Stock Market Watch, Friday July 26, 2013

[Hotler]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 26 July 2013[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 25 July 2013

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 25 July 2013
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[font color=green]Dow Jones 15,555.61 +13.37 (0.09%)
[font color=green]S&P 500 1,690.25 +4.31 (0.26%)
[font color=green]Nasdaq 3,605.19 +25.59 (0.71%)


[font color=red]10 Year 2.49% -0.03 (-1.19%)
[Font color=red]30 Year 3.58% -0.03 (-0.83%








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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
Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.










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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]

[Hotler]

1. That's fucking funny..

Liz Cheney; Carpet-Bagger.

[Hotler]

2. Hhhmmmm! Check this out.

Calling SAC “a veritable magnet of market cheaters,” federal prosecutors announced criminal charges against the hedge fund on Thursday, a rare move against a large company that could threaten its survival. The authorities argued that the firm and its units permitted a “systematic” insider trading scheme to unfold from 1999 to 2010, activity that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profit for the firm, owned by its founder, the billionaire stock picker Steven A. Cohen.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/sac-capital-is-indicted/?_r=0

[Fuddnik]

4. Richard Wolff on Obama's "Drop Dead Detroit" moment.

And more pretty speechifyin'

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/25/richard_wolff_detroit_a_spectacular_failure

[Demeter]

5. It's not even a bubble anymore...it's a poisonous fog of toxic waste

He's not even convincingly going through the motions. What a disappointment!

[Demeter]

6. The Frog Who Crushed the Planet By Greg Palast

http://www.nationofchange.org/frog-who-crushed-planet-1374671432

...This week, US prosecutors finally began the trial of the only person on the entire planet whom they have charged with the financial crimes that sank worldwide stock markets by trillions in 2008 and left millions homeless and jobless, from Detroit to Manchester. Amazingly, say prosecutors, it all came down to a single Frenchman, Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre, only 29 years old at the time. Even Julius Caesar waited until he turned 51 to bring the known world to its knees.

Here's the story which his defense team does not dispute:

In August 2007, hot-shot hedge fund manager John Paulson walked into Goldman Sachs with a brilliant plan to cash in on the US housing crisis. He paid Goldman to announce that Paulson would invest a big hunk of his fund's wealth, $200 million, in securities tied to the US mortgage market's recovery. A few lucky investors would be allowed to give Goldman their billions to bet with Paulson that Americans would never default on their home mortgages.

It was a con. Secretly, Paulson would bet against the mortgage market, hoping it would collapse –making sure it would collapse. All he needed was Goldman to line up the suckers to put up billions to be his "partners". It was Goldman's and Paulson's financial version of Mel Brooks' The Producers, in which a couple of corrupt theatre producers schemed to suck investors into a deliberate flop. Throughout 2007 and 2008, Paulson & Co. worked with Goldman to create the financial equivalent of Springtime for Hitler. Paulson personally chose the group of mortgages for the fund. Rather than pick the least risky, he deliberately loaded the fund with sub-prime losers. To polish this turd, Goldman and Paulson paid a highly respected risk analysis firm, ACA, to endorse the selection. Paulson and his vice president met with ACA to assure them of the value of the crappola – never telling ACA that, in fact, Paulson would profit if the securities failed.

Based on Paulson's pitch, ACA endorsed the value of these "synthetic derivatives" securities. This led rating agencies Moody's and S&P – recipients of fat fees from Goldman – to give the package an AAA rating – that is, marking them as safer than US Treasury notes.

In just a few weeks, by August 8, 2008, the securities lost 99 percent of their value.

The dupes paid up. One, Royal Bank of Scotland, handed over nearly a billion dollars ($840,909,090) to Goldman. Goldman then quietly shifted the loot, minus its fee, to Paulson & Co. The payout busted RBS. But don't shed tears. The Bank of England and British taxpayers took over the bank and covered the loss. The collapse of RBS and the billions lost by others in the scheme fuelled a panic which caused banks in the US to shut their lending windows, refusing to re-finance sub-prime mortgages. Over two million American families now faced eviction. Paulson was thrilled. Each default and eviction just made Paulson & Co. richer, altogether pulling in a profit for his hedge fund of over $3.5 billion on the Springtime-for-Hitler game. Paulson's personal earnings on this economic tragedy exceeded one billion dollars...I happened to be in Detroit that August, at the home of auto union member Robert Pratt. He'd already received his eviction notice. Like almost all black home buyers in the USA, he was steered to a "sub-prime" mortgage. Under a formula years later deemed to be "predatory", his payments suddenly doubled. Pratt's mortgage balance grew to $110,000 on a home worth $30,000. The bank would not refinance, so Pratt prepared to move into his car with his wife and four kids.

Government watchdogs hunted for the financial crimes perpetrators, and, discovering the Goldman/Paulson fraud, brought charges against... the French kid. Goldman had lent Fabrice Tourre to Paulson to take on flunky tasks, including putting together a 28-page "flip book" to lure European banks into the scam. In a text message discovered by investigators, Fabrice admitted to a friend that he couldn't understand the insanely complex derivatives Paulson had crafted with Tourre's bosses at Goldman. He did, though, grasp that the strange securities were, he wrote, "monstrosities". A collapse was coming that would "bring down the whole house", leaving Fabrice standing in a ruined planet – with a fat bonus.

What did the Feds do to Paulson? He received... a special tax break.

