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Demeter

(85,373 posts)
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 06:29 PM Sep 2015

Weekend Economists Implore: "Say it ain't so, Joe" September 18-20, 2015

Yes, you can take that thread headline to mean Biden shouldn't run....



but I'm primarily (pun) thinking of the Black Sox scandal of 1919, when Shoeless Joe Jackson was one of 8 Chicago White Sox players indicted for taking a bribe to throw the World Series.

The World Series is coming up next month, my friend the Queen of Sports tells me. She says St. Louis and Kansas City look like the most likely matchup. Since both of these teams are based in Missouri, it should be pretty boring for the rest of the nation. We shall see what happens: there's still a month, nearly. Anything could happen.



Well, almost anything. I don't expect the Detroit Tigers to come from behind. The Tigers are doing worse than usual, but the manager has been fired, or will be, so things are looking up. I remember the celebration on the streets by my home when Detroit won the Series in 1968, one year after the terrifying riots. It's been downhill ever since for my native land...

Tell your baseball tales of days of yore---blood and gore---run and score. And if you should slip in a little news on the economy, that's all good, too.



(On a personal note: ever since I found out what kind of vile disease my daughter gifted me, and gotten the right medication for the bronchitis it induced, I am feeling much better, and may actually live through the weekend and start to make a real recovery. I've never had bronchitis before....it's awful! Stay healthy, and avoid my daughter like the plague!)



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Weekend Economists Implore: "Say it ain't so, Joe" September 18-20, 2015 (Original Post) Demeter Sep 2015 OP
Shoeless Joe Jackson Demeter Sep 2015 #1
From Humble Beginnings Demeter Sep 2015 #2
Musical Interlude hamerfan Sep 2015 #3
Musical Interlude II hamerfan Sep 2015 #4
Joe at Bat Demeter Sep 2015 #5
The Black Sox Scandal Demeter Sep 2015 #7
Musical Interlude III hamerfan Sep 2015 #6
Joe's Life After 1920 Demeter Sep 2015 #8
Damn Yankees! Demeter Sep 2015 #9
If you'd like the entire Broadway Show: Demeter Sep 2015 #10
The Public Knows Demeter Sep 2015 #11
Alibaba's Wipeout Leaves Investors Questioning What Comes Next? EASY COME-EASY GO Demeter Sep 2015 #12
Taxing Times for Yahoo! and Its Alibaba Shares Demeter Sep 2015 #43
China Is Hoarding the World's Oil BUT FOR HOW LONG, AND HOW MUCH? Demeter Sep 2015 #13
US oil tumbles 4.7% to settle at $44.68 a barrel Demeter Sep 2015 #23
The US-Saudi Oil Deal: From “Win-Win” to “Mega-Loose” Demeter Sep 2015 #25
THE CURE IS SO MUCH BETTER (FOR PEOPLE) THAN THIS DISEASE OF THE BRAIN Demeter Sep 2015 #26
Don't Fall Into the Social Security Trap Demeter Sep 2015 #14
easy to say when you're one of the money people. and the more they say it, the more I call bs magical thyme Sep 2015 #48
I think it's stupid the way it's run Demeter Sep 2015 #50
life is what happens when you're making other plans. unless you have unlimited moolah, you can't magical thyme Sep 2015 #51
These articles are written as advice to the 10% on how to maximize their take of the SS pie Demeter Sep 2015 #52
I'm looking at breadmaking as one of my potential life-long small businesses magical thyme Sep 2015 #68
A small plan is better than no plan Demeter Sep 2015 #69
for some reason nobody believes the "news" any more, if they ever did. magical thyme Sep 2015 #70
Yet Another Election? Weary Greeks See Little Gain From Vote Demeter Sep 2015 #15
Bitcoin Is Officially a Commodity, According to U.S. Regulator Demeter Sep 2015 #16
The Bitcoin Community Disagrees on What Happens Next Demeter Sep 2015 #45
Indian Billionaire Pays $120 Million for Occasional Weekend Home Demeter Sep 2015 #17
Wall Street's Mr. Fix-It Faces His Toughest Test Demeter Sep 2015 #18
JPMorgan's Dimon Says Violent Moves in Treasuries Are Possible Demeter Sep 2015 #19
Will Banks “Cough Up Executives” in the Treasury Bid-Rigging Scandal? YVES SMITH Demeter Sep 2015 #22
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Stock Falls as CEO Dimon Warns of Lower Revenue Demeter Sep 2015 #42
Just How Bad Was the Fed's Non-Hike for Bank Stocks? Take a Look Demeter Sep 2015 #20
video: Don’t Let a Little Debt Get in the Way of Learning DemReadingDU Sep 2015 #21
Central banks fret stimulus efforts are falling short Demeter Sep 2015 #24
Orleans Parish court system operating 'modern debtors' prison,' lawsuit claims Demeter Sep 2015 #27
30k Finns protest govt-planned cuts, nationwide strike grinds country to a halt Demeter Sep 2015 #28
1985 World Series: Royals vs Cardinals -- one of the top 10 blown calls in baseball antigop Sep 2015 #29
I'll have to take your word for it Demeter Sep 2015 #30
Musical interlude: "T-E-A-M" from "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!" antigop Sep 2015 #31
How could I have forgotten that one! Thanks, antigop! Demeter Sep 2015 #32
You're welcome, and glad you are feeling better. I've been away this week. nt antigop Sep 2015 #33
Has the Fed Lost its Mojo? By Mike Whitney Demeter Sep 2015 #34
Best baseball songs of all time antigop Sep 2015 #35
Casey At The Bat / James Earl Jones Demeter Sep 2015 #36
I bid you all a good night's rest, with this absolutely indispensable passage Demeter Sep 2015 #37
Wary Fed has markets recalling years of Japan disappointment Demeter Sep 2015 #38
Florida voted 21.7 million shares 'against' BofA board structure change Demeter Sep 2015 #39
IRS: Coca-Cola owes $3.3 billion in taxes Demeter Sep 2015 #40
Toxic Work World By ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER Demeter Sep 2015 #41
but whatever you do, don't take social security early. magical thyme Sep 2015 #49
VW `Clean Diesel' Scheme Exposed as Criminal Charges Weighed Demeter Sep 2015 #44
$75 million cake sets price record Demeter Sep 2015 #46
Lessons We Can Learn from the Story of Shoeless Joe Demeter Sep 2015 #47
In Historic Settlement, US to Pay $1 Billion to Native Tribes Demeter Sep 2015 #53
And now a word from Joe, the politician... MattSh Sep 2015 #54
If Biden wants to fight corruption, he should tell Hunter to get a different job in another country Demeter Sep 2015 #56
Russia’s ultimate lethal weapon — RT Op-Edge MattSh Sep 2015 #55
Escobar continues... Demeter Sep 2015 #57
OPEC, Russia and the New World Order Emerging By F. William Engdahl Demeter Sep 2015 #58
This afternoon I'm taking a small group to the local Russian Festival Demeter Sep 2015 #59
Sounds like fun DemReadingDU Sep 2015 #60
If I went to all the fall festivals around here, I'd have to skip WEE Demeter Sep 2015 #61
Several festivals every weekend! DemReadingDU Sep 2015 #63
Baseball tidbit DemReadingDU Sep 2015 #62
5 states will need Passport while flying in U.S. DemReadingDU Sep 2015 #64
Is it fascism yet? Demeter Sep 2015 #65
Robert Reich: 4 reasons the Wall Street Journal’s attack on Bernie Sanders is absurd Demeter Sep 2015 #66
Greece is voting today--Polls close 1PM EDT Demeter Sep 2015 #67
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
1. Shoeless Joe Jackson
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 06:34 PM
Sep 2015


Joseph Jefferson Jackson (July 16, 1887 – December 5, 1951), nicknamed "Shoeless Joe", was an American outfielder who played Major League Baseball in the early part of the 20th century. He is remembered for his performance on the field and for his alleged association with the Black Sox Scandal, in which members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox participated in a conspiracy to fix the World Series. As a result of Jackson's association with the scandal, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Major League Baseball's first commissioner, banned Jackson from playing after the 1920 season. Since then, Jackson's guilt has been disputed, and his expulsion from baseball during the prime of his career made him one of the game's legendary figures.



Jackson played for three Major League teams during his 12-year career. He spent 1908–1909 as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics and 1910 with the minor league New Orleans Pelicans before joining the Cleveland Naps at the end of the 1910 season. He remained in Cleveland through the first part of the 1915; he played the remainder of the 1915 season through 1920 with the Chicago White Sox.

Jackson, who played left field for most of his career, currently has the third-highest career batting average in major league history. In 1911, Jackson hit for a .408 average. It is still the sixth-highest single-season total since 1901, which marked the beginning of the modern era for the sport. His average that year also set the record for batting average in a single season by a rookie. Babe Ruth said that he modeled his hitting technique after Jackson's.



Jackson still holds the Indians and White Sox franchise records for both triples in a season and career batting average. In 1999, he ranked number 35 on The Sporting News? '​ list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. The fans voted him as the 12th-best outfielder of all-time. He also ranks 33rd on the all-time list for non-pitchers according to the win shares formula developed by Bill James.

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
2. From Humble Beginnings
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 06:37 PM
Sep 2015
Early life

Jackson was born in Pickens County, South Carolina, the oldest son in the family. His father George was a sharecropper; he moved the family to Pelzer, South Carolina, while Jackson was still a baby. A few years afterwards the family moved to a company town called Brandon Mill, on the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina. An attack of measles almost killed him when he was 10. He was in bed for two months, paralyzed while he was nursed back to health by his mother.

Starting at the age of 6 or 7, Jackson worked in one of the town's textile mills as a "linthead," a derogatory name for a mill hand. Family finances required Joe to take 12-hour shifts in the mill, and since education at the time was a luxury the Jackson family couldn't afford, Jackson was uneducated. His lack of education ultimately became an issue throughout Jackson's life. It even affected the value of his memorabilia in the collectibles market; because Jackson was illiterate, he often had his wife sign his signature. Consequently, anything actually autographed by Jackson himself brings a premium when sold, including one autograph which was sold for $23,500 in 1990 (equal to $42,000 today). In restaurants, rather than ask someone to read the menu to him, he would wait until his teammates ordered and then order one of the items that he heard.

In 1900, when he was 13 years old, his mother was approached by one of the owners of the Brandon Mill and he started to play for the mill's baseball team. He was the youngest player on the team. He was paid $2.50 to play on Saturdays (equivalent to $71.00 today). He was originally placed as a pitcher, but one day he accidentally broke another player's arm with a fastball. No one wanted to bat against him so the manager of the team placed him in the outfield. His hitting ability made him a celebrity around town. Around that time he was given a baseball bat which he named Black Betsy. He was compared to Champ Osteen, another player from the mills who made it to the Majors. He moved from mill team to mill team in search of better pay, even playing semi-professional baseball by 1905.

Nickname

According to Jackson, he got his nickname during a mill game played in Greenville, South Carolina. Jackson suffered from blisters on his foot from a new pair of cleats, and they hurt so much that he had to take his shoes off before he was at bat. As play continued, a heckling fan noticed Jackson running to third base in his socks, and shouted "You shoeless son of a gun, you!" and the resulting nickname "Shoeless Joe" stuck with him throughout the remainder of his life.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
5. Joe at Bat
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 06:40 PM
Sep 2015

Early professional career


1908 was an eventful year for Jackson. He began his professional baseball career with the Greenville Spinners of the Carolina Association, married 15-year-old Katie Wynn, and eventually signed with Connie Mack to play Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics.

For the first two years of his career, Jackson had some trouble adjusting to life with the Athletics; reports conflict as to whether he just did not like the big city, or if he was bothered by hazing from teammates. Consequently, he spent a great portion of that time in the minor leagues. Between 1908 and 1909, Jackson appeared in just 10 games. During the 1909 season, Jackson played 118 games for the South Atlantic League's Savannah Indians. He batted .358 for the year.

Major League career


The Athletics gave up on Jackson in 1910 and traded him to the Cleveland Naps. He spent most of 1910 with the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern Association, where he won the batting title and led the team to the pennant. Late in the season, he was called up to play on the big league team. He appeared in 20 games and hit .387.

In 1911, Jackson's first full season, he set a number of rookie records. His .408 batting average that season is a record that still stands and was good for second overall in the league behind Ty Cobb. His .468 on-base percentage led the league. The following season, Jackson batted .395 and led the American League in hits, triples, and total bases. On April 20, 1912, Jackson scored the first run in Tiger Stadium. The next year, he led the league with 197 hits and a .551 slugging percentage.

