline of Greece’s repayments is well and truly off track. Instead of loans, propose that the money that went into Greek banks (the so-called recapitalisation program) does not count as part of Greek national debt and, in exchange, the EFSF retains common shares of these banks (in proportion to the money it placed into them) while the ECB takes it to itself to supervise the said banks (even wind them down, in an orderly fashion if need be). Once the crisis is over, the EFSF can sell these shares at multiples of the purchasing price, thus ensuring that the European taxpayers get their money back.

The advantage of this move is three-fold: It ‘liberates’ 30 billion euros from Bailout Mk2 for other (productive) uses; it creates a de facto alliance between Athens, Rome and Madrid; it turns european institutions into partners of the Greek banking system, thus giving our partners good cause to cease and desist from all talk of expelling Greece from the Eurozone.

Move 2: Based on a multitude of similar examples (e.g. Britain’s loan repayments to the USA after the WW2), demand a moratorium on repayments to the ECB, the IMF and the EU for one year and until the recession ends. From then on, repayments ought to be linked to Greek GDP growth. The advantage of this is that it gives the troika a genuine motive to see the end of Greece’s vicious recession and, to boot, offer Hollande’s team an opening for arguing in favour of a more dynamic involvement of the European Investment Bank (and the European Investment Fund) in pursuing growth strategies for the whole of Europe.

In short, your main challenge is to bind our European partners to Greece’s recovery, to ending all speculation about a Grexit, and to moves that resonate with genuine attempts to save the euro. “It won’t be easy” is the understatement of the century. I very much doubt that it is feasible. What I do know is that, otherwise, if Greece simply secures an extension or more money or looser bailout conditions, the country will almost certainly be expelled from the euro and the euro will cease to exist shortly afterwards. Already, many old acquaintances of your (of which Hans-Werner Sinn is the most visible) are working towards those dystopian ends.

[Demeter]

28. To Save the Euro, the Eurozone Governments Must Stand By Greece By Marshall Auerback

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/06/to-save-the-euro-the-eurozone-governments-must-stand-by-greece.html


...In the United States we have 50 states and one central bank. Likewise in other Federal systems such as Canada and Australia. In all cases, there are fund transfers across states. And these are permanent institutional arrangements. It is highly likely that West Virginia or Mississippi will remain long term recipients of Federal transfer payments, even if they remain “uncompetitive” vis a vis, say, Texas or California.

But there cannot be any prospect of a secession of a state that will bring with it its own devalued currency. Hence, there is no incentive for deposit flights from banks in one state or region to another. Therefore, private markets, with a little help from the Fed, will close the financial circuit to the extent there are such fund transfers. The European Monetary System was supposed to work that way. And as long as no one worried about any country leaving the euro, it did. But once the risk of euro exit on Europe’s periphery raised its ugly head, the euro system became completely different. Peter Garber argued that, given such a perceived prospect, the euro system was a perfect mechanism for a deposit run. And once doubts arose in 2009 about a possible euro exit by Greece and Ireland, a deposit run began – and in earnest.

Openly discussing the possibility of a “Grexit” then, simply exacerbates the current problem. It is akin to cutting an artery to demonstrate that one is serious about “discipline” and self-sacrifice”, whilst failing to realise that cutting that artery could well cause the entire patient to bleed to death. And whether it’s Greece which withdraws (or is booted out), or Italy, or Spain, very few people have, as Simon Johnson recently noted:

gotten their heads around dissolution risk. Here’s what it means: If you have a contract that requires you to be paid in euros and the euro no longer exists, what you will receive is unclear.” Why would that dissolution risk be mitigated if Greece were to exit the Eurozone?

Today, the euro is slowly but surely bleeding a death via the bank deposit runs that are now afflicting much of the periphery and gradually extending further into the core. Commenting on Frank Veneroso’s analysis of the bank run, my colleague Randy Wray argued:

Euroland is now in the midst of a massive run on periphery bank deposits. If you think about it, anyone who still has a Euro deposit in any bank other than a German bank is either a philanthropist or a fool. Moving deposits to German banks is a sure bet: if Germany leaves the EMU depositors will get appreciating Marks, and if Germany remains in the EMU depositors have the safest Euro deposits available.

Why take a risk that Italy or Spain or Greece will leave the EMU, default on Euro-denominated deposits, and redenominate them into a depreciating currency?

Paradoxically, the only way to alleviate this perception is for the European authorities to stand by its weakest member, in order to enhance the perception of the euro’s permanence as a monetary union. That means the line in the sand must be drawn in Greece, not Spain or Italy, as politically unpalatable as that might be to the German public....

[Ghost Dog]

32. Meeting and discussion are ongoing. No outcome yet. So USUK media whores

are just wanking, clit-teasing, right now (gotta sell the boss sumthin' to print). Or worse.

[Demeter]

25. The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America's Middle Class By Jeff Tietz

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-sharp-sudden-decline-of-americas-middle-class-20120622

They had good, stable jobs - until the recession hit. Now they're living out of their cars in parking lots...Each evening, 150 people in 113 vehicles spend the night in 23 parking lots in Santa Barbara. The lots are part of Safe Parking, a program that offers overnight permits to people living in their vehicles. The nonprofit that runs the program, New Beginnings Counseling Center, requires participants to have a valid driver's license and current registration and insurance. The number of vehicles per lot ranges from one to 15, and lot hours are generally from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Fraternization among those who sleep in the lots is implicitly discouraged – the fainter the program's presence, the less likely it will provoke complaints from neighboring homes and churches and businesses.

The Safe Parking program is not the product of a benevolent government. Santa Barbara's mild climate and sheltered beachfront have long attracted the homeless, and the city has sometimes responded with punitive measures. (An appeals court compared one city ordinance forbidding overnight RV parking to anti-Okie laws in the 1930s.) To aid Santa Barbara's large homeless population, local activists launched the Safe Parking program in 2003. But since the Great Recession began, the number of lots and participants in the program has doubled. By 2009, formerly middle-class people like Janis Adkins had begun turning up – teachers and computer repairmen and yoga instructors seeking refuge in the city's parking­ lots. Safe-parking programs in other cities have experienced a similar influx of middle-class exiles, and their numbers are not expected to decrease anytime soon. It can take years for unemployed workers from the middle class to burn through their resources – savings, credit, salable belongings, home equity, loans from family and friends. Some 5.4 million Americans have been without work for at least six months, and an estimated 750,000 of them are completely broke or heading inexorably toward destitution. In California, where unemployment remains at 11 percent, middle-class refugees like Janis Adkins are only the earliest arrivals. "She's the tip of the iceberg," says Nancy Kapp, the coordinator of the Safe Parking program. "There are many people out there who haven't hit bottom yet, but they're on their way – they're on their way."