Am I defending the Fabulous Fabrice, the French-fried scapegoat? After all, he was just along for the ride. But he was deeply thrilled to carry water for the Bad Boys. And the charges against him are merely "civil", meaning he won't get jail time even if found guilty. And what about Goldman, whose top brass knew of the entire game? The Securities and Exchange Commission did fine Goldman for its duplicity – a sum equal to 5 percent of the cash Goldman got from the US Treasury in bail-out funds. After Goldman's con became public, its CEO Lloyd Blankfein was hailed as a visionary for offloading mortgage-backed securities before the shit hit the finance fan. Blankfein hailed himself for, he said, "doing God's work". God did well. Blankfein's bonus in 2007 brought his pay package to $69 million for the year, a Wall Street record. Rather than prison or penury, Blankfein was appointed advisor to both the business and the law school at Harvard University.

So here's the lesson all Harvard students are taught: If you can't do the time, don't do the crime... unless your booty exceeds a billion.

[Demeter]

7. Why Did the Fed Refuse to Heed Warnings About Fraudulent Mortgage Lenders? Wm. K. Black

http://www.alternet.org/economy/fedearl-reserve-and-mortgage-crisis?paging=off

Real regulators are vital to a nation. They can stop crises in their tracks — or they can let a them explode on an unsuspecting public. The Federal Reserve was warned by many different people, including appraisers, prosecutors, and industry players that the mortgage industry was rife with fraud. Why didn't they listen?

......

1. Stated income loans are associated with fraud, and started to become popular in 2002. A stated income loan is a loan where the income that is put on a home loan application is not verified at all by the banks. The banks simply take your word for it. Home buyers might be unaware of the fraudulent income that is being stated on the loan application because the loan officer, or bank representative have the power to falsify the income on the application. Stated income loans became popular in 2002, and have since become mainstream. According to one survey it was discovered that 37% of all loans sold in the United States are originated without income being proven. In areas where homes are the least affordable (i.e. California, and Florida) that number grows to over 50%.”

3. Fraud is encouraged by the banks

A large problem as to why these loans have become so prevalent is because the first line of defense against stated income loan fraud are individuals who are commission based; the loan originator, the bank representative, and in many cases the managers for the bank reps have a large portion of their income derived from bonuses based on loan production. Bank employees, i.e. underwriters and bank processors, return applications back to mortgage brokers with instructions to send back an application with a higher stated income. The mortgage industry has become comfortable with stating incomes higher on loan applications. Online underwriting systems that are used by Fannie Mae and some banks are being exploited by bank representatives and loan officers wanting to obtain a loan with stated income underwriting standards but with fully documented interest rates. The systems allow mortgage brokers to “play” with different incomes more than 15 times until they get the results they want.

...

12. Rules are not enough, they must be enforced.

The FBI has acknowledged that mortgage fraud is a problem that is a growing epidemic. Reports of suspicious activity has rose from 3,088 in 1999 to 21,994 in 2005. After 9/11 the FBI has made mortgage fraud a low priority. Within the FBI mortgage fraud is in a section for white collar crime that is ranked number seven, (1 through 6 is related to terrorist) and within that mortgage fraud is a smaller subsection which is only priority number four.”

.......

People generally recognized as experts in power in the private and public sectors recognized none of these things. Indeed, they purport to recognize none of these things even now (though that convenient claim of ignorance is so preposterous that it could be swallowed only with a full mine shaft worth of salt)...The appraisers’ warnings were amazingly early – they had reached the stage of creating a formal petition by 2000. Their warning came before the Enron-era epidemic of accounting control fraud!

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

Many Private and Public Sector Actors Could Have Prevented the Crisis

There was ample time and means to prevent any financial crisis from arising from the incipient epidemic of fraudulent lending. A large number of actors, the regulators, prosecutors, credit rating agencies, secondary market purchasers, inside and outside auditors – and, of course, the CEOs of the lenders making the fraudulent loans – could have stopped the appraisal fraud epidemic in its tracks. It is obvious why the CEOs of the fraudulent lenders did not stop the endemic appraisal fraud that was designed to cover up the endemic mortgage origination fraud. The spread of the mortgage fraud epidemics throughout the secondary market participants and CDOs is a testament to the power of the CEOs who lead accounting control frauds to suborn myriad private sector firms and professionals to aid their frauds. The fact that no federal banking regulatory agency responded to the appraisers’ warning with effective action (or even a warning about the fraud epidemic) reveals how severe the damage is when three Presidents in a row (Clinton, Bush, and Obama) appoint anti-regulatory leaders for the agencies. Appointing anti-regulators is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. That is what the industry intends when it influences presidents to appoint anti-regulatory leaders. This particular regulatory failure to take the epidemics of fraudulent liar’s loans and appraisals is one of the most inexcusable in history.

We Know That Real Regulators Would Have Prevented the Crisis (Again)

It is not a hypothetical to say that real regulators would have reacted promptly, long before the crisis, to end the twin control fraud epidemics. We did so a decade before the appraisers first began their petition. We did so against exactly the same twin barrel fraud assault – led by the same CEO and the same lender. Only the name of the firm and the identity of its potential federal regulator had changed. We acted in 1990-1991 to halt this incipient epidemic of accounting control fraud because we were the regional regulators (OTS West Region) with jurisdiction over Orange County, California – the traditional birthplace of U.S. financial frauds...