In August 1915, Jackson was traded to the Chicago White Sox. Two years later, Jackson and the White Sox won the American League pennant and also the World Series. During the series, Jackson hit .307 as the White Sox defeated the New York Giants.

Jackson missed most of the 1918 season while working in a shipyard because of World War I. In 1919, he came back strongly to post a .351 average during the regular season and .375 with perfect fielding in the World Series. However, the heavily favored White Sox lost the series to the Cincinnati Reds. The next season, Jackson batted .382 and was leading the American league in triples when he was suspended, along with seven other members of the White Sox, after allegations surfaced that the team had thrown the previous World Series.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
7. The Black Sox Scandal
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 06:44 PM
Sep 2015

After the White Sox lost the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, Jackson and seven other White Sox players were accused of accepting $5,000 each to throw the Series. In September 1920, a grand jury was convened to investigate the allegations.

During the series, Jackson had 12 hits (a Series record) and a .375 batting average—leading individual statistics for both teams. He committed no errors and threw out a runner at the plate.

It has been claimed that the Cincinnati Reds hit an unusually high number of triples to left field where Jackson played during the series, but this is not supported by the contemporary newspaper accounts. According to first hand accounts, none of the triples were hit to left field. In fact, more triples were muffed by Shano Collins than were hit to Jackson. (Collins was ironically listed as the wronged party in the indictments of the conspirators. The indictments claimed he was defrauded of $1,784 ($24,267 today) by the actions of those charged.)

In testimony before the grand jury on September 28, 1920, news accounts from the era claim that Jackson admitted under oath that he agreed to participate in the fix:

“When a Cincinnati player would bat a ball out in my territory I'd muff it if I could—that is, fail to catch it. But if it would look too much like crooked work to do that I'd be slow and make a throw to the infield that would be short. My work netted the Cincinnati team several runs that they never would have had if we had been playing on the square.”


However, no such direct quote or testimony to this effect appears in the actual stenographic record of Jackson's grand jury appearance, casting doubt on their veracity. Legend has it that as Jackson was leaving the courthouse during the trial, a young boy begged of him, "Say it ain't so, Joe," and that Jackson did not respond. In an interview in SPORT nearly three decades later, Jackson contended that this story was a myth. A contemporary press account does refer to an exchange of Jackson with young fans outside the Chicago grand jury hearing on September 28:

When Jackson left criminal court building in custody of a sheriff after telling his story to the grand jury, he found several hundred youngsters, aged from 6 to 16, awaiting for a glimpse of their idol. One child stepped up to the outfielder, and, grabbing his coat sleeve, said:
"It ain't true, is it, Joe?"
"Yes, kid, I'm afraid it is," Jackson replied. The boys opened a path for the ball player and stood in silence until he passed out of sight.
"Well, I'd never have thought it," sighed the lad.


Even though Jackson's exchange with the shocked young fan was most likely not a true historical event, but rather a fabrication by a sensationalist journalist, the "Say It Ain't So" story remains an oft-repeated and well-known part of baseball lore.


In 1921, a Chicago jury acquitted Jackson and his seven teammates of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the newly appointed Commissioner of Baseball, banned all eight players from ever playing again. Landis argued that while the players had been acquitted, none of them could ever be allowed back into the game if it were to clean up its public image.

Dispute over Jackson's guilt


Jackson spent most of the last 30 years of his life proclaiming his innocence, and evidence has surfaced that casts significant doubt on his involvement in the fix. Jackson reportedly refused the $5,000 bribe on two separate occasions—despite the fact that it would effectively double his salary—only to have teammate Lefty Williams toss the cash on the floor of his hotel room.

Jackson then reportedly tried to tell White Sox owner Charles Comiskey about the fix, but Comiskey refused to meet with him.

Unable to afford legal counsel, Jackson was represented by team attorney Alfred Austrian—a clear conflict of interest. Before Jackson's grand jury testimony, Austrian allegedly elicited Jackson's admission of his supposed role in the fix by plying him with whiskey. Austrian was also able to persuade the nearly illiterate Jackson to sign a waiver of immunity from prosecution.

Years later, the other seven players implicated in the scandal confirmed that Jackson was never at any of the meetings. Williams said that they only mentioned Jackson's name to give their plot more credibility.

Jackson's performance during the series itself lends further credence to his assertions. A 1993 article in The American Statistician reported the results of a statistical analysis of Jackson's contribution during the 1919 World Series, and concluded that there was "substantial support to Jackson's subsequent claims of innocence".

An article in the September 2009 issue of Chicago Lawyer magazine argued that Eliot Asinof's 1963 book Eight Men Out, purporting to confirm Jackson's guilt, was based on inaccurate information; for example, Jackson never confessed to throwing the Series as Asinof claimed. Further, Asinof omitted key facts from publicly available documents such as the 1920 grand jury records and proceedings of Jackson's successful 1924 lawsuit against Comiskey to recover back pay for the 1920 and 1921 seasons. Asinof's use of fictional characters within a supposedly non-fiction account added further questions about the historical accuracy of the book.

Jackson remains on MLB's ineligible list, which automatically precludes his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1989, MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti declined to reinstate Jackson because the case was "now best given to historical analysis and debate as opposed to a present-day review with an eye to reinstatement".

In November 1999, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution lauding Jackson's sporting achievements and encouraging MLB to rescind his ineligibility. The resolution was symbolic, since the U.S. government has no jurisdiction in the matter. Commissioner Bud Selig stated at the time that Jackson's case was under review, but no decision was issued during Selig's tenure.

In 2015, the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum formally petitioned Commissioner Rob Manfred for reinstatement, on grounds that Jackson had "more than served his sentence" in the 95 years since his banishment by Landis. Manfred denied the request after an official review. "The results of this work demonstrate to me that it is not possible now, over 95 years since those events took place and were considered by Commissioner Landis, to be certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis' determinations," he wrote.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
8. Joe's Life After 1920
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 06:52 PM
Sep 2015

During the remaining 20 years of his baseball career, Jackson played with and managed a number of semi-professional teams, most located in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1922, Jackson moved to Savannah, Georgia, and opened a dry cleaning business with his wife.

In 1933, the Jacksons moved back to Greenville, South Carolina. After first opening a barbecue restaurant, Jackson and his wife opened "Joe Jackson's Liquor Store," which they operated until his death.

One of the better known stories of Jackson's post-major league life took place at his liquor store. Ty Cobb and sportswriter Grantland Rice entered the store, with Jackson showing no sign of recognition towards Cobb. After making his purchase, the incredulous Cobb finally asked Jackson, "Don't you know me, Joe?" Jackson replied, "Sure, I know you, Ty, but I wasn't sure you wanted to know me. A lot of them don't."

As he aged, Jackson began to suffer from heart trouble. In 1951, at the age of 64, Jackson died of a heart attack. He was the first of the eight banned players to die, and is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park. Prior to his death, he was scheduled to be interviewed on television to set the record straight about reports that he was living in poverty, but died before the interview could take place. He had no children, but he and his wife raised two of his nephews.

Films and plays

Shoeless Joe has been depicted in a few films in the late 20th century. Eight Men Out, a film directed by John Sayles, based on the Eliot Asinof book of the same name, details the Black Sox scandal in general and has D. B. Sweeney portraying Jackson.

The Phil Alden Robinson film Field of Dreams, based on Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, stars Ray Liotta as Jackson. Kevin Costner plays an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice instructing him to build a baseball field on his farm so Shoeless Joe can play baseball again. (Liotta portrays Jackson as batting right-handed and throwing left-handed, although Jackson actually batted left and threw right.)

Jackson's nickname was worked into the musical play Damn Yankees. The lead character, baseball phenomenon Joe Hardy, alleged to be from a small town in Missouri, is dubbed by the media as "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, MO." The play also contains a plot element alleging that Joe had thrown baseball games in his earlier days.

Jackson was also an inspiration, in part, for the character Roy Hobbs in The Natural. Hobbs has a special name for his bat (as Jackson did), and is offered a bribe to throw a game. In the book (but not the film), a youngster pleads with Hobbs, "Say it ain't true, Roy!"

Shoeless Joe is a character in the song "Kenesaw Mountain Landis", by Jonathan Coulton, although the song takes many liberties with the story for comedic effect.

Legacy




Though Jackson was banned from Major League Baseball, statues and parks have been constructed in his honor. One of the landmarks built for him was a memorial park in Greenville, Shoeless Joe Jackson Memorial Park. A life-size statue of Jackson, created by South Carolina sculptor Doug Young, also stands in Greenville's West End.



In 2006, Jackson's original home was moved to a location adjacent to Fluor Field in downtown Greenville. The home was restored and opened in 2008 as the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum. The address is 356 Field Street, in honor of his lifetime batting average. The restoration and move was chronicled on The Learning Channel's reality show "The Real Deal" episode "A Home Run for Trademark" which aired March 31, 2007. Richard C. Davis, the owner of Trademark Properties hired Josh Hamilton as the construction foreman. In a bit of irony, the show also chronicled Hamilton's attempt to rejoin baseball after a one-year drug abuse suspension and 3-year absence.

Jackson was inducted into the Shrine of the Eternals by the Baseball Reliquary.


Jackson's first relative to play professional baseball since his banishment was catcher Joseph Ray Jackson. The great-great-grand nephew of Shoeless Joe batted .386 for The Citadel in 2013 and was then drafted by the Texas Rangers. Later that year, he made his professional debut with the Northwest League's Spokane Indians.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
9. Damn Yankees!
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 06:59 PM
Sep 2015



more footwork in 2 minutes than you'll EVER see in 15 innings....what's with this overtime binge, anyway?


The film version:

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
12. Alibaba's Wipeout Leaves Investors Questioning What Comes Next? EASY COME-EASY GO
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 07:15 PM
Sep 2015

AS MAX KEISER SAYS, THERE'S NO WAY TO TAPER OFF A PONZI SCHEME

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/alibaba-s-rise-and-fall-what-comes-after-the-historic-wipeout-

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. looked like a sure thing a year ago when it pulled off the largest initial public offering ever. It had a lock on China e-commerce as the economy was surging and consumer spending was steadily rising. Shares soared 76 percent from the IPO price in just two months.

Then it all crumbled. Alibaba came under fire from a China government agency, it cut deals that baffled investors and it replaced its chief executive as growth slowed. Most important, China’s economy turned wobbly, jeopardizing the rise in consumer spending Alibaba needed. Its stock slid down, down, down to the IPO price and then below. The sure thing was no such thing.

What now? Investors who watched $128 billion in market value disappear shouldn’t expect a reprieve any time soon. Atlantic Equities LLP’s James Cordwell, the top-ranked analyst covering the stock, predicts the slowing Chinese economy will undercut e-commerce transaction growth until at least 2016. The many deals Alibaba has negotiated will take time to pay off too.

“All the operating metrics seem to be pointing in the wrong direction,” said London-based Cordwell, who topped Bloomberg Absolute Return rankings for his calls on Alibaba and also recommendations across the portfolio he covers. “Until investors feel some comfort in that slowdown bottoming out, it will be hard for the stock.”

MORE

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
43. Taxing Times for Yahoo! and Its Alibaba Shares
Sat Sep 19, 2015, 11:22 AM
Sep 2015

OH THE TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE, WHEN WE TRY TO AVOID TAXES

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/taxing-times-for-yahoo-and-its-alibaba-shares


It might be the most expensive “no comment” in history. In February, Yahoo! asked the Internal Revenue Service to give advance approval for one part of its plan to create a new company to hold its $25 billion stake in Alibaba Group Holding. The spinoff was aimed at saving the estimated $9 billion in taxes Yahoo would owe if it sold the shares. In a Sept. 8 regulatory filing, however, Yahoo said the IRS had been noncommittal: The agency, it said, “was not ruling adversely on the request,” but it didn’t give its blessing.

“Clearly, it’s not the outcome that people were looking for,” says Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Financial. The IRS did nothing to allay investor concerns when a week later it outlined new misgivings about tax-free spinoffs. Since May, when the IRS raised concerns about such transactions, Yahoo stock has fallen about 30 percent, while Alibaba shares are down 23 percent.

