STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 21 September 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, 21 September 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 18 September 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 18 September 2015
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Dow Jones 16,384.58 -290.16 (-1.74%)
S&P 500 1,958.03 -32.17 (-1.62%)
Nasdaq 4,827.23 -66.72 (-1.36%)



[font color=green]10 Year 2.13% -0.03 (-1.39%)
30 Year 2.93% -0.04 (-1.35%) [font color=black]


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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts
08/03/15 Former City (London) trader Tom Hayes found guilty of rigging global Libor interest rates. Each fo eight counts carries up to 10 yr. sentence.
08/21/15 Charles Antonucci Sr, former pres. Park Ave. Bank sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and attempt to steal $11MM in TARP bailout funds, as well as $37.5MM fraud on OK insurance company. To pay $54MM in restitution and give up additional $11MM.







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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]

[Demeter]

1. TGIMonday! I was running out of baseball trivia

I'm not a sports fanatic of any sort.

I go to one Michigan game a year, to escort a client who is getting a little wobbly. And it's okay for one day. There's a half-time, at least, and the crowd to watch (the team is so young and puny looking, it's rather frightening to watch the plays.) I also give my client the sports section (untouched by my hands) from the paper. We went together to the Russian Festival Sunday.

The Russian Festival, about 10 miles out of town in Dexter, Michigan, was well-attended. We arrived practically first, which was good, because we got to be first in line for the shaslick (and the line just kept on getting longer as the day wore on, until it wound completely around the open area).

The food was good. Their borscht was mostly sauerkraut in tomato juice, but it felt good on my bronchitis-raw throat. (My borszcz is better, IMO). The blini were just like Mother used to make, although we called them jelly-roll ups or crepes suzette. The piroski were just like ones I ate in Finland. The Siberian pelmeni were tiny, tiny gyoza! I bought and tasted kvass--will save it for the next batch of borszcz.

There was a balalaika/accordion trio, from Russia, plus dancing and singing, with a songster imported just for the occasion from north of Moscow. There was dancing by the local parish women, children and adults, including a dancing lesson.

The weather was perfect for an outdoor event. In all, it was a very pleasant afternoon. Even the Kid didn't grumble. Better than what the local cinema had to offer (and worth the price of admission).

This tiny parish of 129 families incorporates Orthodox Christians from all nations (and maybe several counties) and some white bread Americans who wandered in and stayed. Their choir sang for us, lots of good male voices, the priest gave a short summary of the history and a pitch to join, and the icons were iconic (what more can one say?)

If I weren't such a pagan...

Also planted another 3 rose bushes....you can never have enough roses, IMO. No point in waiting until the snow flies! The ones I planted just before the bronchitis set in are doing well.

[Demeter]

2. A Crisis of Public Morality, Not Private Morality ROBERT REICH

http://robertreich.org/post/128561058250



At a time many Republican presidential candidates and state legislators are furiously focusing on private morality – what people do in their bedrooms, contraception, abortion, gay marriage – America is experiencing a far more significant crisis in public morality. CEOs of large corporations now earn 300 times the wages of average workers. Insider trading is endemic on Wall Street, where hedge-fund and private-equity moguls are taking home hundreds of millions. A handful of extraordinarily wealthy people are investing unprecedented sums in the upcoming election, seeking to rig the economy for their benefit even more than it’s already rigged.

Yet the wages of average working people continue to languish as jobs are off-shored or off-loaded onto “independent contractors.”

All this is in sharp contrast to the first three decades after World War II. Then, the typical CEO earned no more than 40 times what the typical worker earned, and Wall Street was boring. Then, the wealthy didn’t try to control elections. And in that era, the wages of most Americans rose. Profitable firms didn’t lay off their workers. They didn’t replace full-time employees with independent contractors, or bust unions. They gave their workers a significant share of the gains. Consumers, workers, and the community were considered stakeholders of almost equal entitlement.

We invested in education and highways and social services. We financed all of this with our taxes. The marginal income tax on the highest income earners never fell below 70 percent. Even the effective rate, after all deductions and tax credits, was still well above 50%. We had a shared sense of public morality because we knew we were all in it together. We had been through a Great Depression and a terrible war, and we understood our interdependence. But over time, we forgot.