HISTORY OF THE S&l CONTROL FRAUDS FOLLOWS




The Fed, the OCC, and the OTS Have No Excuse for Not Heeding the Warnings

The Fed had the unique authority under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994 (HOEPA) to stop all “liar’s” loans by any lender regardless of whether the lender had federal deposit insurance. The Fed held the hearings at which Krystofiak testified because Congress mandated that it did so because of continuing concerns in Congress about predatory lending. The Fed was never dealing with a crisis from 2000-2007. It was “busy” not dealing with the crisis. The Fed had far greater staff than we, the OTS West Region, had. The Fed finally used HOEPA to ban liar’s loans in mid-2008. Even then, it acted in response to Congressional demands that they do so. Worse, Bernanke delayed the effective date of the rule by 15 months – because one would not want to inconvenience a fraudulent lender...



It is only in retrospect that we can see how valuable real regulators are to a nation. They can stop crises in their tracks. As MARI warned in 2006, the early 2000 move to make liar’s loans cost the lending industry “hundreds of millions of dollars.” The appointment of the anti-regulatory leaders in the current crisis allowed over a $10 trillion loss – roughly 4000 times larger. We cannot afford the price of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of regulatory failure by continuing to appoint dogmatically anti-regulatory leaders and judges.





William Black is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He spent years working on regulatory policy and fraud prevention as executive director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention, litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement, among other positions.



THIS ARTICLE IS BADLY BUTCHERED AT ALTERNET, WHICH IS HAVING SEVERE COMPUTER PROBLEMS...THERE IS A LOT OF INFO THERE, SUMMARIZING AND ANALYZING.

[Demeter]

8. Shocking Things Wall Street Financiers Say Off the Record About Their Bloated, Corrupt Industry

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/wall-st-financiers-we-are-corrupt?akid=10714.227380.4a4pXH&rd=1&src=newsletter871529&t=7&paging=off

A new survey shows how brazenly immoral Wall Street is:

"A particularly troubling and consistent finding throughout the survey is that Wall Street’s future leaders–the young professionals who will one day assume control of the trillions of dollars that the industry manages—have lost their moral compass, accept corporate wrongdoing as a necessary evil and fear reporting this misconduct."

In a shocking new survey commissioned by the Labaton Sucharow law firm, Wall Street insiders say that breaking the law, screwing your clients and covering up crimes is a way of life on Wall Street. The shock is not that cheating is going on. We all know that. The shock is that these financiers would actually admit it on a survey. This should tell us that the Wall Street culture is so brazenly corrupt, so confident of not getting caught, so certain that a passive public won't fight back that those surveyed didn't even bother to lie about the fact that they were living, breathing sociopaths. Here are some of the key findings of this sample of 250 traders, portfolio managers, investment bankers, hedge fund professionals, financial analysts, investment advisors, asset managers and stock brokers.

Catch me if you can! "24% of financial services professionals likely would engage in insider trading to make $10 million… if they wouldn’t get arrested. That figure surges to 38% for individuals with 10 years or less in the industry." Screw your clients. "28% of financial services professionals feel that the financial services industry does not put clients’ interests first." They do it, so we have to do it too. "More than half of respondents–52%–felt it was likely that their competitors have engaged in unethical or illegal activity to gain an edge in the market; 24% felt employees at their own company likely have engaged in misconduct to get ahead." Guess what? We still are cheating. "Misconduct is still widespread in the financial services industry; 23% of respondents indicated that they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace." To rise in a criminal organization, you have to be a criminal. "Looking at seniority, 36% of respondents with 10 years or less experience in the industry believed financial services professionals may have to engage in misconduct to get ahead." The boss loves it when you cheat. "17% of respondents felt that if leaders of their organization suspected that a top performer was earning large profits from insider trading, they likely would ignore the problem. More alarming, 15% of professionals in the industry believed that if leaders of their organization learned that a top performer had engaged in insider trading, they were unlikely to report that crime to law enforcement or regulatory authorities."

(Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Weil comes to Wall Street's defense by calling the survey a "worthless smear" because it's not a scientific sample. But "scientific" or not, he has no explanation at all for why sizable percentages of these 250 respondents are so ethically challenged.)

Are the big banks and hedge funds criminal enterprises?

Given the attitudes of our financial elites, you would expect bad things to happen. The list of high crimes and misdemeanors is mind boggling, and growing every day.

Design mortgage related securities so that they will fail in order to bet against them. (See How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour for all the gory details.)

Unlawfully foreclose on 700 military families.

Money launder for drug cartels.

Collude with illegal payday loan sharks.

Fail to live up to settlement to provide mortgage revisions.

Sell billions of dollars worth of bogus insurance policies that are supposed to provide payment protection for ill or unemployed mortgage holders, but actually provide no coverage at all.

Let the London Whale gamble with federally insured money and then lose $6 billion, and then refuse to provide documentation to regulators.

Lie to your colleagues in the media in order to move markets your way. (Jim Cramer's confession.)

Illegally trade on insider information. (71 hedge fund traders plead guilty or are convicted in the last two years.)

Hedge funds spread false rumors about European banks to cause runs.

High frequency traders milk investors.

Collude to manipulate basic interest rates (LIBOR) that effect trillions of dollars of debt.

Engage in predatory lending to rip off cities, towns and school systems.

Rating agencies turn tricks for cash by giving out thousands of bogus AAA ratings.

The end of finance as we know it

What more evidence do we need before concluding that "the Street" is beyond redemption? Regulatory enforcement is weak and the new regulations are weaker still. It's a fools errand to think we can control trillion-dollar banks and billionaire hedge fund honchos. The only hope is to destroy finance as we know it. It's time to think outside the box. We should be demanding what we really want, rather than begging for minor reforms that are certain to fail. Here's a plan that just might work:

1. Set up 50 state banks like the one in North Dakota. Set the top salary at no higher than five times the median wage within the state. At the Bank of North Dakota, the top officers average less than a chauffeur for a hedge fund mogul.)