Now, Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer has to decide whether to proceed with the deal, which investors have been demanding. It’s most likely she will, according to a person familiar with company deliberations who asked not to be named. In the Sept. 8 filing, Yahoo said the IRS decision wouldn’t prevent its law firm, Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom from rendering an opinion that the deal would “satisfy all the requirements for tax-free treatment.” Yahoo and the IRS declined to comment. “There’s a strong likelihood” that the spinoff will happen, says Scott Levine, a tax partner at the law firm Jones Day. Yahoo is also looking at alternatives. One might be spinning off its core Web portal business rather than the Alibaba shares. That business, which includes search and display advertising, might be valued at about $5 billion, according to Shyam Patil, an analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group, so a spinoff would result in a tax hit of roughly $1.75 billion, assuming a rate of 35 percent.

The company also could simply sell its Alibaba shares and take the tax hit. Potential buyers: Alibaba itself or SoftBank Group, which owns a stake in the Chinese e-commerce company, says Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group. Speaking hypothetically, Wieser says Yahoo could sell its core operations. Among companies that might be interested in the business are Twitter, which also depends on advertising revenue, and Verizon Communications’ new AOL unit, a longtime Yahoo rival. There’s no indication from Yahoo that it’s considering such a deal.

Yahoo unveiled the plan to spin off its 384 million Alibaba shares in January, after activist hedge fund Starboard Value and other investors pushed management to unlock the value in its Asian holdings without incurring a huge tax bill. The following month, Yahoo asked the IRS to issue an opinion on the spinoff, which would include the company’s small-business unit, to fulfill the IRS’s requirement that a spinoff has to include an operating business to qualify as tax-free. The move seemed to be on track until May, when an IRS official raised questions about spinoff rules. The agency indicated it had concerns about transactions in which a small operating business is being bundled with large appreciated assets for the purposes of a spinoff, a situation similar to the Yahoo proposal. On Sept. 14 the IRS issued more guidance, indicating it had misgivings about spinoffs consisting mostly of investment assets with small active businesses attached. Essentially, without mentioning Yahoo, the agency said it wouldn’t bless in advance any deals that look like Yahoo’s. It announced it was considering tougher and clearer rules to prevent other companies from starting similar transactions to avoid taxes on investment gains.

The omens aren’t completely bad for an Alibaba spinoff. While the IRS could eventually kill the type of transaction Yahoo asked about, any rule changes are still in the future, says Levine. In its Sept. 14 guidance, the IRS didn’t include language it’s used in the past—including in a 2014 warning against corporate inversions—that any new rules would be retroactive. That means Yahoo might be smart to move quickly on the transaction before the IRS has a chance to finish its changes. If the spinoff took place this year, Yahoo could report it as a tax-free transaction on its 2015 tax return, which it would likely file by September 2016. The IRS would have up to three years to inaugurate an audit. Big companies are typically audited annually, though each review can take years. If a subsequent audit led to a claim for additional taxes, Yahoo could go through the internal IRS appeals process. If it were still found to owe money, it could file suit in tax court. That would likely lead to years of preliminary hearings, trials, and appeals. For example, a case dating to 2004 involving deals among Microsoft’s overseas units hasn’t even gone to tax court yet. A tax court ruling this year in a case involving chipmaker Altera affected the company’s fiscal years back to 2004.

Levine doesn’t see things going that far. If the spinoff proceeds and the IRS claims it owes taxes, Yahoo would probably be able to settle on favorable terms....

The bottom line: Yahoo may have to take on the IRS to avoid a $9 billion tax bill for spinning off its 384 million Alibaba shares.


ALTERNATE REALITY: IF THEY WAIT LONG ENOUGH, THERE MAY NOT BE ANY VALUE LEFT TO SPIN OFF....

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
13. China Is Hoarding the World's Oil BUT FOR HOW LONG, AND HOW MUCH?
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 07:17 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/even-a-slowing-china-is-oil-s-best-defense-against-deeper-slump

Even after China’s slowing economy dragged crude to a six-year low, oil’s second-biggest consumer remains the main safeguard against a further price meltdown. While China’s surprise currency devaluation helped trigger Brent crude’s slump to about $42 a barrel last month, the nation’s stockpiling of oil can staunch further losses. In the first seven months of the year, China purchased about half a million barrels of crude in excess of its daily needs, the most for the period since 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. As the country gathers bargain barrels for its strategic petroleum reserve, the demand is cushioning an oversupplied market from a further crash, according to Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“It throws a lifeline to the market” that safeguards against the risk of crude touching $20 a barrel, Jeff Currie, head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York, said by phone. “That lifeline lasts through late 2016.”




Other countries have emergency oil-supply buffers, and while the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been stable at about 700 million barrels for years, China is expanding its stockpiles rapidly.

The Asian nation has accumulated about 200 million barrels of crude in its reserve so far and aims to have 500 million by the end of the decade, according to the International Energy Agency. It’s currently filling a 19 million-barrel facility at Huangdao and will add oil at six sites with a combined capacity of about 132 million barrels over the next 18 months, the Paris-based adviser on energy policy estimates...MORE
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
23. US oil tumbles 4.7% to settle at $44.68 a barrel
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:19 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/17/us-crude-prices-dip-opec-targets-market-share.html

U.S. oil prices fell about 5 percent on Friday after U.S. energy firms cut oil rigs for a third week in a row this week, data showed on Friday, a sign the latest crude price weakness was causing drillers to put on hold plans announced several months ago to return to the well pad.

The drop comes amid increased concerns about the outlook for energy demand. The U.S. central bank warned of the health of the global economy and bearish signs persisted that the world's biggest crude producers would keep pumping at high levels.

Drillers removed eight rigs in the week ended Sept. 18, bringing the total rig count down to 644, after cutting 23 rigs over the prior two weeks, oil services company Baker Hughes Inc said in its closely followed report.

Those reductions cut into the 47 oil rigs energy firms added in July and August after some drillers followed through on plans to add rigs announced in May and June when U.S. crude futures averaged $60 a barrel....MORE
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
25. The US-Saudi Oil Deal: From “Win-Win” to “Mega-Loose”
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:48 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-saudi-oil-deal-from-win-win-to-mega-loose/5467991

Who would’ve thought it would come to this? Certainly not the Obama Administration, and their brilliant geo-political think-tank neo-conservative strategists...John Kerry’s brilliant “win-win” proposal of last September during his September 11 Jeddah meeting with ailing Saudi King Abdullah was simple: Do a rerun of the highly successful State Department-Saudi deal in 1986 when Washington persuaded the Saudis to flood the world market at a time of over-supply in order to collapse oil prices worldwide, a kind of “oil shock in reverse.” In 1986 was successful in helping to break the back of a faltering Soviet Union highly dependent on dollar oil export revenues for maintaining its grip on power.

So, though it was not made public, Kerry and Abdullah agreed on September 11, 2014 that the Saudis would use their oil muscle to bring Putin’s Russia to their knees today.


It seemed brilliant at the time no doubt.

On the following day, 12 September 2014, the US Treasury’s aptly-named Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, headed by Treasury Under-Secretary David S. Cohen, announced new sanctions against Russia’s energy giants Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftgas and Rosneft. It forbid US oil companies to participate with the Russian companies in joint ventures for oil or gas offshore or in the Arctic.

Then, just as the ruble was rapidly falling and Russian major corporations were scrambling for dollars for their year-end settlements, a collapse of world oil prices would end Putin’s reign. That was clearly the thinking of the hollowed-out souls who pass for statesmen in Washington today. Victoria Nuland was jubilant, praising the precision new financial warfare weapon at David Cohen’s Treasury financial terrorism unit.

In July, 2014 West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark price for US domestic oil pricing, traded at $101 a barrel. The shale oil bonanza was booming, making the US into a major oil player for the first time since the 1970’s. When WTI hit $46 at the beginning of January this year, suddenly things looked different. Washington realized they had shot themselves in the foot...They realized that the over-indebted US shale oil industry was about to collapse under the falling oil price. Behind the scenes Washington and Wall Street colluded to artificially stabilize what then was an impending chain-reaction bankruptcy collapse in the US shale oil industry. As a result oil prices began a slow rise, hitting $53 in February. The Wall Street and Washington propaganda mills began talking about the end of falling oil prices. By May prices had crept up to $62 and almost everyone was convinced oil recovery was in process. How wrong they were.

Since that September 11 Kerry-Abdullah meeting (curious date to pick, given the climate of suspicion that the Bush family is covering up involvement of the Saudis in or around the events of September 11, 2001), the Saudis have a new ageing King, Absolute Monarch and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman, replacing the since deceased old ageing King, Abdullah. However, the Oil Minister remains unchanged—79-year-old Ali al-Naimi. It was al-Naimi who reportedly saw the golden opportunity in the Kerry proposal to use the chance to at the same time kill off the growing market challenge from the rising output of the unconventional USA shale oil industry. Al-Naimi has said repeatedly that he is determined to eliminate the US shale oil “disturbance” to Saudi domination of world oil markets. Not only are the Saudis unhappy with the US shale oil intrusion on their oily Kingdom. They are more than upset with the recent deal the Obama Administration made with Iran that will likely lead in several months to lifting Iran economic sanctions. In fact the Saudis are beside themselves with rage against Washington, so much so that they have openly admitted an alliance with arch foe, Israel, to combat what they see as the Iran growing dominance in the region—in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq. This has all added up to an iron Saudi determination, aided by close Gulf Arab allies, to further crash oil prices until the expected wave of shale oil company bankruptcies—that was halted in January by Washington and Wall Street manipulations—finishes off the US shale oil competition. That day may come soon, but with unintended consequences for the entire global financial system at a time such consequences can ill be afforded.

HOIST ON THEIR OWN PETARDS, THE US AND THE SAUDIS SHALL FALL TOGETHER!--KASSANDRA (DEMETER'S ALTER EGO)

...In short, Washington has completely lost its strategic leverage over Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom that had been considered a Washington vassal ever since FDR’s deal to bring US oil majors in on an exclusive basis in 1945.

WHAT PRICE 9/11? AND NOW, THE SAUDIS ARE TRYING TO MAKE A DEAL WITH PUTIN....CAN YOU SPELL EPIC FAILURE?

READ THE WHOLE THING! IT'S ENTERTAINING, IT'S FUN, IT'S UNBELIEVABLE

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
26. THE CURE IS SO MUCH BETTER (FOR PEOPLE) THAN THIS DISEASE OF THE BRAIN
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:50 PM
Sep 2015


...The reason US shale oil companies have been able to continue in business since last November and not declare bankruptcy is the ongoing Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy that leads banks and other investors to look for higher interest rates in the so-called “High Yield” bond market.

Back in the 1980’s when they were first created by Michael Millken and his fraudsters at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Wall Street appropriately called them “junk bonds” because when times got bad, like now for Shale companies, they turned into junk. A recent UBS bank report states, “the overall High-Yield market has doubled in size; sectors that witnessed more buoyant issuance in recent years, like energy and metals mining, have seen debt outstanding triple or quadruple.”

Assuming that the most recent downturn in WTI oil prices continues week after week into October, there well could be a panic run to sell billions of dollars of those High-Yield, high-risk junk bonds. As one investment analyst notes, “when the retail crowd finally does head for the exits en masse, fund managers will be forced to come face to face with illiquid secondary corporate credit markets where a lack of market depth…has the potential to spark a fire sale.”

The problem is that this time, unlike in 2008, the Federal Reserve has no room to act. Interest rates are already near zero and the Fed has bought trillions of dollars of bank bad debt to prevent a chain-reaction US bank panic.


One option that is not being discussed at all in Washington would be for Congress to repeal the disastrous 1913 Federal Reserve Act that gave control of our nation’s money to a gang of private bankers, and to create a public National Bank, owned completely by the United States Government, that could issue credit and sell Federal debt without the intermediaries of corrupt Wall Street bankers as the Constitution intended. At the same time they could completely nationalize the six or seven “Too Big To Fail” banks behind the entire financial mess that is destroying the foundations of the United States and by extension of the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, of most of the world.
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
14. Don't Fall Into the Social Security Trap
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 07:19 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-18/don-t-fall-into-the-social-security-trap

Every year, Americans give up thousands of dollars of income by filing for Social Security benefits too early. If you're anywhere near retirement, or want to help guide your parents, here's how to think about when to file—a once-in-a-lifetime decision with huge financial consequences.

You can start getting a monthly check at 62, but that locks in a reduced benefit for the rest of your life. Retirees currently get the full Social Security benefit at 66. Waiting even longer will fatten those checks further. File for Social Security as a single person at 70 and your monthly check can be 76 percent higher than if you had filed at 62. That's a source of income that automatically adjusts for inflation and will last as long as you do.

