n2doc
n2doc's JournalCitigroup’s simple message about trading: it’s getting worse
Is it time to panic yet? The trading business on Wall Street is continuing to get walloped. Indeed, Citigroup chief financial officer John Gerspach just told attendees at a conference that the bank’s second-quarter revenues from trading stocks and bonds may plummet by as much as 25%, compared to the same quarter last year.
Why? Pretty simple really. Markets have been calm lately. (Low volatility.) And, as a result, there hasn’t been a lot of trading activity. (Low volume.) As a result, banks trading revenues are likewise, low.
“Historically low volatility, an uncertain global macro environment and geopolitical events have all combined to drive volumes lower,” Gerspach told conference attendees.
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What’s not clear is exactly what’s driving the downturn in volatility and trading activity. For his part, Gerspach had a simple explanation: Nobody knows what to do. “In order to create some level of volatility there needs to be people on both sides of a view. Right now I don’t think people even know what view to be on either side of,” Gerspach said, adding, “It’s just a market that is becalmed.”
http://qz.com/214025/citigroups-simple-message-about-trading-its-getting-worse/
Volatility might be the banksters' friend, but it is most assuredly not a friend of the 99%
We just never learn (cars)
New and used vehicle sales are on fire. But domestic car sales are down 6%. How that can make any sense?
It turns that Americans are over cars. They’re buying trucks, instead.
Domestic and imported truck sales are up 8% in 2014, and they account for more than 100% of all new vehicle purchases, off-setting the decline in new cars. (The used-vehicle market seems to skew slightly toward smaller durable cars, but it’s hard to find great data.) Some smaller models, like the Toyota Camry and Hyundai Sonata, are outselling last year. But overall, bigger is selling better across the board.
http://qz.com/213967/trucks-are-saving-the-us-economy/
Sigh.
The cold logic behind Elon Musk’s $5 billion gigafactory gamble
Elon Musk is placing an enormous bet on the world’s largest lithium-ion battery plant—a $5 billion, 10 million-square-foot “gigafactory” that would make enough battery packs to power 500,000 electric cars a year. That is four times the number of electric cars of any brand bought around the world last year, and a whopping 21 times Tesla’s own 2013 sales. In addition to betting on this monumental sales boost, Musk is hoping an inventive rival won’t eclipse his battery technology and render the gigafactory instantly obsolete.
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But the deck may be at least partly stacked in Musk’s favor. He appears to be banking not so much on a sharp swing in consumer taste as on a shift already underway in public policy. Over the coming decade, eight US states will begin to require carmakers to sell an estimated 3.3 million low- and zero-emission vehicles. In addition, California will require utilities to buy the capacity to store 1.3 gigawatts of electricity, enough to serve one million homes.
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When combined, the required mobile and stationary battery capacity will be so massive that Musk would be scrambling not so much to find buyers as to meet the demand, some say. “Industrywide, you are no longer talking about 500,000 or one million vehicles, but millions of cars that have to be on the road,” Ann Schlenker, director of transportation at Argonne National Laboratory, told Quartz.
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Musk says he will ante up $2 billion of the factory’s cost and raise the rest of the money. Here we examine his calculus.
more
http://qz.com/214093/tesla-elon-musk-5-billion-gigafactory-gamble/
Women won't stand for abortion-rights rollback
(CNN) -- Last week, the Louisiana legislature passed a bill that could force all but two of the state's abortion providers to close their doors, which means Louisiana is preparing to join Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi to the list of Southern states on the verge of wiping out access to safe and legal abortion.
Laws such as the one now headed to Gov. Bobby Jindal's desk appear to be part of a national strategy to subject doctors who provide abortion to medically unnecessary restrictions under the guise of improving patient safety despite the fact that abortion is already one of the safest medical procedures in the country.
These laws have one real purpose: to make it almost impossible for a woman to get an abortion, no matter what circumstances she may be facing.
Three years ago in Texas, there were 62 health centers that provided safe and legal abortion. Come this fall, as a result of harsh abortion restrictions, there could be as few as seven. That's seven health centers for 5.7 million women of reproductive age in a state roughly the size of France.
more
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/28/opinion/richards-abortion-access-restrictions-south/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
They won't? News to me. "Women" aren't a monolithic voting block and there are a lot of female voters who are just fine with the fetus-worshipping and rights-denying, judging by the results in Virginia and elsewhere. One can only hope those who do support the right to choose and women's rights, will exceed the turnout of the ones who want to go back a century or 2.