2. Nationalize the 20 largest banks and set the top salary at no more than the President of the United States ($400k, $50k expenses, no stock options). "What, live on just $400,000? You must be mad." Just think of how many financiers, young and old, would flee Wall Street for other professions. Just think of how many scams would grind to a halt. After all if you can't make your $10 million on a trade by cheating, why bother?

3. Pass a Financial Transaction Tax—a sales tax on all stocks, bonds, derivatives etc. That would bring the high-frequency trading racket to a grinding halt and slow down the financial hustlers.

Dream on?

When discussing proposals such as these during media interviews, the usual response is incredibly fatalistic -- "The genie is out of the bottle." "Global finance is here to stay and we can't do much about it." "They have the money to buy political power." "They'll always find a way to cheat.".... These are the very words bankers love to hear. These are the thoughts that will allow ever increasing inequality and ever larger financial crashes and bailouts. Sure, we're getting our butts kicked right now, and it's so much easier to ignore the incredible rip-offs than to fight. But our runaway financial system won't leave us alone. They're siphoning away the nation's wealth and they won't let up...ever. At the very least we should by asking for what we really want, what we really think will work, and what we really think is fair and just. I'll wager that 100 years from now, people will look back at this period and say, "How the hell did you let these bankers ruin the world? Why didn't you take them over when they were down on their knees begging for bailouts? Why didn't you set up a public financial system that served the country rather than the financial elites --- just like we have now ....and it works!"

Les Leopold is the director of the Labor Institute in New York. His latest books is How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning off America's Wealth (Wiley 2013)

[Demeter]

11. Bank of America's Recipe for Getting Away with Massive Fraud, Racketeering and Money Laundering

This July, Bank of America was expecting to report an earnings increase of 32% from last year. The Washington Business Journal declared the bank among the top 10 “most improved brands” of the year. Bank of America is the second-largest bank in the United States following JPMorgan Chase. So why does this bank deserve such an “improved” reputation? Perhaps it's worth looking at a little of the bank’s record for some clarity...During the first year of the global financial crisis, which the big banks helped to create and which they profited enormously from, the government stepped in to bail out Bank of America. They rewarded the bank $20 billion for its massive financial crimes, as well as a special guarantee for nearly $100 billion of potential losses on the balance sheets of Merrill Lynch, which Bank of America acquired during the crisis....As it turns out, Bank of America and other big banks continue to get "backdoor bailouts" through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which acts as a legal guarantor and protector of the Wall Street chain gang of criminal conglomerates. The bank was recently added to a list, compiled by a corporate watchdog group, of the "dirty dozen" criminal financial institutions for its role deceiving investors, committing mortgage and foreclosure abuses and engaging in municipal bond rigging and illegal payments.

When Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone that Bank of America was “a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time,” he wasn't exaggerating. The bank foreclosed on tens of thousands of Americans through a “mass perjury” scheme and pushed worthless mortgages on pension funds and unions. As several big banks – including BofA, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup – agreed to pay a $25 billion settlement with the government over “abusive mortgage practices,” the Department of Justice granted the banks what amounted to legal immunity “from civil government claims over faulty foreclosures.” In January, Bank of America settled to pay $11.6 billion to the government-controlled mortgage company Fannie Mae in response to a legal battle over “bad loans.” In June of 2013, six former BofA employees and one contractor issued sworn statements in which they accused the bank of lying to homeowners, fraudulently denying loan modifications and paying bonuses to staff who pushed people into foreclosure. One of the whistleblowers commented, “we were told to lie to customers.” Employees that pushed ten or more homeowners per month into foreclosure would receive a $500 bonus, and the Bank also “gave employees gift cards to retail stores like Target or Bed Bath and Beyond as rewards for placing accounts into foreclosure.” Further, anyone who “questioned the ethics” of the bank's practices was summarily fired - a policy that led to a lawsuit in which homeowners accused the bank of racketeering “to defraud homeowners who sought modifications and then acted as the kingpin of that [racketeering] enterprise.”

Of course, it doesn’t end there. Bank of America, along with multiple other big banks, has been accused of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels. The FBI confirmed that BofA was involved in laundering drug money for the Los Zetas drug cartel in Mexico. However, in a twist of fine news for the bank, U.S. government regulators indicated they would not hold the bank responsible for its actions.

Banking on Influence

So how does a massive criminal enterprise engaging in large-scale fraud, racketeering and money laundering get a free pass from the U.S. government? The bank’s financial clout in the economy certainly plays a part. But so too do its affiliations with dominant national and international organizations, institutionalizing the bank within the larger global power structures and the elites who run them. Research conducted for the Global Power Project found 28 individuals at Bank of America, including executives and members of board of directors, with institutional affiliations. Four of the individuals who hold leadership positions at BofA are also affiliated with the major foreign-policy think tank in the United States: the Council on Foreign Relations. Three individuals are connected to Morgan Stanley, another major financial institution, while two affiliations exist with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (promoting big business "solutions" to environmental crises), the Business Council, Catalyst, Duke University, Stanford University, and BlackRock. The following institutions each also hold one individual affiliated with Bank of America: Royal Dutch Shell, DuPont, Deere & Company, the World Wildlife Fund, the President’s Export Council, Harvard, the World Economic Forum, Brookings Institution, Sara Lee Corporation, Monsanto, CBS Corporation, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Walt Disney Company, President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, the Rockefeller Foundation, Business Roundtable, Financial Services Forum, PepsiCo, Carlyle Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, Goldman Sachs, the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait.