Of course, you could die before you get those higher benefits or get to enjoy them for long. But research suggests that for those with average life spans, it usually makes sense to wait.

Even for groups statistically more likely to die in their 60s, including African Americans and people without high-school diplomas, one study found that some delay in Social Security benefits makes sense. This is particularly true for couples in which one spouse—usually the man, in older male-female couples—is the main breadwinner.

“If you’re a primary earner, not only do you get higher benefits for the rest of your life, you pass on higher benefits to your widow if you die first,” says Sita Slavov, a professor of public policy at George Mason University....MORE
 

magical thyme

(14,881 posts)
48. easy to say when you're one of the money people. and the more they say it, the more I call bs
Sat Sep 19, 2015, 07:15 PM
Sep 2015

yes, you'll get more money if you hold out longer. you'll also be pissing your life away making billions for somebody else. there is more to life than money.

I'm collecting early because I can't earn enough to support myself in my current situ. But I can earn enough to boost my IRA, possibly pay off the student loans, fix up my house and ultimately sell it and downsize so that I lower my overall cost of living.

And I may be able to supplement it until I drop being my own boss and working at something low pay but meaningful.

It sounds like the advise my parents would give. I learned long ago if I do the opposite of what they say, 95% of the time I come out better than ok. Maybe 100%, but I figure nothing is 100% guaranteed.

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
50. I think it's stupid the way it's run
Sat Sep 19, 2015, 07:42 PM
Sep 2015

You need to be a clairvoyant accountant to figure out what to do....

 

magical thyme

(14,881 posts)
51. life is what happens when you're making other plans. unless you have unlimited moolah, you can't
Sat Sep 19, 2015, 08:01 PM
Sep 2015

"plan" financially, because everything is a setup. Everything. You do everything you are supposed to do, and you're just being set up to be robbed, at least if you're a single woman.

I remember a woman cashing out her TIAA investment account after waiting years for it to recover it's pre-08 value. She wished she'd put the money into her dream. I told her I did that -- bought my farm -- but I was defrauded on the land and now real estate had crashed and wasn't recovering so I can't sell and try again.

But she said, "At least you tried. Even if it didn't work out, at least you tried. I didn't even try. I just did what they told us to do."

It's not that I'll never listen to the money people. But I listen and do the opposite of what they recommend. Because what they are recommending will make *their* dreams come true; not mine.

There's a reason they don't want us taking social security early, and it's not because it will hurt us. They don't give a flying fuck about us. I don't know what their reason is...maybe because if we retire there won't be so many peons fighting for crummy jobs. But whatever the reason is, it has nothing to do with being "bad" for us

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
52. These articles are written as advice to the 10% on how to maximize their take of the SS pie
Sat Sep 19, 2015, 10:05 PM
Sep 2015

Believe me, it's not written for thee and me.

They have all kinds of fancy dodges around the really peculiar structure of the program, so that the rich man gets every penny he can squeeze out.

I'd advocate a flat and equal share and share alike, regardless of age, previous income and work history, etc. Then we'd see true cost of living increases!

 

magical thyme

(14,881 posts)
68. I'm looking at breadmaking as one of my potential life-long small businesses
Sun Sep 20, 2015, 09:14 AM
Sep 2015

Just went to a workshop on gluten-free bread making held by a small business owner here in Maine. She is soooo rural Maine, and she did it! So once the harvest is over and the bulk of my property clean-up and home clean-up is over, I'll be trying out recipes over the winter.

A woman at the workshop is part of a network alliance for food security that is putting together an online collection of resources, including registered kitchens for rent.

I figure I can sell at first at farmer's markets, along with seedlings in the spring and early summer. And if I have the motivation, maybe eventually at a regular outlet...and then if/when the economy goes totally belly up, barter on the black market.

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
69. A small plan is better than no plan
Sun Sep 20, 2015, 09:24 AM
Sep 2015

Unfortunately, when the elephants dance, it doesn't matter what the ants were planning...that's why we need multiple plans, that involve multiple participants, maybe even government participation (what a concept!).

Unfortunately, there are too many people, even after so much bad news, who live in the dream that it will all be over next quarter, next year, next election...and they don't want to develop any contingency plans, or start to make changes for surviving bad times. They don't want to disrupt their pleasant lives out of fear, or prudence, or having to think and work better/harder/more purposefully. After all, it can't and won't happen to THEM!

The ones who have been living those bad times for a decade or two are either still struggling, or dead. There isn't the cohesiveness that a large catastrophe forces upon the survivors...just the steady rising to a boil for the frogs in the pot.

Sometimes I am discouraged. Other times, worse.

 

magical thyme

(14,881 posts)
70. for some reason nobody believes the "news" any more, if they ever did.
Sun Sep 20, 2015, 09:46 AM
Sep 2015

The only reason I am where I am is after nearly 2 decades of struggling, I got lucky to be in the right place at the right time (really, a little late to the game, but still in time to play for a while). I used to thank Clinton, but now I realize I really have Al Gore to thank for "inventing" the internet. For 8 years I raked in a decent amount of dough. I knew there was no way it could last, and saved like crazy to prepare as best I could for when it ended.

Still, I still never could have predicted how *totally* it would end. That overnight my income would completely disappear and then struggle back sporadic income at early 80s levels at best, up against 2015 expenses.

I also could never have predicted that, after a lifetime of being spurned and called ugly by a multitude of men, I would become a target of a creepy sex offender and his gang at home, with zero protection from the police. And then a brain-damaged janitor stalker at work, with zero protection from my employer. Kind of like getting to be Jodie Foster for a time, but without the perks.

Was is fortunate for me is that I am close to living the life I dreamed of since I was a child. I just never imagined so much obstruction or so many obstacles from all directions...

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
15. Yet Another Election? Weary Greeks See Little Gain From Vote
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 07:23 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-16/yet-another-election-weary-greeks-see-little-gain-from-ballot

Like many Greeks, Christi Psarra has no illusions about what the country’s third vote in less than a year will bring.

“On Sunday, we will wake up, go to the polling station and each one of us will vote for change, but nothing will really change in the end,” said the 30-year-old, who works for a shipping company. “Futile. That’s the only word that comes to mind when I think about the elections.”

As Greeks are summoned to the ballot box yet again -- after a vote in January that brought former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to power and a referendum in July on the terms of the country’s European bailout -- election fatigue has set in. Voters are bracing for more economic pain no matter who’s elected.

Tsipras stepped down on Aug. 20 after eight months in power, announcing new parliamentary elections following the political turmoil resulting from his government’s signing of a third bailout agreement with Greece’s creditors in August. New austerity measures in the 86 billion-euro ($97.2 billion) bailout saw Tsipras suffer defections of his own party’s lawmakers, forcing him to seek a new mandate.

“Holding elections continuously in such a short period of time creates for citizens the impression that their vote is of little importance,” said Jenny Papadopoulou, a bank employee.

ESPECIALLY IF THE PRIME MINISTER GOES AND DOES SOMETHING OTHER THAN WHAT THE PEOPLE MANDATED....
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
16. Bitcoin Is Officially a Commodity, According to U.S. Regulator
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 08:58 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/bitcoin-is-officially-a-commodity-according-to-u-s-regulator

Virtual money is officially a commodity, just like crude oil or wheat. So says the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which on Thursday announced it had filed and settled charges against a Bitcoin exchange for facilitating the trading of option contracts on its platform. "In this order, the CFTC for the first time finds that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are properly defined as commodities," according to the press release.

While market participants have long discussed whether Bitcoin could be defined as a commodity, and the CFTC has long pondered whether the cryptocurrency falls under its jurisdiction, the implications of this move are potentially numerous.

By this action, the CFTC asserts its authority to provide oversight of the trading of cryptocurrency futures and options, which will now be subject to the agency's regulations. In the event of wrongdoing, such as futures manipulation, the CFTC will be able to bring charges against bad actors.

If a company wants to operate a trading platform for Bitcoin derivatives or futures, it will need to register as a swap execution facility or designated contract market, just like the CME Group. And Coinflip—the target of the CFTC action—is hardly the only company that provides a platform to trade Bitcoin derivatives or futures...MORE
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
45. The Bitcoin Community Disagrees on What Happens Next
Sat Sep 19, 2015, 11:30 AM
Sep 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-18/the-bitcoin-community-disagrees-on-what-happens-next

...The U.S. Internal Revenue Service thinks bitcoin is property; a federal judge thinks it's a currency; now the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has decreed it a commodity. That means the regulator can now bring charges against any wrongdoers trading cryptocurrency futures and options.

In a statement, the CTFC’s Director of Enforcement, Aitan Goelman, said:

“While there is a lot of excitement surrounding Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, innovation does not excuse those acting in this space from following the same rules applicable to all participants in the commodity derivatives markets," said Aitan Goelman, the CFTC's director of enforcement of the decision.”

Does the ruling change the fundamental nature of what Bitcoin is, and how its advocates will use and develop it? We asked leading members of the bitcoin community for their views.

The Developer: ‘A Bizarre Ruling That Will Be Challenged’

The Researcher: ‘Don’t Take it Out of Context’

The Exchange Founder: ‘It Will Send Companies Offshore’

The CEO: ‘Regulators Need to Work Together’

The Lecturer: ‘A Very Prudent Move’

The Entrepreneur: ‘Compliance Will Cost Startups’


EXPLICATION AT LINK

FOR MY MONEY, BITCOIN SHOULD EXIST 12 MILES OFFSHORE ON PERMANENT INTERNATIONAL WATERS AWAY FROM ALL "FOREIGN" ENTANGLEMENTS.

WHEN YOU ARE TRYING TO BREAK WITH THE SYSTEM, YOU CAN'T SIMULTANEOUSLY COZY UP TO IT AND TRY TO SIPHON OFF ITS FOOD SUPPLY...
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
17. Indian Billionaire Pays $120 Million for Occasional Weekend Home
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:01 PM
Sep 2015

CHEAP AT TWICE THE PRICE!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-18/what-to-do-with-120-million-home-visit-it-occasional-weekends

What do you do with your new $120 million home? Visit it on Saturdays and Sundays.

The billionaire Indian Poonawalla family last week agreed to pay that much for a former maharajah’s residence in Mumbai that most recently had been the U.S. consulate in the city. The owners of Asian’s largest maker of vaccines may use it about two days a week.


“We always visited Mumbai on the weekends,” Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of Serum Institute of India Ltd., said in an interview Wednesday in Pune where he lives, about four hours from Mumbai. “We have a lot of our horse racing in Mumbai on the weekends. It’s not going to increase my visits.”


Lincoln House, as the building has been called during its U.S. ownership, sits on a two-acre plot on the shores of the Arabian Sea in the Breach Candy neighborhood of south Mumbai. The 8 billion rupee ($120 million) price, which includes taxes and other fees, is a record for a residential sale in the city, according to local media reports including Livemint.com.

Because of its heritage, Lincoln House has landmark status and can’t be fundamentally altered, but that didn’t deter Poonawalla.

“We hope to open up the rooms and -- because at the moment it is designed as a consulate -- there are a lot of security rooms and waiting rooms and all that,” said Poonawalla, 34. “We’ll have to demolish what we can internally. We will have to do it up a little bit, with the permission of the government.”


MORE
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
18. Wall Street's Mr. Fix-It Faces His Toughest Test
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:04 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-18/wall-street-s-mr-fix-it-faces-toughest-test-with-first-data-ipo

...Bisignano, a 56-year-old who’s spent 30 years cleaning up messes at Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., faces what may be his biggest challenge yet: taking First Data Corp. public for Henry Kravis and George Roberts, co-founders of KKR & Co. It’s a tall order for the man colleagues call Wall Street’s Mr. Fix-It, especially with world financial markets in one of their most volatile runs in years. KKR took the payment-technology firm private in 2007 in a top-of-the-market purchase that loaded the company with $22 billion in debt. First Data’s finances are in better shape now, but it’s still debt-saddled, and revenue is growing slower than rivals.

“He’s going to have a tough job convincing investors that First Data’s growth can be a lot faster than it is now,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc. “The business is what it is. There’s only so much he can do to make it look better.”


Still, he didn’t get the nickname for nothing. A son of middle-class Brooklyn, Bisignano did so well at JPMorgan there was talk at one time that he might be among potential candidates to succeed Jamie Dimon as CEO.