..."When you come to me, you've hit rock bottom," Kapp says. "You've already done everything you possibly could to avoid being homeless. You maybe have a teeny bit of savings left. People are crying, they're saying, 'I've never experienced this before. I've never been homeless.' They don't want to mix with homeless people. They're like, 'I'm not going over to those people' – sometimes they call them 'those people.' So now they're lost, they're humiliated, they're rejected, they're scared, and they're very ashamed. I'm worried about the psychological damage it does when you have a place and then, all of a sudden, you're in your car. You have to be depressed just from the fall itself, from losing everything and not understanding how it could happen."

...However long it takes to lose everything, to get to the point where you're driving away from your repossessed home, the final unraveling seems eye-blink fast, because there is no way to imagine it. Even if you've been unemployed for a year and are months-delinquent on your mortgage, you still won't have a mental category for your own homelessness; it's impossible to project yourself into the scenario. The reality, when it occurs and endures, seems to have sprung from nowhere...


IT GOES ON FOR 5 PAGES...

[Tansy_Gold]

26. Remember that this is the objective

-- and I use that word intentionally -- of the far right.

"Brother, you asked for it."


And you got it. . . . .

[wordpix]

78. I just heard a PR type ad for XOM about the corpos' contributing to a good cause - about damn time!

These oil corps are worth more than the US gov and continue to feed off the poor and middle class. WE have to pay higher taxes so they can have their free security (armed forces) overseas, WE have to pay for health impacts and environmental clean up.



And now they're so "good," they're contributing to a good cause. Big F-ing deal.

[mnhtnbb]

98. Wow. Read the entire article. This country is becoming a mean and cruel place.

[Demeter]

104. Ever since Reagan--30 years of decline

[Hotler]

106. But, but, but......

This is America the greatest country in the world and if you are willing to work hard and be accountable you can become anything you want. Just put forth the the same amount of effort and hard work that the wealthy do and you can reach your goals. Sitting around in parks during the day and parking lots at night feeling sorry for yourself won't cut it. Reach down and pull up on those bootstraps you lazy fuckers.

[DemReadingDU]

109. "The American Dream"

"Its called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin


video and transcript
http://shoqvalue.com/george-carlin-on-the-american-dream-with-transcript

[Demeter]

29. 11:15 PM AND IT'S DOWN TO 85f AND 71% HUMIDITY

or a heat index of 95F...I'm giving up waiting, the windows aren't opening tonight.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESSOR, IT'S NOT EVEN JULY YET!

[Demeter]

35. 4:45 am and 74.4F, 88% humidity, heat index 73F

(Insomnia, the gift that keeps on giving)

[DemReadingDU]

43. I was out walking my dogs at 5am. and it was already 82F HOT

Last edited Fri Jun 29, 2012, 07:59 AM - Edit history (1)

humidity was 76%

I was ready to get back to my air conditioning after only half hour, but my dogs kept on going for the usual hour walk.



oops, spelling error. Although 'aid' conditioning is appropriated too!

[Demeter]

45. It's down to 69, so I'm going to go water

in the vain hope that something might survive...

[Demeter]

49. Yesterday's official high 105F

Hasn't been this hot since the '60's...although the last time the West caught fire, in 1988, it was close...

[Roland99]

60. My mom said it was 105 in her (Ky) town yesterday

Now Ky's had heat like that but it's usually in July/August...rarely in June (although we're almost in July )

I remember a heat index topping 125F just SW of Louisville several summers ago.

Was 103 in Louisville yesterday, beat the previous record set in 1944.

[Warpy]

76. Last night certainly sucked here in the high desert

While we don't have the humidity, we do have the heat and it's been brutal. It was still 88 degrees at midnight, the last time I checked the local weather site. It's now nearly 9 AM here and already 90 degrees inside the house.

I'm thinking that the next major expense for this dump isn't going to be the kitchen or bathroom remodel it so desperately needs, it's going to be a heat pump for heating and cooling. The balky swamp cooler just isn't cutting it these days.

[Demeter]

36. 6 Ways the Big Banks Are Getting Back-Door Bailouts and Making Big Money From Taxpayers

http://www.alternet.org/story/156005/6_ways_the_big_banks_are_getting_back-door_bailouts_and_making_big_money_from_taxpayers?page=entire

...Jamie Dimon, grilled this week in front of Congress over JP Morgan Chase's massive recent losses, famously complained last year that some regulations are “anti-American.” And Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, warned ominously that increased regulations might make the bank seek out another location to do its business: “Operations can be moved globally and capital can be accessed globally,” he said. Even while some of them occasionally have the grace to admit that they wouldn't still be around without the massive taxpayer bailouts of 2008 (and continued access to ultra-cheap loans from the Federal Reserve), they still like to claim that they're free-market entities, subject to the whims of the invisible hand, and that the government's meddling can only be destructive.

Yet those same banks are happy to make their money from the same governments about which they love to whine. Most of us know about the big, official bailouts. But the banks get much more than that from federal and state governments. Those lobbying dollars and campaign donations aren't just to keep regulators away; they lead to lucrative contracts where banks are paid to administer government services, and are put in position to skim fees off the very same taxpayers who pay for those services.

The big banks have their tentacles in every aspect of government—despite right-wing hand-wringing about government bureaucracy, the big banks are often actually the ones coming between you and your money. So who's really getting rich off “welfare”? JP Morgan and Bank of America...