Meet the Elites

Bank of America’s CEO, Brian T. Moynihan, was a former executive vice president at Fleet Boston and director of BlackRock. He is currently a member of the Business Roundtable and Vice Chairman of the Financial Services Forum, as well as being a member of the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Charles O. Holliday, Jr. is the Chairman of the Board of Bank of America and a director of Royal Dutch Shell, and was the CEO of DuPont from 1998 to 2009. He was the former Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Business Council, Catalyst, the Society of Chemical Industry, and is a founding member of the International Business Council. Holliday is a director of Deere & Company, a member of the board of Planet Forward, Climate Works Foundation, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, and is a member of the board of directors of the National Geographic Education Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Mukesh D. Ambani is a member of the board of Bank of America and is the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries. He is a member of the Global Board of Advisors of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry for the Government of India, a member of the board of governors of the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi, and a member of the Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group. Ambani is also a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, a member of the Indo-U.S. CEOs Forum, a member of the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait, Vice Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Additionally Ambani is a member of the Business Council, the India-Russia CEO Council, Co-Chair of the Japan-India Business Leader’s Forum, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, and is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution.

Monica C. Lozano is Chairman and CEO of ImpreMedia and CEO of La Opinion, as well as a member of the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company. She is also a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California, a Trustee of the University of Southern California and a director of the Weingart Foundation, as well as a member of the board of directors of the Commission of the 21st Century Economy. Lozano was a member of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board from 2009-2011, and has since been a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Charles O. Rossotti is a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group and was the Commissioner of the IRS from 1997 to 2002, also sitting on the board of directors of Booz Allen Hamilton, Quorum Management Solutions, Primatics Financial and AES Corporation. He too is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Linda P. Hudson, who sits on the board of BofA, is the President and CEO of the military contractor BAE Systems, and former Vice President of General Dynamics. Hudson sits on the board of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and on the executive committee of the Aerospace Industries Association. She is a member of the University of Florida Foundation Board and the International Women’s Forum.

Anne M. Finucance, who is the Global Strategy and Marketing Officer at Bank of America, is also a director of Partners HealthCare System, CVS Caremark Corporation, a trustee of Stonehill College and Carnegie Hall, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Finucance sits on the boards of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the American Ireland Fund, the International Center of Journalists, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Banking on America?

Bank of America is, in short, a profound symbol of much that is wrong on Wall Street: massive fraud, money laundering, racketeering, conspiracy, and weighty influence in Washington and beyond. Surely it's comforting to know that a woman who sits on the board of BofA, Monica Lozano, also sits on President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, advising the president as to how to appropriately manage the economic "recovery". In terms of the media reporting on Bank of America's crimes, Lozano, as CEO of a media company and board member of the Walt Disney Company, along with BofA board member Charles K. Gifford — who sits on the board of directors of CBS Corporation — signal that a “fair” portrayal of the bank's activities aren't exactly what the public should expect. What is clear is that Bank of America, like all big banks in our era, isn't merely a financial institution but simultaneously acts as an influential institution in the media, military industrial complex, think tanks, chemical companies and government circles. The bank is too big to fail. Too big to jail. And too connected to change.

An earlier version of this article appeared on Occupy.com

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/how-does-criminal-enterprise-engaging-large-scale-fraud-and?akid=10716.227380.ea2AuO&rd=1&src=newsletter872026&t=3&paging=off

[Demeter]

12. IN OTHER WORDS:

[Hotler]

24. "Doing God's work."....

Lloyd needs his ass kicked.

[Hugin]

27. This is only one example of why I've lost my faith in Kharma.

... and without my faith. I ain't got nuttin'.

Colossal crimes like these, should cause colossal falls... But, they don't. Ever.

They only get richer... and richer... and richer...

[Hugin]

30. I've also lost my faith in some statistical concepts like regression to the mean. n/t

[xchrom]

9. Japan consumer prices rise for first time in 14 months

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23462201


Japanese consumer prices rose for the first time in more than a year in June, a sign that policies aimed at ending deflation could be yielding results.

Data showed that consumer prices, excluding food, rose by 0.4% - the biggest increase for five years.

However, the rise was mainly due to higher energy bills rather than increased domestic demand.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said that he will end more than a decade of falling prices.

[xchrom]

10. China unveils fresh measures to boost growth

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23445528

China has unveiled a series of moves aimed at boosting growth, indicating that policymakers are concerned about the slowdown in its economy.

The steps include tax breaks for small businesses, reduced fees for exporters and opening up of railway construction.

China's economic growth rate has slowed for two quarters in a row and there are concerns that it may slow further.

But the cabinet said the economy was in a reasonable shape and it was pushing for reforms to stabilise growth.

[xchrom]

13. Chinese Wage Growth Is Slowing Significantly

http://www.businessinsider.com/china-wage-growth-slowing-2013-7

China's one-child policy has contributed to a demographic structure in which the working-age population isn't growing fast enough to sufficiently support economic growth.

Companies are struggling to fill positions, and the ones that can find candidates have to pay up because of worker shortages.

This is bad news for a company that is as big as and is growing as fast as China.

Currently, the average economist expects GDP growth to slow to 7.5% in 2013 and 2014.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/china-wage-growth-slowing-2013-7#ixzz2a9QNKPwM

[xchrom]

14. REPORT: There's A Letter Circulating In The Senate Supporting Janet Yellen As The Next Fed Head

http://www.businessinsider.com/report-janet-yellen-fed-head-senate-letter-circulating-2013-7

A letter circulating among U.S. Senate Democrats in support of Janet Yellen's candidacy to succeed Ben Bernanke as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Bloomberg reports.
It was drafted by Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, and it is said to have signatures of other Democrats.

