Economy
Related: About this forumSTOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 6 December 2012
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Thursday, 6 December 2012[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 5 December 2012
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 5 December 2012
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Dow Jones 13,034.49 +82.71 (0.64%)
S&P 500 1,409.28 +2.23 (0.16%)
[font color=red]Nasdaq 2,973.70 -22.99 (-0.77%)
[font color=black]10 Year 1.59% 0.00 (0.00%)
[font color=red]30 Year 2.77% +0.01 (0.36%) [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
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
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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
(85,373 posts)they at least had the ability to evolve into birds.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)SO, WHEN DO WE GE SOME RED MEAT?
http://news.yahoo.com/sec-charges-wells-fargo-banker-nine-others-insider-212855223--finance.html
U.S. securities regulators on Wednesday charged a Wells Fargo investment banker and nine others for their alleged role in an insider-trading ring that earned more than $11 million by trading on tips about impending mergers.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said that John Femenia, 30, misused his position at a unit of Wells Fargo to obtain material, non-public information about four different mergers involving firm clients.
The SEC said Femenia then tipped his friend, Shawn Hegedus, a registered broker-dealer. The SEC says the two then tipped other friends, resulting in a "massive, serial insider-trading ring" that spread across five states.
The SEC said it has already obtained a court order to freeze the assets of the defendants involved.
MORE
WELL, THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR HIRING BABIES.
WHEN DO THE SILVERBACKS GET THEIRS?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Securities and Exchange Commission launched an inquiry into a $10 million sale of stock by Big Lots Inc. Chief Executive Steven Fishman before the company announced news that sank its stock, a person familiar with the inquiry said.
Big Lots said Tuesday that Mr. Fishman, 61 years old, intends to retire in order to spend time with his family. The discount retailer said it hadn't been contacted by the SEC and that the timing of Mr. Fishman's departure was coincidental to any regulatory interest.
The company said his trades were "properly made" at a time when they were allowed by the company...Mr. Fishman's trading of Big Lots stock in March was cited in a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal last week. The article highlighted trades by corporate executives that were highly beneficial and occurred just before bad news hit, which spared the executives large price drops in their holdings...MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Shares of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. made big moves during U.S. trading Wednesday, while Apple Inc. and Citigroup Inc. were among top trending tickers...Apple slumped 6.4%, its worst single-day percentage loss since December 2008. The stock is headed for what investors refer to as a death cross, which is formed when its 50-day moving average crosses below its 200-day moving average. Still, this is not necessarily a bad thing, according to Collin Monsarrat at Birinyi Associates Inc.
The death cross has happened 5 times in AAPL since November 2000. Looking at these occurrences the data is fairly inconclusive but if it shows anything it is that a death cross implies better performance going forward, he said in an investors bulletin. The stock has tended to struggle for the week and month following the cross, but 3 months later the stock has tended to be not only up but outperform the S&P 500 60% of the time, he said.
Meanwhile, some clearing firms are reportedly raising the margin requirement for Apple shares. StreetInsider.com said COR Clearing raised its margin requirement for Apple to 60% from 30%. Laurence Balter, principal with Oracle Investment Research, told Barrons that this is due to the rogue trader at Rochdale Securities whose unauthorized trade in Apple shares resulted in a $5 million loss for the brokerage. See: Former Rochdale trader charged in Apple trade
Apple is also due back in court for a post-trial hearing in its fight with Samsung Electronics on Thursday. When it goes before the judge, it will seek to impose injunctions on various Samsung products, which it says infringed on its patents while Samsung will try to get a new trial and reduce the $1-billion verdict. Heres a quick laundry list of what Apple and Samsung will be arguing over from allthingsd.com: See: Four things to watch at Apple-Samsung hearing
MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Talk to someone who has never dealt with the cops about police behaving badly, and he or she will inevitably say, But they can't do that! Can they? The question of what the cops can or can't do is natural enough for someone who never deals with cops, especially if their inexperience is due to class and/or race privilege. But a public defender would describe that question as naïve. In short, the cops can do almost anything they want, and often the most maddening tactics are actually completely legal.
There are many reasons for this, but three historical developments stand out: the war on drugs provided the template for social control based on race; 9/11 gave federal and local officials the opportunity to ensnare Muslims (and activists) in the ever-increasing surveillance and incarceration state; and a lack of concern from the public at large means these tactics can be applied, often controversy-free, to anyone who resists them.
What follows are 10 of the innumerable tactics the police can use against a population often incapable of constraining their behavior.
1. Infiltration, informants and monitoring.
2. Warrantless home surveillance.
3. Preemptive visits and harassment.
4. Creating call logs from stolen phones.
5. Consent searches.
6. Stop and frisk.
7. Pretext stops (Operation Pipeline).
8. Police dogs.
9. Surveillance drones.
10. Enlist the private sector.
DETAILS AT LINK
Hotler
(11,353 posts)without an attorney present. Even if you have done nothing wrong. Just roll the window down enough to pass your license and registration and proof of insurance through.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The European debt crisis, and the ensuing austerity-fueled chaos, can seem to Americans like a distant battle that portends a dark future. Yet a closer look reveals that the future is already here. American austerity has largely taken the form of municipal budget crises precipitated by predatory Wall Street lending practices. The debt financing of U.S. cities and towns, a neoliberal economic model that long precedes the current recession, has inflicted deep and growing suffering on communities across the country.