1. Big Contracts for Food Stamps

Suzanne Merkelson at Republic Reports points out that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—the program formerly known as food stamps, which provides food aid to families—increased to $72 billion last year (from $30 billion in 2007). And as the lousy economy keeps people relying on benefits to feed their families, big banks keep benefiting from the program too. A new paper [PDF] from Michele Simon finds that SNAP “represents the largest, most overlooked corporate subsidy in the farm bill.” Merkelson writes:

While SNAP is a federal program, USDA and the states work together to administer the program. States contract with banks, who authorize payments (Electronic Bank Transfers or EBTs) from the Federal Reserve to retailers. J.P. Morgan Chase has contracts in half the states “indicating a lack of competition and significant market power,” according to Simon. How much are these deals worth? In New York, one seven-year deal originally gave the bank $112 million for its services, but was recently amended to add another $14.3 million.

JP Morgan spends a bunch of money lobbying the Department of Agriculture on this program, making sure they get what they want—a big paycheck from state taxpayers. And the best part? When you have a problem with your JP Morgan SNAP benefits card? You call a JP Morgan call center for help—and that call center just might be in India. So to recap: big bank makes money off a program that helps people who are unemployed—and creates jobs in India with that money, rather than creating them here in the US.

2. Making Money Off the Unemployed

The banks get paid directly by the state to handle the SNAP program, but that's far from the only program designed to help the victims of the lousy economy that has turned into a cash cow for the banks that created the crisis in the first place. Unemployment benefits in 41 states are provided through Wall Street giants like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase. In South Carolina, for instance, customers get a prepaid debit card from Bank of America to access their unemployment benefits—which is, of course, fee-free at a Bank of America ATM. But for rural South Carolinians, the nearest Bank of America ATM might be 50 miles away. Shawana Busby, a South Carolina user of the program, tells the Huffington Post that she's probably spent $350 in fees to access her benefits—which are $264 a week. Another user of the cards, Sandra Gortman, tells the Huffington Post that she was pressured to adopt the prepaid card, and then when she used it to put gas in her car, the gas station put a hold on her card for $75, which didn't come off for three days. When she called to check on the hold, she was charged a customer service fee. (The bank has now eliminated such fees.) The bank also collects a 3-cent fee from the state each time it “facilitates” a transfer on a prepaid card. It also gets those fees for direct-depositing unemployment benefits into someone's bank account.

3. Sweet Campus Deals to Prey on Students While Distributing Federal Student Aid Money

A recent report from USPIRG, “The Campus Debit Card Trap,” dug into the deals that universities, both public and private, make with banks to produce student ID cards and more significantly, actually handle and disburse student financial aid. In other words, young people who've already signed up for a lifetime of student debt are being preyed on further by banks that can charge them fees just to access their money. (And, remember, those same big banks are already making big bucks on student aid.) USPIRG found that 32 of the 50 largest public 4-year universities and 26 of the largest 50 community colleges—the schools in part supported by taxpayers—had deals with banks to provide debit or prepaid cards for students. The campuses often get money from the banks for the privilege of access to students, and the banks then make their money back in fees—and possibly other ways, too. Mela Heestand, writing for AlterNet about the protests at the University of California Davis that drove US Bank to close its campus bank branch, pointed out that “university contracts with banks encourage tuition hikes, because banks stand to profit directly from rising tuition, while the administration comes to rely on funding from bank contracts.” US Bank has agreements at 52 campuses around the country. (After the protests that shuttered the US Bank branch, twelve activists were arrested and face up to 11 years in prison and $1 million in fines.) Students are the ones bearing the costs of access to money they're already paying interest on, and USPIRG points out that the fees are “steep and frequent,” including per-swipe fees, inactivity fees (yes, you read that right), overdraft fees and fees to reload their prepaid cards. And financial aid that is paid to students through a debit card is subject, just like any other card, to ATM fees if students use an ATM not owned by the bank that currently has their money. The Department of Education has rules on this practice, banning banks from charging fees if they provide “convenient” ATMs for the students' use, but their definition of “convenient” is vague—leaving students at the mercy of a single ATM on campus, which produces long lines and leaves no alternative if it breaks or runs out of cash.

4. Cashing in on Tax Returns

It's not only your unemployment, financial aid, or SNAP benefits that the big banks control these days—they also might come between you and your tax return. Once again, South Carolina takes the lead, claiming to save the taxpayer money by cutting a deal with Bank of America, this time to send out tax returns in the form of—you guessed it—prepaid debit cards from Bank of America. And just like with unemployment benefits and financial aid (or your regular, consumer bank card), the bank is making its money collecting fees from people trying to access their own money.

“They’re not even nickel and diming people, they’re five-dollaring and 10-dollaring people,” Sue Berkowitz, Director of the Appleseed Legal Justice Center, says.

Oh, and the bank got this deal through a no-bid contract—the Department of Revenue calls them “the best fit” for the program. The program isn't mandatory but, the Palmetto Public Record notes, it's opt-out, not opt-in. Which means that unless you request otherwise, your money will be given to you through Bank of America—which in addition to sticking you with ATM fees and other charges, is going to make interest on your money while it's sitting in their account.

5. Refinancing Homes Means Big Bucks for Banks

Getting the big banks to refinance mortgages and help people facing foreclosure stay in their homes has been a huge fight, with activists around the country putting their bodies on the line, physically occupying homes to keep residents in them. Now, the program that's supposed to help those struggling homeowners looks instead to be a big fat handout to the same banks that were preying on borrowers to begin with. According to the Wall Street Journal, banks that service mortgages could make as much as $12 billion by refinancing under the newest version of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP 2.0). And the borrowers? Oh, they'll save money, too—somewhere around $2.5 billion, maybe $5 billion tops. The program is supposed to let underwater borrowers who've made all their payments in good faith refinance their mortgages at current market value. But, Bonnie Kavoussi at the Huffington Post notes, instead those banks are able to charge steep fees and above-market interest rates. Shaun Donovan, the current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development calls it “a monopoly on refinancing,” saying at a Senate hearing, "Whoever holds their current loan, whoever is the servicer, they can charge borrowers—and we're seeing this—very high fees."