The change began when Wall Street convinced the Reagan Administration and subsequent administrations to repeal regulations put in place after the crash of 1929 to prevent a repeat of the excesses that had led to the Great Depression. This, in turn, moved the American economy from stakeholder capitalism to shareholder capitalism, whose sole objective is to maximize shareholder returns. Shareholder capitalism ushered in an era of excess. In the 1980s it brought junk bond scandals and insider trading. In the 1990s it brought a speculative binge culminating in the bursting of the dotcom bubble. At the urging of Wall Street, Bill Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated investment from commercial banking. In 2001 and 2002 it produced Enron and the corporate looting scandals, revealing not only the dark side of some of the most admired companies in America but also the complicity of Wall Street, many of whose traders were actively involved. The Street’s subsequent gambling in derivatives and risky mortgages resulted in the crash of 2008, and a massive taxpayer-financed bailout. The Dodd-Frank Act attempted to rein in the Street but Wall Street lobbyists have done everything possible to eviscerate it. Republicans haven’t even appropriated sufficient money to enforce it. The final blow to public morality came when a majority of the Supreme Court decided corporations and wealthy individuals have a right under the First Amendment to spend whatever they wish on elections.

Public morality can’t be legislated but it can be encouraged.

1. Glass-Steagall must be resurrected. Big banks have to be broken up.
   
   
2. CEO pay must be bridled. Pay in excess of $1 million shouldn’t be deductible from corporate income taxes. Corporations with high ratios of executive pay to typical workers should face higher tax rates than those with lower ratios.
   
   
3. People earning tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year should pay the same 70 percent tax rate top earners paid before 1981.
   
   
4. And we must get big money out of politics – reversing those Supreme Court rulings, providing public financing of elections, and getting full disclosure of the sources of all campaign contributions.

None of this is possible without a broadly based citizen movement to rescue our democracy, take back our economy, and restore a minimal standard of public morality. America’s problems have nothing to do with what happens bedrooms, or whether women are allowed to end their pregnancies. Our problems have everything to do with what occurs in boardrooms, and whether corporations and wealthy individuals are allowed to undermine our democracy.

[Demeter]

3. Tsipras Wins Big Again in Greece as Voters Ignore Euro Showdown

DEFINITION OF INSANITY APPLIES HERE

I'M NOT SURE WHO IS CRAZIER--THE GREEKS FOR RETURNING TSIPRAS TO POWER, OR TSIPRAS FOR TAKING UP THE JOB.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-20/syriza-is-headed-for-victory-in-greek-election-exit-poll-shows

Alexis Tsipras will return to power in Greece following another emphatic election victory, securing a new mandate after he yielded to the demands of European leaders for more austerity in the crisis-hit country.

The former prime minister’s Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, received 35.5 percent of the vote, according to an official projection by the Interior Ministry based on more than half of votes counted. The center-right New Democracy, whose leader Evangelos Meimarakis conceded defeat, was expected to get 28 percent.

With Syriza set to fall short of a majority in the 300-seat parliament, Tsipras, 41, will enter negotiations to build a viable government with the same coalition partner as before, scotching expectations he might do a deal with a more moderate party. In a year marked by the standoff between Greece and its European creditors, the difference now is that the new government will have little room to maneuver after Tsipras acceded to more spending cuts and tax increases in exchange for a new bailout....

TALK ABOUT YOUR POLITICAL UNDERSTATEMENT!

[pscot]

12. Deja vous all over again

Have the Greeks finessed the bankers?

[Demeter]

13. The Greeks want to have their eurozone, and eat, too

It's not working out very well for them. When push comes to shove, they are going to have to make a choice.

[Demeter]

4. Miami’s ‘Scarface’ Pad Has New Resident: A Billionaire Ex-President in Exile

O JOY! ANOTHER ONE!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/from-miami-s-scarface-pad-an-exiled-billionaire-fights-back

Just outside downtown Miami, in a luxury condo building made famous by the 1980s hits “Scarface” and “Miami Vice,” a billionaire ex-president is holed up in exile.

Ricardo Martinelli -- scion of Panamanian landholders and an ex-Citigroup banker -- was Latin America’s most popular president a few years ago, a leader who was just as likely to make headlines for helping his country win an investment-grade rating as he was for his lavish personal spending and extravagant parties. Yet as Panama’s Supreme Court was opening probes earlier this year into his role in alleged phone-tapping and corruption scandals that drained millions from government coffers, Martinelli skipped town. A separate investigation is now underway in crisis-torn Brazil, home to a company that won concessions for mega-projects in Panama during Martinelli’s 2009-2014 tenure, and another was carried out in Italy.