Bernanke's term ends this year, and many expect him to retire.

Yellen, who is currently the Vice Chair of the Fed, has been long considered the favorite for the position.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/report-janet-yellen-fed-head-senate-letter-circulating-2013-7#ixzz2a9R2V2fL

[Demeter]

17. I'd like to think....

1) Janet Yellen is a worthy candidate we can support with confidence that she won't turn into the female Obama

2) The Senate isn't so corrupt, that such public support would be totally ignored and shut out.

3) That nobody connected to or exploiting the NSA snoop program would try to blackmail her.

4) That she isn't secretly or inherently already corrupted by the banksters.

...but frankly, that's a lot to take on faith, and I haven't even had a shower, let alone breakfast, yet. Also, I'm an atheist on faith.

Between fighting with my computer, which has an annoying problem, probably due to some dastardly malware, and fighting my nausea due to the posts above, I'm done for the morning.


See you all tonight on the Weekend thread!

[xchrom]

20. see ya, miss demeter!

[xchrom]

15. Investor Momentum In The Housing Market May Have Swung Too Far

http://www.businessinsider.com/housing-investors-now-a-concerns-2013-7

During the downturn and early stages of recovery, we were huge proponents of investors taking advantage of overcorrected home prices to make great investments while also helping the housing market recover. Mission accomplished.
We are now concerned that investor momentum has swung too far in the other direction.

Recent developments include:

Highest investor activity ever. We now have an all-time high level of investor activity, reaching 30% of all resales in the markets we track and 45% in markets such as Orlando and Florida. We believe that thousands of organizations and individuals now have the capital and infrastructure to invest quickly, and we don't know what will shut it off.

No more bargains. Price appreciation at the lower end of the market now exceeds 30% YOY in markets such as Atlanta, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Las Vegas (Case-Shiller data). The bargains are gone.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/housing-investors-now-a-concerns-2013-7#ixzz2a9Rcln7F

[westerebus]

28. Anecdotal.

A friend who is a local contractor moved his woman-friend into his home over the weekend. She divorced two years ago and had the martial home on the market for a year as part of the divorce settlement. It was purchased in 2005-6 for $277,000. After 90 visits and 30 some offers, it sold for $250,000. Deduct realtor fees and closing costs and $12,000 in upgrades and fixes, she and her ex split a loss over $48,000.

Local agent I know said they know there are homes being held off the market and rented out in some of the best neighborhoods. Even at that, anything below $300,000 is bid on by competing investors who low ball offers with cash down deposits forcing home buyer's to go in at asking price which is the tax value of the property.

Given the tax value has shrunk considerably, anyone who bought between 2004 and 2008 is jammed between a rock and a hard place.

She went on to say that the upper end of the market is drifting dead in the water for re-sales. If they have money, they shop the area and make wish lists and hire a contractor to build their own.

The local high end contractors are doing well. The developer's have adopted a build two sell one strategy that includes upgrades. These new homes are in new developments that border established communities in which now body knows if it will be completed. The developers are pressuring the county board to eliminate proffer payments. Proffer payments are per housing unit assessments that pay for county infrastructure like schools and EMS charged directly to the developer.

We the homeowner taxpayers are pushing back to keep them in place. We face rising property taxes that would subsidize the developers' profits if the proffers went away. Can you say tax revolt?

[xchrom]

16. Banks shiver as UBS swallows $885 million U.S. fine

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/uk-usa-ubs-settlement-idUKBRE96P0DV20130726

(Reuters) - UBS will pay $885 million (574.6 million pounds) in a settlement with a U.S. regulators over allegations the Swiss bank misrepresented mortgage-backed bonds during the housing bubble, paving the way for billions more to be paid by other banks.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees government-sponsored housing enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said late on Thursday UBS must pay $415 million to Fannie Mae and $470 million to Freddie Mac to resolve claims related to securities sold to the companies between 2004 and 2007.

Other European banks, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, and U.S. banks including JP Morgan and Bank of America could face costly settlements. RBS was the worst performing of European banks on Friday, shares falling 2.5 percent by 0930 GMT.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were seized by the U.S. government in 2008 as the housing crisis threatened their solvency. They have received $187 billion in taxpayer funds to stay afloat.

[xchrom]

18. Portugal plans gradual company tax cuts from next year

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/uk-portugal-tax-reform-idUKBRE96P0F020130726

(Reuters) - Portugal's government promised on Friday gradual cuts in corporate taxes from early 2014 as part of a fiscal reform aimed at boosting investment to help drag the bailed-out economy out of a deep recession.

The finance ministry said the plan was to cut the main corporate tax rate to 19 percent in the medium term from 25 percent now. Officials said concrete proposals for the reform to be carried out over the next five years, will be published next week, then discussed with business groups and the civil society.

Finance Minister Maria Luis Albuquerque told a briefing the plan is to make Portugal's company tax system "one of Europe's most competitive" via the reform that began under her predecessor and architect of Lisbon's austerity drive, Vitor Gaspar.

[xchrom]

19. UK pay deals offer 2.5 percent wage increase in second quarter

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/25/uk-pay-deals-idUKLNE96O00520130725


(Reuters) - British employers agreed a median 2.5 percent pay rise with workers in the second quarter, the same as in the first three months of the year, a survey by researchers Incomes Data Services showed on Thursday.

Employers in the automotive and energy sectors were the most generous, offering 3 percent annual pay rises on average, while public sector workers received pay rises of only 1 percent as part of the government's real-terms public spending cuts.