6. Profiting Off The Very Idea of Another Big Bailout

In case all this profit enabled by the government wasn't enough for you, perhaps the most disturbing recent bank-related news is a report by the “wild socialists” at Bloomberg that, “JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fund and our own analysis of bank balance sheets.” They explain:

In recent decades, governments and central banks around the world have developed a consistent pattern of behavior when trouble strikes banks that are large or interconnected enough to threaten the broader economy: They step in to ensure that all the bank’s creditors, not just depositors, are paid in full. Although typically necessary to prevent permanent economic damage, such bailouts encourage a reckless confidence among creditors. They assume the government will always make them whole, so they become willing to lend at lower rates, particularly to systemically important banks.

In other words, because we bailed them out once, the expectation that we'll do it again is actually making the banks money. Other lenders are willing to lend money to the “systemically important banks” (read: banks that got bailed out by the US government because they were “too big to fail”) at lower interest rates because they presume that they'll always get their money back since the government will make sure the banks don't go belly up. So the biggest banks are paying less in interest than medium-size and small banks--and that adds up to billions. So, they're profiting just from being too big to fail. And each time there's a crisis, the expectation of government support actually grows—as of 2009, Bloomberg notes, they're saving about 0.8 percent every time they borrow. The total benefit to the big banks just of the expectation that there will be another bailout? About $76 billion a year—which Bloomberg points out is equal to their total profit from the past twelve months, and is more than the federal government spends each year on education.

Brad Sherman, a Representative from California, asked Jamie Dimon this week, before Congress, “[H]ow can medium size banks compete against you when your cost of capital is reduced by 80 basis points, 0.8 percent, because of a belief that if they go under we'll let 'em go under, but if you go under we'll bail out your creditors?”

Dimon, of course, claimed that it wasn't true, and that he borrowed in the marketplace, “with the smartest people in the world.” But it looks like the smartest people in the world are getting a whole lot of help—and making a whole lot of money—off of college students and taxpayers, off the working poor and unemployed in the U.S.

[Demeter]

37. Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule

http://www.alternet.org/story/156071/conservative_southern_values_revived%3A_how_a_brutal_strain_of_american_aristocrats_have_come_to_rule_america_?page=entire


It's been said that the rich are different than you and me. What most Americans don't know is that they're also quite different from each other, and that which faction is currently running the show ultimately makes a vast difference in the kind of country we are. Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution. Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that's corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here's what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now.

North versus South: Two Definitions of Liberty

Michael Lind first called out the existence of this conflict in his 2006 book, Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics. He argued that much of American history has been characterized by a struggle between two historical factions among the American elite -- and that the election of George W. Bush was a definitive sign that the wrong side was winning. For most of our history, American economics, culture and politics have been dominated by a New England-based Yankee aristocracy that was rooted in Puritan communitarian values, educated at the Ivies and marinated in an ethic of noblesse oblige (the conviction that those who possess wealth and power are morally bound to use it for the betterment of society). While they've done their share of damage to the notion of democracy in the name of profit (as all financial elites inevitably do), this group has, for the most part, tempered its predatory instincts with a code that valued mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and imbued them with the belief that once you made your nut, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Your own legacy depended on this. Among the presidents, this strain gave us both Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Poppy Bush -- nerdy, wonky intellectuals who, for all their faults, at least took the business of good government seriously. Among financial elites, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet still both partake strongly of this traditional view of wealth as power to be used for good. Even if we don't like their specific choices, the core impulse to improve the world is a good one -- and one that's been conspicuously absent in other aristocratic cultures.

Which brings us to that other great historical American nobility -- the plantation aristocracy of the lowland South, which has been notable throughout its 400-year history for its utter lack of civic interest, its hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, its love of hierarchy, its fear of technology and progress, its reliance on brutality and violence to maintain “order,” and its outright celebration of inequality as an order divinely ordained by God. As described by Colin Woodard in American Nations: The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, the elites of the Deep South are descended mainly from the owners of sugar, rum and cotton plantations from Barbados -- the younger sons of the British nobility who'd farmed up the Caribbean islands, and then came ashore to the southern coasts seeking more land. Woodward described the culture they created in the crescent stretching from Charleston, SC around to New Orleans this way:

It was a near-carbon copy of the West Indian slave state these Barbadians had left behind, a place notorious even then for its inhumanity....From the outset, Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror. Its expansionist ambitions would put it on a collision course with its Yankee rivals, triggering military, social, and political conflicts that continue to plague the United States to this day.

David Hackett Fischer, whose Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways In America informs both Lind's and Woodard's work, described just how deeply undemocratic the Southern aristocracy was, and still is. He documents how these elites have always feared and opposed universal literacy, public schools and libraries, and a free press. (Lind adds that they have historically been profoundly anti-technology as well, far preferring solutions that involve finding more serfs and throwing them at a problem whenever possible. Why buy a bulldozer when 150 convicts on a chain gang can grade your road instead?) Unlike the Puritan elites, who wore their wealth modestly and dedicated themselves to the common good, Southern elites sank their money into ostentatious homes and clothing and the pursuit of pleasure -- including lavish parties, games of fortune, predatory sexual conquests, and blood sports involving ritualized animal abuse spectacles. But perhaps the most destructive piece of the Southern elites' worldview is the extremely anti-democratic way it defined the very idea of liberty. In Yankee Puritan culture, both liberty and authority resided mostly with the community, and not so much with individuals. Communities had both the freedom and the duty to govern themselves as they wished (through town meetings and so on), to invest in their collective good, and to favor or punish individuals whose behavior enhanced or threatened the whole (historically, through community rewards such as elevation to positions of public authority and trust; or community punishments like shaming, shunning or banishing). Individuals were expected to balance their personal needs and desires against the greater good of the collective -- and, occasionally, to make sacrifices for the betterment of everyone. (This is why the Puritan wealthy tended to dutifully pay their taxes, tithe in their churches and donate generously to create hospitals, parks and universities.) In return, the community had a solemn and inescapable moral duty to care for its sick, educate its young and provide for its needy -- the kind of support that maximizes each person's liberty to live in dignity and achieve his or her potential. A Yankee community that failed to provide such support brought shame upon itself. To this day, our progressive politics are deeply informed by this Puritan view of ordered liberty.