A silver-haired, portly 63-year-old, Martinelli spends much of his time in Miami’s waterfront Brickell neighborhood defending his public record, maintaining his innocence and hinting at a possible political comeback. He’s on Twitter constantly, tweeting opinions and announcements to his legion of 557,000 followers.

When he sat down for a recent interview at a Miami cafe, he was in a combative mood, lashing out at political enemies and rattling off his administration’s accomplishments -- surging growth, falling unemployment and construction of Central America’s first subway system. “We put Panama on the map,” he boasted. And then he laid out what essentially form the two central points of his response to the probes: Ricardo Martinelli has been a very rich man for a very long time; and rivals are using the investigations to weaken him...

THE JURY WILL EAT THAT UP, FOR SURE!

[MattSh]

15. Maybe he's hoping to pull off a Saakashvili?

Georgia ex-President Saakashvili makes play to be prime minister – in Ukraine - CSMonitor.com

MOSCOW — Mikheil Saakashvili has never been shy about picking fights.

As president of Georgia, he fought his country's notorious corruption, but using an authoritarian style of governance that has left him wanted on criminal charges in his homeland.

He also sparked a war with Russia in 2008 by attempting a military takeover of the Moscow-protected breakaway territory of South Ossetia.

And when he came to Ukraine earlier this year to serve as governor of the corruption-infested Black Sea port of Odessa, he squared off publicly with the region's most powerful oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky.

But last week, Mr. Saakashvili picked a fight with an opponent that no one expected – Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister – with an apparent eye towards replacing him.

.....and.....

"We’re talking about sabotage by central government," Saakashvili said, directly fingering the cabinet headed by Yatsenyuk. "Now the government is paralyzed. There must be a total reset of the Ukrainian government on all levels."

Within days a petition appeared on the president's official website asking Poroshenko to fire Yatsenyuk and appoint Saakashvili in his place. It now has thousands more signatures than the 25,000 that would require the president to officially consider the issue.

Complete story at - http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0910/Georgia-ex-President-Saakashvili-makes-play-to-be-prime-minister-in-Ukraine

I'm sure they would need Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland to sign off on that first.

[Demeter]

5. Saudi Arabia's Crude Stockpiles at Record High as Exports Fall

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-20/saudi-arabia-s-crude-stockpiles-at-record-high-as-exports-fall

Saudi Arabia’s crude stockpiles rose to a record in July after exports by the world’s biggest oil shipper declined for the third time in four months.

Commercial petroleum stockpiles increased to 320 million barrels, the highest since at least 2002, from 319.5 million barrels in June, according to data Sunday on the website of the Riyadh-based Joint Organisations Data Initiative. Crude exports slumped 1.2 percent to 7.28 million barrels a day after hitting a record 7.9 million barrels in March. Overseas shipments declined every month since then except in June.

Brent crude oil prices have slumped 17 percent this year as Saudi Arabia led the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in boosting production to keep market share amid a global supply glut. The failure of producers to cut output fast enough may require prices to fall near $20 a barrel to clear the surplus, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates. Saudi Arabia cut back on oil production by 1.9 percent in July, the first drop since February, to 10.36 million barrels a day, according to the JODI data. Saudi Arabia told OPEC its June production of 10.564 million barrels daily was a record, exceeding a previous all-time high set in 1980.

“It seems that the Saudis are determined to keep their market share at above 10.2 million barrels a day,” Essam al-Marzouq, Kuwait-based independent oil analyst and former vice president at Kuwait Petroleum International, said by phone on Sunday. “In the case when exports are down, they will not scale back on production and will store the crude at home or even abroad."

MORE

[Demeter]

6. Saudi Stocks Drop Most in Mideast as Fed Stirs Growth Concerns

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-20/dubai-stocks-drop-as-fed-stirs-growth-concerns-abu-dhabi-rises

Saudi Arabian equities fell the most in the Arab world after the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates unchanged sparked concern over global growth and the price of oil capped its third week of losses....Banks made up four out of the top five contributors to the decline....

OF COURSE

MORE

[Demeter]

7. How to end boom and bust: make cash illegal

CASH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BOOM AND BUST--CENTRAL BANK PRINTING PRESSES DO!
CASH HAS TO DO WITH PERSONAL PRIVACY AND COUNTERFEITING BY AMATEURS.