Adjusting for the fact that more staff worked for employers offering smaller pay rises, the average worker received a 1.4 percent pay rise in the three months to June.

This is slightly higher than the 1.0 percent annual increase in regular pay reported by the Office for National Statistics in the three months to May, but well below the 2.9 percent rate of consumer price inflation recorded in June.

[DemReadingDU]

21. Yves Smith: A Pox on Optimists!

7/26/13 A Pox on Optimists!

I’ve had it with optimism. Optimism, at least US style, got us into this mess. It gave us 30+ years of indulgent parenting in which self-esteem was considered to be more important than skill acquisition, self-discipline, cooperation, and learning to cope with adversity. It’s led to widespread magical thinking, that if you had the right attitude, you’d surely get ahead. Notice how everyone looking for a job is obligated to fake that they have passion? The Greeks understood that passion was an affliction, something you got when you were on the receiving end of Eros’ arrow and as a result developed an insane, insatiable fixation on whatever you saw next, which in a best case scenario might be an unattainable but fetching female, and if you were unlucky, might be a goat.

My sense is the issue of motivation is more pressing in the zeitgeist than it used to be due to the how dark things are now and how difficult it appears to be to effect positive change. Over the last few weeks, we’ve had a running sub-theme in the comments section on how to motivate people to make sacrifices for future generations if you couldn’t appeal to religion. And in the last day, in a weird bit of sychronicity, I’ve seen two calls from members of the lonely faith of True Progressives, for Yet More Optimism.

moire...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/a-pox-on-optimists.html

[Demeter]

31. Optimism without some underlying Integrity is DELUSION

Show me the Integrity, and I'll be optimistic!

I don't see any, anywhere. Not in any institution, nor any office, appointed or elected.

Contract law is broken, social contract is broken, all promises are broken. Everything and every body is for sale, or can be easily stolen from its owner, often "legally".

[Demeter]

32. Yves gets philosophical

...Victor Frankl, concentration camp survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, would often start his therapy sessions by asking his patient, “Why haven’t you killed yourself?” He found that what enabled people in concentration camps to endure was either that they had a loved one they wanted to live for, or they had some sort of creative work they wanted to accomplish. The interesting bit about the loved ones is that many of the survivors learned that turned out to be a delusion, that many had assumed they were dead and had moved on to other relationships.

I’m up for a much more fundamental rethink of cultural values. The pursuit of optimism has both a hedonistic element (we want to feel good emotionally) and Judeo-Christian dualism (optimism is a good, safe, nice, clean emotion, we don’t need to think about our nasty chthonic drives). It requires an ongoing, active effort to deny significant parts of our personality and human experience, which is why I’m dubious of its ability to sustain people over the long haul (admittedly, there are some people who are blessed with naturally sunny dispositions, but they don’t have to exhort them, they just seem to have been lucky in the brain chemistry they inherited).

I have to confess I’m not deeply enough read in it to be sure, but Stoicism has gotten a bad rap, and it has a lot to recommend it in times like ours. Stoics have a lot in common with Buddhists, in that they believe in cultivating emotionally equanimity and resilience no matter what your external circumstances. What appeals to me about Stoicism is that they have a non-Christian (as in not driven by fear that God will get you in the afterlife if you are bad) foundation for morality.... I feel we need to find new ways, on a practical and philosophical level, to get out of the mess we are in, and it can’t hurt to see if past schools of thought can provide fresh vantages.

[xchrom]

22. The Olympic legacy is that it proved public funding works

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/26/olympic-legacy-public-funding-works

Welcome to the Britain that actually learned from the best of the Olympics. You take a day off work to potter around your community allotment, paid for by a national public health fund. Next week you fancy another day off to take an interesting elderly person who attends the same GP surgery as you for tea. They talk in fascinating detail about how grim things were before the NHS. After that, maybe a day building a garden at the local school, or helping to set up a publicly funded community green energy scheme. At the end of the month you'll have a big party with everyone else doing similar things, then start all over again. Better still, your employer cheers you on, the national press treats you like a hero and the prime minister lauds the example you have set.

You're a Games Maker who never gave up. You're living in a nation that stumbled on an extraordinary idea – that instead of chaining ourselves to desks, working ever longer and throwing ourselves on the mercy of the markets, there is another way. A new book, London 2012: How Was It For Us? argues it could be like this for everyone – a publicly funded good time: working less, getting to know complete strangers, feeling better about life and watching the economic and social benefits flow.

David Cameron and George Osborne would be horrified if the idea crept out because it directly contradicts government moralising on austerity and the primacy of the private sector. Yet it's a lesson we can all draw from, and holds the simple logic of acknowledging the positive impact of the Olympics that the coalition is claiming credit for.

Nearly £10bn in trade and investment came our way as a result of hosting the Olympics, they say. Given that the Olympics was over 90% publicly funded, it must be a clear triumph of the stimulus that public spending can generate.

[Roland99]

23. US Futures in a downer mood

[font color="red"]S&P 500 -0.4%
DOW -0.4%
NASDAQ -0.2% [/font]

[DemReadingDU]

25. Local golf course buys 2 Hovercrafts

Nick Tiller - owner
Uncle Dave Duffey - general manager
Son Pete Duffey - managing director

6/30/13 Golf courses scrambling as participation dwindles
Two area courses — Larch Tree in Trotwood and River Bend in Miamisburg — have closed. Indian Springs near Mechanicsburg has gone from 36 to 18 holes. And the original owners of 12-year-old Windy Knoll in Springfield went bankrupt.