In the old South, on the other hand, the degree of liberty you enjoyed was a direct function of your God-given place in the social hierarchy. The higher your status, the more authority you had, and the more "liberty" you could exercise -- which meant, in practical terms, that you had the right to take more "liberties" with the lives, rights and property of other people. Like an English lord unfettered from the Magna Carta, nobody had the authority to tell a Southern gentleman what to do with resources under his control. In this model, that's what liberty is. If you don't have the freedom to rape, beat, torture, kill, enslave, or exploit your underlings (including your wife and children) with impunity -- or abuse the land, or enforce rules on others that you will never have to answer to yourself -- then you can't really call yourself a free man. When a Southern conservative talks about "losing his liberty," the loss of this absolute domination over the people and property under his control -- and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws that he was once exempt from -- is what he's really talking about. In this view, freedom is a zero-sum game. Anything that gives more freedom and rights to lower-status people can't help but put serious limits on the freedom of the upper classes to use those people as they please. It cannot be any other way. So they find Yankee-style rights expansions absolutely intolerable, to the point where they're willing to fight and die to preserve their divine right to rule.

Once we understand the two different definitions of "liberty" at work here, a lot of other things suddenly make much more sense...MORE, INCLUDING:

The Battle Between the Elites IT IS A HORRIFYING, TRUE ACCOUNT OF HOW WE GOT HERE, AND WHERE WE ARE GOING, ABSENT ANY OPPOSITION FROM WE THE PEOPLE...

MUST READ!

[Demeter]

38. THE DILBERT SOLUTION

[xchrom]

40. trying to stay cool...

[Demeter]

50. Talk about nothing left to lose!

[xchrom]

53. all i'm left with is a Charm Offensive...

[Demeter]

62. Well, you were half successful

[xchrom]

63. ...

[westerebus]

92. Uncle Frank!!!!

You said you were allergic to cats?

[xchrom]

41. WORD OF THE DAY: Sovereignty

http://www.businessinsider.com/word-of-the-day-sovereignty-2012-6



Here is an under-appreciated irony: One of the underlying themes of the European summit is the erosion of sovereignty for the sake of integration. In the US today, the Supreme Court decision on President Obama's national health care program, reinforces if not strengthens the power of the sovereign (in this case, to tax). The US state may have gotten stronger, while the European state is set to weaken.

The first day of the European summit contained a few surprises. First, many understood Germany's Schaueble's comments about being about to accept some mutualization of euro zone debt and would support short-term measures to deal with the financing problems effecting some governments (Spain and Italy), to be a shift in policy. It was not.

Schaueble set the conditions upon which Germany could agree on some shared liability for euro zone debt: if it was convinced that the path toward establishing centralized controls over national fiscal policy was irreversible. The Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying, "There will be no jointly guaranteed bonds without a common fiscal policy."

The second surprise was the willingness of Spain and Italy to cut their nose to spite their face, as it were. They say they will not support a 120-130 bln euro growth measures if there do not get support for their bond markets. Monti too separately made a gesture intended to demonstrate his resolve: He will not return to Rome, he says, without an agreement to support Italian bonds.


Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarcToMarket/~3/oPtRc-WVj-w/word-of-day-sovereignty.html#ixzz1zBBF5UCm

[xchrom]

42. Did Merkel Just Get Trounced?

http://www.businessinsider.com/did-merkel-just-get-trounced-2012-6

So far, investors have argued that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been the big loser at this week's EU summit.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy pushed an agenda to depress their borrowing costs and save their banks, forcing Germany to retrace its aversion to bailing out Southern Europe.
Further, Spain's bailout won an important concession as European institutions agreed to drop explicit seniority clauses in public funding provided to the banks.
That said, Germany saved face by requiring a banking authority to be established before Europe proceeds with plans to recapitalize banks through Europe's bailout funds. Here's the exact wording ot those contingencies from the EU summit statement released after discussions about this plan:
When an effective single supervisory mechanism is established, involving the ECB, for banks in the euro area the ESM could, following a regular decision, have the possibility to recapitalize banks directly. This would rely on appropriate conditionality, including compliance with state aid rules, which should be institution specific, sector-specific or economy-wide and would be formalised in a Memorandum of Understanding.
Further, Germany has said that it supports a slow fiscal integration, and banking union rather than direct help for sovereigns through debt mutualization avoids moving further towards this goal without the proper financial plumbing in place.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/did-merkel-just-get-trounced-2012-6#ixzz1zBCPYafa

[Demeter]

46. The West Has an Important Lesson to Learn

Last edited Fri Jun 29, 2012, 08:08 AM - Edit history (1)

You can't Have your (predator) banks and eat, too. To bend a proverb...

[Ghost Dog]

52. Let's raise a small cheer for this show of

force solidarity, then.

... The dramatic change in the bailout rules came after Italy and Spain forced leaders to remain at the summit overnight, blocking agreement on all other agenda items before getting a deal on short-term rescue measures...

/... http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5513d3d4-c19f-11e1-8eca-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1zB8If45F

[xchrom]

47. Europe summit surprises with bold moves

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-06-29-07-33-18

BRUSSELS (AP) -- After 18 disappointing summits, Europe's leaders appeared Friday to have finally come up with a set of short-term measures and long-term plans that show they are serious about solving their crippling debt crisis.

Meeting for the 19th time since the debt crisis exploded, leaders of the 17 countries that use the euro currency agreed they will let funds intended to bail out indebted governments funnel money directly to struggling banks as well. They said the move will "break the vicious circle" of bank bailouts piling debt onto already stressed governments.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy called it a "breakthrough."

The decision is a victory for Spain and Italy, whose borrowing costs have risen to near unsustainable levels despite their efforts to cut spending and reform their labor markets.


*** 2 old sayings come to mind: the proof is in the pudding and don't count your chickens til they are hatched.

[Demeter]

48. This Time for Sure!

&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwrel&NR=1&v=wmnHLUW8Z1o

[Roland99]

54. ah...cut out the middle man

more profits


or something.

[Roland99]

55. US Future rejoice now that Europe is finally fixed!! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

S&P 500 1,342.50 20.00 1.51%
DOW 12,671 145.00 1.16%
NASDAQ 2,566 38.50 1.52%

[Demeter]

85. The Farce Is Strong In This One

Who do they think they are fooling?

[Ghost Dog]

100. What are you suggesting? The USA is not good for its debt?

http://www.usdebtclock.org/#

Come on: let's see your accounts.