WHY PRINT COUNTERFEIT, WHEN WITH THE CLICK OF A FEW KEYS, YOU CAN DO IT AN NO COST WHATSOEVER?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/comment/11602399/Ban-cash-end-boom-and-bust.html

Forcing everyone to spend only by electronic means from an account held at a government-run bank would give the authorities far better tools to deal with recessions and economic booms, writes Jim Leaviss...

This story is part of our "Money Lab" series, in which respected figures from the world of finance put forward controversial ideas for improving our personal finances or the economy...

AND IF YOU BELIEVE IT, YOU WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING!

[Demeter]

9. BEST COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE

Any government that wants this level of social control, is managed by criminals.

[Punx]

23. A Cashless Society

Has been a "wet dream" of the Authoritarian crowd for a while now. Obviously it would make it more difficult for criminal and black market activity. But mainly they can follow everything anyone does.

And if you become a trouble maker, say protesting TPP or Keystone, well with a flick of a switch they can shut down (or confiscate!) all your finances, credit/debit cards and you're stuck.

[Demeter]

24. And they would, in a heartbeat

"I'm sorry, our computers are down, call us back in 24 hours..."

[DemReadingDU]

28. and your Passport too

as in Edward Snowden

[Demeter]

25. It's the same answer to the NSA--Any government w/this level of social control is managed by crooks

It's not only unnecessary, it's abusive even before the government accesses that info.

[Demeter]

8. Global list of biggest pensions exposes Britain's flawed retirement plan

Two countries have half the world's retirement wealth. Britain has only one fund in the top 50 - but the BBC nearly makes the top 200...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/11854493/Global-list-of-biggest-pensions-exposes-Britains-flawed-retirement-plan.html

Reports on the pensions industry can be dull and are easily overlooked. One such study published last week attracted few headlines yet offered wonderful insights.

The world’s 300 largest pension schemes, a study put together by Towers Watson, allowed for interesting conclusions to be drawn on who owns the world’s retirement wealth – and what that says about how each country will meet future pension costs.

First, I was surprised that only one British scheme made the top 50: BT Group which has accumulated $68bn to ensure it can pay employees past and present sufficient retirement income. The next biggest British pensions were the Universities Superannuation Scheme, with big banks’ and utility companies’ schemes close behind. BT may have only just made the top 50 but lower sections of the list were loaded with UK pensions. The BBC, with around 20,000 employees, nearly made the top 200 thanks to its $20bn warchest. That size sets it up for an intriguing comparison with Tesco, with 500,000 workers, yet much further down the list due its mere $15.5bn fund.

The geographical spread of assets is fascinating. The US and Japan sit on half of the world’s retirement wealth: America has 38pc, Japan has 12pc.

MORE

[Demeter]

10. Ferguson, Mo., on Path to Insolvency, Gets Downgrade to Junk

LOST THEIR REVENUE STREAM WHEN THEY WERE TOLD TO STOP SIPHONING MONEY OUT OF THE POOR WITH ALL THOSE TICKETS AND WARRANTS...

http://www.bondbuyer.com/news/regionalnews/ferguson-mo-on-path-to-insolvency-gets-downgrade-to-junk-1084874-1.html

Ferguson, Mo. lost its investment-grade rating Thursday when Moody's Investors Service dropped its rating four notches in a sign of the financial fallout from the fatal 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown. Moody's dropped the city's general obligation rating to the highest junk level of Ba1 from Aa3 and its lease revenue ratings to Ba2 and Ba3, from A1 and A2, respectively. The downgrade "reflects severe and rapid deterioration of the city's financial position, possible depletion of fund balances in the near term, and limited options for restoring fiscal stability," Moody's wrote.

The action impacts $6.7 million of outstanding GO bonds, $8.4 million of certificates of participation from a 2013 issue, and $1.5 million of 2012 certificates. The COPs are payable from available revenue and subject to appropriation. The credits remain under review for further downgrade or withdrawal due to a lack of information. The once plentiful reserves of the city northwest of St. Louis are dwindling and the city could be headed toward insolvency as soon as 2017, Moody's said...Between draws in fiscal 2015 which ended June 30, and fiscal 2016 projections, city reserves are expected to fall by 70% compared to audited fiscal 2014 levels...

"Key drivers of this precipitous drop are declining key revenues, unbudgeted expenditures, and escalating expenses related to ongoing litigation and the Department of Justice consent decree currently under negotiation," Moody's wrote.