Windy Knoll, which was in foreclosure, was purchased for $1.44 million in May 2012 by Nick Tiller under the name of Nostaligic Golf, LLC. And the 40-year-old Springfield native has already made a considerable investment in the links-style course. The bent-grass fairways and greens are being restored. The gravel parking lot has been paved and striped. One mile of fencing has been rebuilt. And all the facilities are being upgraded. Although the course is a long way from being profitable, it did 20,000 rounds in 2012, about 7,000 more than the previous year.

A hedge-fund manager on the East coast, Tiller wouldn’t agree to an interview. But his uncle, Windy Knoll general manager Dave Duffey, said Tiller’s motive for buying the property was that he didn’t want to see an upscale course in a prime part of Springfield become an abandoned field. “He was raised in this area, and he wants to save this place,” said Duffey, a 66-year-old retired salesman for General Motors in Dayton. “I’m not trying to make him sound noble. If we can get this to break even, he’d sure be a lot happier. He doesn’t want to continue to lose money. He’d like it to sustain itself. But it’s not something he needs to live on.”

One of the ways Windy Knoll hopes to gain a foothold in a crowded market is customer service. Duffey has vowed not to overbook tee times, a practice that results in slow play, and to make players feel valued. “A lot of golf courses don’t meet, greet, stroke and pat. That doesn’t cost anything,” Duffey said.

Windy Knoll also has set itself apart by purchasing two Hovercraft golf carts, the first to be ordered by a U.S course. They cost $53,000 apiece and go 35 m.p.h. over land or water. They’ll be unveiled during a special event July 27, although Duffey isn’t sure how quickly they’ll be made available to the public. “We don’t know enough about them yet,” he said. “But with all the hard work we do — and my nephew works very hard for what he makes with a lot of stress — we want to make it fun to play. At the end of the day, when you come to the golf course, you’re supposed to have fun.”

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/sports/golf/golf-courses-scrambling-as-participation-dwindles/nYYbq/



7/9/13 For the curious and the adventurous, a round of golf at an Ohio course is about to cost a lot more.
Windy Knoll Golf Club tries to keep the price under $40 on the weekend, which includes a cart. That soon will go up to $230 — when the round of golf includes a hovercraft. Pete Duffey, the managing director of the public course in Springfield, Ohio, was so intrigued by the YouTube video of Bubba Watson skimming over water and through bunkers in a hovercraft built for golf that he called the manufacturer to make sure it was real.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2013/07/09/windy-knoll-golf-club-hovercraft/2504099/



4/2/13 video Bubba's Hovercraft

[xchrom]

26. 'An Anxious Continent': Walter Lacqueur on Europe's Decline

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-historian-walter-lacqueur-on-the-decline-of-europe-a-912837.html

SPIEGEL: Mr. Laqueur, you experienced Europe and the Europeans in the best and the worst of times. Historical hot spots and the stations of your personal biography were closely and sometimes dramatically intertwined. Which conclusions have you reached today, at the advanced age of 92?

Laqueur: I became a historian of the postwar era in Europe, but the Europe I knew no longer exists. My book "Out of the Ruins of Europe," published in 1970, ended with an optimistic assessment of the future. Later, in 2008, "The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent" was published. I returned to the subject in my latest book, "After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent." The sequence of titles probably says it all.
SPIEGEL: The last two, at any rate, sound as if the demise of the Western world were imminent.

Laqueur: Europe will not be buried by ashes, like Pompeii or Herculaneum, but Europe is in decline. It's certainly horrifying to consider its helplessness in the face of the approaching storms. After being the center of world politics for so long, the old continent now runs the risk of becoming a pawn.

SPIEGEL: Fortunately, the European Union refrained from pursuing any imperial ambitions. Nevertheless, it remains an impressive entity, both politically and economically, despite the financial and debt crisis.

Laqueur: Europe will likely remain influential in the future as an economic power and trading partner. But the continent still isn't standing on its own feet politically and militarily today. This wouldn't be that important if power politics didn't play a role and conflicts were resolved peacefully by the United Nations or the International Court of Justice. But the conflicts have not decreased. Their inherent fanaticism and passions continue to burn, as we can now see, once again, in Syria and in Egypt. Under these circumstances, is it realistic to call for European independence in global politics?

[DemReadingDU]

29. From Billionaire to Millionaire in One Day

7/26/13 From Billionaire to Millionaire in One Day

Brazil businessman Eike Batista has seen better days. Last March the Brazilian tycoon ranked as the world’s eighth richest person with a net worth of $34.5 billion. His net worth today: $200 million, according to Bloomberg Billionaires.

Batista, who has been called the Donald Trump of Brazil, may have suffered one of the “worst wealth losses in history,” says Bloomberg Billionaires Index editor Matt Miller. “He was the face of Brazilian capitalism. He’s mired in debt. This is a tragic fall for him.”

Miller explains how EBX Group Co., Batista’s commodities empire, “tended to oversell the amount of resources it had,” and Batista would have to “constantly borrow against one company to pay for the needs of others.”

Unlike billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, Batista was ostentatious about his wealth, even declaring that he would overtake Mexico’s Carlos Slim for the world’s richest person title by 2015. He told Bloomberg: "Just give me time, let me work please."

"I suffered very heavy asthma, so my mother threw me in the cold swimming pool," Batista said. "So I cured my asthma through discipline, and I saw that you could achieve things by performing, and it's part of my DNA… I'm very competitive."

Well, Batista now has one year and five months to earn back $66.8 billion.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/billionaire-millionaire-one-day-134444038.html