Dimon recruited Bisignano to work for him after Bisignano transformed Citigroup’s transaction-services division into a profit machine. “That’s still one of Citi’s greatest businesses,” said Robert Druskin, the bank’s former chief operating officer. At JPMorgan, Bisignano worked on the integration of Bear Stearns after its emergency acquisition in 2008, helped turn around the troubled mortgage business inherited from Washington Mutual Inc. and handled tough negotiations at its London business as the government weighed new taxes on compensation.

When it came to getting things done, “he was above politics and would always do the right thing,” said Greg O’Hara, a former chief investment officer of JPMorgan’s special investments group. “He fosters loyalty among his employees, he can really get the best out of people.”


Still, he sparred with some members of JPMorgan’s operating committee at the time, according to people with knowledge of the matter. By 2013, Bisignano was looking for a new job...
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
19. JPMorgan's Dimon Says Violent Moves in Treasuries Are Possible
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:06 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-18/jpmorgan-s-dimon-says-violent-moves-in-treasuries-are-possible

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s chief executive officer, said the bank will be prepared for the possibility that Treasury prices move violently when interest rates rise.

“The one thing I do worry a little bit about, by the way, is Treasuries,” Dimon said Friday at a conference in New York sponsored by Barclays Plc. “Interest rates have been so low, for so long,” he said, adding that some traders and their managers have never experienced a rising interest-rate environment.


The U.S. banking system is much safer now because of higher capital and business diversification, said Dimon, 59, responding to a question about whether the next U.S. credit downturn would come from banks or non-banks. In April, he called volatility in the Treasury market in late 2014 a “warning shot” to investors.

“So I wouldn’t be shocked to see 10-year Treasuries, when rates are going up, people change their mind, they change direction, that they will be violently volatile and go up much faster than people think,” Dimon said. “I’m not predicting that. I’m simply saying in the back of my mind, I think that’s a possibility.”


His comments followed the biggest single-day rally in six years for two-year Treasuries. After the Federal Reserve announced Thursday it would keep interest rates near zero, yields on the policy-sensitive note dropped by 13 basis points, the steepest decline since the central bank announced it would expand its bond-buying program in March 2009. The rate on 10-year notes fell 10 basis points to 2.19 percent.

JPMorgan has “about the same” third-quarter trading-revenue trends as other banks that have disclosed expectations at the conference, Dimon said. Executives from Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. have said they probably will report a 5 percent drop in third-quarter trading revenue.

“September is still to go, so who knows,” Dimon said. “I think people are massively over-focused on those numbers.”
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
22. Will Banks “Cough Up Executives” in the Treasury Bid-Rigging Scandal? YVES SMITH
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:15 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/09/will-banks-cough-up-executives-in-the-treasury-bid-rigging-scandal.html

The Department of Justice may face an early test of its long-overdue policy change, that the government will seek to prosecute individuals, including executives, along with those of corporations. As Sally Yates, Deputy Attorney and author of the memo setting forth the new policy, put it, “We mean it when we say, ‘You have got to cough up the individuals.’”

As Bloomberg reported on Thursday, private plaintiffs have filed two suits alleging bid-rigging by the 22 primary dealers, adding pressure to an ongoing Department of Justice investigation. We’ve embedded the more recent filing, Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund v. Bank of Nova Scotia et al., at the end of this post. From the article:

The same analytical technique that uncovered cheating in currency markets and the Libor rates benchmark — resulting in about $20 billion of fines — suggests the dealers who control the U.S. Treasury market rigged bond auctions for years, according to a lawsuit….

The plaintiffs built their case against the 22 primary dealers who serve as the backbone of Treasury trading — including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley — using data from Rosa Abrantes-Metz, an adjunct associate professor at New York University who has provided expert testimony in rigging cases.

Bear in mind that investigations and litigation is underway, and no charges have yet been proven. However, in the last major Treasury bid-rigging scandal, in 1991, the Fed didn’t bother to wait for the Department of Justice to act. Our summary in ECONNED:

Salomon Brothers trader Paul Mozer and other government bond dealers routinely traded an arbitrage that involved Treasury bonds traded on a “when issued” basis. The Treasury would announce its funding calendar, and traders would start making a market prior to when the bonds would actually be auctioned. The arb play involved shorting the “when issued” bonds. A short seller eventually had to buy the instrument to close out his position, so he was committed to making a purchase at some point.

Mozer decided to squeeze the dealers doing this trade, but to do that, he needed to control the Treasury auction in the maturity he targeted, the two-year note. Primary Treasury dealers like Salomon submit bids at Treasury auctions, both for themselves and for customers.

Mozer first tried bidding for 100% of the offered amount for Salomon. A Treasury deputy secretary called and politely but firmly reminded him that the government had a gentlemen’s agreement that a buyer is restricted to a maximum bid of 35% of the total offered at any auction. The government, after all, wants to raise money on good terms, not enrich dealers, particularly ones engaging in anticompetitive practices. Remarkably, Mozer not only got abusive with the official, but became openly defiant, next submitting a bid for 240% of the auction. That led to another unproductive call from the Treasury to Mozer, plus a request to the Fed, which runs the auctions on behalf of the Treasury, to lower the bid to 35%. Mozer tried yet again with a 300% bid, the Fed haircut it again, and the Treasury made the 35% informal understanding into an official limit. Mozer went on a rampage, submitting multiple 35% bids, making abusive calls to the Treasury, and trying to get media support.

The officialdom of the firm took notice, and the second most senior officer, Tom Strauss, ordered Mozer to apologize and take some time off.

But Mozer was not deterred. A few months later, he not only submitted 35% bids in Salomon’s name, but also submitted bids on behalf of unwitting customers and created phony customer trades after the fact to cover his tracks. He was clumsy about it. The Treasury got wind of what he was up to, conducted an investigation, and sent a letter to one of the clients that Mozer had falsely said was bidding, with a copy to Mozer.

When a firm crosses a regulator, the right response is to quickly roll over and show your belly: a massive display of contrition and swift punishment, at minimum a suspension, of the perp. That did not happen. Mozer showed the letter to John Meriwether, his boss, who showed it to Strauss. They agreed it was very serious, “career threatening.”

They were right, but the career it ended was CEO John Gutfreund’s. He was out of town; the matter was left until his return. Mozer, still in place, submitted yet another phony bid at the next auction. When Gutfreund got word, he agreed the matter was serious, and the top brass debated whom to notify (the Treasury or the Fed). There was no discussion of reining in Mozer, much less punishing him. The phony bids continued. Some hedge funds heard of Mozer’s ploy and started placing similar buy orders (except theirs were legitimate).

Gutfreund waited more than a month to leash and collar Mozer. His profits during this period were substantial, and Gutfreund thought he could hang on to Mozer’s ill-gotten gains. When the Salomon chief finally sat down with the Treasury, he argued that the firm’s conduct had been proper, even though the squeeze had become visible and costly to competitors. The Treasury was not satisfied. An investigation ensued and the results did not support Gutfreund’s claims. When the Federal Reserve, the regulator in this matter, found out via reading the story in the press, the end came quickly. Gutfreund, Strauss, Meriwether, and the firm’s general counsel resigned in a matter of days.


Similarly, when Barclays tried shifting blame for its misconduct in the Libor scandal †o the Bank of England, the Bank forced the resignation of the chairman, CEO, and president. But similar shows of spine from American regulators are almost antique. That is in part due to the fact that the New York Fed disbanded its primary dealer surveillance unit in 1992.

Despite the fact that the efforts to look into the Treasury market are gaining momentum, I have serious reservations about the statistical analysis in the suit embedded below. It does not provide direct evidence of collusion, but tries to use statistical approaches to infer that the price anomalies around the time of auctions can only be explained by collusion. By contrast, the Department of Justice appears to be first looking for direct evidence of collusion, as in dealers sharing information in chat rooms and coordinating bidding strategies. One would assume that if they find this behavior (and press leaks suggest they have), statistical evidence would then serve to demonstrate impact, i.e., harm.

MORE AT LINK
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
42. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Stock Falls as CEO Dimon Warns of Lower Revenue
Sat Sep 19, 2015, 11:11 AM
Sep 2015
http://www.thestreet.com/story/13293731/1/jpmorgan-chase-jpm-stock-falls-as-ceo-dimon-warns-of-lower-revenue.html?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO

...Speaking at a Barclays (BCS) conference, Dimon said JPMorgan's third-quarter revenue is "about the same as everybody else" following warnings from Bank of America (BAC - Get Report) and Citigroup (C - Get Report) of a 5% year-over-year decline for the current quarter at the same event, Reuters reports.

Dimon did not give any specific numbers buy said trading volume was "very slow" and results "weren't really great" during August, Reuters added.

"I liked the fact that we could trade through those days and not lose any money," he noted.

JPMorgan will spend some capital to expand into a new city in the U.S. since the company is too large to acquire other banks, Dimon said.

JPMorgan will also increase its share of the European capital markets business as banks there show weakness, he added, according to Reuters...
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
20. Just How Bad Was the Fed's Non-Hike for Bank Stocks? Take a Look
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:08 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-18/just-how-bad-was-the-fed-s-non-hike-for-bank-stocks-take-a-look

The Federal Reserve’s decision to hold off raising interest rates has only helped to spur bearish bets on financial stocks, capping a month in which the group fell almost 10 percent.

Financial stocks emerged as the whipping boy of the U.S. equity market Thursday, falling within minutes of the central bank’s post-meeting announcement. It continued Friday with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index slipping to a four-month low relative to the benchmark.

The group now hovers above a key resistance level against the broader market, indicative of the sentiment shift after the Fed’s announcement, said Jim Stellakis, founder and director of research at Greenwich, Connecticut-based Technical Alpha Inc. “You’re not going to find anyone who thinks we’re going to get higher rates anytime soon because of what happened yesterday.”

Genworth Financial Inc. has slumped 7.7 percent since Wednesday, followed by Charles Schwab Corp., which hit a seven-month low after dropping 3.7 percent Friday. Relative to the S&P 500, financial stocks have “gone nowhere” since August 2013, trading within a band of less than 6 percentage points, Stellakis said. “Everybody gets excited about these stocks for a couple months, and then the whole thesis gets thrown out the window.”

MORE

DemReadingDU

(16,000 posts)
21. video: Don’t Let a Little Debt Get in the Way of Learning
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:15 PM
Sep 2015

9/8/15 Don’t Let a Little Debt Get in the Way of Learning

When Alexis meets Scott Govinsky (“Everybody calls me Gov”), she’s ready to drop out of college and pursue a small business that has been making her money. Gov convinces Alexis to not only stay in school by taking out a loan, but to go into even more debt than necessary by traveling abroad in Italy.

This is the first part of a short comedy series published by The Independent Institute – “Love Gov”. The series pokes fun at the many problems of big government, personified by Gov. Sometimes reality is so bad, the only way to grapple with it is through humor. However, while “Love Gov” might make you smile, the Orwellian arguments coming from Gov sound all too familiar:

"That’s what loans are for – when you don’t have the money for it. Sounds like someone needs an education. I know some people. If I vouch for you, they can definitely get you the money that you need. Maybe even a little extra.”

video at link
http://schiffgold.com/videos/dont-let-a-little-information-get-in-the-way-of-learning-video/


Note that this is a series of 5 videos, each video is appx 5 minutes

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
24. Central banks fret stimulus efforts are falling short
Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:24 PM
Sep 2015
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/18/us-economy-rates-idUSKCN0RI1Q320150918?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

The world's leading central banks are facing the risk that their massive efforts to revive economic growth could be dragged down again, with some officials arguing for bold new ideas to counter the threat of slow growth for years to come.

  • A day after the U.S. Federal Reserve kept interest rates at zero, citing risks in the global economy, the Bank of England's chief economist said central banks had to accept that interest rates might get stuck at rock bottom.

  • In Japan, where interest rates have been at zero for more than 20 years, policymakers are already tossing around ideas for overhauling the Bank of Japan's huge monetary stimulus program as they worry that it will be unsustainable in the future, according to sources familiar with its thinking.

  • Separately a top European Central Bank official said the ECB's bond-buying program might need to be rethought if low inflation becomes entrenched. But he added monetary policy would not restore economic growth over the long term.

    More than eight years after the onset of the financial crisis, the economies of the United States and Britain are growing at a healthier pace, in contrast to those of Japan and in many euro zone countries. But the risk of a sharp slowdown in China and other emerging economies has prevented the Fed from starting to raise interest rates and is being watched closely by the Bank of England. Investors mostly think that the Fed's delay will be short-lived and that it could begin raising rates before the end of the year, followed a few months later by Britain's central bank.