In July 2012, Mayor Christopher Doherty of Scranton, Pennsylvania, reduced all city employees salaries to the minimum wage. With a stroke of his pen, wages for teachers, firefighters, police, and other municipal workers, many of whom had been on the job for decades, dropped to $7.25 per hour. The city, the mayor explained, simply could not pay them more. Ron Allen, who reported the story for NBC Nightly News, repeated this assessment. Cities like Scranton, he said, just dont have the money to pay city employees more than the minimum wage. Officials blamed the crisis on a declining tax base, on reduced revenue from the state, and on public sector labor contracts that the city could no longer afford.
What does it mean to say that a former steel town in decline just doesnt have the money to pay its bills? It means that it no longer has access to credit markets controlled by the big banks. For years, Scranton officials, like officials across the United States, have been selling municipal bonds to finance everything from basic services to development projects. Scrantons problems careened out of control when they citys parking authority threatened to default on its bonds. Wall Street responded aggressively by cutting off its credit line, and city workers paid a steep price. American-style austerity arrived in Scranton under the guise of budget cuts blamed on public employees, whose salaries and pensions had nothing to do with the economic crisis.
Scrantons problems are hardly unique. Municipalities across the country are grappling with declining local tax revenue and reduced federal funding in an era when growth and development are equated with prosperity. This toxic mix has produced a $3.7 trillion municipal debt market, a revenue juggernaut for Wall Street. Municipal bonds are issued by virtually every city, county, and development agency in the United States. The number of taxpayer-backed bonds in circulation is five times higher than only ten years ago. This means that the worlds largest financial firms now hold the purse strings for everything from essential services like sewage treatment plants to large-scale developments such as sports arenas. Municipal bonds are extremely profitable for investors because they are tax-exempt and, like mortgages, can be packaged into securities.
How Did We Get Here?
Part of the municipal debt story can be traced to New York Citys 1975 fiscal crisis, when the city almost defaulted on its debt. New York was able to avoid bankruptcy at the last moment by issuing guaranteed bonds backed by public pension funds. As a result, the Emergency Financial Control Board, the municipal body that controlled the citys bank accounts, was in the position of rewriting the social contract, exerting control over labor at every level. Union leadership agreed to the deal because they feared a bankruptcy filing would void labor contracts. Only after the city had disciplined the unions did the federal government move in with rescue loans....
MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Derivatives regulators from major trading centers promised on Tuesday to minimize cross-border clashes over their new rules to rein in risks in the $640 trillion sector and give industry extra time to adjust.
World leaders agreed in 2009 to increase transparency by requiring swaps contracts to be recorded, cleared and traded on electronic platforms by the end of this month, but not all countries are ready.
The leaders decided on action because most interest rate, credit default, commodity and other types of swaps are traded privately among 15 or so top banks like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and HSBC.
This makes it hard for regulators to get a full picture when things go wrong, as with the collapse of U.S. bank Lehman Brothers in 2008...
MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Federal Reserve is set to announce a fresh round of Treasury bond purchases when it meets next week, avoiding monetary policy tightening to maintain support for the weak U.S. economy amid uncertainty over the looming year-end "fiscal cliff." Many economists think the U.S. central bank will announce monthly bond purchases of $45 billion after its policy gathering on December 11-12, signaling it will continue to pump money into the U.S. economy during 2013 in a bid to bring down unemployment.
"We expect status quo," said Laurence Meyer of the forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers. "We expect purchases will continue at the same monthly rate as over the last three months; that the composition will be the same, and that the maturities distribution will be the same."
The decision would cement expectations that the Fed will keep buying a combined $85 billion of Treasuries and mortgage-backed bonds a month, while repeating that it expects to hold interest rates near zero until at least mid-2015.
The Fed could even decide to announce a larger level of purchases if it wanted to exceed expectations and give the market a bigger jolt to press borrowing costs lower.
"If the market expects $45 billion, maybe they should deliver $60 billion ... get markets more excited and really push rates down," said Torsten Slok with Deutsche Bank in New York.
U.S. unemployment remains high at 7.9 percent and the economy, while doing better than Europe's, is expected to grow at a meager rate of only around 2 percent next year.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)truth hurts
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)12/6/12
Wonder Why States Are Broke? One Reason is Companies Play Them Off Against Each Other
The New York Times published an expose this week on Texass regime of business incentives, but for anybody who pays passing attention to so-called municipal and state economic development schemes, there wasnt much news: Our states and localities are cannibalizing one another as they concoct targeted tax breaks which they use to lure corporations from their neighbors. Meanwhile, a bevy of middlemen wet their beaks by helping corporations pit sucker states off of one another and brokering deals to sell the tax credits that comprise much of the ensuing largess. Heres the rub:
Granting corporate incentives has become standard operating procedure for state and local governments across the country. The Times investigation found that the governments collectively give incentives worth at least $80 billion a year.