[Demeter]

56. EU Leaders Ease Debt-Crisis Rules on Spain

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/eu-leaders-ease-debt-crisis-rules-for-spain-as-merkel-retreats.html

Euro-area leaders agreed to relax conditions on emergency loans for Spanish banks and possible help for Italy as an outflanked German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave in on expanded steps to stem the debt crisis.

After 13 1/2 hours of talks ending at 4:30 a.m. in Brussels today, chiefs of the 17 euro countries dropped the requirement that taxpayers get preferred creditor status on aid to Spain’s blighted banks. They also opened the way to recapitalizing lenders directly with bailout funds once Europe sets up a single banking supervisor. Stocks and bonds in Spain and Italy surged and the euro rallied.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti welcomed the result, saying the agreement to consider short-term steps to ease borrowing costs “could be useful to Italy and many other states, too.”

The politicians struggled for consensus on reducing market pressure as surging borrowing costs in Italy and Spain stoked concern among investors and policy makers around the world that the currency union threatened to splinter and risk damaging the global economy. Euro governments were granted access to rescue loans without having to relinquish control of their economies.

“We agreed on short-term measures that should apply to Spain and Italy,” said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the group of euro finance ministers. “We will keep all options open to do the interventions that need to be done to calm the situation. There is a whole array of possible interventions and measures.”

WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

[Roland99]

58. taxpayers = suckers

[Demeter]

65. The Long Memory of “The Sick Man of Europe”

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-06-28/long-memory-%E2%80%9C-sick-man-europe%E2%80%9D

It’s astounding just how distorted the coverage of Germany’s role in some grand Eurozone bailout scheme has been—well, at least in the English-speaking mainstream media. Time after time, we’re confronted with the inanest headlines and reports that place German politicians, and particularly Chancellor Angela Merkel, on some kind of invisible verge where they will suddenly, and under tremendous international pressure, come to their senses and ... blink. And by blinking, Germany would agree to, guarantee, and fund all the panaceas regularly trotted out by those that need them, particularly Spain, Italy, and now loudest of all, due to its shaky megabanks, France. The lasted blast came from the Wall Street Journal where "Berlin Blinks on Shared Debt". Others regurgitated it, including MarketWatch. Yet, it contradicted everything that either German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble or Chancellor Merkel had ever been quoted saying in the German press. And indeed, not much later, a spokesman at the Ministry of Finance made it clear, once again: “This is not true,” he said.

In addition to Eurobonds, the basket of panaceas includes other forms of “mutualization” of debt, a Eurozone-wide banking union with the power to bail out banks with taxpayer or ECB funds, a similarly endowed modified version of the still non-existing ESM bailout fund, and an ECB that can buy even the crappiest sovereign bonds of the most bankrupt Eurozone countries to keep them afloat another day (similar to the Fed and its purchases of treasuries and other securities).

But the 17-member Eurozone isn’t a country. It’s but a monetary union within a 27-member free-trade block. And any mutualization of debt would simply transfer financial responsibility from those who spend to those who end up having to pay for it, without any kind of reciprocal control. Even in the US, California can’t shuffle off its pile of debt and its never-ending deficits—though it’s supposed to have a balanced budget—to the Federal Government and its taxpayers. So why should Spain be able to shuffle off its debt to taxpayers in other countries? NOT NECESSARILY TRUE...THE FEDS CAN'T FORCE CALIFORNIA TO BAIL OUT BANKS IN CALIFORNIA...AND INTER-STATE TRANSFERS THROUGH THE FED. GOV. AMOUNTS TO THE SAME THING...

That’s how it’s seen in Germany—where Eurobonds are despised by 79% of the people. The ESM, which continues to be pushed by Merkel, has been running the gauntlet ranging from street demonstrations to the Federal Constitutional Court, where it is currently hung up. It should have been ratified by July 1, and while it is likely to get through the process with some delay, any steps beyond it, such as Eurobonds, are considered unconstitutional. But as if all these reasons still weren’t good enough, George Dorgan—a portfolio manager based in Switzerland—has put his finger on another powerful reason:

The first full-blown bailout Germany undertook, namely the integration of East Germany (only 17 million people), caused the German debt to nearly triple from €430 billion in 1989 to €1,200 billion in 1999, a decade during which even the US managed to reduce its debt for a couple of years. Germany greatly underestimated the integration costs. It led the country into a long phase of slow growth till 2006; and still now the west pays subsidies to the east. Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, and Greece might be better developed than the former communist GDR. But they count over 100 million people and might need even more time to adjust than the 20 years the former Eastern Germans needed.

Merkel hails from former East Germany and experienced firsthand how difficult the adjustment has been for East Germans—and how expensive for West Germans. Reunification wasn’t only funded by debt that will be around for generations, but also by a special income tax, the Solidaritätszuschlag—lovingly called Soli—introduced in 1991. And it’s still around as well. As George points out, the entire period until 2006 was tough on Germany—by then “the sick man of Europe.” That's what it took to bail out a country of 17 million people, raise the standard of living, and make its industries competitive in a globalized economy. Bailing out in this manner the growing stable of Eurozone countries will be beyond the feasible. As with East Germany, costs will be underestimated, but will then balloon for years or decades. Merkel knows that. Hence her limits on how far Germany would be willing to go. But the beleaguered Chancellor just can’t catch a break. She has already committed hundreds of billions of taxpayer euros to propping up collapsing countries. In return, she wants them to live within their means and restructure their economies so that the bailouts wouldn’t have to continue for years. For that, she got tossed into the Axis of Evil. And then the Swiss Minister of Defense spoke up. Read..... “You Can Lose Freedom Only Once.”

“These hordes of Eurocrats should be summarily fired and their agencies totally abolished,” said Doug Casey during a pungent interview. Governments in the EU “are all bankrupt,” and Europeans “will be indentured servants of the Chinese.” Europe is like a skydiver, and if they pull the bailout ripcord, “they’ll find there’s no chute… just a bunch of dirty laundry their economists packed as a joke.”