    But the BoE's chief economist, Andy Haldane, who has long been gloomy about the chances of a sustainable recovery, said the world might in fact be sinking into a new phase of the financial crisis - this time caused by emerging markets. In a speech on Friday that summed up the dilemma for many central banks, he said policymakers had a lot less room for maneuver than in the past. Haldane pointed out that the Bank of England's next move might be to cut its rates below their record low 0.5 percent rather than proceed with a hike as widely expected. But even when interest rates do start to rise, he warned they could be pulled back again to near zero by future problems.

    "If global real interest rates are persistently lower, central banks may then need to think imaginatively about how to deal on a more durable basis with the technological constraint imposed by the zero lower bound on interest rates," he said.

    "That may require a rethink, a fairly fundamental one, of a number of current central bank practices."


    VARIOUS IDEAS FOLLOW...
  •  

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    27. Orleans Parish court system operating 'modern debtors' prison,' lawsuit claims
    Fri Sep 18, 2015, 09:52 PM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/09/orleans_parish_court_system_op.html

    A class-action lawsuit accuses the Orleans Parish criminal court system of using illegal warrants to arrest the city's poorest citizens in what amounts to a "modern debtors' prison."

    The 42-page suit, filed Thursday (Sept. 17) in federal court, blasts the court system for funding itself through an unconstitutional "cycle of debt and threats." Defendants, in some cases, are never asked whether they can pay the high court costs and fees levied against them, the lawsuit states, and are tossed in jail for days or weeks until they settle debts they are unable to afford.

    "The environment of threats of jail and actual jailing creates a culture of fear among indigent people and their families, who borrow money at high interest rates, divert money from food for their children, and cash their family members' disability checks in a desperate attempt to pay the Collections Department to avoid indefinite confinement," the lawsuit states.

    The lawsuit says that staffers in the court's Collections Department "admitted under oath that they have been issuing arrest warrants for unpaid debts by signing themselves the signatures of judges without first presenting any information to the judge or even notifying the judge."

    I'M SURE GOVERNOR BOBBY JINDAL APPROVES...
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    28. 30k Finns protest govt-planned cuts, nationwide strike grinds country to a halt
    Fri Sep 18, 2015, 10:00 PM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.rt.com/news/315843-finland-nationwide-strike-cuts/

    Finnish trade unions have launched a national one-day strike protesting against austerity measures. Some 30,000 people have taken to the streets of Helsinki rallying against the government’s plans to aid the economy at the expense of workers.

    The protesters are angry with the government’s plans to boost the competitive advantage of the Finnish economy by 5 percent in 3 years by cutting payments and compensation to working people.

    Finland’s three largest trade unions: Akava, SAK and SKKT have organized their 2.2 million members to strike in protest against the government’s reduction in expenditure plans at national level.

    Finnish media has stressed that the grandeur of the event is unprecedented in nearly 100 years. The last time anything similar was witnessed in the capital was in 1917, when Finland gained independence from Russia...

    antigop

    (12,778 posts)
    29. 1985 World Series: Royals vs Cardinals -- one of the top 10 blown calls in baseball
    Fri Sep 18, 2015, 10:21 PM
    Sep 2015
    http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=5572350

    Don Denkinger is a stand-up guy and a respected umpire -- crew chief for the '85 World Series, even -- but if he hadn't blown The Call late in Game 6, the Kansas City Royals might never have celebrated an autumn title. Just maybe, Whitey Herzog and his St. Louis Cardinals would have hung on to snag another championship to go with their '82 title and further enhanced their proud franchise legacy. Only history can't be rewritten.

    That Saturday night in October, the Cardinals held a 1-0 lead and were three outs away from clinching the Series when Denkinger, the first-base umpire, ruled pinch hitter Jorge Orta safe in one of the most controversial postseason calls ever. First baseman Jack Clark fielded Orta's slow roller and made an underhand flip to pitcher Todd Worrell at first base. TV replays showed Worrell clearly winning the race to the bag, but the call gave the Royals hope, setting the stage for a two-run rally and sending the series to a Game 7.


    One of the top 10 blown calls in baseball
    http://www.realclearsports.com/lists/top_10_blown_calls_baseball/don_denkinger_the_call_1985_world_series_game_6.html
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    34. Has the Fed Lost its Mojo? By Mike Whitney
    Fri Sep 18, 2015, 10:35 PM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/18/has-the-fed-lost-its-mojo/

    After 6 full years of zero rates and extreme pump-priming that flushed more than $10 trillion dollars into global markets, the Federal Reserve decided that even the slightest uptick in its benchmark Fed Funds rate would trigger enough destructive volatility in emerging markets that it would be better to postpone the rate hike until some unknown date in the future. The announcement that the FOMC planned to keep rates pegged at zero sent stocks briefly higher after which they fell sharply pushing global indices deep into the red. The stunning decline in stock prices has Wall Street veterans worried that the Fed has lost its ability to move markets higher. Also, they are concerned that, by not raising rates, the Fed is indicating that the economy is much weaker than the data suggest and that even insignificant changes in the price of money could tip the economy back into recession. The combination of Central Bank impotence and slower global growth has manifest itself in a confused selloff which, as of this writing, has sent the Dow Jones down 212 points.

    While it’s too early to say the Fed has lost control of the markets, it’s clear that negative interest rates no longer “pack the punch” they once did. It now appears that too much accommodative monetary policy can have the opposite effect than the one intended; that it can actually increase volatility, intensify investor jitters and, eventually, precipitate a correction. As of Friday, none of this has really sunk into the public consciousness. Analysts are still trying to figure out ‘what went wrong’ without drawing the obvious conclusion that the Fed’s policies don’t always work the way they’re expected to work. Friday’s reversal illustrates the unintended consequences of excessive monetary intervention. Things can go haywire in a hurry...Thursday’s FOMC statement is going to severely damage the Fed’s aura of invincibility. As time passes, more people are going to realize that the Fed is neither “all powerful” nor can it strengthen the economy and create widespread prosperity. It’s not that the Fed has lost its mojo. It’s that the Fed never had a mojo to begin with. Monetary policy is just not the right tool for fixing the economy, in fact, the allure of easy money has just paved the way to another giant asset bubble that will end in disaster. Been there, done that.

    The volatility we see in the markets now, is due entirely to the Fed’s massive liquidity injections which have created stock and bond prices that are disconnected from fundamentals. The Fed believes it can sustain those artificial prices with more easy money, but investors are no longer so sure, mainly because there are other factors at play that are beyond the Fed’s ability to control, like foreign direct investment, a persistent selloff in US Treasuries (Quantitative Tightening), and the vulnerable US Dollar which will be severely battered by the FOMC’s decision. If it was just a matter of cranking up the printing presses and showering Wall Street with more liquidity, then the Fed might be able to get away with it. But it’s not that simple. The global financial system is intricately interwoven. A sovereign default in the emerging markets can quickly implode counterparties in the US sending markets off a cliff and setting the stage for another financial crisis.

    The world needs to wean itself off its addiction to cheap money and return to the pragmatic policies of the past. Another round of fiscal stimulus would be a good place to start. That would put money in the hands of the people who would spend it fast and get the economy growing again. Isn’t that the point? Quantitative Easing for working people is an idea whose time has come. It involves increasing the budget deficits to mainline cash directly into the economy through infrastructure projects, jobs programs, expanded entitlement benefits, and increasing the federal workforce. All of these put money where it needs to be; circulating in the real economy, generating activity, stimulating investment, and spurring growth. That’s the ticket, baby!

    Are we really going to wait until the Fed’s fanatical monetary policies blow up the system again? Hopefully not. It’s time for Congress to step up to the plate, reassert its control over the economy, and spend whatever the hell it takes to get the economy back on track.

    Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected]
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    38. Wary Fed has markets recalling years of Japan disappointment
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 09:46 AM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/18/us-markets-fed-disappointment-idUSKCN0RI1Y420150918?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

    If Japan's experience in the 1990s is anything to go by, central banks that serially disappoint market expectations of higher interest rates will soon see those expectations fall to zero.

    Financial markets were unnerved by the Federal Reserve's decision on Thursday to hold interest rates close to zero despite weeks of speculation that it was about to raise them for the first time in almost a decade. Their concern is that if the global economic cycle is turning lower with rates still at emergency settings aimed at easing the pain of the last recession, then central banks may be trapped at zero with no ammunition to cope with a new downturn.

    For all the caveats about different circumstances, investors are again looking to Japan's experience of 20 years ago for an inkling of what's going on now in the major Western economies...Market behavior in the four years after the Bank of Japan first experimented with near-zero borrowing costs in 1995 tells a sobering tale: The economy sank into a cycle of falling wages, prices and output from which it has still not emerged, a specter that has haunted policymakers across the developed world since the 2008 financial crisis. Three times in 1996 and 1997, measures of 3-month forward interest rates in Japan rose above 1 percent only to sink back to levels below 0.5 percent, which reflected effectively zero borrowing costs. In the three years that followed, those blips - even supported by a short-lived quarter-point hike in official rates - slipped steadily lower before flatlining for five years around 0.1 percent.

    The Fed and others like the Bank of England and European Central Bank may not be in that territory yet, but the lessons from Japan are clear: The longer rates are anchored at zero, the more financial markets sense the difficulty the central bank faces in raising them much, if at all.

    "Japan is the eternal mistake," said Ashraf Laidi, CEO at Intermarket Strategy Ltd, arguing that the Fed's delay in raising rates on Thursday adds to a growing sense of correlation.

    "People were continuously wrong about Japan," he says. "The Fed might get away with one rate hike or two, but it is (also) probably going to be forced to stay with lower rates for longer."


    In March last year fed funds futures were fully discounting a first rate hike by the second quarter of this year, a fed funds rate of 1 percent by the end of this year and 1.5 percent by the middle of next. As recently as May this year, "liftoff" by the end of 2015 was fully priced in. Expectations of a move had faded somewhat by the time the Fed held fire on Thursday, but it was still by far the closest call in years. The expected timing of the first hike based on fed funds futures has now been pushed back to next year.

    "There's a continual series of expectations that a central bank will be able to move, and those are continuously pushed back ... but the target stays flat or moves lower," said Andrew Milligan, Head of Global Strategy with UK-based asset manager Standard Life Investments.


    Based on fed funds futures contracts, the first rate rise is now only 50 percent factored in by next January and 75 percent priced in by April.

    MORE
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    39. Florida voted 21.7 million shares 'against' BofA board structure change
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 09:48 AM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/18/us-bankofamerica-election-florida-idUSKCN0RI1Z520150918?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

    Florida pension officials said Friday they have voted 21.7 million shares of Bank of America Corp(BAC.N) stock "against" bylaw changes that allowed the bank to combine its chairman and chief executive roles.

    The Charlotte, N.C. bank is holding a vote Sept 22 to ratify the bylaw changes, which drew objections from critics who said they ignored a 2009 shareholder vote to separate the two leadership roles.

    Friday's announcement by the Florida State Board of Administration was in line with votes against the bank from pension funds in New York and California.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    40. IRS: Coca-Cola owes $3.3 billion in taxes
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 09:51 AM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2015/09/18/irs-coca-cola-owes-3-3-billion-in-taxes.html?ana=yahoo

    The Internal Revenue Service claims The Coca-Cola Co. owes $3.3 billion in taxes plus interest for profits made overseas.

    The Atlanta-based beverage giant said the IRS sent it a notice Thursday stating a five-year audit found “a transfer pricing matter involving the appropriate amount of taxable income the company should report in the United States in connection with its licensing of intangible property to certain related foreign licensees regarding the manufacturing, distribution, sale, marketing and promotion of products in overseas markets.”

    The issue is for tax years 2007 to 2009.

    To put the $3.3 billion claim in perspective, Coca-Cola's second-quarter 2015 profit was $3.1 billion. Its profit for all of 2014 was $7.1 billion.

    Coca-Cola noted “no penalties were asserted” by the IRS and that it has used the same transfer pricing methodology for the licenses since the methodology was agreed with the IRS in a 1996 agreement.

    “The company’s compliance with the closing agreement was audited and confirmed by the IRS in five successive audit cycles covering the subsequent 11 years through 2006, with the last audit concluding as recently as 2009,” Coca-Cola said.

    Further, Coca-Cola said the assessments are without merit and it plans to “pursue all administrative and judicial remedies necessary to resolve this matter.” Its first move is to file a petition in the U.S. Tax Court to challenge the notice.