Thats an especially big deal for cash-strapped states, banned from deficit spending, no printing presses on hand. The $80 billion figure represents a full ten times the budget of my state of Rhode Island, and more than 15 times the amount spent from locally-generated funds.
more...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/wonder-why-states-are-broke-one-reason-is-companies-play-them-off-against-each-other.html
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)12/5/12 A Thin Line: Economic Growth Or Corporate Welfare?
In her new series for The New York Times called "The United States of Subsidies," investigative reporter Louise Story examines how states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year in tax breaks and other financial incentives to lure companies or persuade them to stay put.
The states and localities want jobs and economic growth; the companies want free land, free buildings, property tax abatement, "anything you can think of that would be financially beneficial," Story tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.
The companies, she says, know they can get what they want, which is why they ask, and officials are so afraid to risk losing a current or prospective local employer that they readily comply.
"The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world," she writes in the series. However, the rewards from the incentives are difficult to calculate, Story writes, because job growth as related to incentive packages is rarely tracked.
And yet, Story tells Gross, "I don't think you'll find a company out there that has not received financial incentives from local government."
As Dale Craymer, president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, says to Story, the question is: "When does economic development end and corporate welfare begin?"
more...
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/05/166489199/a-thin-line-economic-growth-or-corporate-welfare
The New York Times spent 10 months investigating business incentives awarded by hundreds of cities, counties and states. Since there is no nationwide accounting of these incentives, The Times put together a database and found that local governments give up:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/01/us/government-incentives.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-bankroll-corporations.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/us/winners-and-losers-in-texas.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/us/when-hollywood-comes-to-town.html
xchrom
(108,903 posts)i'm 'surprised' it took a journalist so long to take a look at this.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Bigger, please...
rusty fender
(3,428 posts)smiley
xchrom
(108,903 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)Apple Inc. (AAPL) plans to spend more than $100 million next year on building Mac computers in the U.S., shifting a small portion of manufacturing away from China, the country that has handled assembly of its products for years.
Next year were going to bring some production to the U.S., Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. This doesnt mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but well be working with people and well be investing our money.
Apple, which until the late 1990s made and assembled many products in the U.S., moved manufacturing to Asia to take advantage of the regions lower labor costs. The planned investment makes up a sliver of Apples $121.3 billion in cash, and probably wont meaningfully affect profit margins. Still, it reflects pressure on companies to create even a modest number of domestic jobs as the unemployment rate hovers near 8 percent and the economy rebounds from the recession that ended in 2009.
I dont think we have a responsibility to create a certain kind of job, Cook said. But I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Only if they can profit from it...see tax incentives, above
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Homeowners and banks are accelerating sales of properties for less than the amount owed as a U.S. law that gives them a tax break expires at the end of the year.
The transactions, known as short sales, increased by 35 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, while sales of bank-owned homes dropped 20 percent, according to a report today by mortgage data seller Renwood RealtyTrac LLC. Together, they accounted for 41.5 percent of home purchases in the quarter.
Short sales have accounted for as many as 1.1 million transactions since 2009, helping to reduce the inventory of homes owned by banks that can blight neighborhoods and flood the market. Barring a last-minute extension of the 2007 Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, homeowners will be taxed on the forgiven principal. With Congress focused on the so-called fiscal cliff, federal spending cuts and tax-rate hikes set to kick in on Jan. 1, the law may not be extended, leading to a drop in short sales and a rise in foreclosures.
If youre struggling to pay your mortgage, its not likely you can afford an extra $25,000 or $35,000 tax bill to avoid foreclosure, said Edward Mills, a financial policy analyst at FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia. Mortgage forgiveness has become part of fiscal cliff politics.
Hotler
(11,353 posts)how Clinton and Obama got lumped in with them I wonder.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)The fat cats fear that the American people will realize the great lie that's been fed to them since Saint Ronnie took the helm.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)BERLIN (AP) -- Industrial orders in Germany rebounded strongly in October, growing by 3.9 percent compared with the previous month, sending an unexpectedly hopeful signal about the strength of Europe's biggest economy.
The recovery in October was the strongest since January 2011 and followed a 2.4 percent decline the previous month, the economy ministry said Thursday. The September figure was revised up significantly from the initial reading of a 3.3 percent drop.
The rise came despite a below-average number of large orders and was led by a 6.7 percent increase in orders from abroad. That included a healthy 3.5 percent rise in demand from other countries in the 17-nation eurozone, many of which are struggling economically as the region's debt crisis drags on.
Germany's own growth has slowed this year but its economy is expected to continue growing, if unspectacularly, in 2013.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)WASHINGTON (AP) -- Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages ticked up this week just slightly above their record lows, keeping home-buying and refinancing attractive to consumers.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on the 30-year loan ticked up to 3.34 percent, above last week's rate of 3.32 percent. Two weeks ago, the rate dipped to 3.31 percent, the lowest on records dating to 1971.
The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage rose to 2.67 percent from 2.64 percent last week. The rate declined to 2.63 percent two weeks ago, also a record low.
Mortgage rates have been near record lows all year. That has helped fuel a modest housing recovery.