"We believe fiscal ramifications from these items could be significant and could result in insolvency," Moody's wrote. "We expect additional detail within the next few months as to the city's final audited fiscal 2015 results as well as options and financial strategies for addressing these looming costs."

YES, I SUPPOSE "UNBUDGETED EXPENDITURES" MEANS LEGAL COSTS AND REPARATIONS

A March report from Justice's Civil Rights Division found the Ferguson police department engaged in unlawful and discriminatory practices partially driven by the city's reliance on court fine revenue to support its budget. Advocacy groups have filed a series of lawsuits challenging municipal ticketing operations....

[Demeter]

11. Occam’s razor says the stock market is in a downtrend

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/occams-razor-says-the-stock-market-is-in-a-downtrend-2015-09-18

Investors can forget the “death cross,” “bearish divergences” and “symmetrical triangles,” and what the Federal Reserve says it will do about interest rates, and just focus on Occam’s razor: The S&P 500 abandoned its long-term uptrend in late August, meaning it is now in a downtrend.

Occam’s razor is the philosophical principle that suggests, all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.

One of the most elementary trading maxims on Wall Street is “the trend is your friend.” That’s basically what all the short-term technical patterns, economic data and earnings reports are used for, to determine which direction the longer-term trend is heading, and whether it’s about to change. Once that trend is determined, a tenet of the century-old Dow Theory of market analysis says it is assumed to remain in effect, until it gives definite signals that it has reversed, according to the Market Technicians Associations knowledge base. In other words, the trend is your friend, until it isn’t.

After cutting through all the noise, a trendline is probably the best chart pattern to determine the trend, as it is also the simplest. And the simplest way to tell if a trend has reversed, is if the trendline breaks...

[Demeter]

14. No More Jet Skis, Maine Tells Food Stamp Recipients

"Hard-working Mainers should not come home to see snowmobiles, four wheelers or jet skis in the yards of those who are getting welfare."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/food-stamps-maine-paul-lepage_55fc4b98e4b08820d9187580?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) is tired of able-bodied food stamp recipients zipping around on snowmobiles instead of looking for jobs.

The state announced this week that it will disallow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for childless households with certain assets worth more than $5,000. Home equity and a person's primary vehicle won't count against the limit, but the state has issued a list of things that could: "bank accounts, snowmobiles, boats, motorcycles, jet skis, all-terrain vehicles, recreational vehicles, campers," and other valuables.

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

The Huffington Post asked Maine Department of Health and Human Services spokesman David Sorensen if the change had been inspired by any specific instances of welfare recipients with Jet Skis in their yards. "We hear examples and concerns from clients and constituents quite frequently," Sorensen said in an email. More importantly, Sorensen said, "Maine applied the asset test for years prior to August 2010, as did most states before the recession, so the question really is, why did we do away with it and why shouldn’t we bring it back?"

Federal law imposes resource limits for SNAP eligibility, but states generally waive the limit for applicants if they already qualify for even modest assistance from another means-tested safety net program. It's a policy called broad-based categorical eligibility, and most states offer it. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, almost all states also waived time limits on food stamp benefits for able-bodied adults without dependents, and those limits are coming back now that the unemployment rates are falling. LePage's administration imposed the time limit -- billed as a "work requirement" -- ahead of schedule, ending benefits for 9,000 Mainers this year.

While Maine's list of recreational vehicles may seem a bit fanciful, federal law does tell states to look out for vehicles when counting a household's assets. Still, antipoverty advocates and Democrats dislike the policy change.

"What’s next? Grandma can’t buy groceries until she sells her engagement ring?" said Rep. Drew Gattine, a Democrat who co-chairs the state legislature's Health and Human Services Committee, according to the Portland Press Herald. (Personal items such as jewelry will not count toward the asset limit.) Maine's HHS said the rule change should affect roughly 8,600 people, though it's unclear how many would be disqualified. The Congressional Budget Office has previously estimated that most people who qualify for SNAP under broad-based categorical eligibility could still pass the asset test. The department said the asset limit will return in October following a public hearing.

AND WHAT IS THE MARKET VALUE FOR A USED JETSKI, SNOWMOBILE OR RV?

AND HOW DOES THE VICTIM MOVE AROUND IN THE SNOW? OR FROM SPOT TO SPOT OVER WATER? WHERE DOES HE LIVE WHEN HIS HOUSE IS FORECLOSED?