    It also said it is confident it will ultimately prevail.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    41. Toxic Work World By ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 09:53 AM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/a-toxic-work-world.html?_r=0

    FOR many Americans, life has become all competition all the time. Workers across the socioeconomic spectrum, from hotel housekeepers to surgeons, have stories about toiling 12- to 16-hour days (often without overtime pay) and experiencing anxiety attacks and exhaustion. Public health experts have begun talking about stress as an epidemic.

    The people who can compete and succeed in this culture are an ever-narrower slice of American society: largely young people who are healthy, and wealthy enough not to have to care for family members. An individual company can of course favor these individuals, as health insurers once did, and then pass them off to other businesses when they become parents or need to tend to their own parents. But this model of winning at all costs reinforces a distinctive American pathology of not making room for caregiving. The result: We hemorrhage talent and hollow out our society.

    To begin with, we are losing women.
    America has unlocked the talent of its women in a way that few nations can match; girls are outpacing boys in high schools, universities and graduate schools and are now entering the work force at higher salaries. But the ranks of those women still thin significantly as they rise toward the top, from more than 50 percent at entry level to 10 to 20 percent in senior management. Far too many discover that what was once a manageable and enjoyable work-family balance can no longer be sustained — regardless of ambition, confidence or even a partner who shares tasks equally.

    Every family’s situation is different; some women may be able to handle with ease conditions that don’t work for others. But many women who started out with all the ambition in the world find themselves in a place they never expected to be. They do not choose to leave their jobs; they are shut out by the refusal of their bosses to make it possible for them to fit their family life and their work life together. In her book “Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home,” the sociologist Pamela Stone calls this a “forced choice.” “Denial of requests to work part time, layoffs or relocations,” she writes, will push even the most ambitious woman out of the work force.

    MORE

    Anne-Marie Slaughter is the president of New America, a think tank and civic enterprise, and author of the forthcoming “Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family,” from which this essay is adapted.
     

    magical thyme

    (14,881 posts)
    49. but whatever you do, don't take social security early.
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 07:19 PM
    Sep 2015

    says the same slave owner corporatists who own "our" government.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    44. VW `Clean Diesel' Scheme Exposed as Criminal Charges Weighed
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 11:26 AM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-19/vw-clean-diesel-scheme-exposed-as-u-s-weighs-criminal-charges

    Volkswagen AG’s admission that it cheated to make its diesel cars appear cleaner-burning than they are leaves the automaker facing billions in fines, its executives risking criminal charges and its U.S. expansion plans in peril. VW admitted systematically cheating on U.S. air pollution tests for years, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday in citing violations that could add up to $18 billion in fines. The company said it has also heard from the Justice Department, which the EPA said could pursue criminal prosecution.

    The German automaker has struggled to gain a foothold in the world’s second-biggest car market with a strategy built in part on touting the efficiency of fun-to-drive “clean diesel” vehicles now shown to be anything but. “It’s a huge black eye for Volkswagen,” said Matt DeLorenzo, managing editor for news at Kelley Blue Book in Irvine, California. Consumer Reports magazine reacted by suspending its “recommended” rating of two diesel models.

    Diesel versions of the popular Beetle, Golf, Jetta and Passat comprise more than a quarter of the brand’s sales in the U.S. and are a vital part of the company’s strategy for meeting tougher U.S. fuel economy standards going into effect in coming years. More than other carmakers, VW has chosen to focus on diesel technology instead of electrics or hybrids.

    “They were counting heavily on diesels to meet the fuel-economy numbers. This brings that whole strategy into question,” DeLorenzo said...

    THE ENTIRE BUSINESS PLAN IS CALLED INTO QUESTION!
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    46. $75 million cake sets price record
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 11:40 AM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/14/75-million-cake-sets-price-record.html



    You've heard of $900 cupcakes and $34,000 puddings. But a birthday cake loaded with diamonds and hand-sculpted fondant just smashed the record for the most expensive dessert ever created.

    Price tag: $75 million.

    The decadent cake was created by British designer Debbie Wingham, who rose to fame when she crafted the world's most expensive dress for $17.7 million. The extravagant dessert was purchased by an unnamed buyer in the United Arab Emirates, who bought it for his daughter's joint birthday and engagement party.

    The cake's price tag easily tops the previous record of $50 million.






    Wingham said the cake—a six-foot long depiction of a runway fashion show—weighs nearly 1,000 pounds, with more than 250 pounds of fondant and confectioneries.

    It took more than 1,100 hours to make, since all of the tiny edible figurines were hand-sculpted with Wingham's couture clothing and accessories, including sunglasses and handbags.

    But much of the value comes from the bling. The cake has 4,000 diamonds, including a 5.2-carat pink diamond, a 6.4-carat yellow diamond and 15 five-carat white diamonds. Those 17 stones alone are worth more than $45 million.





    The runway is also bedazzled with 400 one-carat and 73 three-carat white diamonds, along with 75 three-carat black diamonds.

    And yes, it's also tasty. Wingham told CNBC that the front-row seating of the cake was done in "Madagascan vanilla bean with mascarpone cream and strawberry conserve," while the runway was done in "triple Belgium chocolate with chocolate ganache and chocolate truffle cream."

    Now that's rich.


    AND THAT STORY TAKES THE CAKE FOR TODAY---THE PHOTOS DON'T DO IT JUSTICE, IMO--EITHER THAT, OR THE BUYER GOT TAKEN

    VIDEO OF CAKE: http://www.dailyoffbeat.com/articles/11242/20150914/most-expensive-cake-17-million-cake-debbie-wingham-catwalk-cake.htm
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    47. Lessons We Can Learn from the Story of Shoeless Joe
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 06:37 PM
    Sep 2015

    These are my own observations/conclusions. Please add your own below!


    1) Chicago is a dirty place.
    It is drenched in crime and corruption: always has been, and always will be. I don't know what evil fairy cast the curse, but I suspect she was American Indian...


    2) Stoicism.

    sto·i·cism

    noun: stoicism; noun: Stoicism



      1. the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint.
      synonyms: patience, forbearance, resignation, fortitude, endurance, acceptance, tolerance, phlegm

      "she accepted her sufferings with remarkable stoicism"

      antonyms: intolerance

      2. an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge, and that the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.




    Shoeless Joe, banned from his game, humbly and quietly picked up the pieces of his life and got on with it. He didn't look back, he didn't whine, he didn't go to pieces and drink or drug.

    This kind of coping is very much out of fashion--my great-grandparents, Polish immigrants all and contemporaries of Joe Jackson, had much the same attitude when facing reverses and obstacles as he did. I guess they figured that even at it worst, life in America was better than back in the Old Country. I got to question one great-grandmother before her death, and she spoke of the joy of having a job and money and being able to afford a life that wasn't daily back-breaking work on your brother's farm for nothing....another great-grandmother went back to visit relatives in Poland, and swan around showing off her prosperity and her two young sons....unfortunately, her timing was off, Arch Duke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated, and ggma and sons ended up in Europe and Russia for the duration of WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution....

    Their children, my grandparents, were another story altogether. They were not willing to give up without a fight. But then, they were toughened by the Great Depression and WWII, although none of them were the right age for the draft...Unions were strong, and so were they.

    My parents, born during the great Depression, were part of the post-war generation, had their own little Baby Boom and reverted to middle-class attitudes. Unions went into self-destructive decline. My parents had some of the stoicism, but then, even in the 1950-1980's life was STILL better in the USA than elsewhere....after all, it was the Space Age. Things were still looking up.

    As a Boomer, and a woman, a feminist, college grad, etc, etc....I think that stoicism is the way to be ignored and deprived of one's opportunities. Boomers either learned to fight, or went off into drink and drugs to deal with the psychic pain of changing times and diminishing expectations.

    Each generation faces different problems, has different expectations, and different coping mechanisms.

    Shoeless Joe, raised in the sharecropper/company store milieu, was stoic, because that was the way to survive that brutal way of life. People that stuck up for their rights were hammered down like nails, with the full support of the local power structure.

    And today, we see that there are still bullies trying to reimpose that way of life on Americans all across the country!

    May they NEVER succeed again.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    53. In Historic Settlement, US to Pay $1 Billion to Native Tribes
    Sat Sep 19, 2015, 10:30 PM
    Sep 2015

    The settlement “removes one of the significant obstacles to tribal self-determination and self-governance.” In a historic settlement, the U.S. federal government agreed to pay almost one billion dollars to Native American tribes, ending 25 years of litigation over the government’s failure to fully cover service costs on reservations. The settlement, filed in a New Mexico court, provides a payment of US $940 million to 645 plaintiffs, including the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Zuni Pueblo and Ramah Chapter of the Navajo Nation.

    If approved in federal district court, the settlement ends a 25 year legal battle over the U.S. government’s failure to fully fund contracts with Native American tribes to support their own services, including law enforcement, forest management, housing and education.

    “Today’s proposed settlement, together with President Obama’s request for full, mandatory funding of tribal contract support costs in the future, removes one of the significant obstacles to tribal self-determination and self-governance,” said Kevin K. Washburn, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affair.

    “Tribes can now be confident that the federal government will pay sufficient costs to allow them to be successful in running federal programs,” Washburn added, according to Indian Country Today Media Network.


    The payment is a result of a lawsuit filed in 1990 when the government rejected the demand of Native American tribes to fully cover service costs. The government asserted it could decide both on the amount and the timing of their payment. The case moved to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the tribes.

    “This landmark settlement represents another important step in the Obama Administration’s efforts to turn the page on past challenges in our government-to-government relationship with tribes,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a press release. “Tribal self-determination and self-governance will continue to be our North Star as we navigate a new chapter in this important relationship, and we are committed to fully funding contract support costs so that tribal contracting can be more successful.”


    This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
    "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/In-Historic-Settlement-US-to-Pay-1-Billion-to-Native-Tribes-20150919-0001.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

    MattSh

    (3,714 posts)
    54. And now a word from Joe, the politician...
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 03:04 AM
    Sep 2015

    I was going to call him "Clueless Joe", but thought better of it. As politicians go, there's quite a few who are a lot more clueless.

    No More Money for Ukraine Unless Kiev Gets Rid of Corruption - Biden

    US Vice President Joe Biden is “extremely worried” about the scale of corruption in Ukraine. He warned Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk that if the situation doesn’t change the United States will stop bankrolling the country, Ukraine’s Novoe Vremya reported.

    The White House is worried about a high level of corruption in Ukraine and worse of all by the fact that it isn't decreasing.

    The United States told the Ukrainian government to fight against corruption more actively by carrying out anti-corruption reforms. Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at the US State Department, stressed that Ukraine must get rid of corruption, as it represents Viktor Yanukovych's "old system."

    US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt also spoke against corruption: "There isn't a problem in Ukraine today that is a bigger threat to the long-term success of the country than legalized corruption."

    Complete story at - http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150919/1027242990/ukraine-to-receive-no-money-from-us-if-corruption-levels-stay-high.html

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Hey Joe. This is exactly what I was saying February 2014. This State Dept coup would not, could not, make a dent in corruption in Ukraine. The only possible outcome would be a redistribution of who gets the spoils. So here's a proposal. You need new advisors. I'm available. For a small retainer of $5,000 USD a month, I can be your "On the Ground" advisor here in Kiev. And I will promise you that my advice will be more accurate and more useful that your neocon advisors in State or capable of providing.

    Hmmm. Maybe that $5,000 a month is a bargain.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    56. If Biden wants to fight corruption, he should tell Hunter to get a different job in another country
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 07:04 AM
    Sep 2015

    He's the father of corruption, literally!

    MattSh

    (3,714 posts)
    55. Russia’s ultimate lethal weapon — RT Op-Edge
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 03:51 AM
    Sep 2015

    Pepe Escobar

    Let’s start with some classic Russian politics. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov is drawing up Russia's economic strategy for 2016, including the government budget. Siluanov – essentially a liberal, in favor of foreign investment - will present his proposals to the Kremlin by the end of this month.

    So far, nothing spectacular. But then, a few days ago, Kommersant leaked that Russia's Security Council asked presidential aide Sergei Glazyev to come up with a separate economic strategy, to be presented to the council this week. This is not exactly a novelty, as the Russian Security Council in the past has asked small strategy groups for their economic assessment.

    The Security Council is led by Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of the Federal Security Service. He and Siluanov are not exactly on the same wavelength. And here’s where the plot thickens. Glazyev, a brilliant economist, is a Russian nationalist – sanctioned personally by the US.