[Roland99]

57. Bevy of post-EU Summit articles >>>

As Europe Moves To An "E-TARP", Goldman Is Selling Spanish, Italian And Irish Bonds To Its Clients
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/europe-moves-e-tarp-goldman-selling-spanish-italian-and-irish-bonds-its-clients

lol!



Last Night's Critical Phrase "No Extra Bailout Funds"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/last-nights-critical-phrase-no-extra-bailout-funds


What They Really Said: Key Soundbites From Last Night's Eurosummit
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/what-they-really-said-key-soundbites-last-nights-eurosummit


German ESM Ratification Vote To Be Delayed?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/german-esm-ratification-vote-be-delayed


Hardball In Brussels
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/hardball-brussels

In the final analysis Europe is quite exposed at this moment and may be for quite some time. The ESM, after the change in seniority status, must be re-affirmed in at least two countries that are the Netherlands and Finland and Germany has not yet approved it yet either. The EFSF has already spent $450 of its capacity on Greece, Ireland, Portugal and now $125 billion for Spain. The balance left in the fund is tissue paper thin and that is all that is in existence presently for any more problems in Europe. Plans and schemes aside, the amount of money that could actually be used today is a drop in the proverbial bucket.

IOW, by next week, reality will have set back in and we'll slide back down, melting in the summer heat.

[xchrom]

51. Taoiseach says EU deal will ease Ireland's debt burden

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0629/breaking1.html

?ts=1340971813


Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said a European Union agreement reached in Brussels in the early hours of this morning to bring down borrowing costs for indebted countries will reduce the debt burden on Ireland's taxpayers.

Responding to pleas from Irish, Spanish and Italian leaders, the midnight summit of the 17-member currency area agreed that euro area rescue funds could be used to stabilise bond markets without forcing countries that comply with EU budget rules to adopt extra austerity measures or economic reforms.

In addition to reducing costs, the deal reached at the Brussels meeting will create a single supervisory body for euro zone banks by the end of this year, a first step towards a European banking union.

Mr Kenny said the agreement represented a "seismic shift" in European policy and should open the way to "re-engineer the debt burden on our taxpayers".

[Demeter]

59. Asia Drinking the Euro Koolaid

Drunkards will drink anything

[Fuddnik]

74. In that case, I'll take a double of irrational exuberance!

[Demeter]

86. I may join you

when the sun goes down...

[xchrom]

61. Contagion fears grow for Canada

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0629/1224318946998.html


EUROPEAN LEADERS need to “act in concert” to bring an end to the ongoing sovereign debt crisis, says the Canadian minister for finance Jim Flaherty, adding that, while Ireland should be seen as a “model”, he fears that the crisis is getting worse.

Flaherty is in Ireland this week, fresh from an appearance at the G20 meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico, where the European members expressed a commitment to take the necessary steps to stabilise their banking system and build the necessary firewalls.

“The point we were making is that overwhelming action is needed in order to restore market confidence,” says Flaherty, noting that the incremental measures euro zone leaders have been taking over the past few years have proven “inadequate” to restore market confidence.

“The problem is getting their act together to act in concert,” he says of European leaders, adding that, while he thinks the situation can still be resolved, it is “deteriorating”.

[DemReadingDU]

64. Two little girls explain the ‘worst haircut ever’

You really need to listen to the audio!
A little day brightener for all these doomy topics.

6/28/12
When five-year-old Sadie Cohen decided to give her younger sister a free haircut, the results weren't quite what either of the girls expected.

Not only did they get screamed at by their parents, but they also were then interviewed by their journalist father.

After Sadie emerged from "hiding under the radiator," WNPR reporter Jeff Cohen decided to interview her and three-year-old Eva about their experience with the worst haircut ever. The audio recording is almost certainly going to be the most delightful three minutes of your day.

"I was like, uh oh. This is bad, bad, bad," Sadie said of her initial reaction to her stylistic offering.

Asked why she performed the impromptu trim, Sadie reasoned, ""It was almost all the way down to her tush. And if she grew it any longer, when she wiped her butt, her hair would like, go, into the toilet. And it would be gross."

"I really wanted a hair cutter to cut it," Eva said about her feelings on the matter.

"Cutting hair, takes, like, a lot of concentration," Sadie explained. Still, she took it somewhat in stride, noting this sort of thing isn't totally uncommon. "It happens three times in every life. Or twice. Or once."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/two-little-girls-explain-worst-haircut-ever-201420201.html

direct link to audio
http://www.prx.org/pieces/73865-two-little-girls-explain-the-worst-haircut-ever



My 4 y/o grandson recently cut his 5 y/o sister's shoulder length hair, just on the left side.
cute, in a lopsided way. lol.

[Roland99]

72. Need to teach these kids some Grecian haircuts

[xchrom]

66. Bank of Spain sees recession moving faster on “increased risk aversion”

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/06/27/inenglish/1340810231_996560.html

Far from letting up, Spain’s recession is picking up speed in the second quarter, according to the latest figures released by the Bank of Spain. “The latest information points to a continued reduction in activity at a more intense pace,” says the central bank’s June bulletin.

Lower consumption and persistent job destruction are causing an even greater decline in GDP between April and June than the 0.3-percent contraction recorded in the first three months of the year as compared with the last quarter of 2011. The results from the first quarter of this year confirmed that Spain had officially entered recession for the second time in three years.

Experts at the institution now presided by Luis María Linde based their warning on retail sales, consumer confidence and private consumption, which shrank in April at a pace not seen since 2003. Vehicle registration also fell faster in May compared with the same month last year, to 15.3 percent.

Meanwhile, on the supply side, investment continued to show signs of weakness, according to the report. Industrial output shrank at a rate of 13 percent in April, almost four points higher than over the same period last year.

[xchrom]

67. Rajoy warns of “difficult” reforms still to come

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/06/25/inenglish/1340644089_852369.html

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced on Monday that more economic reforms are to come, but did not go into any further detail. Speaking at a meeting of the country’s largest employers association, the CEOE, he said that these reforms would be “difficult” and would arrive “soon, before the end of the year.” He also said that the government was willing to “correct what needs to be corrected and reform what needs reforming.”