SOMETIMES I HATE THIS COUNTRY. IT'S NOT JUST THE GOP--IT'S THE ELITE, AND THOSE THAT THINK THEY BELONG TO THE ELITE....

[Demeter]

16. Did the Other Shoe Just Drop? Big Banks Hit with Monster $250 Billion Lawsuit in Housing Crisis

Did the Other Shoe Just Drop? Big Banks Hit with Monster $250 Billion Lawsuit in Housing Crisis

By Ellen Brown FROM JULY, 2014

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39118.htm

For years, homeowners have been battling Wall Street in an attempt to recover some portion of their massive losses from the housing Ponzi scheme. But progress has been slow, as they have been outgunned and out-spent by the banking titans.

In June, however, the banks may have met their match, as some equally powerful titans strode onto the stage. Investors led by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and PIMCO, the world’s largest bond-fund manager, have sued some of the world’s largest banks for breach of fiduciary duty as trustees of their investment funds. The investors are seeking damages for losses surpassing $250 billion. That is the equivalent of one million homeowners with $250,000 in damages suing at one time.

The defendants are the so-called trust banks that oversee payments and enforce terms on more than $2 trillion in residential mortgage securities. They include units of Deutsche Bank AG, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, HSBC Holdings PLC, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Six nearly identical complaints charge the trust banks with breach of their duty to force lenders and sponsors of the mortgage-backed securities to repurchase defective loans.

Why the investors are only now suing is complicated, but it involves a recent court decision on the statute of limitations. Why the trust banks failed to sue the lenders evidently involves the cozy relationship between lenders and trustees. The trustees also securitized loans in pools where they were not trustees. If they had started filing suit demanding repurchases, they might wind up suedon other deals in retaliation. Better to ignore the repurchase provisions of the pooling and servicing agreements and let the investors take the losses—better, at least, until they sued.

Beyond the legal issues are the implications for the solvency of the banking system itself. Can even the largest banks withstand a $250 billion iceberg? The sum is more than 40 times the $6 billion “London Whale” that shook JPMorganChase to its foundations...

YES, I'M READING BACK ISSUES OF NEWSLETTERS IN THE EMAIL INBOX AGAIN...IT'S QUIET OUT THERE...TOO QUIET. WHEN THE PLACE WAS JUMPING LAST YEAR, I COULDN'T KEEP UP. THING IS, HAVEN'T HEARD A PEEP ABOUT THIS SINCE....

[Demeter]

17. Who Will Pay – the Banks or the Depositors?

The world’s largest banks are considered “too big to fail” for a reason. The fractional reserve banking scheme is a form of shell game, which depends on “liquidity” borrowed at very low interest from other banks or the money market. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008, triggering a run on the money market, the whole interconnected shadow banking system nearly went down with it.

Congress then came to the rescue with a taxpayer bailout, and the Federal Reserve followed with its quantitative easing fire hose. But in 2010, the Dodd Frank Act said there would be no more government bailouts. Instead, the banks were to save themselves with “bail ins,” meaning they were to recapitalize themselves by confiscating a portion of the funds of their creditors – including not only their shareholders and bondholders but the largest class of creditor of any bank, their depositors.

Theoretically, deposits under $250,000 are protected by FDIC deposit insurance. But the FDIC fund contains only about $47 billion – a mere 20% of the Black Rock/PIMCO damage claims. Before 2010, the FDIC could borrow from the Treasury if it ran short of money. But since the Dodd Frank Act eliminates government bailouts, the availability of Treasury funds for that purpose is now in doubt.

When depositors open their online accounts and see that their balances have shrunk or disappeared, a run on the banks is likely. And since banks rely on each other for liquidity, the banking system as we know it could collapse. The result could be drastic deleveraging, erasing trillions of dollars in national wealth.

[Demeter]

18. Phoenix Rising (CONTINUES)

Some pundits say the global economy would then come crashing down. But in a thought-provoking March 2014 article called “American Delusionalism, or Why History Matters,” John Michael Greer disagrees. He notes that historically, governments have responded by modifying their financial systems:

Massive credit collapses that erase very large sums of notional wealth and impact the global economy are hardly a new phenomenon . . . but one thing that has never happened as a result of any of them is the sort of self-feeding, irrevocable plunge into the abyss that current fast-crash theories require.