    Glazyev is arguably going no holds barred. He is in favor of barring Russian companies from using foreign currency (which makes sense); taxing the conversion of rubles to foreign currencies (same); banning foreign loans to Russian firms (depending if they are not in US dollars or euro); and – the smoking gun - requiring Russian companies that have Western loans to default.

    Predictably, some sectors of US ‘Think Tankland’ went bonkers, stating with utmost certainty that “the Russian energy sector would not be able to find much financing without connections to the West.” Nonsense. Russian firms would easily find financing from Chinese, Japanese or South Korean sources.

    Whatever measure of attention Glazyev will get inside the Kremlin, the whole episode already means that Moscow harbors no illusions in the near future regarding the exceptionalists (one just has to look at the presidential candidates, from ‘El Trumpissimo’ to ‘The Hillarator’); as Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov recently put it, "[we] should expect toughening of the sanctions pressure."

    Once thing though is absolutely certain; Moscow won’t bend over backwards to “pacify” Washington.

    Complete story at - http://www.rt.com/op-edge/315731-russia-kommersant-moscow-kremlin/

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    57. Escobar continues...
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 07:08 AM
    Sep 2015
    Neo-Tsarism, anyone?

    One might be tempted to see Glazyev drawing up plans to return to some sort of Tsarist self-sufficiency while cutting off ties with the West. Assuming some version of that would be approved by the Kremlin, what’s certain is that it may turn into a huge blow the EU might not recover from.

    Imagine Russia defaulting on all its foreign debt - over $700 billion – on which Western sanctions have raised extra, punitive costs in terms of repayment.


    The default would be payback for the twin Western manipulation of oil prices and the ruble. The manipulation involved unleashing on the oil market over five million barrels a day of excess reserve production that were held back by a few usual suspects, plus derivative manipulation at the NYMEX, crashing the price.

    Then, the derivative manipulation of the ruble crashed the currency. Almost all imports to Russia were virtually blocked – as oil and natural gas exports remained constant. In the long run though, this should create a significant balance of trade surplus for Russia; a very positive factor for long-term growth of Russia’s domestic industry.


    WAR BY ANY OTHER NAME...AND THE WEST IS STILL LOSING!
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    58. OPEC, Russia and the New World Order Emerging By F. William Engdahl
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 07:22 AM
    Sep 2015
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42908.htm

    By the day it’s becoming clearer that what I have recently been saying in my writings is coming to be. The OPEC oil-producing states of the Middle East, including Iran, through the skillful mediation of Russia, are carefully laying the foundations for a truly new world order. The first step in testing this will be if they collectively succeed in eliminating the threat to Syria of the Islamic State, and prepare the basis for serious, non-manipulated elections there...


    Russia in OPEC?

    In an interview with the London Financial Times, Russia’s most important oilman, Igor Sechin, CEO of the state-owned Rosneft, confirmed rumors that Saudi Arabia’s monarchy is seeking a formal market-share agreement with Russia, even going so far as offering Russia membership in OPEC, to stabilize world oil markets. In the interview, Sechin, considered one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, confirmed the Saudi offer. The Financial Times (FT) is an influential media owned until this past July by the Pearson Group an asset tied to the Rothschild family who historically also dominate Royal Dutch Shell.

    The London paper chose to emphasize Sechin’s rejection of the Saudi offer. However, most instructive is to read between the lines of what he said. He told a Singapore commodities conference organized by the FT, “It needs to be recognised that Opec’s ‘golden age’ in the oil market has been lost. They fail to observe their own quotas [for Opec oil output]. If quotas had been observed, global oil markets would have been rebalanced by now.”

    OOOOH! THAT'S A TELLING BLOW TO THE EVER=CORRUPT SAUDIIS!

    Sechin well knows the background to the Saudi oil price war and the fact it was triggered by a meeting between US State Department’s John Kerry and the late Saudi King Abdullah in the desert Kingdom in September 2014, where Kerry reportedly urged the Saudis to crash oil prices. For Kerry the aim was to put unbearable pressure on Russia, then hit by US and EU financial sanctions. For the Saudis, it was a golden opportunity to eliminate the biggest disturbing factor in the OPEC domination of world oil markets–the booming production of US unconventional shale oil that had made the USA the world’s largest oil producer in 2014.

    Ironically, as Sechin told the FT, the US-Saudi deal and the US financial sanctions have backfired on the US strategists. The Russian ruble lost more than 50% of its dollar value by January 2015. Oil prices similarly fell from $103 a barrel in September 2014 to less than $50 today. But Russian oil production costs are calculated in rubles, not dollars. So, as Sechin states, the dollar cost of Rosneft oil production has dropped dramatically today from $5 a barrel before the sanctions to only $3 a barrel, a level similar to that of Arab OPEC producers like Saudi Arabia. Rosneft is not hurting despite sanctions. USA shale oil by contrast is unconventional and vastly more costly. Industry estimates depending on the shale field and the company, put costs of shale in a range of $60-80 a barrel just to break even. The current ongoing shakeout in the US shale industry and prospects of rising US interest rates dictate the demise of shale oil from the US for years if not decades to come as Wall Street lenders and shale company junk bond investors suffer huge losses.

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


    Quotas could be agreed so that Russia and Saudi Arabia and OPEC act much as the Anglo-American oil companies did in 1928 to end literal wars between the British Rothschild group behind Royal Dutch Shell and the Rockefeller Standard Oil companies for world oil market control, wars that raged across the world from Mexico to Baku, from Kuwait to Texas.

    The Anglo-American oil wars were ended in a meeting at the Achnacarry Scotland castle of Royal Dutch Shell’s Sir Henry Deterding in 1927. The American and British oil companies formally agreed to a “ceasefire” which resulted in the creation of the enormously powerful Anglo-American oil cartel, later dubbed the ‘Seven Sisters.’ The peace agreement was formalized in 1927, at Achnacarry, the Scottish castle of Shell’s Sir Henri Deterding. John Cadman, representing the British government’s Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (British Petroleum), and Walter Teagle, president of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon), gathered under the cover of a grouse shoot to create the most powerful economic cartel in modern history. The Seven Sisters were effectively joined at the hip, acting in the world as one at least until 1945.

    Their secret pact was formalized as the ‘As Is’ agreement of 1928, or the Achnacarry Agreement. British and American oil majors agreed to accept the existing market divisions and shares, to set a secret world cartel price, and to end the destructive competition and price wars in what became the Red Line Agreement. Britain forced a weakened France to agree in 1927 to let the Americans into the Middle East and revise the secret wartime Sykes-Picot accords to reflect that. A Red Line was drawn from the Dardanelles down through Palestine, to Yemen and up through the Persian Gulf.

    The Anglo-American Red Line Agreement has led to oil wars and world wars since 1928

    The history of the past approximately 88 years since that secret Anglo-American oil cartel agreement is not understandable if that fateful Achnacarry Red Line Agreement and its ensuing political corollaries are not understood.

    Now what is very likely to emerge in the current extraordinary situation is a negotiated arrangement between Putin’s Russia and the Saudi-led OPEC oil producers of the Middle East, including Iran, to devise a new ordering of world energy supply, one independent of the near century of Anglo-American domination. The benefits of such a new world ordering are simply too great for all involved parties to ignore.

    Whether or not Igor Sechin is ready to think in such terms, it is abundantly clear by his diplomacy that President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are. Not that Sechin is incapable, but the recent sacking of Vladimir Yakunin, chief executive officer of OAO Russian Railways shows that Putin is prepared to move the global situation even if it is not to the liking of his closest old circle of friends, if he deems it for a greater good of Russia...The inclusion of Iran, a geopolitical essential for all parties, as well as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab OPEC states, along with Egypt, together in an alliance with the negotiated military support of the one state in the world today able to challenge the USA, namely, Russia, would end more than a century of Anglo-American colonial wars and destruction in the region, the most recent of which is the Washington-CIA-instigated series of destructive Color Revolutions dubbed the “Arab Spring.”

    THERE'S SO MUCH MORE AT LINK..I JUST GRABBED THE MOST RELEVANT BITS


    F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    59. This afternoon I'm taking a small group to the local Russian Festival
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 07:26 AM
    Sep 2015

    held at the newly built Russian Orthodox church (the old one has been converted to condos...shame, it was beautiful, but downtown Ann Arbor has a severe parking problem and refuses to do anything except shrink the streets by carving out bicycle lanes).


    I'll bring back a report on if Monday, if there's anything noteworthy.

    DemReadingDU

    (16,000 posts)
    60. Sounds like fun
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 07:39 AM
    Sep 2015

    Around here, there is a Greek festival and an Italian Festival and several Octoberfests. Maybe an upcoming theme could be fall festivals?

    DemReadingDU

    (16,000 posts)
    62. Baseball tidbit
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 07:43 AM
    Sep 2015

    Spouse went to the same high school as Mike Schmidt, and grew up in the same neighborhood as Steve Yeager.

    DemReadingDU

    (16,000 posts)
    64. 5 states will need Passport while flying in U.S.
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 07:51 AM
    Sep 2015

    9/17/15 If You’re From One of These Five States, You’ll Likely Need a Passport for a Domestic Flight
    Driver’s licenses from New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, American Samoa, and New Hampshire will no longer be enough to get on a domestic commercial flight.

    tarting in 2016, travelers from five U.S. states will not be able to use their driver’s licenses as ID to board domestic flights—a pretty major development considering an estimated 38 percent of Americans don’t have passports.

    The standard licenses from New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and American Samoa are considered “noncompliant” with the security standards outlined in the Real ID Act, which was enacted back in 2005 but is being implemented in stages. Why are these specific licenses deemed sub-par? In these five states, getting a license doesn't require proof of citizenship or residency.

    The new rules will go into effect sometime in 2016 (the exact date has not been announced), and there will be a three-month forgiveness period, during which people with these licenses will be warned that their IDs are no longer valid for flights.

    Here’s the breakdown: if you're from one of these states, “acceptable” IDs include passports and passport cards, as well as permanent resident cards, U.S. military ID, and DHS trusted traveler cards such a Global Entry and NEXUS.

    The TSA will also accept Enhanced Driver’s Licenses, the kind that are currently used to replace passports for travel to and from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Of the noncompliant states, only New York and Minnesota issue enhanced licenses.

    For families from these states, at least children under 18 years old do not need ID when traveling with a companion.

    http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/drivers-licenses-new-york-domestic-flight-real-id


     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    66. Robert Reich: 4 reasons the Wall Street Journal’s attack on Bernie Sanders is absurd
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 08:00 AM
    Sep 2015
    http://robertreich.org/post/129306966350



    I’ve had so many calls about an article appearing earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal – charging that Bernie Sanders’s proposals would carry a “price tag” of $18 trillion over a 10-year period – that it’s necessary to respond.

    The Journal’s number is entirely bogus, designed to frighten the public. Please spread the truth:

    1. Bernie’s proposals would cost less than what we’d spend without them. Most of the “cost” the Journal comes up with—$15 trillion—would pay for opening Medicare to everyone.

    This would be cheaper than relying on our current system of for-profit private health insurers that charge you and me huge administrative costs, advertising, marketing, bloated executive salaries, and high pharmaceutical prices.

    (Gerald Friedman, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, whom the Journal relies on for some of its data, actually estimates a Medicare-for-all system would actually save all of us $10 trillion over 10 years).

    2. The savings from Medicare-for-all would more than cover the costs of the rest of Bernie’s agenda—tuition-free education at public colleges, expanded Social Security benefits, improved infrastructure, and a fund to help cover paid family leave – and still leave us $2 trillion to cut federal deficits for the next ten years.

    3. Many of these other “costs" would also otherwise be paid by individuals and families – for example, in college tuition and private insurance. So they shouldn’t be considered added costs for the country as a whole, and may well save us money.

    4. Finally, Bernie’s proposed spending on education and infrastructure aren’t really “spending” at all, but investments in the nation’s future productivity. If we don’t make them, we’re all poorer.

    That Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal would do this giant dump on Bernie Sanders, based on misinformation and distortion, confirms Bernie’s status as the candidate willing to take on the moneyed interests that the Wall Street Journal represents.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    67. Greece is voting today--Polls close 1PM EDT
    Sun Sep 20, 2015, 08:47 AM
    Sep 2015

    and it doesn't look good for the Greeks, period.



    Greek voter: 'we used to have a vacation every year and elections once every four years. Now it's the opposite.'

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