During his speech, Rajoy called for decisions to be taken by European Union countries on the measures that are necessary to save the euro and deal with the banking and sovereign debt crisis. “The political message must be emphatic and the calendar for integration needs to be clear,” he said, after stating that one of his objectives was the creation of “a joint European agency for debt and issues.” In other words, eurobonds.

Before speaking at the meeting, the head of the CEOE, Juan Rosell, took the floor. The business leader used the opportunity to call on the government to go even further than it already has with reforms to the labor market. A wide-ranging change to the laws — which, among other things, has made the cost to businesses of sacking employees cheaper — will be signed off by Congress this week.

Rosell used the example of Germany, where Chancellor Schröder carried out labor reforms in four phases between 2002 and 2005.

[Roland99]

68. Today's Reports

[Roland99]

69. May Consumer Spending >>>>

* Consumer spending falls less than 0.1% in May
* April consumer spending revised down to 0.1% gain
* Consumer spending barely changed in past 4 months
* Personal income climbs 0.2% in May
* PCE inflation index falls 0.2%; core up 0.1%
* U.S. savings rate increases to 3.9% from 3.7%

Sooo...pretty much nothing going on but markets melted up even more in futures.

DJIA +202 at one point.

[wordpix]

79. Stocks up 11:10 am after EU Deal

Stocks Soar After EU Deal, Dow Rallies 200
Dow Jones Industrial Average

DOW
12811.03

up 208.77
+1.66%

NASDAQ
2911.66

up 62.17
+2.18%

[Demeter]

70. More than anything else, the whole Global Banking/Eurozone Chaos Resembles Jonestown

Unfortunately, I don't think the Elitists will oblige us by drinking their own Koolaid.

And I'll be damned if my country's people do it for them. Or any other nation's people. This has gone more than far enough. If the people we elected won't put a stop to these crimes, then it's FRSP time.

[Roland99]

71. Gold and oil are taking off!

Oil up over $4/bbl...pushing $82/bbl. Gold nearing $1,600/oz again.

[wordpix]

80. hanging on to my momma's old gold jewelry...

The only thing I inherit after her health care costs have eaten away all her savings and the small condo she owns.

[Po_d Mainiac]

97. don't advertise it n/t

[Hugin]

82. I was watching that, too.

Seems to be a concerted effort started yesterday afternoon based on nothing.

[Demeter]

87. It's based on a wink, a nod, and a handshake

behind totally secure doors.

[Ghost Dog]

102. Totally artificial manipulated market. But, yeah, keep an eye on it.

Hi Hugin.



/... http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com.es/

[Roland99]

75. Goldman Lowers Q2 GDP Forecast One Day After Raising It

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/goldman-lowers-q2-gdp-forecast-one-day-after-raised-it

High frequency economics is truly living up to its name, as now GDP forecasts are adjusted not weekly but daily. After Goldman yesterday hiked its Q2 GDP forecast to 1.7% on better than expected Q1 GDP composition, today's weak consumer spending data pushed it right back down. "Due to the downward revisions to March and April PCE, we revised down our estimate for Q2 PCE to +1.8% (annualized) from +2.0% previously. This lowered our tracking estimate of Q2 GDP growth to +1.6% from +1.7%."

[Roland99]

89. Bernie Madoff’s Brother Says He Will Plead Guilty

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/peter-madoff-bernie-s-brother-to-plead-guilty.html

Peter Madoff said he will plead guilty to conspiracy in Manhattan federal court three years to the day after his brother Bernard was sentenced to 150 years in prison for directing the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.

“The Madoff investment empire, built on a foundation of deceit, was a house of cards that grew to skyscraper proportions,” FBI Assistant Director Janice K. Fedarcyk said today in a statement. “Peter Madoff played an essential enabling role in the largest investment fraud in U.S. history. He made a pretense of compliance; he was really about complicity.”

Peter Madoff, 66, a graduate of Fordham University Law School who began working at the Manhattan-based firm in 1965, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation this morning. He agreed as part of his plea not to ask U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in New York for less than a 10-year term.

He will also agree to forfeit $143.1 billion, including all of his real and personal property. The forfeiture calculation is based on the total funds that passed through the Madoff firm during the fraud. The judge has to accept the plea.

more at the link....

[Roland99]

90. JPMorgan Cushions (Ina) Drew’s Retirement With $21.5 Million

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/jpmorgan-cushions-drew-s-retirement-with-21-5-million.html

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s decision to let Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew retire four days after the bank disclosed a $2 billion loss in her division allowed her to walk away with about $21.5 million in stock and options.

Drew, who resigned May 14, can keep $17.1 million in unvested restricted shares and about $4.4 million in options that she otherwise would have been required to forfeit if the New York-based bank had terminated her employment “with cause,” according to regulatory filings and estimates from consulting firm Meridian Compensation Partners LLC.

...

Drew, 55, oversaw the London traders responsible for a $2 billion loss on credit derivatives that Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said “violated common sense.” Shares of the largest U.S. bank have plunged 19.1 percent since Bloomberg News first reported on April 5 that JPMorgan was having trouble unwinding illiquid bets on credit derivatives. While Dimon told lawmakers in separate hearings this month that the company could claw back two years of bonuses, Drew’s pay probably won’t be affected, according to compensation consultants.

...

The bank’s employment terms require executives to forfeit unvested restricted stock and options, worth $21.5 million in Drew’s case, if they are fired “with cause.” Because she was allowed to retire and keep that money, the company probably won’t claw back her bonuses, pay specialists said.

[Po_d Mainiac]

96. No doubt she wood have run straight to to the

FBI/DOJ with her lawyer on tow.

There is a term for that kind of payout...hush-money

[wordpix]

108. I read the loss could be as high as $9 billion so way to go, Drew! Golden handshake for major F-up

So here's $21.5 million for losing so much for our firm.

[Roland99]

94. Oil closes up 9%. Nearing $85/bbl!

[Roland99]

95. And gas was *just* about to drop under $3/gal here. Saw $3.03 today.

[Roland99]

99. One hour from now...

and I'll be home. Then I'm putting on my swim trunks, walking next-door to join my family at our neighbors and jumping in the pool and then gorging on all kinds of deep-fried stuff. No idea what we're gonna deep fry but it will at least include Twinkies, burger, hot dogs...who knows what else!

[Demeter]

105. Bon appetite!