The reason for this is that credit is merely one way by which a society manages the distribution of goods and services. . . . A credit collapse . . . doesn’t make the energy, raw materials, and labor vanish into some fiscal equivalent of a black hole; they’re all still there, in whatever quantities they were before the credit collapse, and all that’s needed is some new way to allocate them to the production of goods and services.

This, in turn, governments promptly provide. In 1933, for example, faced with the most severe credit collapse in American history, Franklin Roosevelt temporarily nationalized the entire US banking system, seized nearly all the privately held gold in the country, unilaterally changed the national debt from “payable in gold” to “payable in Federal Reserve notes” (which amounted to a technical default), and launched a series of other emergency measures. The credit collapse came to a screeching halt, famously, in less than a hundred days. Other nations facing the same crisis took equally drastic measures, with similar results. . . .

Faced with a severe crisis, governments can slap on wage and price controls, freeze currency exchanges, impose rationing, raise trade barriers, default on their debts, nationalize whole industries, issue new currencies, allocate goods and services by fiat, and impose martial law to make sure the new economic rules are followed to the letter, if necessary, at gunpoint. Again, these aren’t theoretical possibilities; every one of them has actually been used by more than one government faced by a major economic crisis in the last century and a half.

That historical review is grounds for optimism, but confiscation of assets and enforcement at gunpoint are still not the most desirable outcomes. Better would be to have an alternative system in place and ready to implement before the boom drops....


SEE LINK FOR THAT SOLUTION

[Demeter]

19. Why We're Doomed: Interest and Debt By Charles Hugh Smith

GOOD REFERENCE MATERIAL

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly14/interest-debt7-14.html

[Demeter]

20. The Rise Of The Non-working Rich By Robert Reich

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39132.htm

In a new Pew poll, more than three quarters of self-described conservatives believe “poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything.” In reality, most of America’s poor work hard, often in two or more jobs. The real non-workers are the wealthy who inherit their fortunes. And their ranks are growing.

In fact, we’re on the cusp of the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history. The wealth is coming from those who over the last three decades earned huge amounts on Wall Street, in corporate boardrooms, or as high-tech entrepreneurs. It’s going to their children, who did nothing except be born into the right family.

The “self-made” man or woman, the symbol of American meritocracy, is disappearing. Six of today’s ten wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. Just six Walmart heirs have more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined (up from 30 percent in 2007).

The U.S. Trust bank just released a poll of Americans with more than $3 million of investable assets. Nearly three-quarters of those over age 69, and 61 per cent of boomers (between the ages of 50 and 68), were the first in their generation to accumulate significant wealth. But the bank found inherited wealth far more common among rich millennials under age 35. This is the dynastic form of wealth French economist Thomas Piketty warns about. It’s been the major source of wealth in Europe for centuries. It’s about to become the major source in America – unless, that is, we do something about it...POLICY CHANGES AND PROPOSALS FOLLOW; SEE LINK....We don’t have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth. We can and must take action — before it’s too late.



ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.

[Demeter]

21. Faced With Western Freeze-Out, BRICS Bank Is a Coup for Russia

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/faced-with-western-freeze-out-brics-bank-is-a-coup-for-russia/503411.html

... For Russia, the creation of a $100 billion BRICS development bank and a reserve currency fund worth another $100 billion is a political coup. Just as the West freezes Russia out of its own economic system as punishment for its politics in Ukraine, Russia is tying itself into the financial superstructure of the next generation of economic heavyweights: India, Brazil, China and South Africa.

The World Bank and the IMF have come under criticism from the rapidly developing BRICS, who together account for 20 percent of global GDP and 40 percent of the world's population. In their view, the two financial institutions are dominated by the rich nations of the G7 and attach stringent conditions to their lending that impinge on the economic sovereignty of its members.

Far from assuaging their complaints, efforts to reform the 70-year-old institutions have stalled. Proposed updates to the IMF that would grant increased influence to developing economies have been languishing in the U.S. Congress since 2010 and were blocked once again in April.

If the framework agreements due to be signed at the BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, are ratified at home, the new bank and the reserve fund could come just in time for the BRICS countries. U.S. tightening of the dollar supply starting last year has caused a wave of crises in developing nations as the cash inflows of the past decade begin to reverse themselves....