Wednesday Toon Roundup 2- The Rest
GOP
CONgress
Environment
Economy
Education
Gitmo
Court
Fear
Pope
Putin
Man in Pig Mask Arrested for Impersonating Police Officer
Steven Peers, a 46 year old father of four was recently arrested in Manchester for impersonating a police officer. Mr. Peers was not attempting to commit any crime, but was actually wearing a noticeable costume in hopes to call attention to, and raise awareness about police corruption and misconduct.
His costume did include a police hat and jacket, but the pig mask that he was wearing made it obvious that the whole thing was a joke. Unfortunately, the police didn’t find the joke very funny, and they arrested him for impersonating an officer.
A police department spokesman said in a statement that “At about 4pm on Thursday 22 May 2014, a man was arrested in Manchester city centre on suspicion of impersonating a police officer.“He was released on bail until 17 July 2014 pending further inquiries.”
The arrest has created a wave of backlash on the internet, and Mr. Peers says that the charges will never hold up in court.
After his arrest he told reporters that, “my reaction to being arrested was total disbelief. I was wearing a toy hat and a pig mask and was arrested for impersonating a police officer. It’s ridiculous….If they want to take it to court they will be a laughing stock because there is no substance to it whatsoever. I don’t think it’s antagonistic. It’s just a parody making fun of GMP. I’ve dressed like this at Barton Moss, in front of Swinton police station and in front of the force HQ in Newton Heath. Other officers have laughed it off.”
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/man-pig-mask-arrested-impersonating-police-officer/#Ox9wuLV4ClsIE4tc.99
New York Federal Judge: Tens Of Thousands Of Innocent People Have Likely Pleaded Guilty
BY NICOLE FLATOW
A prominent New York federal judge said this week that a broken guilty plea system is sending too many people innocent people to prison, coerced by the threat of long prison sentences and not enough information.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said the modern American system in which 97 percent of defendants plead guilty “is totally different from what the founding fathers had in mind.” Rakoff elaborated on his concerns during an interview with the New York Daily News, a month after he first raised the issue during a speech at the University of Southern California.
Rakoff blamed draconian mandatory minimum sentences for coercing defendants into accepting plea deals, forcing defendants to “choose between Satan and Lucifer.” He cited estimates that between 1 and 8 percent of those who plead guilty are actually innocent. Even if that percentage were just 0.5 percent, that would be 10,000 people, he tells the New York Daily News.
We only know about a fraction of this population, and they are particularly difficult to identify, since many defendants their case finalized once they make the calculation to enter a plea. In 2013, 87 people were exonerated — 17 percent for false guilty pleas.
more
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/05/27/3441890/new-york-federal-judge-tens-of-thousands-of-innocent-people-have-pleaded-guilty/
Damn Dirty Hippies
By Mary Kelly
Hippies, Drugs and Promiscuity
Labin
1972
Dig the groovy cover? I do.
This is sort of a tell-all about the crazy world of hippies. In the context of this book, “hippy” generally refers to those folks that “reject the values of the established order.” However, they aren’t Communists (because they are too lazy to organize), or atheistic Marxists (because they like spirituality). They also aren’t cynical, like Beatnicks. They are different, because they embrace the use of “mind-bending chemicals.” (In this book, alcohol is not considered a “mind-bending chemical.”) I get the feeling that this somehow makes the hippies worse than these previous anti-establishment folks.
Labin gives everyone from the establishment a pretty good scare about those out of control kids. It reads like Richard Nixon lecturing on morality, sex and drugs. Every societal issue/problem is probably the fault of the hippies. If you are my age or older, you probably have heard most of these arguments from the older generation. It is an interesting read from a historical perspective and does belong in a collection somewhere.
more
http://awfullibrarybooks.net/damn-dirty-hippies/
Someone in San Diego deserves a round of applause for this highway sign modification along I-5
“STEVE-O DENIED ANY INVOLVEMENT WITH THE PRANK AND THE CHP SAYS HE IS NOT A SUSPECT.”
sea-world-sucks-san-diego-highway
Someone in San Diego deserves a round of applause for this highway sign modification along Interstate 5. In regards to Steve-O, the Jackass star was pulled over close to an hour after the sign had been changed to read “Sea World SUCKS,” when he showed up on the scene with a camera crew in tow to shoot a video segment.
http://www.theworldsbestever.com/2014/05/27/steve-o-denied-involvement-prank-chp-says-suspect/
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