[Demeter]

22. The Rage of the Bankers Paul Krugman

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/opinion/paul-krugman-the-rage-of-the-bankers.html

Last week the Federal Reserve chose not to raise interest rates. It was the right decision. In fact, I’m among the economists wondering why we’re even thinking about raising rates right now. But the financial industry’s response may explain what’s going on. You see, the Fed talks a lot to bankers — and bankers reacted to its decision with sheer, unadulterated rage. For those trying to understand the political economy of monetary policy, it was an “Aha!” moment. Suddenly, a lot of what has been puzzling about the discussion makes sense: just follow the money.

The basic principles of interest rate policy are fairly simple, and go back more than a century to the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell. He argued that central banks like the Fed or the European Central Bank should set rates at their “natural” level, defined in terms of what happens to inflation. If rates are too low, inflation will accelerate; if rates are too high, inflation will fall and perhaps turn into deflation. By this criterion, it’s hard to argue that current rates are too low. Inflation has been low for years. In particular, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, has consistently fallen short of its own target of 2 percent, and shows no sign of rising. It’s true that rates — near zero for the short-term interest rates the Fed controls more or less directly — are very low by historical standards. And it’s interesting to ask why the economy seems to need such low rates. But all the evidence says that it does. Again, if you think that rates are much too low, where’s the inflation?

Yet the Fed has faced constant criticism for its low-rate policy. Why?

The answer is that the story keeps changing. In 2010-2011 the Fed’s critics issued dire warnings about looming inflation. You might have expected some change in tune when inflation failed to materialize. Instead, however, those who used to demand higher rates to head off inflation are still demanding higher rates, but for different reasons. The justification du jour is “financial stability,” the claim that low interest rates breed bubbles and crashes. I suppose this latest excuse for raising rates could be right. But it’s striking how convoluted and dubious the case for rate hikes has become. I like to think of it this way: if left-leaning politicians were to offer rationales for their policies that were this dependent on shaky logic and weak evidence, they would be lambasted for their irresponsibility. Why does anyone take this stuff seriously?

Well, when you see ever-changing rationales for never-changing policy demands, it’s a good bet that there’s an ulterior motive. And the rate rage of the bankers — combined with the plunge in bank stocks that followed the Fed’s decision not to hike — offers a powerful clue to the nature of that motive. It’s the bank profits, stupid. Many people have been led astray here by trying to figure out whether easy money is good or bad for wealthy people in general. That’s actually a complicated question. What’s clear, however, is that low rates are bad for bankers. For banks make their profits by taking in deposits and lending the funds out at a higher rate of interest. And this business gets squeezed in a low-interest environment: the rates banks can charge on loans are pushed down, but rates on deposits can only go so low. The net-interest margin — the difference between the interest rate banks receive on loans and the rate they pay on deposits — has fallen sharply over the past five years. The appropriate response of policy makers to this observation should be, “So?” There’s no reason to believe that what’s good for bankers is good for America. But bankers are different from you and me: they have a lot more influence. Monetary officials meet with them all the time, and in many cases expect to join their ranks when they come out on the other side of the revolving door. Also, it’s widely assumed that bankers have special expertise on economic policy, although nothing in the record supports this belief. (The bankers do, however, have excellent tailors.) So we shouldn’t be surprised to see institutions that cater to bankers, not to mention much of the financial press, spinning elaborate justifications for a rate hike that makes no sense in terms of basic economics. And the debate of the past few months, in which the Fed has seemed weirdly eager to raise rates despite warnings from the likes of Larry Summers that it would be a terrible mistake, suggests that even U.S. monetary officials aren’t immune.

But the Fed did the right thing last week: nothing. And the howling of the bankers should be taken not as a reason to reconsider, but as a demonstration that the clamor for higher rates has nothing to do with the public interest.

[Demeter]

26. So, they tried to pump the DJIA 200 pts, but it's barely 80 now

and there's still plenty of time for that to melt away...

I'm having a bad Monday, too. This is going to be one of those weeks were it doesn't even pay to chew through the restraints. This virus will not quit. If I thought I had a bacterial secondary infection, I'd go visit the doctor, but there's no sign of it. 4.5 weeks of this so far and I have nothing to show for it but zeroes....

The Kid is feeling much better. Of course she had 7.5 weeks of recovery with no demands on her strength...I'm just going to go cry, and then go back to work. Don't mind me...

[DemReadingDU]

27. Under the circumstances

You are doing as good as you can.



I don't have any excuse for being as behind as I am.